by Don Travis
“So what’s your point? Spence inherits, and you get your car.”
“How many times I gotta tell you, that’s a loan!” He snorted like a quarter horse blowing after a race. “You got no proof, man. Lay off. Hear me. Lay off. I don’t wanna see those two cops again, including that bozo down the street in his car. And nobody talks to my boss. Shit they even got the bartender at the Hogshead looking at me sideways. Call ’em off.”
“Those two men are conducting an investigation. When it’s finished they’ll go away.”
His shoulders rippled with frustration. His voice grew hoarse. “I’m gonna get me a lawyer and sue your ass. You hear me?”
“When the investigation’s over, Rocky. They’ll go away when it’s over.”
He seemed to grow larger each time his fists clenched and unclenched, as if he were pumping himself up. I wished for my Ruger.
“You got no proof!” He spit the words out with a rush of air like a miniature sonic boom.
I decided on a ploy. “Rocky, do you remember the last time you were here? I offered you a beer. You accepted and drank it. Paul took the can to APD. You have any idea what’s on a can like that… besides your fingerprints, that is?”
“Wh-what?”
“Your DNA. Marvelous stuff, DNA. It can trace a single hair back to the head it grew on. It can identify skin cells. In other words, it can put a stunt driver right into the seat of a Caravan used to deliberately try to kill Paul.”
The light went out in his eyes. And then it fired up again, brighter than ever. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with. Watch your six!”
He stomped to the curb, got into his Cougar, and squealed his way down the street.
Paul joined me as I watched the black car, followed by Alan’s Honda, lurch around a corner. “So you found DNA in the Caravan?”
“I might have been a bit premature in my declaration.”
“But he doesn’t know that, does he?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Then you better do what he said. Watch your six.”
“No. We better watch our six.”
WINTER DECIDED to strike a blow the first weekend of December, meaning a cold, blustery couple of days with a little sleet keeping the roads wet. It was enough to discourage golf or tennis, so we hit the indoor pool at the country club, Paul for the love of swimming, me for therapy… and the pleasure of admiring his grace in the water.
Monday morning Charlie let me know Tim and Alan had noticed a change in Lodeen’s pattern of behavior. He’d spent the last three nights with Spence. Sarah didn’t rate a single visit, and Friday nights were usually devoted to her.
“Anything else change?” I asked.
“Nope. Work, Hogshead, home, and then slip out the back door in the night hours.”
“He knows we’re watching him, including at night,” I mused aloud. “Why the change?” Then I told Charlie about Rocky’s visit to Paul and me the previous Friday.
“Looks like they’re plotting their strategy. Calming one another’s nerves,” Charlie said.
“They could do that at the Hogshead in plain sight. This calls attention to Rocky’s change in pattern.”
“Deliberate?”
I nodded. “Deliberate. Like Rocky’s trying to lead us somewhere.”
“To Spears. But we know about the ten grand Spears gave him. There’s already a strong connection. If it was me in that situation, I’d cool it, not intensify things.”
I looked at my tall, thin business partner. The overhead lights reflected off his glasses. “Exactly. He’s pointing a finger right at Spence Spears. Why?”
“Misdirection?”
“That would be my guess.”
“So what do we do now?” Charlie asked.
“Any sign Rocky’s getting ready to bolt?”
“Not according to Tim and Alan.”
“Then keep doing what we’re doing. In the meantime, I want to talk to Spence again.”
BEFORE I could arrange to meet with Spence, Paul showed up in my office with Guerra in tow.
“Great news.” Paul’s beaming smile lent emphasis to his words. “Roy found Rocky Lodeen’s DNA in the van.”
“Correction,” the detective said. “The lab found it. Got confirmation this morning.”
I nodded. “That connects him to Paul’s car wreck but doesn’t prove he had anything to do with Belhaven’s death.”
“But it moves us closer,” Paul said.
