Rage Against the Dying Page 14

  No “Did you see an overturned van?” just “Hm.” Max turned the rocks this way and that with a rising excitement usually not given to rocks. “When were you there?”

  Always tell as much truth as possible, but no more than necessary. Liars always want to embellish and it gets them into trouble. I looked at the clock, stupidly. I told myself it must be time to inhale. “The other day. Why, what’s up?”

  “Don’t you die in this heat?”

  What was his game? “I try to keep under the bridge where it’s shady. Isn’t it funny how the temperature changes drastically when you’re in the shade here?”

  “I told her not to keep going down there,” Carlo added inconsequentially and reached over the breakfast counter to push my hair away from my forehead to expose the faint remains of my bruise, while I jerked slightly, annoyed at being a specimen. “Look, she fell.”

  That qualifies as more information than necessary. Thanks, Carlo. Now I’d have to incorporate the fall into my story.

  Max squinted at the spot Carlo indicated. More interested than usual, I thought, but maybe it was just the guilts working. I tried to look vulnerable.

  “That must have been a bad knock,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s okay, I’ve had worse. That looks good.” I got off the stool to get my own coffee. I used the action to get control over my pounding pulse, hiding lips that threatened to twitch incriminatingly behind the coffee cup, trying to anticipate Max’s questions and where they might lead: Did you see anyone driving a white van? Where are the clothes you were wearing when you tripped? I waited, mentally calculating the number of holes in my story. Why was he toying with me like this?

  Regretting what Carlo might be about to hear, I still had to pretend ignorance. “So tell us what you saw. From the look on your face I’d guess it was something more exciting than a rabid bobcat.”

  “Found a vehicle upside down in the wash.”

  I let my eyes flare briefly, held his glance one count, two count, what an honest person would do, before looking away with feigned lack of interest. Pulse racing, take a deep breath through my nose to calm it, so my heart doesn’t show up in my voice. Oh my God, this is what a murderer feels like. “That’s not something you see every day. Who found it?”

  “Clifton Davies. You know him, don’t you?”

  “Nice kid. Met him at your party, saw him at that place the other day, Emery’s Cantina. You know the place?”

  “Sure, been there a few times.” But he shook his head with annoyance that I wasn’t staying on topic. “Clifton was coming back from his night shift and saw some buzzards circling over the area, just was curious.”

  “Could the accident have happened after I left?”

  Max shrugged in a tough-guy manner rather than admit to anything. This was a big event for him and he was choosing to keep me in suspense. “Where were you collecting rocks again?”

  “Usual place, around the bridge where they wash up, and it’s shady there, too.”

  “That explains it. Clifton found it around the bend in the wash north of the bridge.”

  “Ah, you’re right, that explains it. If it was far enough around the bend from the bridge area I wouldn’t have been able to see it.” Too many words, stop spilling, turn the focus. “So why do you want to know?”

  “You’re the only person we know who goes there regularly, so it kind of makes you a potential witness. But knowing you, you would have noticed something and called.”

  “Of course. What about the van, just abandoned after an accident?”

  Focused on what he had seen, Max’s eyes lit with the finding of death that we all feel despite the inappropriateness of the thrill. “Hell, no. It was disgusting inside. Stunk to heaven, guy dead for maybe what the ME thinks is a few days but maybe he’ll be able to tell more after the autopsy.”

  “Oh my God.” I turned in the direction of Carlo’s voice, so concentrated on what I was saying to Max that I’d forgotten the Perfesser was standing there listening. He spoke in the hushed voice you save for church and funeral homes. “Less than a mile away from our house. And Brigid goes into that wash every day.”

  “Not every day,” I said quickly.

  Carlo’s face went gaunt and pale. This was upon simply hearing of a body. I looked at that face and imagined his reaction upon hearing I was the one who made the body dead. Not to mention how. For the first time I felt maybe I’d done the right thing after all. But there was still Max, and he was just getting warmed up.

