Scars (Nevada James #2) (Nevada James Mysteries)

by Matthew Storm

  I thought about getting a cat. Maybe once my house was done and I moved in it would be worth considering. I was sober now and could probably handle the responsibility of taking care of an animal. If I’d had a pet during my drunken years it wouldn’t have had much of a chance. I’d barely been able to remember to feed myself back then, let alone anyone or anything else.

  Molly sent me a text saying she was sorry she’d missed my call and asking whether I needed anything. I was a shitty friend in that I only got in touch with people when I was a mess. I texted back that everything was good and I’d catch her another time.

  Sooner or later I was going to have to drag myself back to a therapist’s office. Why did I keep putting it off? Stubbornness? That sounded about right. I had things to do first, though. Tomorrow I’d get in touch with the cop who’d worked Anita’s case back in the 90’s. Maybe he’d have some ideas. If he could just give me a placed to start, maybe I’d have somewhere to take the investigation. I’d never expected it to go far, but I’d expected it to go farther than this. The files Jason had given me had been next to useless.

  I wasn’t that surprised to see I’d made the ten o’clock news. They ran a clip of me with my hands cupped around my mouth, shouting at nobody like a crazy person. The microphones hadn’t been close enough to pick up anything I’d said, thank god, but it didn’t look good. I was surprised that no reporters had called me to try and get a comment. Then again, it wasn’t easy to get my number. No cop who had it would have been willing to give it up for fear of my reaction, and one of the advantages of living in a motel was that it made you hard to find. If someone did track me down, I could always leave and check into another motel under a fake name. Celebrities were able to get away with that, weren’t they? To keep the paparazzi away? I wasn’t a celebrity, but I had a gun. Two guns, actually.

  Just before I went to bed I shut off all the lights in my room and then went to peek out the window. There was no activity in the parking lot. Nobody was sitting in a car alone for no apparent reason. No suspicious vans were around. Maybe the Laughing Man wasn’t watching me. Maybe his attention was focused on the copycat and he’d forgotten all about me.

  It was a nice thought, but I knew it wasn’t true.

  Chapter 13

  I picked up a breakfast sandwich from a gas station the next morning and headed back to the motel to call Howard Lanford. His phone rang four times before a woman answered. “Lanford residence.”

  “My name is Nevada James,” I said. “I used to be with the San Diego Police Department. I was hoping to speak with Mr. Lanford about an old case of his.”

  “I’m sorry, Detective, but Mr. Lanford is resting at the moment. You’ll have to call back…”

  I’d been about to interrupt and tell her I wasn’t a detective anymore, but an old man’s raspy voice barked, “Who is that?” before I had the chance.

  There was a noise on the phone as if the woman was putting her palm over the phone’s handset, not that that kept her voice from coming through. “It’s not important, Mr. Lanford. You’re supposed to be resting now.”

  “I won’t be told who I can talk to in my own damn house,” Lanford said. “Give me the damn phone.”

  A moment later I heard his voice clearly. “Who is this?”

  “Is that how you talk to your wife?” I asked him. “You’re lucky she doesn’t cut your throat.”

  “She’s not my wife,” he said. “She’s my nurse. Now who is this?”

  “Nevada James,” I said. “I’m…”

  “You’re that crazy woman from the television,” Howard interrupted me. “I saw you yelling in the park like some damn hobo.”

  I sighed. “Okay, that wasn’t my best moment ever. Anyway, if you have a few minutes…”

  He cackled. “I was playing with you, Detective. I know exactly who you are. Can’t say I know why you’re calling me, though. I never worked a serial killer case. Or are you people so desperate now you’re calling old men out of retirement?”

  Of course he’d known who I was. Even if I hadn’t once been the most famous cop in San Diego, I’d been on television twice in the last week. The last time hadn’t been particularly flattering. “No, but I’m not calling about that. I should also tell you I’m not a cop anymore, either.”

  “I know. You went down like a shooting star.”

