“Lieutenant Mariola.” I flash my badge. “Looking for Cindy Sherman.”
“Yeah, well, I’m her father. That’d be George Sherman. Cindy’s out to the grocery store. Fact, I thought you was her, needin’ help with the groceries.” He pauses to rub at the stubble on his chin. “This here about Bradley?”
Cindy chooses that moment to drive up to the trailer. She steps out of a battered Ford pickup and looks at me for a long moment. “Been expecting you,” she finally says.
The girl’s beautiful, simple as that. Honey blond hair rolling to her shoulders, eyes as blue as they are confident, dimples she can’t hide, even when she’s not smiling. A far cry from the first and only time we met in the past. On that night, one side of her face was the color of an overripe plum, and a line of sutures crawled from behind her ear to the edge of her jaw like ants in a line. The doc had shaved part of her scalp before he stitched her up. That made the side of her head appear even more lopsided.
I follow her through the living room and into a spotless kitchen.
“This about Bradley?” She lays the groceries on the counter. “I hope you’re not thinkin’ I had something to do with . . . with killin’ him.”
“No. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Lieutenant. I’m not a fool, not anymore.” She turns her back on me, leaving me to sit while she puts her groceries away.
“Cindy was home last night,” her father says from the doorway. “Me and—”
“Hush, Dad. I’ll handle this.” Cindy runs a finger along the scar behind her ear, the gesture seeming unconscious, a habit. When she speaks, she looks directly into my eyes, no longer the naïve child who married Bradley Grieg. “I used my cell phone to find a recipe for pulled pork last night. That was about ten o’clock. I made a call before that, to my girlfriend, Lea-Ann Cowpers. I don’t remember the time exactly, but we were on the phone for almost an hour. Lea-Ann’s gettin’ married, and we spoke about the hall she wants to hire but can’t afford.”
The unidentified female in the video entered Cabin 909 at 10:42. Cindy’s alibi isn’t an alibi at all, but it’s too early to go there. Just now, I need cooperation. “I’m not here because you’re a suspect. I’m after background information. Bradley’s friends and associates, where he hung out, maybe his current girlfriend. Anything you can tell me about him will help. There’s a killer out there. A killer free to kill again.”
The look in Cindy’s blue eyes remains skeptical. Still, she has to answer, and she knows it. “Look, after the attack . . . after what happened, I was all set to cooperate. I wanted to see the bastard behind bars for the rest of his life. I wanted revenge.”
“She ain’t the only one,” George says. “I started cleanin’ my shotgun soon’s my girl come back from the hospital. I was gonna kill the son of a bitch, but then Connor Schmidt showed up and . . .”
I motion for George to continue, but Cindy’s the one who speaks first. “Connor, he was . . . sympathetic, that’s the right word. He was so sorry for what happened to me. He even agreed that Bradley deserved to spend time in jail. But he needed Bradley—for what he didn’t say—so I’d have to back off. If I did, he’d guarantee that Bradley wouldn’t come anywhere near me. Ever again, Detective. What Connor said, exactly, was, ‘If the shithead so much as speaks to you, I’ll put him in the ground. Me personally.’”
Cindy stops long enough to draw a breath. “Only thing about it, the deal worked both ways. I couldn’t come anywhere near Bradley. Couldn’t call him, either. We were done with each other.”
“And it held up?” I ask.
“I don’t know what Connor said to Bradley, but it scared him straight. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.”
The lie-detector alarm in my head’s not goin’ off. I think the girls tellin’ the truth. If she was out for revenge, she could have gotten it a long time ago. “But you do know people who have contact with Bradley? You have friends in common?”
Her pretty blue eyes narrow slightly and draw together. Lie or tell the truth? Finally, she decides to answer a question I didn’t ask.
“I never talk about Bradley with my friends.”
“Try again, Cindy.”
“Look, I don’t need trouble, not with the Schmidts. I just wanna live my life in peace.”