“Possibly,” I acknowledged. “It throws light on his change in behavior. He knew the odds were that we’re gonna be able to tie him to the deliberate attempt on Paul.”
“What change in behavior?” Paul and Roy asked in unison.
I thought about the DNA evidence while Charlie explained.
“Might not be proof,” Roy said, “but there was no reason to stage an accident with Paul if it didn’t tie back to the Belhaven murder somehow. And if Lodeen was rattled after you told him about the DNA, Spears is probably calming him down.”
“I didn’t even know Lodeen existed until Spence let us know about him,” Paul said. “Has to be the Belhaven connection.”
“Agreed. And your explanation for why he’s paying more attention to Spence now may be correct. But what if it’s Rocky’s attempt to throw us off target? I asked. “Any sign of panic on Spence’s part?”
“Tim and Alan are spending their time watching Lodeen. The only time they see Spears is when they’re together at the Hogshead. They haven’t reported anything like that.”
“Ask them about it,” I said.
While Rocky might be trying to shield someone else by paying more attention to Spence, I couldn’t afford to ignore the obvious.
“In the meantime,” Roy said, “I’m picking Lodeen up for questioning in the staged car wreck.”
IT WASN’T that simple. It did not take long to discover Rocky had disappeared. Apparently while Tim or Alan watched the comings and goings through the back door, their target simply went out the front sometime Tuesday night and took off for parts unknown. He’d planned well, telling his employer he needed the next week off to handle some family business… an obvious attempt to avoid raising an alarm. And if I was right, he’d want to clean up a couple of details before he vanished… namely, Paul and me. Possibly Tim and Alan. I told Charlie to alert them to any possibility.
I contacted Spence by cell phone while he was at work in the Belhaven’s backyard. He invited me over, although he looked to be sucking on persimmons when I showed up. I didn’t give him time to vent.
“Where’s Rocky Lodeen?”
“How the hell would I know. At his apartment, I guess. Why?”
“Because we can’t find him. He’s not at the apartment or at work. He and his Cougar have disappeared. Apparently right after he snuck over to your apartment for the third night in a row. And don’t try to tell me you didn’t know he’s on the run. He hasn’t met you at the Hogshead as usual the last couple of days.”
“Yeah, well… you guys riding his tail kinda set him off.”
“And you had to calm him down before he blew everything sky high, right?” I said.
“I tried to take the wind outta his sails as a friend. That’s all.”
“Come on, Spence, he’s involved in Belhaven’s killing, and you know it.”
“How do you know that?”
“We found his DNA in the Caravan that T-boned Paul.”
“Yeah, he told me.”
“And Paul was here not thirty minutes before the incident asking you questions about Belhaven’s death.”
Spence snatched off his sunglasses and glared at me. “You think I put him on Paul?”
“Somebody did. He didn’t even know who Paul was.” Spence stood stock-still with a slight frown on his face, so I hit him with another question. “Was the ten thousand a payoff for killing Belhaven for you?”
“For me! Why would I want Pierce dead? He was my meal ticket.”
“Sti
ll is. A quarter of a million dollars’ worth.” I paused before throwing out some bait. “And that’s nothing compared to the insurance… if you ever get it.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Life insurance companies don’t pay beneficiaries who kill their insureds. It’s called profiting off murder.”
“I didn’t kill anybody.”
Bingo! Spence did know about the policy. “Maybe not. But it’s beginning to look like Rocky Lodeen might have. And who introduced him into the Belhaven circle? Who paid him $10,000 right after he received his inheritance?”
“That’s a loan!”
“Show me the paperwork.”
“Handshake.”
“Not many people do a handshake deal for ten grand.”
“Not many people go through the hell of Afghanistan together, either.”
“I thought you didn’t know him over there.”
“He was there. I was there. That’s what counts.”
“From the way things are looking, I wouldn’t bet on getting your money back. But it must have felt pretty good.”
“What felt pretty good?”