  During my drinking days I’d have taken mortal offense to that comment, but he wasn’t lying. “Fair enough,” I said. “I’m calling about the Collins case from 1993. The car bomb.”

  Lanford exhaled slowly as if I’d just poked him with a pin to let the air out of him. “Let me guess,” he said. “Anita hired you.”

  “Good guess.”

  “Not really. You couldn’t be working it in an official capacity. How did you get your hands on the case file?”

  “I said some magic words and they appeared,” I told him. “It was really weird. Anyway, I’ve got a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Why don’t you come up here?” he asked. “I’d like to meet you.”

  I shrugged, then remembered he couldn’t actually see me. “I can do that. SDPD gave me your address. When is good?”

  “Now is fine. Julia is trying to make me take a nap, but you’ll be on important police business, so it’s just too bad for her.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “She doesn’t need to know that. See you soon, Detective.”

  Scripps Ranch was just north of me on I-15, not far from Miramar. It took me twenty minutes to get up there and find Lanford’s house, a modest split-level ranch in the suburbs. I parked on the street and went to ring the doorbell. A tired-looking woman in her fifties with gray hair pulled back in a bun answered the door. She wore a pink lab jacket with the name of some medical outfit on it. “You must be Detective James,” she said.

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Julia. I’m his nurse. Do you have a badge you need to show me or something like that? I don’t know how these things work.”

  “I’m not here to arrest anyone,” I said. “We just need some help with an old case of Mr. Lanford’s.”

  She nodded. “You may as well come in, then, and good luck to you. He’s feisty today.”

  Julia led me into the kitchen. Howard Lanford was waiting for me there, a cup of coffee on a circular wooden table in front of him. He looked to be in his seventies and probably weighed 120 pounds, which I was guessing was down from at least 180 or more, given his frame. He sat in a wheelchair with a blanket over his legs and had a clear tube under his nose feeding him oxygen. It was looped over his ears and attached to a tank on a rolling carrier that could be pushed along with him.

  Lanford pointed to an empty chair at the table. I sat. “That’s enough, Julia. You can leave us alone now. We have important police business to discuss.” Julia nodded, somehow refrained from rolling her eyes, and left the room.

  Lanford looked me up and down. His breathing was on the ragged side. I’d made a joke about needing to talk to him before he died of old age. I felt pretty shitty about that now. Lanford didn’t have a lot of time left.

  He finally grunted. “You don’t look like much.”

  I shrugged. “Neither do you.”

  Lanford glared at me for a moment, then his face cracked and he exploded into laughter that degenerated into a coughing fit a second later. When he recovered he said, “No, but I’m dying. What’s your excuse?”

  “I was drunk for three years.”

  He held my gaze for a moment and then nodded. “I guess you really were. I’d heard that, but you know how people talk. I thought maybe some of it was a fish story.”

  “No,” I said. “That was a true story. If anything it was worse than whatever you heard. I damn near died.”

  “I won’t offer you some Scotch, then.”

  “You drink Scotch for breakfast?” I asked. “I do that, my old boss picks me up and carries me to the hospital.”

  “I’ll be dead in a f
ew weeks,” he said. He nodded at his coffee. “So I put a little in there when nobody’s looking. Julia pretends she doesn’t know. She does, of course, but she also knows it hardly matters anymore.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Lanford reached for the coffee. His hands shook a bit, but from the way his lips pressed together in concentration I could tell he was putting on a show of force, trying not to let me see how bad it really was. He probably hadn’t been exaggerating about how much time he had left.

  He took a sip of the spiked coffee and sighed deeply, then slowly put the cup back down. “Tell me what you think of Anita,” he said.

  I shrugged, not ready to show him my cards.

  “She’s a sweet old lady, isn’t she?” Lanford asked. “Did she make you cookies and tea? I always liked her cookies. Rum raisin was my favorite.”

  “There was tea,” I said. Lanford nodded at me encouragingly. “I guess I didn’t rate cookies. Maybe I should have stuck around longer. I was kind of hoping she’d read me a story and tuck me into bed.”