  “The body was thrown into the back. Maggots were there and gone like even they couldn’t take the heat. ME said probably a hundred and eighty degrees and with the wash running the other day decomp was accelerated; it was like a Crock-Pot in there. The bastard’s stewed. Big fissures in his flesh where the gases broke through.”

  Cops love to talk about this shit the way little boys like frogs; it’s a guy thing. But Carlo shivered and excused himself. Max was polite enough to wait until he was out of the room. “Made me gag,” he confessed. “I’ve never seen anything like it except in pictures.”

  “So who is it?” I asked. “Anybody reported missing?”

  “No clue right now. Even if he wasn’t in such decrepit shape he would of looked like a bum, long hair, ragged Wildcats T-shirt, nylon shorts, no shoes. There was no wallet on the guy, no insurance card or vehicle registration. Ran a check on the license plate, though.”

  Come on, Max, don’t stop now. Give me a name, give me a name. I tried to sound casual. “So was it stolen?”

  Max shrugged. “Who knows? Registered in the name of Gerald Peasil but no guarantee that’s who died.”

  “Unfortunate name,” I said, trying to look semibored with the whole thing. “Did Gerald Peasil have a sheet?”

  “Arrested for assaulting a hooker outside the Desert Diamond Casino about six months ago. And once for groping an elderly lady on the bus in Phoenix. That’s it. I still keep thinking drugs, though.”

  “I don’t know, two sexual assaults might not be coincidence … what do you think the ME will call it?”

  “Right now, accidental. Could have died in the crash—” Max gave a weary crime-fighting sigh. “George Manriquez will try to slip his skin for fingerprints so we can compare against Peasil’s but they’re not even sure they’ll have that. But I have to get back there. I left Clifton to take care of transferring the body to the morgue and getting the van hauled away, just wanted to see if you…” He stopped in midthought. Then his eyes narrowed, his mouth opened as if to say something he did not want to say.

  Earlier in the conversation, before he said van, I had said van. I shouldn’t have known the vehicle was a van. I could almost smell him thinking, going back over our conversation, recalling the sequence, trying to remember who said van first. I stared at him as innocently as I knew how, silently hoping that he would get it wrong.

  “… if I knew anything?” I said, finishing the sentence he had begun and shaking my head.

  His expression adjusted, and when Carlo came back into the room he seemed to give it up. But the fact that he hadn’t come out with what he was thinking was almost worse; it made me feel like a suspect.

  “So are you staying around? Want me to fix you a sandwich?” I asked.

  “Thanks, I better get back to the office and start my report,” he said.

  “Well, if you need me for anything, Max, you know where to find me.” I gave him a cheery grin.

  He looked at me speculatively. I looked at him more speculatively. Max left soon after.

  “I think I’ll walk down there, see what’s going on,” I said, after a little while, and started out the door.

  Carlo looked mildly repulsed but didn’t object. “Don’t forget your stick.” He glanced at the umbrella stand. “Where is it?”

  I was sure the question was innocent. It wasn’t like he was thinking of it as a potential murder weapon.

  “It broke. That was the best thing you made me, with that X-Acto knife yo
u put in the bottom. I’ll have to get you to make another one.” We stood there looking at each other a moment, both of us thinking, Why hadn’t I told him it was broken before now? “You know, I guess I won’t head down after all, it’s probably all blocked off.”

  Murmuring something about poisoning an anthill, Carlo went into the garage. I got the suspicion that he wasn’t believing me much anymore, either, that I was losing my knack. And I was going to have to figure out fast how to spin this whole thing to Max once he had more time to review our conversation. But at least I now had a name, one small lead in finding out who hired Gerald Peasil.

  Twenty-three

  I had some of my own questions for Floyd Lynch, like had he ever heard the name Gerald Peasil? It would be taking a risk to ask him, but it might also be one step closer to finding out if they were connected to each other or to the Route 66 killer. And if so, how and why.

