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

by Matthew Storm

  “$240 if you want a week.”

  I counted out five hundred-dollar bills onto the desk. “Give me two weeks. Keep the change.”

  The clerk glanced at the cash but didn’t make a move to take it. “You a drug dealer? You don’t look like a drug dealer.”

  “I’m someone who wants to be left alone.”

  “Prostitute, then? I don’t care, mind you. You wouldn’t be the only one here. I just don’t want trouble in the parking lot.”

  I stared at him. “Do I look like a prostitute?”

  “They never do, at first.” He shrugged. “I’ll need an ID.”

  I put another hundred on the desk. When he didn’t say anything I added another, and then another on top of that. “Fine,” he said. “Forget the ID. You were never here.”

  “I don’t want housekeeping knocking on the door.”

  He snorted. “That’s not going to be a problem.”

  I gave him a serious look. “If anyone asks about me, or comes by here looking for a woman my age and describes me, it would be worth something to me to know about that. You understand? If you got me a description of whoever it was, or footage from a security camera, that would be worth even more.”

  The clerk squinted at me. “You famous or something?”

  “I’m Julia Roberts.”

  He laughed. “You’re pretty, but you sure as hell aren’t Julia Roberts. I’ll keep an eye out for you. You need anything, let me know.” He looked out the window at my Mustang. “You come in that?”

  “Yeah. Don’t take down the license plate number. Just make sure I don’t get towed.”

  “They don’t come unless I call them. You got a dead body in the trunk or something?”

  “Not yet. It’s still early, though.”

  My phone buzzed as I was lugging my suitcase into the first-floor room I’d been given. It was Dan calling again. “Hey,” I answered.

  “I’m in your room,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Gone,” I said. “Gone like the wind. Wind that was in a hurry, even.”

  “Damn it, Nevada…”

  “I’m near La Jolla,” I lied. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hide from you. Just everyone else. You see the flowers?”

  “Yeah. The card is a dead giveaway. How did the copycat find you?”

  The Laughing Man had been sending me gifts for years, usually with a card attached. On the card he’d write a friendly message, and he always drew a laughing face. The drawing wasn’t any more elaborate than a circle for a head, with a few lines sketched inside to make eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but it was always the same. He’d never drawn a heart. Even if he’d been sane enough to entertain romantic feelings for me, he’d have considered that an inelegant way to express them. “I was staying under my own name there,” I said. “I figured the Laughing Man would be able to find me if he really wanted to, but I didn’t think anyone else gave a shit.”

  “Someone else does,” Dan said. “I’ll get this over to the forensics guys. We probably won’t get a fingerprint, but maybe they’ll find something we can use.”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “So do I.”

  “He did do the card himself, though, so he’d have had to go into the flower shop. Maybe someone would remember him.”

  “I’ll check it out. Tell me where you are.”

  “No.”

  “What? You just said you weren’t hiding from me.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m hiding from the fleet of patrol cars you’ll send to babysit me the minute you know where I am.”

  He paused just long enough to try to think of a good lie. “I wasn’t going to do that.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That was the best you could do? You are the worst liar of all time.”

  “Nevada…”

  “You could have said, ‘Nevada, I respect your judgment and would never try to force bodyguards on you,’ or something like that.”

  “Nevada…”

  “Wait, I know,” I said. “You could have tried, ‘Nevada, we live in dangerous times, but as long as you promise to be careful I’ll respect your wishes.’ See, that might have worked. You’d have been playing on the fact that you know how seriously I take promises, so if you managed to get one out of me, you might think I’d believe you in turn.”

  Dan didn’t say anything for a long minute. I imagined if I cracked an egg on his head right now it would fry in a great hurry. “You okay, Dan?” I asked. I liked needling him a bit, but this was a time it was important not to go too far. If I did, he might be willing to go as far as defying department protocol and having my cell phone traced. And if he did that, shortly afterward he’d be wondering why their tech guys couldn’t get a location on my phone. I wasn’t about to tell him about the modifications that had been made to it. He’d start wondering what kind of company I was keeping.

  “All right, Nevada,” he finally said. “But I am going to want to see you. I’ll call to check in after I hit up the flower shop.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “And what are you going to do until then?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll think of something.”

  Chapter 18

  My new motel room looked like the kind of place junkies go to die. It stank of carpet cleaner that had been applied far too liberally, maybe to cover the smell of something else that was better left not thought about. I didn’t bother unpacking my clothes; I didn’t want them exposed to any of the surfaces in here, anyway. After a cursory check of the bathroom, I decided I’d be taking my showers at Molly Malone’s dojo. For that matter, maybe I’d go to a hardware store, buy a roll of plastic sheeting, and cover every surface in the room with it. I was pretty far from being a clean freak; my house had reached the point of moldy carpet back in my drinking days, when I’d been too drunk to pick up my garbage, but this was ridiculous.

  I put the .45 and my Glock down on the bed. As much as I really didn’t care for the .45, it wasn’t going to kill me to have a backup piece. I didn’t really expect that any of this was going to come down to a gunfight, but you never really knew what was going to happen. If my life had a theme, it was that whatever could go wrong absolutely would, sooner or later. Sometimes it seemed like the world was out to kick me in the teeth.