  Lanford threw his head back and laughed. “Good,” he said. “You’re not a complete idiot.”

  Julia poked her head into the kitchen. “Everything okay in here?”

  “We’re fine,” Lanford snapped. “Let us be, woman!” Julia retreated.

  “You could be nicer to her,” I said.

  “I’m leaving her everything in my will.” He gave me a stern look. “And don’t you dare tell her that, either. I want it to be a surprise.”

  “I’m sure it will be,” I nodded. “So we’ve established that neither of us bought Anita’s kindly old grandmother act.”

  “Oh, she wasn’t always like that,” Lanford said. “When I met her the first time, in the hospital, she was exactly who I expected her to be. Scared, mourning, in more physical pain than I’d ever wish on a person. It took years before…” he looked away. “I don’t really blame her, mind you. She waited for justice for a long time. But every time I saw her, she was just a little bit angrier with me.”

  “Frustrated, I’m sure.”

  “Yes. The investigation stalled out after the first few weeks. I kept trying, of course, but we burned up all our leads.” He winced. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said burned. Anyway, I kept going back to her with nothing. And then one day, the anger was gone. It looked that way, anyway. She smiled. She touched my hand. She told me she knew I’d been working hard for her and she appreciated it.”

  “When was that?”

  “Maybe ten years in. I kept digging the file out every now and then, and then I’d go by and tell her we still had nothing. And she was so…warm. So kind.”

  “She…” I thought about how to phrase my next question but didn’t come up with a delicate way to ask. “Did you two…you know…”

  “No!” he said. “Good god, woman!”

  “I was wondering if she tried to seduce you,” I said. “I wasn’t saying you’d try to take advantage of her.”

  “Well, neither of those things happened. We talked and drank tea and she was cheerful. She asked about my family and laughed when I told her about my new grandchildren. It wasn’t until later…she slipped once, and I got a look at her eyes.” He frowned. “She was lying.”

  “Lying?”

  “She wasn’t warm, or understanding, or enjoying any of my silly little stories. She wanted blood. Mine, I thought.”

  I blinked in surprise. “You think she wanted to kill you?”

  “Maybe. For failing her. I let the killer go free.” He shook his head. “And she was right, of course. After that I just called her now and then to let her know what was going on. I didn’t want to see those eyes again.”

  “You obviously don’t think she was involved, then.”

  “No.” He shook his head again. “No chance. Not with that kind of hate. And you’d better understand this, Detective.” He wagged his finger at me. “She’s been carrying that torch for twenty years. She’ll never give up. She’ll never stop.”

  “I was getting that idea,” I said. “Tell me about the suspects you had.”

  “None of them did it.”

  That hadn’t been what I’d expected to hear. That maybe he suspected someone and couldn’t make a case, sure. Not that he’d just dismiss them outright. “You’re sure? You cleared all of them?”

  “They were a bunch of useless old hippies. The only one I ever seriously considered might have done it was Lewis, the chemistry professor. We knew his group built a couple shitty bombs during the war, even though they never managed to get one to go off.”

  “One of them was found under a police car, if I remember.”

  “You’ve done your homework. Another dud. Even if it hadn’t been, the FBI never had anything to tie it to him directly. They spent enough time looking. And he kept preaching that ‘fight the power’ nonsense after he became a professor. Served as a faculty advisor for a socialist group on campus. We had him on tape saying violent action was sometimes the only catalyst for social change.”

  “But you cleared him?”

  “He was in Europe at the time of the bombing. He’d been there for three weeks. He knew Adam Collins socially but claimed not to know much about his work, and he didn’t seem to give a good goddamn about some supercomputer nuking everyone, or whatever the bomber was afraid of. We had no reason to think he was lying. And to be honest with you, he was the type that if he’d done it, he’d want you to know. It would have been a statement.”

  “Maybe I should talk to him anyway.”

