Dead Stop

by Barbara Nickless

  Had the killer been busy inside that fifth kiln during the time Samantha and her children had been there? Had he seen them, maybe followed them, and chosen them as his victims? Samantha’s familiarity with the cement factory could explain why she’d run off the road when she did. Maybe she’d known where the killer was taking them.

  I texted Cohen and told him that the number in the kiln might be a crossing ID and that the video left little doubt that Samantha’s death was an act of murder. When he shot a text back, asking why he was hearing from me instead of Mauer, I told him Mauer was leaving town, I was on the case, and that was where I wanted to be. A few minutes went by, then he sent me a thumbs-up.

  Smart move. He wouldn’t enjoy sleeping on his couch.

  Next, I called Denver Health. I played the police card, identifying myself and asking to speak with a nurse regarding Detective Frank Wilson. While I waited, I went to stand by the window overlooking the parking lot. Sunlight glowed through the windows, a cool, white light. As if we’d leapt from July to January.

  A nurse came on the line. “He’s in surgery. Just started. The surgeon estimates five hours. We’ll know more after that.”

  “What’s his status?”

  “Critical.” Somewhere behind her, an alarm chimed incessantly. “We’ll know more later.”

  I thanked her and hung up. I stared out at the white light, thinking about what the Sir had said about grace and acceptance. An old rage, as familiar as heartache, wrapped itself around me. There was no grace in Wilson’s suffering, nor acceptance. His wasn’t the kind of pain that forged you into a better person. It was needless torment.

  I grabbed my bag and called Clyde just as Mauer came out of his office with a cardboard box holding the CDs, the video stills, and the information he’d collected for Cohen. I added Ben’s personnel file to the box.

  “Thanks for the intel,” I told him. “I’m going by Zolner’s now. Maybe I’ll catch him sleeping off a drunk.”

  “Just be careful.” At my look he added, “I know. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Come on, I’ll walk you to your truck.”

  Outside, the sky was a chalk-gray dome. The temperature hovered around seventy—unseasonably mild. In the west, lightning flickered across the gray expanse.

  Mauer frowned. “The meteorologists say floods are coming. Damnedest summer I’ve seen.”

  At my truck, I unlocked the doors and Mauer set the box on the floor in the back. I dug out my spare sunglasses from the glove box, then pointed for Clyde to hop into the passenger seat while I got in on the other side. I rolled down the window, and Mauer leaned in.

  “Hell of a hornet’s nest going on upstairs with that hazmat train indefinitely delayed.”

  I nodded. “All velocity, all the time.”

  “TSA. Homeland Security. It’s gonna be more red, white, and blue around here than the flag. What if this guy really meant to blow up that train?”

  “He can’t now.”

  “Train’s gotta run sometime. And I’m heading off to a wedding. I should stay. That little girl . . .”

  “There’s nothing more you can do here, John. And it really is priorities. Take care of your own daughter for a couple of days.”

  He ran a finger under his collar, like a man afraid of a hanging. “I know. But it doesn’t mean I feel good about it. If you get a date for the Death and Dismemberment forms, let me know. I’m going to haul some of the boxes out of the vault and take them to Estes Park. Not like Kimmy and Dot will need me. Father of the bride is more about signing checks than anything else.”

  “You’ve got the wedding. And the dance.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes misted. He drifted away for a moment, and I let him go. Finally he drew a deep breath. “You need anything, you call. I’m less than two hours away. You got Fisher, and we’ll get backup from the other guys if you need it.” He gave me a searching look. “Promise me if you find yourself in a jam or you aren’t feeling good about this, you’ll call.”

  “I will.” I glanced at the clock on my dashboard. “Now let me get on this.”

  He slapped my truck. We were done.

  I backed the truck out of the parking space and headed toward the gate. He was still standing there when I turned onto the street, and he and DPC headquarters fell from view.

  CHAPTER 7

  How well we think is the best edge we’ve got.

  —Sydney Parnell, ENGL 2008, Psychology of Combat.