  Maybe Coleman was right, maybe Lynch was finding out that sitting in a cell alone wasn’t as much fun as he thought it would be. Maybe he was ready to talk and could answer these questions. So putting aside my worries about Max, I headed down to the county jail in the afternoon, a little earlier than my appointment with Coleman, to snag a few minutes alone with Lynch.

  The jail, a cream-colored boxy structure with burgundy trim, was kind of attractive if you overlooked the coils of razor wire running along the top edge of the building. I left my weapon locked in the car, went through the scanner, signed in, showed my driver’s license, and emptied the pockets of my cargo pants. They told me to take a seat in the waiting room. I waited with the rest of a small group in a plain though not totally depressing lobby, with nothing that could be turned into a weapon, just molded blue plastic chairs that were even a little cleaner than those at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

  Most of the people joining me were women, with a few men, who were there to visit their spouses, children, felons. We all stared without looking, everyone folded into their personal drama. Most of them got up together and filed through the door to a public visitors’ room while I still waited for Lynch to see me privately.

  I waited about thirty minutes, until the time when Coleman was supposed to have shown up. Then I waited twenty more. Besides having my plans frustrated, I was annoyed at the tardiness of the rigidly efficient Coleman. I was getting ready to try calling her when Royal Hughes showed up instead.

  “Royal Hughes, Floyd Lynch’s public defender,” he said, holding out his hand.

  I shook it, did not bother to say my name because we had already introduced ourselves just four days ago.

  “Is this a coincidence?” I asked.

  “Not at all,” he said, flashing those teeth. “They had instructions to call us if you tried to see Mr. Lynch.”

  I didn’t bother asking who they and us was. “I was just meeting Agent Coleman here, so it’s okay.”

  “No it’s not. She’s no longer on this case.”

  I tried to conceal my flabbergastedness. “Since when?”

  He looked at his watch and I wasn’t sure whether he was checking the date or just getting impatient. “Since three days ago when Special Agent in Charge Roger Morrison discovered she had brought you and David Weiss to the dump site and tried to set up an insanity test. She should have known better than to do that without authorization.”

  That meant that Coleman was further off the reservation than she had told me. She didn’t have the authorization to proceed with any investigation at all, let alone set up interviews with Floyd Lynch’s family or come to the jail to question him further. Why hadn’t she told me this? And where was she so I could beat her up properly for blindsiding me again?

  “So that’s why she didn’t show up? Why didn’t she call and tell me?” I said it more to myself than Hughes.

  Hughes gave an attractive shrug. “Maybe she’s embarrassed.”

  “Now she’s embarrassed?”

  “Just go away and I won’t report that she was going to meet you here.” Hughes looked at his watch again and this time I was sure it wasn’t about the date. I gripped his forearm gently before he could lower it. “Let me ask you something,” I said. “Did Agent Coleman voice her doubts to you about Floyd Lynch’s confession, and did she tell you why?”

  “The profile, the ears,” he intoned, not so much bored as weary. “She talked to anyone who would listen. But with our backlog, when you’ve got a voluntary confession on top of such a mass of corroborating evidence, you focus the tax dollars on the other cases.”

  I thought about what Coleman was going to tell me, what she had been so excited about in her e-mail message. Whatever it was, I was convinced it was the nonsmoking gun that would exclude Lynch as the killer. I said, “You’re going to put a man in prison for life who only fucked a mummy. And you’re going to let the real serial killer off the hook.”

  “The case is closed, Ms. Quinn. On top of that, you were decommissioned four years ago and the case is not yours. Now why don’t you go do something … retired.”

  That made me boil and I gave him my best retort. “Maybe you’re right, it’s a different world when the agent defends the perp and the defense doesn’t.”

  Not good enough. Without seeming to take sufficient offense, Hughes started to move away from me. But he turned when I tested Sigmund’s intuition with, “Whatever does she see in you?”

  Hughes paused but didn’t turn around until I said, with my voice low enough so no one else could overhear, “If you and Agent Coleman are having an affair I could blow the whistle and get you both in huge trouble.”

