Racing the Devil

by Jaden Terrell

  I said, “There must be something.”

  “We figure she was hired to set you up. Fingerprints, DNA. Then whoever hired her decided she was more of a liability than she was worth.”

  “‘Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.’”

  “Exactly.”

  I remembered the fresh bruises on her face. “She must have let him hit her.”

  He zipped the bag. There was something sad about watching the opaque plastic close over her face. I thought of the note she’d left. I’m sorry. In spite of what she’d done to me, I felt a rush of sorrow for the person she might have been and for the pitiful, pathetic thing she had become.

  “They didn’t use your gun on this one,” he said. “For whatever that’s worth.”

  They. I cleared my throat before I spoke, but my voice still sounded strained. “You don’t think I did it.”

  He rolled the body back into the freezer. “If I thought you did, we wouldn’t be here. Anyway, a couple of hikers found the body out near the lake. Buried shallow, looked like something got at her, maybe dogs, maybe a coyote. That’s why they found her. Saw a foot sticking out of the ground.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She’s been dead about three weeks, give or take. Another hooker, works the same stretch of road, says she saw the victim get into a red Corvette at about seven-thirty the same night Amy was killed. We found gray fibers matching the ones on Amy Hart-well’s body. We figure those came from the carpet in the Corvette. No license number, naturally.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Our witness was so hopped up on crack it was a wonder she remembered anything, let alone the license plate.”

  “Does Avery have an alibi for that time frame?”

  “Home in bed with his wife.”

  Too bad. “She credible?”

  “Credible enough, since there’s no evidence against him.”

  “Heather’s friend. Where could I find her?”

  “Try driving up and down Dickerson Pike until you spot a white woman with her hair a kind of purple red. Street name’s Shannon. This morning, she was wearing a leopard-print bustier and a black leather miniskirt. Black panties. Ask me how I know.”

  I didn’t need to. Lot of these girls got a rush out of flashing their arresting officers.

  “Mind if I go see if I can get anything else out of her?”

  “Be my guest.”

  I didn’t ask the other question I had, the one I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer to. He answered it anyway.

  “There’s something else you want to know,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  He looked at the ceiling, at the shiny metal instruments, at the slanted metal tables with their faucets and gizmos. Anywhere but at me. “She tested positive.”

  I’D USED A CONDOM, I told myself. I couldn’t have been infected; I’d used a condom. But I’d performed cunnilingus on her, which was not without its risks.

  If I’d known she was a whore . . .

  But I hadn’t known. And what difference did it make? The risks were what they were. Only suddenly, the risk factor had multiplied.

  Whoever she was, I should have been more careful.

  The worst part was, it would be months before I knew. I’d have to be tested in three months, then again in three more. That was a heck of a long wait to know if you were dying.

  My mouth filled with the metallic taste of genuine fear. Beatings by thugs, broken bones, a quick bullet—I’d never been too afraid of those. The quick rush of adrenaline when a gun was pointed at my head, that sudden awareness of mortality, that wasn’t fear. That was preparation. Even at Caleb Wilford’s hunting lodge, with my blood pooling beneath Frank’s hands, I’d felt more shocked than frightened. But the thought of the long slow death that was AIDS, the wasting, the cancers, the eventual dementia . . . I wondered how Jay lived with this crushing fear.

  “You okay?” Frank pushed me down into a metal folding chair and handed me a cup of water.

  “I’m okay.” I took a sip, noticed that my hand was trembling. Thought of Valerie. We’d used condoms. We hadn’t done anything that might put her at risk.

  “You been thinking about what I said?” Frank asked. “About this being about you?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. But this pretty much proves Amy was the target.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “If all that mattered was framing me for murder—just any murder—they could have just planted all that evidence on Heather and left photos of her in my car.”

  “Hope,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Her name was Hope. Heather was her street name.”

  “Hope.” The irony of the name wasn’t lost on me. “They could have just framed me for her murder. Why kill two women, if all that mattered was I go to jail? And if they were going to kill both women anyway, why not just frame me for both?”

  He grunted. “Who says they haven’t? Just because I don’t think you killed her doesn’t mean nobody else will.”

  “They didn’t use my gun on Hope, and they hid her body. Somehow it was important for Amy to be the one I was supposed to have killed, and somehow it was important for you to think I’d taken those pictures of Katrina.”

  “Just think about it, okay?” He jangled the keys in his pocket. “Somebody about your height and build. Who knew you’d be a sucker for a lady with a hard-luck story. Who knew Maria called you ‘Cowboy.’ Someone who knew the combination to your glove compartment, and that you’d have your piece in there.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I think you know.”

  “No.”

  “He knows the combination to the lock.”

  “Hell, everybody in the family knows. Ashleigh announced it over Sunday dinner, thought it was a big joke. ‘He knows his horse’s birthday. It’s the combination to his glove box.’ ”

  “But Randall knows the exact date.”

  “It wouldn’t be that hard to find. Besides, if Randall hated me that much, he’d just shoot me and be done with it.”

  “All I’m saying is, somebody knows an awful lot about you. How sure are you that Randall wasn’t banging Amy Hartwell?”