  “If you see him, tell him I’ll see him soon.”

  “Oh?”

  “In Hell,” he said.

  I sighed. That would teach me not to take my research more seriously. I’d never gotten as far as an obituary. “I only knew he’d retired. When did he die?”

  “Couple years ago. I only knew because I read the obituaries every day. It’s a morbid habit I picked up when I got sick. I keep waiting for my name to show up.”

  I thought things over for a minute. “Well, shit,” I said. “That means I’ve got nothing.”

  “Welcome to the club,” Lanford said. “Don’t worry. We don’t collect dues.”

  “Maybe we should have jackets made. We could wear them around town and hang out with the guys who were looking for Jimmy Hoffa.”

  “Hoffa’s in a gravel pit in Camden, New Jersey.”

  “What? Really?”

  “No.” He smirked. “Got you, Detective.”

  I drummed my fingers on the table, trying to think if there was anything else worthwhile I could ask. Lanford took another sip of his coffee and frowned. “Can’t really even taste this anymore,” he said. “Even with the Scotch. I just drink it out of habit.” He gave me a long look. “Do you carry a gun, Detective?”

  “You know who I am, so you know the answer to that question. Why?”

  He smiled weakly. “I don’t suppose you’d put it down on the table and leave the room for a few minutes?”

  I felt my heart break just a little bit. “You know I can’t.”

  Lanford shook his head. “Ah, well. I doubt I’m strong enough anymore to pull the trigger, anyway.” He sighed deeply. Never get old, Detective.”

  “There’s really no chance of that,” I said. “If the Laughing Man doesn’t kill me, the shit I’ve done to myself drinking will.”

  “You should take up smoking, just to be sure.”

  We looked at each other for a moment, and then we both started to laugh. “I like you,” I said. “I don’t say that to a lot of people.”

  “Now you’re just trying to get into my will,” he said. “Sorry. Julia gets everything. She’s put up with me for a lot longer than you have.”

  “I guess I’ll just have to retire on all this Mafia money I have stashed away.”

  Lanford frowned at me. “Mafia money?”

  “Forget it,” I said. “Long story. Anyway, have you come up with anything since you retired? Any leads you were never able to tra
ck down?”

  He bit his lip as he thought it over. “Not really,” he said. “Although…I was never sure about the bomb.”

  “The bomb? Because of the hydrogen peroxide that turned up in the analysis?”

  “No, that was a lab mistake. There was never any hydrogen peroxide. The weird thing was that the bomb should never have been able to do as much damage as it did.”

  “I don’t know a lot about pipe bombs, but it was hard for me to imagine one taking out a car.”

  “Oh, they can. Pipe bombs are what terrorists use to blow up convoys in Iraq. But those are big ones filled with shit you make in a lab. This one was small, and it was maybe half full of gunpowder. It was going to go bang, of course. But take out a car and burn that way? That hot? No. That never sat right with me. There were times I thought that thing was never supposed to explode the way it did.”

  “Who sets a bomb and doesn’t want to blow something up?” I asked.

  “I never figured it out,” Lanford said. “You like riddles, Detective?”

  “No.”

  “Well, here’s one anyway. When is a bomb not a bomb?”

  I thought it over. If it wasn’t supposed to blow up, what else was a bomb good for? “When it’s a message?”

  “Good,” Lanford nodded. “Or when it’s a warning, I would think.”

  “And what’s the message?”

  He shrugged weakly. “I have a bomb?”

  Or maybe the message had been about the smart computers the note Anita had found warned of. The note the bomber had left obviously hadn’t stopped Collins from continuing his work, so maybe the bomb had been meant as a second, more serious warning. My mind wandered back to the Unabomber case. Kaczynski had railed against what he called the “industrial-technological” system when he wrote his manifesto. If I remembered correctly, he’d called for a revolution against technology. The Collins bombing fit that profile almost perfectly. But the FBI had ruled Kaczynski out as a suspect. They wouldn’t be wrong about that.