“Cindy, you don’t cooperate, you’re trading problems with Connor for problems with me. I’m not asking for the moon here. So who was Bradley seeing? Did he have a current girlfriend, someone special? How ’bout enemies? Anybody you know? Any rumors out there?”
George picks that moment to become protective. “Cindy ain’t committed no crime, Detective. You got no call—”
“No call? Tell me, George, where were you last night?”
“Never left the damn house.”
“You make any phone calls? Go online? I mean, you just told me how you were preparing to kill the bastard. Maybe you bided your time. Maybe you waited for Bradley to forget about you.”
Now it’s Cindy’s turn, and she finally gets it right. “What do ya wanna know, Detective? Let’s get to it.”
I manage a relatively encouraging smile. “Bradley’s friends and enemies. Who he hung out with and where. Anything you know about your former husband, any rumor, any crimes he might have committed. Look at it from my point of view. You’re either cooperating or you’re hindering. And if you’re hindering, I have to ask myself why. Considering what he did to you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
CONNOR
I spend most of the day with Violet Arabella. She works out of a truck stop north of Baxter and she’s a major coke junkie. When I dangle a little baggie holding a gram of decent powder in front of her nose, she hops into the car, snuggles up, and says, “Game time.”
I don’t do any of the coke. In fact, outside of an occasional beer, I never use drugs or alcohol. My old man busts my balls about it, but he busts balls about everything I do. In his world, drinks with the boys—on the house if the barkeep’s properly intimidated—are mandatory. But like I said, I stopped carin’ about what Daddy thinks a long time ago. Our relationship, from his point of view? It’s user-usee. Like I was born to be used, and no two ways about it. That’s my purpose. There was no other reason to bring me into the world.
Over the years, I’ve seen a bunch of movies with dominating fathers and cringing, creepy sons. But I’m not the cringing type. I’m more the time-biding type, and Daddy’s time is coming soon. I’m already putting the pieces together.
Violet’s as generous with her body as I am with the coke, and the day passes quickly. We’re in a motel far from the Skyview Motor Court, and Violet’s talking a mile a minute. Me, I’m watching the TV, watching our police chief’s press conference. Deliberate or stupid, I can’t tell which. But when Chief Black tells his audience that robbery was the most likely motive for Bradley’s murder, he’s pouring gasoline on the fire. He has to know that, right?
“My mother kicked me out of the house when I was thirteen and I got pregnant,” Violet tells me.
“What happened to the kid?”
Violet slides a rolled-up twenty over a line of white power. “I got beat up a couple months later and had a whachacallit. A mis-something.”
“How old are you now?”
“Sixteen.”
“You got a pimp on the outside?”
“I’m stayin’ with a guy.”
“How many whores he runnin’?”
Violet’s eyes drop to her naked lap. “Three.”
“So, you’re payin’ him and you’re payin’ me, too? When are you gonna stop bein’ a jerk, Vi?”
“Everybody,” she tells me, “needs somebody.”
“Speak for yourself.”
I’m back in town again a little before seven. I know the cops are gonna come to me at some point, and I want to put that point as far into the future as possible. I’m on my way to an abandoned strip mall on Baxter Boulevard, one of many. I’m meeting Augie Barboz
a. Augie and his crew service the assholes who borrow money from Dad, mostly degenerate gamblers who bet their mortgage money and lose. They approach me for a loan because they can’t face their families. That’s fine as long as they pay up at the end of every week. If not, they get to play with Augie.
The two of us have a job to do tonight. My old man was right on target when he said that somebody else had to know Bradley was gonna be at the motel on Saturday night. Me and Augie, we’re gonna talk to that somebody. This is not a problem I couldn’t handle on my own, but Augie . . . Augie’s got the look, the shovel jaw, the broken nose, a pair of deader-than-dead eyes the yellow-brown color of dog shit on the bottom of your shoe. I’m not forgetting that my old man told me to handle this on my own. I just don’t care.