  I’d made a mental note of all the cars in the motel’s parking lot when I’d come in. Now I looked out the window and checked for any new ones. Nothing had changed. If the copycat had been waiting at my other place and followed me here, he’d had the sense to stalk me from somewhere I couldn’t see him.

  Why he would send me flowers was an interesting question. The Laughing Man had done that for years, starting shortly after I’d gotten his case. That was hardly common knowledge, though. I didn’t think it had ever made the news, but that was something I could check on. Fewer people knew he’d kept doing it after I’d been kicked off the force and holed up in my house to drink myself to death. Dan Evans, Sarah Winters, and…I thought it over. That was about it. Some of the lab techs had known, certainly. Back when I’d still cared I’d passed things the Laughing Man had sent to me on to them in the hopes that they might find DNA, or a fingerprint, but none of those things had ever panned out and eventually I’d just given up on it. Llewellyn Carter knew. He’d taken it personally back then. There was little doubt others at the FBI were aware of it. And people did talk, after all, even when they knew perfectly well they were sharing things they weren’t supposed to. Want to show off your importance to your friends? Impress them with your insider knowledge about the most famous serial killer in San Diego history. The court jester always knows some of the king’s secrets.

  I looked through the window again. One car that had been here when I’d arrived was gone now. Nothing else looked different.

  I was getting hungry and didn’t feel like having food delivered. I didn’t know Miramar nearly as well as I did some of the other neighborhoods in San Diego, so I wasn’t sure where to pick
up groceries around here, either. I hadn’t brought any food with me, though, so I decided to head out to explore. It didn’t take me long to find a Ralph’s. I went inside and picked up a 12-pack of Diet Coke, a tray of pumpkin muffins topped with chocolate chips, and half a rotisserie chicken. If I’d been a grown woman that would have made for a pretty pathetic dinner. Oh, wait. I was a grown woman. Well, too bad. I’d have a kitchen once they finished building my house, but damned if I was moving in there before they caught the Laughing Man’s copycat. Two people had died in my last house inside of a week. The new one was going to stay a corpse-free zone for as long as I could manage it. As long as my corpse didn’t wind up in there, I’d have nothing to complain about.

  When I left the store I saw a red convertible had parked next to my Mustang while I’d been inside. I wasn’t that surprised to see a model-beautiful young man leaning up against its door waiting for me. Another equally beautiful young man sat behind its wheel, not looking in my direction. That was Fitch. He never looked at me.

  “Hey, Abercrombie,” I said as soon as I was within earshot. He tossed his head to the side, sending his silky blond hair tumbling to the side like an ocean wave. If he hadn’t been gay I might have jumped on him right there.

  “You do know my name isn’t Abercrombie?” he asked.

  “And his isn’t Fitch,” I said, nodding at the other young man. “But you won’t tell me your real name, so you get to be Abercrombie. Hey, Fitch,” I called to the driver. Fitch continued not looking at me. “I don’t think Fitch likes me,” I said to Abercrombie.

  “He likes you. He just has trouble expressing himself. We’re working on that.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or not. Abercrombie tended to be very…dry. “Well, I guess that’s a good thing.”

  Abercrombie and Fitch worked for Scott Landers, a somewhat retired computer hacker who had made a fortune stealing from the bank accounts of the rich and unpleasant. Now he managed money instead of stealing it. Scott’s brother had been an early victim of the Laughing Man, which was how I’d come to know him. Technically, given that I’d discovered what Scott’s past had entailed, I should have introduced him to my friends at the FBI, who would no doubt have loved to meet him and offer him free lodging at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, for the rest of his life. But I had a certain sympathy for the Laughing Man’s victims, and the truth was I didn’t really care what Scott had done. He didn’t kill people, and his skills had proven to be extremely useful in my work. He was the reason nobody other than his people could get a location on my cell phone, and that was the least of what he could do.

  My phone buzzed with another text from Sarah Winters, asking to meet me as soon as possible. I put it in my pocket. She was going to have to wait.

  “Is that your dinner?” Abercrombie asked, nodding at my grocery bag. “Because that is just tragic, my dear. Do you want me to take you out and teach you how to order food in a restaurant? It’s not complicated. Even you should be able to get the hang of it.”

  “Hey, Fitch?” I called. “When you dump this guy, I’ll have a line of hot boys just waiting to meet you. Say the word and it’s done.” Fitch continued ignoring me, but I thought I saw him smirk just a little bit.

  “Be nice,” Abercrombie said. “Do you want what I have or not?”

  “Of course I want it.”

  “As far as I can tell, Michael Lewis kept his nose clean after his hippie days. He was the faculty advisor for some anarchist club called the Malatesta Group, and he was on record saying violence has a legitimate place in effecting social change, but all the club did was march around with their garish little signs and shout about divestment whenever the university’s regents had a meeting. I expect it was one of those college things where everybody goes on about ‘the revolution’ for four years and then forgets all about it once they start getting a real paycheck. Kind of like the ‘gay until graduation’ crowd.”