  He gave me a shocked glare and stormed out the door of the jail.

  Twenty-four

  It’s true, if sex between an investigating agent and the defense counsel on the same case was known, it could cause a mistrial and get both fired. But I didn’t like the thought of going there, just yet. I was still steamed about Coleman blowing me off at the jail, let alone not telling me she’d been taken off the case. Our Pure as the Driven Coleman, screwing the public defender, bringing in Sigmund without authorization, taking case files out of the office … I had my doubts about whether she could be trusted at all; she reminded me too much of me.

  All that wasn’t enough for me to throw her under the bus by blowing a whistle on her and Hughes. I pictured Coleman playing some kind of secret agent game. In my defense I must stress it was for this reason it had not yet occurred to me that she might be in danger.

  For now I was focused on getting all the facts before I made an accusation that would make her lose her job. She was trying too hard to do the right thing. I phoned her cell, but it wasn’t turned on. I e-mailed her that I’d had it and would be at her office to have it out with her the next day, but no response.

  “O’Hari, what’s wrong?”

  Carlo and I were sitting on the back porch before dinner, having a glass of an inexpensive but passable Malbec and enjoying the nice wet-dog smell of the desert due to some rain over the mountains in the distance. A bit of breeze brought the early-evening temperature into the high seventies.

  I had finally gotten in touch with Zach Robertson on my way back from the jail. He had sounded as upbeat as he could get and eased my mind, so I didn’t berate him for not returning my calls before. He said he had been taking care of having Jessica’s body cremated and asked if I would spread her ashes on top of Mount Lemmon. I agreed.

  “That’s great,” he said. “I researched the area and that’s the highest mountain near the city. Jessica liked mountain hiking.”

  The conversation rambled a bit.

  “When are you heading home?” I had finally asked.

  He paused, and then said, sounding a little cagey or apologetic, “Tomorrow. I have one of those early-morning flights.”

  “You weren’t going to say good-bye?” Sigmund and now Zach, I thought. What was it with these guys? “How are you getting to the airport?”

  “Uh, taxi.”

  “At least let me pick you up. What tim
e?”

  “No need.”

  “I insist, Zach.”

  I heard him put his phone down, so I must have caught him in his room. He came back on shortly. “My flight leaves so early, six fifty.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you at five thirty tomorrow,” I had said.

  Carlo put his life of Wittgenstein on his lap. My own Clive Cussler had been resting on mine for some time. It wasn’t exciting enough to help me escape from real life. He reached over and lightly cupped my hand in his own. “What’s wrong, O’Hari?” he said again.

  So I told him. Oh, not about a man who was about to serve a life term for having sex with a mummy. Not about the serial killer who had obsessed me for the past thirteen years; who was likely still on the loose; and, if Sigmund’s conjecture was solid, who might very well be killing even now. Not about how I suspected that someone had tried to have me killed and, failing, would try to do it again. And certainly not about killing Gerald Peasil and how I covered it up because I was still certain the Perfesser couldn’t live with knowing what I was capable of.

  Leaving out the gory bits, I told Carlo about a father who lost his child and who couldn’t come to terms with her death. And how I couldn’t stop feeling responsible for it all.

  Carlo listened without speaking, without trying to quick-fix things. When I was done he slouched down in his chair a bit as if feeling the weight of it and said, “Life is so damn hard.”

  “You got that right. It sucks.”

  “And then you die?” He appeared to give that some thought, then shrugged. “I don’t think of myself as a Pollyanna, but I have to say I’ve seen blessing come out of pain before.”

  “Careful, Perfesser, you’re sounding a lot like a priest.”

  “Maybe.” Carlo swirled the rest of his wine around and breathed in the scent. “Trying to derive meaning from hardship isn’t exclusively Christian. There’s Viktor Frankl. And I like what someone once said: ‘there’s a crack in everything, and that’s how the light gets in.’”