In a way, I get lucky. The cop lights me up while I’m still a few blocks from the strip mall. If he’d caught me and Augie together, it’d be a lot worse. The only thing bigger than Augie’s bicep is his mouth.
I let the window down and put my hands on the steering wheel. I don’t want any misunderstanding. The cliché is that cops like to shoot black people, but you can count the number of black families in this town on your fingers. So when it comes to cop shootings, it’s white people or no one. Me, I wanna be counted among the “no one,” and I’m not exactly cheered when Vern Taney climbs out of the unmarked Ford. Me and Taney played football together in high school. I was only a freshman that year and barely got to play. Taney was a superstar offensive guard, strong enough to intimidate whoever lined up across from him. Word on the street is that his laid-back attitude is purely for show.
Taney’s dressed in street clothes, including an unbuttoned jacket pulled far enough back to reveal the automatic tucked below his left armpit. I’m also armed, my gun as legal as his, but I don’t want any misunderstandings, and I keep my hands where he can see them.
“Reach through the window and open the door, Connor,” he says, putting the emphasis on my name.
“I’m carrying a gun,” I tell him as I comply.
Taney pulls his own weapon at that point, the movement smooth and quick, but his expression doesn’t change. He’s looking at me like I’m something crawling across the floor that he wants to crush. I tell myself not to react, but I can’t help it. When someone puts a gun in your face, cop or no cop, you pay attention.
“Get out of the car. Keep your hands where I can see them.” He waits until I’m out and standing. “Now turn around and put your hands on top of the car, palms down.”
Taney puts his gun away before treating me to a thorough shakedown. He takes my gun, cell phone, and wallet, then runs his hands along my body, gripping hard. I’ve been through this drill before, and I don’t react, not even when he puts me in handcuffs. At this point I’m supposed to ask him why he’s arresting me, but I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“We’re gonna take a little ride,” he tells me. “There’s somebody wants to talk to you.”
I can’t help it, I lose my cool, which is not my style: “Your dyke boss maybe?”
He slaps me in the face, and I eat the pain. We’re standing on the sidewalk in front of a drugstore, which is closed at this hour. But I have to figure the security camera hanging above the front door is operating.
“Hit me again, asshole,” I tell him. “I can use the money.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DELIA
The shithead’s been cooling his heels inside one of our interrogation rooms for the past two hours. No phone calls, no trips to the bathroom, no food, nothing to drink. This isn’t New York or San Francisco or even Des Moines. Plus, for Mayor Venn, it’s strictly see-no-evil. And Chief Black’s not much better. Black wants results, methodology be damned. Find the killer and do it quick.
Bottom line: there’s nobody looking over my shoulder.
As it turned out, Cindy Sherman was eager to help once she got going. She provided me with a list of clubs that she and Bradley visited regularly back when they were still courting. She also named several women Bradley cheated with. Referring to them as “Bradley’s whores.” But there was bad news, too. The list includes eight clubs, and it seems that Bradley dumped his conquests almost as fast as he took them to bed. Still, Vern and I had spent most of the afternoon visiting the clubs, showing Bradley’s picture to the mostly uncooperative help. Nobody would admit to seeing him last night, which didn’t surprise me. His connection to the Schmidts is well known. Just as you don’t speak ill of the dead, you don’t speak ill of people who can make you dead. Tomorrow I’ll try a few of the individuals Cindy named, but I really doubt that gentle persuasion is going to produce results. It’ll take something more, but exactly what, I don’t know.
There was a notification to make, as well. Grieg’s parents left Baxter ten years ago for warmer pastures in San Diego. Somebody had to track them down and deliver the bad news. I assigned this task to Detective Meacham. It took most of the afternoon, and several reminders, but the Dink got it done. Personally, I hate notifications. Like most cops, I’ve learned to put my emotions to the side, empathy be damned. You wallow in that pain, you end up eating your gun.
“This prick, he’s not gonna give us shit.” Vern bites into a roast beef sandwich, his lunch and his dinner both. “He’s gonna play the tough guy.”