  “Gay until graduation?” I asked. “That’s a thing?”

  “It’s a thing,” Abercrombie said. “I could tell you some stories about…”

  “No, you can’t,” Fitch said. I think it may have been the first time I’d ever heard him speak.

  “Yeah, I actually don’t care,” I said. “What about his work? Anything on oxides or malaria medicine?”

  “His research was mainly on cadmium selenide particles. Before you ask me what that is, I don’t know. I do know it doesn’t explode.”

  I sighed. “Damn it. So this was a complete waste of time?”

  Abercrombie cocked his head and grinned at me. “I could have just called and told you that. I wanted to see your face for the next part.” He waited while I stared at him expectantly. “Oh, you’re no fun at all, Nevada. You could at least pretend to be excited.”

  “I’m excited on the inside, I promise.”

  Abercrombie rolled his eyes. “One of Lewis’s students had several papers published that dealt with peroxide bonds. Special peroxide bonds. Can you guess what he was working on?”

  “Artemisinin?”

  “Artemisinin was his starting point, but he came up with a synthetic that makes artemisinin look like leeches and bleeding. He’s changing the world.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I had a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach, like a hungry animal had taken up residence there.

  “More than that, he doesn’t even charge for it. He’s been giving the treatment away. It’s all done through this foundation I’ve forgotten the name of…”

  “I think I can probably guess it,” I said.

  “The man’s singlehandedly responsible for saving thousands of lives. He’s pretty much Gandhi, Nevada.”

  “Oh, learn some history,” I said, a bit more sharply than I needed to. “Gandhi didn’t actually cure anything. He’d have to be more like Salk. Or Norman Borlaug, maybe.”

  “I know Gandhi didn’t cure diseases, Nevada.”

  “Yeah, I just wanted to sound smarter than you for a change.”

  “Oh, yeah? How’s that working out for you?”

  I shrugged. “Not so great. I think my day is about to go to shit. What’s this guy’s name?”

  “Conrad Meyers. He retired early and sits on the boards of directors of half a dozen companies that do medical research. Lives up in Del Mar.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of folded-up paper. “I even got you an address.”

  I took the paper and looked at it. “Thanks,” I said. “I guess I owe you one.”

  “You owe me several, but who’s counting?” He made an “o” shape with his mouth. “Wait, I know! Scott’s counting! He wants to know what’s going on with the copycat case.”

  “If he knows it’s a copycat, why does he care?” I asked.

  “I guess he wants to hear you say it’s a copycat and that screwing around with this amateur isn’t distracting you from your more important work, which is gutting the Laughing Man like a fish.”

  I crossed my arms in front of me. “Do I look distracted, Abercrombie?”

  “Unless you think Conrad Meyers is the Laughing Man, you kind of do.”

  I looked over at Fitch, but if I’d thought I was going to get some backup from over there, that had been a mistake. “He’s not. I’ll be on the Laughing Man as soon as he actually does something, but right now I’ve got nothing to go on. He’s been quiet since he sliced Chandler Emerson up at my house.”

  “Doesn’t that seem strange to you?” he asked.

  “A little. I wonder what he’s waiting for. But I also don’t know if he’s even still alive. He could have been hit by a car last week and we all read his obituary without even knowing it. When the Laughing Man moves, I’ll move. Until then, we’re in intermission.”

  Abercrombie watched my face for a second, then looked away. “I already know the answer,” he said, “but I was told to ask. Are you sober?”

  I stared at him. “I said I know the answer, Nevada,” he said, shrinking away as if he
thought I might hit him.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I remember you when you were a drunk. You looked like you’d been in a concentration camp. And my god but you stank, Nevada.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. Tell Scott thanks for the concern, and the help. I’ll be in touch when I have something new for him.

  Abercrombie nodded and looked back at Fitch. “We’re going to get going. Good luck with Conrad Meyers. I doubt he’s going to have many good days left.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because when I told you he was changing the world, you made a face like…like you were having the best dream of your life and you just realized you were about to wake up.”

  That did seem about right. “Maybe,” I said. I held up the paper he’d given me. “If this is the guy I’m looking for…well, I guess I really hope he’s not the guy I’m looking for. Because if he is, I’m going to ruin his life.”

  Chapter 19

  Del Mar was only about twenty minutes away from the motel I was hiding out in, but it was getting late and I still had half a rotisserie chicken in my bag that I wanted to eat before it got cold. Conrad Meyers could wait. I doubted he was going anywhere.

  I hadn’t bothered to get paper plates or plastic forks at the store, so I wound up eating the chicken with my fingers while I watched the evening news on the motel’s tiny television. There was nothing new on the copycat killer. Nor were they running any footage of me screaming in the park. Hopefully the media were on their way to forgetting about me.

  My phone buzzed. It was a text from Dan that read, No joy with Tapestry Flowers. Buyer wore a hat and kept his head down. White male.

  Serial killers were almost always male, and white guys in San Diego were about as common as sunny days. I went to wash my hands before I texted Dan back. Maybe you should investigate hat dealers.