“You apparently won out over Sarah. Rocky was visiting you every night. She seems to have been cut out.”
“Yeah, I heard how you put a cop in the alleyway to spy….” He stopped midsentence as I saw something in his eyes. “You wanna talk to me again, talk to my attorney.”
“Okay, give me his name and number.”
He flushed. “I don’t have one yet, but I will.”
“One last question before you get one. You have any idea where Rocky would run to if he wanted to disappear?”
Spence was slow to answer. “Comes from some little berg in Southern California called Deer Lick. But he’s independent. Don’t think he’d go near there again.”
“So no idea?”
Spence’s sexy strawberry birthmark on his left cheek fairly glowed. “Not a one. Remember… lawyer.”
“Okay, guy, but if you’re telling the truth about having nothing to do with Belhaven’s death, you have two million reasons for helping me prove who did.”
HARRIS BELHAVEN had cooled off a bit and agreed to talk to me again. I met him at his office after the stock markets closed late in the afternoon. This time I was less interested in Harris than in learning what he knew about the relationships swirling around his late father. I learned little new—other than there had been a second partial payout of Belhaven’s estate—but came away convinced he didn’t know Rocky Lodeen beyond saying hello whenever Spence brought the ex-paratrooper around.
I wasn’t able to run Sarah Thackerson down until that evening at her apartment. I thought for a moment she was going to slam the door in my face, but she relented and allowed me to come in. Books scattered across the kitchenette table let me know she’d been studying.
“Physics,” she said when she saw I’d noticed. “It’ll be the death of me yet.”
“Required?” I asked.
“Shoulda opted for chemistry. What do you want this time?”
“Have you seen Rocky Lodeen lately?”
“You tell me. I understand you have two ex-cops keeping a close eye on him.”
“Including his nighttime trips out the back door of the apartment house. Looks like you lost out to Spence.”
Other than a tinge of color to the cheeks, she didn’t react. “He’ll come back. And if not, it’s not much of a loss.”
“It’s a double loss, I’d say. Spence too.”
She got red in the face and bit her lip. “I don’t know what to say to convince you I have nothing to do with that shit.”
“Back to the issue. Where’s Rocky?”
She shrugged and sat down at the table. “How should I know?”
“You spent more time with him than most people. I suspect you know a little bit about the man.”
“We didn’t spend a whole lot of time talking. I have studying to do, and you’re wasting my time.”
Chapter 29
REASONING THAT Rocky wouldn’t abandon the field without claiming more from his coconspirator than the $10,000 used to buy his car, I asked Gene whether or not he could get warrants to access the financial and banking records of Harris Belhaven, Sarah Thackerson, and Spencer Spears. We already knew Rocky’s account at the local bank was still open with a few dollars in it.
After Gene agreed to give it a try, we turned to other matters.
“Any sighting of Lodeen?” I asked.
“BOLO hasn’t turned up anything. Checked with Deer Tail—”
“Deer Lick.”
“—Deer Lick, California, and they haven’t seen hide nor hair of him in almost a year. But we’ll get lucky sooner or later.”
GENE WAS able to get the required warrants but came up with nothing. No one had tapped the checking or investment accounts of any of the suspects beyond what was explainable. He saw fit to include the Harpers over in Grants in his warrants and found they raided their inheritance more than the others, but most of it went to attorney’s fees for their son’s trial. Nothing unusual for any of the suspects. This puzzled me. I couldn’t see Rocky leaving without his fair share of the loot. That meant he was still in the vicinity.
I marshaled all the forces at hand and concentrated on finding the missing man. Charlie, Paul, and I joined Alan and Tim in the field while Hazel hit the computer to sniff out a trace of Rocky. Guerra went to work trying to find his phone. Gene’s cops were on the alert for Rocky’s car.
We continued the search even through the weekend. Sunday night we got our break. Paul and I had just arrived home when my cell phone went off.