  Bull Zolner lived in a part of town that made Korea’s demilitarized zone look like a nice place for a family picnic. Years ago, Vietnamese gangs had turned three blocks into a turf war that landed more bodies on the autopsy table than most people had fingers and toes. Since then, Denver Metro Gang Task Force had gone in and cleaned it up. Now the killings only happened once a month or so. Progress.

  Why, I asked myself, had a racist like Bull chosen to live there? Bull hated everyone, but according to what I’d heard, he especially hated Asians. Maybe he’d sunk so far into the bottle that gang turf was the only real estate he could afford. Or maybe he was one of those ornery types who preferred living in a war zone, especially one of his own making. Nothing like a purpose-driven life.

  I turned onto his street. Halfway down the block, his house was immediately identifiable as the only one with an American flag and a colossal red F650 super truck parked in the driveway. I double-checked the address, then pulled up to the curb to take the lay of the land.

  The truck, along with its fiberglass skirts and custom hubcaps, suggested where Bull’s retirement money had gone. More than a hundred grand for a vehicle like that, I figured. It was clean, despite the recent rains, and freshly waxed and buffed. Clearly, Bull cared about something.

  The house was a different story. Two stories, with curling shingles and broken gutters, the entire structure listed to the left as if preparing to lie down and rest. What was left of the paint was long past any hope of being assigned a color. The yard was packed dirt—indeed, the only spots of green were the weeds sprouting in the cracked driveway and the trash bin on the side of the house. With the drapes drawn, lights out, and the promise of rain in the air, the place gave off the gray-white pallor of something six feet under.

  “Nice digs,” I said to Clyde as we got out.

  Clyde—ears perked—looked ready to rumble, regardless.

  At the front step I pushed the bell, found it broken, and knocked on the aluminum screen door.

  The house seemed to hunker into itself, brooding in silence.

  I stepped back to the edge of the porch. Overhead, the sun broke free of the clouds with a blinding burst of light; the crumbling window sashes and every crack and fault in the clapboards popped in sudden relief. Hoping against hope that Bull would be passed out on a chaise lounge in the back, I walked with Clyde around the side of the house and let us into the back through a gate set in a chain-link fence. The packed-earth backyard was empty of anything except a length of chain hooked to a steel stake driven into the ground and surrounded by mounds of dog shit. Clyde sniffed the nearest pile disdainfully. None of it looked fresh—wherever Bull had gone, he’d taken his dog with him. The curtains were drawn on every window. Even the sliding glass doors were shrouded. My knocks on the glass also went unanswered.

  Clyde and I looked at each other.

  Somewhere on the drive over, my heart had begun to throb in my chest, as if it were a clock tracking each second Lucy had been gone. Now, in Bull’s squalid, weedy yard, it gave an anxious hop, threatening to go into triple time. I sucked in air.

  “The neighbors,” I said to Clyde.

  I picked the house to the east since someone had at least mowed the lawn in the last month. A curtain twitched and a minute later, a woman yanked open the door. She had a five-foot frame, gray-black hair cut sharply at the chin, and a wary squint. The scents of fish and ginger wafted out. She left the screen door closed and scowled up at me, taking in my badge and uniform with suspicion. Then her eyes lit on Clyde.

&n
bsp; “Oh, isn’t he precious!”

  Former Marines don’t aspire to be precious, but Clyde bore up well. He opened his mouth and let his tongue unfurl, which made him look happy. The woman beamed.

  “He’s such a beauty! My son has a dog just like that. Adopted him through some veterans program.” She lifted her eyes to me and the glare came back. Clearly I ranked far below Clyde. “Rosco was a military working dog.”

  “Ma’am, I’m here about your neighbor, Fred Zolner. Have you seen him today?”

  “That nasty old man.” The screen door pixelated her sneer. “Left yesterday evening. I saw him loading stuff into his truck. I went and asked him if he wanted me to keep an eye on his place. Trying to be neighborly.”

  “His truck is in the driveway.”

  She pushed open the screen and stepped outside, shielding her eyes with her hand. “Not that one. He took off in his old black Dodge. Looks like a piece of shit, but I guess it runs okay.”

  “Did he tell you where he was going?”