“Do I look like I’m expecting a confession?” I pick at a slice of apple pie with the edge of a fork. I should be hungry, but I’m not. I need to get home to Danny. He’s old enough to stay by himself, and he’s almost surely asleep by now. Meanwhile, I can’t stop worrying. Or feeling guilty.
“Then what are you expecting?”
“Best case, he gives us an alibi that doesn’t check out.”
“You’re thinking he did it? What about the woman?”
“If we find her, we’ll have to hold her.” I find myself wishing we had a real medical examiner instead of Arshan Rishnavata. The coroner’s estimated the time of death between nine o’clock at night and two o’clock in the morning. A true professional would have been a lot more precise.
“C’mon, Delia, where’s that devious brain of yours going with this?”
“Muzzle flash.”
When you fire a gun, the exploding gunpowder produces a gas hot enough to burn. This burning gas exits the weapon through the barrel, blinding you for a few seconds if you happen to be looking directly at it. I’m speaking from experience. Only a year ago I was part of a nighttime drug raid that went bad. Real bad. “I’m gonna review the video from the Skyview’s camera again, but I didn’t pick up any muzzle flash while the woman was inside the cabin.”
Vern doesn’t come back with the first idea that pops into his head. That’s not his style. But when he finally gives his opinion, it doesn’t surprise me.
“The cameras at the Skyview are for shit, Delia. They’re also far away and it was rainin’ and the drapes are thick, and we know the muzzle was jammed into a pillow. Maybe the flash was just too dim for the security cams to pick it up.”
“Exactly what a prosecutor’s gonna tell a jury if we find the woman and charge her. That doesn’t make it true.”
Connor’s sound asleep when Vern and I walk into the room. Then Vern slaps him in the head, and he wakes with a start, his hands balling into fists. They open quickly when he finds Vern towering over him.
“Hi, guys, how’s it goin’?”
“Never better.”
“Glad to hear it. So, what can I do ya for?”
Connor’s sitting behind a small table with his back against a windowless wall. I sit across from him, place a digital tape recorder on the table, and turn it on. Good to go. “First, let me say that I’m sorry for the long delay. I was conducting interviews in the field. But that’s no excuse, and I’m sure you want to get home. So let’s make this as painless as possible. Answer my questions and you’ll be out of here in an hour.” I pause for a fraction of a second, then say, “First, tell us how you’d describe your relationship with Bradley Grieg?”
“Grieg?”
“Cut the shit.”
Connor’s a good-looking boy, blue-eyed with a full mouth. I watch him lean back in the chair. Despite the smirk, I know he wants to tell me to go fuck myself. I can punish him if he does. I can walk out of the room and leave him to stew overnight. Another mutt, trapped behind the same table, might voice his resentment. Not Connor. He’s not going to give us the satisfaction.
“We run into each other from time to time. In the bars and clubs.”
“Which bars?”
“I don’t know. Palacio, the Dew Drop, Randy’s, the Black Sheep, Underground. And don’t ask me for a time and date. I go clubbing three or four nights a week.”
“And you had no other contact with Grieg?”
“Like I said, I see him around.”
“But you were buddies in high school?”
“That was a long time ago.”
“You drifted apart, did you?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“When was the last time you saw Bradley?”
“I don’t exactly remember. Maybe sometime last week.” He glances at the ceiling as though searching his memory, the pose so theatrical I want to laugh. “Yeah, last week. I think it was Thursday or Friday. At Randy’s. Brad likes Randy’s. He claims the women he meets at Randy’s ain’t that complicated. Like they know what they want and it’s not a long-term relationship.”
Connor laughs at his own joke, but stops abruptly when I say, “Liked, Connor. Not likes. Grieg’s dead. No more relationships for the man, long-term or short-term.” I smile. “Now, have you ever been to the Skyview Motor Court?”
“Where?”
“The Skyview, Connor. You ever been there?”
“Is that where Brad . . . got whacked?”
Vern speaks for the first time. “Answer the question, asshole. Yes or no.”
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