  I thought of Wendy’s tear-streaked face. Ask him where he goes when I wake up at night and he’s not there.

  “I’d bet my life on it,” I said.

  “Good.” His voice was somber. “Because that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  HE WAS WRONG about Randall. My brother might have reason to resent me, but he would never kill a woman or take pornographic pictures of a child.

  I drove up and down Dickerson Pike for an hour and a half, looking for Heather’s—Hope’s—friend, seething at Frank’s suspicions and reminding myself that he had my best interests at heart.

  Then I saw her, a tall girl with purple-red hair, maybe five-nine without the three-inch spike heels she was wearing. She had on black fishnet hose under her miniskirt, and nothing under the bustier, which had been laced so that a three-inch gap showed most of her cleavage and a glimpse of aureole.

  I pulled over, reached across the seat, and shoved open the passenger side door. “You Shannon?” I asked.

  She stared at me, chomping on a wad of gum the size of an apricot. “Who wants to know?”

  I grinned and arched my eyebrows. “I have a hundred bucks says, what do you care?”

  “Show.”

  I slipped a hundred out of my wallet. On a normal case, this would be considered an expense, and the client would reimburse me for it. This time, I was the client, so once it left my pocket, it would stay gone.

  I waggled the bill at her.

  “You a cop?”

  “Nope.”

  She got in.

  “Okay.” She slammed the door, hard. “For a hundred bucks, what the hell?”

  I shook my head and pulled away from the curb. They’d go anywhere, these girls. With her friend newly dead, it still hadn�
��t occurred to Shannon that she might be in danger. Or maybe it had, and she just didn’t care. “Buckle up,” I said.

  She gave me a funny look, but pulled the seat belt across her lap. “What gives?”

  “You were friends with a girl named Hope? Called herself Heather?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you said you weren’t a cop.” “I’m not.”

  “What you want to know about Hope for?”

  There were track marks on the inside of her arms, but she seemed to have come down from the high she’d been on when Frank questioned her.

  I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. “ ‘Cause I’m the guy she helped set up for murder.”

  She shrank back against the door. “Oh, my God.”

  “She tell you about that, did she?”

  “She called me from the dressing room when the john was buying her new clothes. Said he gave her five hundred bucks to let him beat her up, and she’d get five hundred more if she could get you into bed and bring him something with your fingerprints, a couple of strands of hair and the used rubber.”

  “And it never occurred to her to wonder why?”

  She popped her gum and shrugged. “Hey, man, a thousand bucks. Nobody gonna turn that down.”

  “Some people would.”

  She shrugged again. “Girl’s gotta live.”

  A flush of anger started at the top of my head and washed downward. “You gonna live, Shannon? You got the virus? Gonna pass it to some poor schmoe who never did you any harm?”

  “Hey, man.” It was her turn to redden. “You pays your money and you takes your chances. Anyway, some pig wants to pay me so’s he can rut around like some kind of animal, what do you expect? Guy’s an exploiter. He deserves what he gets.”

  “For buying what you’re selling?”

  “For being a pig.”

  It hadn’t been like that. Had it? I’ll admit that Heather—Hope—had meant next to nothing to me. A night of pleasant company, an enjoyable diversion from the thought of Maria with D.W. But the desire had been mutual—or so I’d thought. If anyone had been exploited, it had been me.

  “So.” I decided not to argue the point. “Who’s the guy who hired her?”

  She snorted derisively. “You think he gave her his name?”

  “Could be.”

  “Well, he didn’t.”

  “He have a face?”

  “I expect he did.”

  I gave her a look of annoyance, held up the hundred between two fingers. “Did you see it?”

  “Naah. Never met him. It was s’posed to be some big secret, never tell a soul, yadda, yadda, yadda.”

  “But she called you from the dressing room.”

  “A thousand bucks. She got to tell somebody. Besides, I’m her best friend.” She rolled down the window and tossed the plug of chewing gum at a pedestrian. “Shit,” she said. “Missed.”

  “She tell you what he looked like?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Hundred bucks,” I reminded her.

  “Ain’t worth squat if you ain’t alive to spend it.”

  “He know about you?”

  “How should I know? I don’t know what she might of told the guy before she died.”

  “You figure the guy who hired her is the one that killed her?” “Sure.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Had to keep her quiet, didn’t he?”

  “Then, if she’d told him about you, I reckon you’d be dead by now.” I gave her a minute to think about it. When fear flickered across her face, I said, “You see him when he picked her up?”

  Her eyes were wide. “Uh-uh.”

  “She tell you what he looked like?”

  She leaned her head back and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t know.” A tear trickled from the corner of her eye and down into her ear.

  “You do know.”

  “Blond,” she said. I could be called blond, but there was no reason for me to try to frame myself.

  “Did you tell the police all this?” I asked.

  “Hell, I don’t talk to cops.”

  “Today you do.”

  “The hell I am.”

  “The hell you aren’t.” I gave her an icy smile. “See, it works like this. You tell Frank Campanella everything you just told me, and probably they’ll just leave you alone. Frank works Homicide. He doesn’t care if you turn tricks. But if you don’t tell, things will start to get very interesting. Cops hauling your ass in to the station at the drop of a hat. Could get very hard to make a living.”