“Found him,” Gene said in my ear.
“Where?”
“In his Cougar. Bullet hole behind his right temple.”
“Dead?” I asked, wasting my words.
“You might say that.”
“Can I have a look at the scene?”
“Come on out.”
Following Gene’s instructions, Paul and I headed for Nine Mile Hill. At Ninety-eighth I turned south in a semirural area. The lights of multiple cop cars guided me the rest of the way to a fall-down shed that obviously hadn’t seen regular use in a long time.
I parked, and Roy Guerra led us to where Gene stood talking to another cop about thirty yards short of the shed.
“What brings the commander of CID out on a call like this?” I asked.
“Personal interest,” Gene answered. “He’s in the front seat. Pretty ripe. Probably been there ever since he disappeared last week.”
“Can I take a look?”
“Forensics won’t even let me inside. Medical Inspector’s on the way. We’ll get a peek at the corpse when the doc arrives to cart him off.”
I glanced around in the darkness. We’d driven over a fallow field to reach the shed. Lights and the muted growl of moving automobiles reached us from Central Avenue. The traffic on Ninety-eighth was spottier. “How’d you find him?”
“Couple of kids out rabbit shooting spotted the car. Took a closer look and boogied. One of the kids’ mothers called the station.”
“What time was that?” I asked.
“Around four. Patrolmen recognized the car from our BOLO, and the call finally gravitated up to Roy.”
“It took a pro to take down someone like Rocky Lodeen,” Paul observed.
“Not necessarily,” Gene said. “Not if it was someone he trusted. Not that hard to get the drop on a guy who’s dropped his guard.”
“That pretty well narrows the field down to one,” Paul said. “Spencer Spears.”
“Not sure that’s true,” I said.
“You mean the Thackerson woman?” Gene asked.
“Or Harris Belhaven. Any of the three could have been in on the plot.”
“Why not the Belhaven daughter and her husband… and their delinquent kid? He’s already been involved in one shootout, I understand,” Gene said.
“I’ll have to check, but I’ll bet we find the d
elinquent kid’s in Virginia.”
“I’ll have Grants PD check out the rest of the Harpers.”
After that, we stood around in the cold and stomped our feet to keep warm. I’m not certain if it was a macho thing or not, but no one took advantage of a car with a heater. After half an hour, an ambulance turned off Ninety-eighth and rocked its way down the rough dirt track to deliver the OMI medic. Fifteen minutes later Rocky Lodeen was laid out on a gurney. While half a dozen cops held flashlights to illuminate the scene, the doctor gave us a preliminary.
“Dead several days.” He pointed to a discolored hole behind Rocky’s right ear. “Probably small-caliber gunshot wound. Autopsy will tell us more.” With that he whisked the body into the ambulance and made off back down the road.
“Right ear. That’s consistent with the shooter being in the passenger’s seat,” Gene said.
“But why would Rocky drive out here in the middle of nowhere with his killer? It could be suicide,” Paul suggested.
I turned to Gene. “Any sign of a weapon?”
“Forensic leader showed me a .25-caliber semi. He sent it for testing.”
“Does suicide make sense to you?” I asked Gene.
“You knew him better than I did. But if his general discharge is any clue, he had a flaky character. Maybe he just liked pulling the trigger, even if it was on himself.”
“You’ll have to convince me he shot himself,” I said. “He was too much in control for suicide.”
“Those wound tightest eat the gun fastest,” Gene came back at me.
I looked around again. “Did the arriving patrol officers locate any other tire prints?”
Roy answered in the negative.
“Footprints?”
A shake of his head. “It was already getting dark. They spotted the kids’ footprints before they lost the light. Have to recheck in the morning.”
I glanced around at the boots trampling the area and wished him luck before concentrating on the Central Avenue traffic. “What’s the closest bus line?”
“That would be Westgate Heights. It turns south off West Central onto Ninety-eighth,” Roy said.