  “Up to Cheyenne to spend a few days with his daughter. Said he’d be back next week. Mind if I pet your dog?”

  “Sorry. He’s on duty.” I remembered what Mauer had said, that Zolner didn’t have any family. “A daughter? You’re sure?”

  She glowered. “You think I’m lying? That old man’s so bitter I find it hard to believe any woman ever slept with him. Plus he’s ugly as sin. But some people get desperate. And he’s got a pension. Makes a certain kind of woman chase him.”

  Probably meaning her. I pulled out a business card. “If he comes back, can you let me know? Tell him I need to speak with him. It’s urgent.”

  She took the card. I was halfway down the porch stairs when she said, “You want to know about the other fellow who came by? He said it was urgent, too.”

  I stopped, felt that staccato beat in my chest, and turned back. “Who was he?”

  “Salesman, he told me. Said Fred called for a quote on siding. But”—she sidled over to the top of the stairs—“I saw that movie. The one about the mob. You know, the one with the horse’s head.”

  “The Godfather?”

  She nodded triumphantly. “That’s the one. That’s what he made me think of.”

  “He made you think of Italian mobsters?”

  The glare came back. “Hit man. Not Italian. Just a bad . . . what do you young people say? Dude. A bad dude. He smiled and smiled, and all the time I’m telling myself that smile don’t mean a thing. I didn’t want to get Fred in trouble, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to lie. So I told him the same thing I told you. Daughter in Cheyenne. You ask me, old Fred’s got a real problem. I think”—her voice dropped—“it’s his gambling. Probably borrowed from the wrong people. Don’t they cut off people’s fingers if they don’t pay up?”

  “Did they threaten you?”

  A snort. “You heard of the Asian Pride gang? I got two nephews and a cousin. Nobody better threaten me.”

  Back in my truck, I frowned out the windshield. Maybe, probably, Zolner’s disappearance and his threatening visitor had nothing to do with the Davenports. Maybe the man was a siding salesman, although I’d bet my own pension against it. But I wasn’t big on coincidence. I called Mauer, confirmed that there was no family on record for Fred Zolner, then decided I’d try to run Zolner down another way before backing off.

  I drove half a mile north toward Colfax Avenue and a long strip of bars. As I went, I crossed out of gang territory and into a place where the lifestyle tended more toward hookers and fifty-cent beers. Plenty of bars, but none with Royal or Crown in the name. I circled back and still came up with nothing. I pulled over and dialed Dan Albers.

  “I’m not on shift, Parnell,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Consider it overtime.” Albers was one of our engineers. He had a bad temper, and I’d had to rein him in now and again at employee barbeques. For Albers, beer and too much idle time were a deadly mix. But he was good at his job and showed up for work as reliably as a Monday-morning quarterback. “I need something.”

  “Which is different how?”

  “I’m looking for a railroading bar near East Colfax. The Royal or the Crown, something like that.”

  “It’s not five o’clock, Parnell. But I’m in.”

  “You’re out. This is business. You know the place?”

  “The Royal Tavern’s what you want. But if you’re going in to knock heads, be gentle. Nothing but old guys there, getting drunk while they wait for the last stop.” He rattled off an address. “Now, about that drink?”

  “I should be so lucky.”

  He snorted. “Story of my life. Kidding, anyway. I’m in Topeka. And listen, Parnell? Call me again before I’m back on shift and it’s over between us.”

  “That’s all it’d take?”

  He chuckled and dropped off the line.

  I glanced at Clyde as I put the engine in gear. “Did you doubt me?”

  The Royal Tavern looked like a good place to go when no one else would take you in.

  A squat, gray-brick building with blacked-out windows, the bar sat back from the road and was surrounded on three sides by an army of dying poplars whose leaves clung like the last strands of hair on a balding pate. I pulled into a dirt lot littered with broken glass and rain-sodden trash. There were only two other vehicles, and neither was a Dodge pickup.