  I didn’t know if I still had that kind of pull, but whether I did or not, it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that she believed I did.

  If looks could kill, I would have spontaneously combusted. “You threatening me?”

  “You bet your sweet ass I am.”

  I dropped her off at the police station with Frank’s card and the hundred bucks. She wasn’t happy about it.

  AN HOUR LATER, I SAT BEHIND the desk in my office, considering Shannon’s description of the man who had paid a thousand dollars for my DNA and fingerprints. A blond man, about my height and build. I thought of the possibilities. Ben Carrington, not blond. He could have worn a disguise, but my instincts told me he wasn’t involved. I typed his name into my favorite search engine and did a brief background check that raised no alarms.

  D.W. Shorter and stockier than I and not blond. He had access to my schedule and personal information. He might even have known Tex’s birthday, but I couldn’t see him in the role of predator. Safe, reliable D.W., murdering people? I wasn’t sure I liked him, but the idea was ludicrous.

  Eric the Viking. Funny, how he’d shown up just as I was being framed for murder. I deleted Carrington’s name and did a search for Eric’s. There were about a dozen hits. Art shows, gallery openings. He’d been at an open house the night Amy was killed; photos of the event were posted on his studio’s web site. Too bad. I would have liked to nail the little shit to the wall.

  Samuel Avery, or whoever he was. He was hiding something, but a nearsighted witness on a foggy, moonless night would have had a hard time confusing him with me. He could have been pulling strings, though. Had he hired or persuaded someone to murder Amy and impersonate me?

  Walter was a manipulator, and if Avery was Walter, he’d had thirteen years to perfect his craft. He had plenty of motive—three-quarters of a million dollars’ worth. And then there were the photos. Who but Walter would want to incriminate me with those particular pictures?

  Then there was Valerie’s ex. Or not-so-ex. I pulled out the pamphlets I’d gotten from Avery and skimmed them until I found a photo and blurb for Sonny Vanderhaus, a mastering engineer at AudioStyle recording studio. An Internet search showed that he was a busy boy, working full-time at the studio and hosting a nighttime radio show on weekends. The show was live, which meant that, unless he could be in two places at once, he had an alibi for Amy’s murder. Still, his relationship with Avery kept me from crossing him off the list.

  A quick search through one of the databases I subscribed to showed a six-year gap in his activities, and I made a mental note to find out if he had a record.

  I moved the cursor to exit the database. Paused. The program’s final question taunted me. Do you want to make another search?

  I typed in my brother’s name and stared at the screen some more. What did I think I could learn? Financial problems? Hell, who didn’t have those? An old arrest record? What difference would it make?

  The words looked stark against the screen. Randall James McKean.

  Even to consider it was a breach of trust. I cleared the screen and exited the program.

  I’VE GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU,” Jay said. “But this one’s going to cost you.”

  “That good, huh?”

  His smug expression said it was.

  “Okay, what’s it going to cost me?”

  “Dinner at Amerigo’s. And I want to go dancing.”


  I groaned. “Jesus, Jay. Dancing?”

  “We can go someplace with line dancing. I don’t care. We don’t have to slow dance or anything.”

  “You want me to take you to a gay bar?” I tried to wrap my mind around this. “Me?”

  He laughed. “It will be an educational experience.”

  I gagged and gasped, rolled around on the couch and pretended I was dying, but he didn’t relent. Dinner and dancing it was.

  To be honest, I knew he would give up the info for nothing if I asked him to. But I also knew how bummed he was about Eric the Viking. He could use a little cheering up.

  All the same, I hoped Randall wouldn’t find out.

  Or Frank.

  Or pretty much anybody else I knew.

  “I’ll take you,” I finally agreed. “But I won’t dance.” It was as good a compromise as he was going to get, and he knew it.

  I wasn’t sure what a straight guy was supposed to wear to a gay club, but Amerigo’s Italian restaurant was upscale, so I dressed up for the occasion in a dark gray suit and a silk tie with tigers on it. I knotted the tie with a pang of regret. Maria had bought it for me, and the last time I’d worn it, she was the one who had tied the knot and smoothed the tie flat against my shirt.

  Jay’s suit was the color of ash. One corner of a silk handkerchief protruded from his suit pocket. He looked ironed and creased, like he had just stepped out of GQ. He gave me an approving nod as we went down the driveway to the car. “What a waste,” he said. “A tragedy for gay men everywhere.”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” I said, and he laughed.

  At dinner, he ordered a vegetarian pasta dish, while I settled on grilled salmon with new potatoes and grilled vegetables. I don’t eat red meat when Jay’s around. Once I ordered lamb and thought he was going to vomit.

  “All right,” I said. “You’ve got your dinner, and I promise to take you dancing. Now, give.”

  “Her name is Shirleen Roystan. She and Calvin married thirteen years ago. Divorce papers filed two years later.”

  “No unmarked grave, then?”

  “No unmarked grave.” He handed me a slip of paper with an address and phone number on it. “This is where she lives. I guess someone will need to call her.”