  The Royal wasn’t a typical working-class bar or a friendly neighborhood bar or even a convenient stopping-off place for a beer and some peanuts before you went home to the missus. This bar was exactly what Albers had said—the end of the line. The kind of place where you went to get thoroughly wasted before the bar closed and you had to go home and face whatever waited there. Maybe your personal demon in the form of a fifth of rotgut. Or maybe nothing more than the echo of empty rooms and your own reflection given back darkly.

  It would be hard to fall farther than this.

  I got out of the truck and waited as Clyde hopped down.

  “The sooner we’re in, the sooner we can leave,” I told him.

  Inside was a gloomy cavern reeking of spilled beer and burned popcorn. A haze of cigarette smoke—illegal since Denver’s ban on public smoking—obscured the air, and most of the light came from a television screen mounted in a corner behind the bar; the TV emitted a steady stream of shouts and organ music from a baseball game. The only other sounds were the crack of slamming balls from a pool table and an occasional slurred shout from one of the players.

  I stood in the entryway until my eyes adjusted. Five middle-aged and elderly men sat at the farthest end of the bar from the door, their shoulders hunched, their hands wrapped around their drinks. Professionals in the drinking game, they gave off the desolate air of having long ago pulled off the highway of life, then found themselves stranded when their off-ramp led here. Two of them watched the television. The other three appeared to watch nothing but the approach of death. None of them glanced at me.

  In the back, a pair of twenty-something toughs in leather vests played pool, their faces festering under long, greasy hair and a junkyard of piercings. They didn’t fit in—but maybe they figured any port in a storm. The man bending over the table had his back turned, giving me an eyeful of his skull-head boxers. The one waiting his turn sent his gaze flickering over me; the look put me in mind of a dying bulb of questionable wattage. He said something to the other man, who glanced over his shoulder at me. They brayed like a pair of donkeys until their eyes lit on Clyde. Then they went back to their game.

  I touched Clyde’s head. Better than having my own SWAT team.

  The only real motion in the place came from a woman who looked to be on the far side of sixty with a dusty blond ponytail, heavy eyeliner, and a black T-shirt pulled over a denim blouse. The T-shirt had a picture of a green alien and the words CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 3RD KIND. She moved slowly around the room wiping tables and collecting empty glasses. She carried a set of empties behind the bar, grabbed a fresh towel, then made
her way toward me, wiping down the bar as she came. I slid between two bar stools and gave her a smile—two women in a place that reeked of dying testosterone. Clyde kept an eye on the patrons.

  “Not that I want to turn away a customer,” the woman said, “but you sure you’re in the right place, sugar?”

  “I’m looking for a man named Fred Zolner. I heard he hangs out here.”

  She puffed her long bangs out of her eyes. “I don’t know any Fred, but if you’re looking for Bull, he took off last night. Headed up to Cheyenne to spend a few days with his daughter. Left me shorthanded, the bastard.”

  “He works here?”

  “It pays for his beer and most of his whiskey tab. He was supposed to be on tonight, when we actually get some business.” She yawned. “Sorry. Every night’s a long one. And every day I ask myself why I went into this business. Now I gotta find someone to cover Bull or work his shifts by myself.”

  “It’s important I talk to him. You have a number for his daughter?”

  She shook her head. But I caught something guarded in her eyes. I braced my arms on the bar and said, “If he wasn’t really going to visit his daughter, you know where else he might go?”

  “Now why would he lie about visiting his daughter?”

  “He doesn’t have one.”

  “Hm.” She got busy wiping down the counter in front of me, forcing me to lift my arms. I noticed a leftover clear plastic sticker on her T-shirt indicating it was size L. “Well, it don’t surprise me much, Bull lying. Sometimes him and the truth don’t see eye to eye.”

  “He’s lied to you?”

  “Honey.” Her voice carried the weight of centuries. “He’s a man.”

  “I see.” I offered my hand. “I’m Sydney, by the way.”

  She shook it. “Delia. Nice to make yours.”

  “So, Delia, you know where he hangs out when he’s not here?”

  “Inside a bottle, I suspect. Far as I know, the man does three things: drinks, sleeps most of it off, then pisses out what’s left.” She pointed at the DPC logo on my uniform. “That’s one logo I recognize. We see a lot of that in here. You a railroad cop like Bull?”