She looked at her watch. She still had a half hour before she was supposed to meet Pamela. She headed south, on and off 1-35, round and round quiet city blocks, looking for anything that might be a follower. At the south end of the loop, a heavy jet roared five hundred feet overhead, and she turned, heading north, moving fast now. She took the car straight into the hotel parking garage, got a ticket, left it, and took the stairs down to the lobby.
Rinker was sitting in a corner. She saw Carmel step out of the stairway, smiled, stood up and walked back to the elevators. She was just getting in the elevator car when Carmel caught up with her.
'Did you understand what I saw saying on the phone?' Rinker asked, as the elevator car started up. 'I think so. I'm not being followed, unless they've done something electronic, and I'd be willing to bet they haven't – if they really think I'm involved, it's way too early in the investigation to have twenty-four-hour surveillance. But right now, there's nobody with me.'
'I sort of bet myself you'd be coming out of that stairwell,' Rinker said. 'It's what I would have done. Zip into the garage, take the stairs, they can't stick too close behind or you'll spot them… and by the time they sneak in, you're in one of five hundred rooms.'
'They'll go through five hundred rooms if they have to, if it gives them a professional killer,' Carmel said.
'Which is why I'm trying not to touch anything hard, except the TV remote control, the on-and-off faucets in the bathroom, and a few things like that.
I'll wipe them before I leave.'
'What about the credit card?'
'Good card, fake name,' Rinker said.
'So what's going on? I was worried when you didn't call back, I thought they'd picked you up.'
'You tell me what's going on. Why'd you call?' Rinker asked.
'This Davenport guy, the cop. Remember?'
Rinker nodded.
'He took some pictures over to show the little girl who saw us. I was in the photo spread.'
'Ah, jeez. Why?
'I don't know. I've got a contact in the police department, and nobody knows what's going on. But apparently, the kid failed to identify me. Nothing came out of it.'
'But why would they take your picture over in the first place?' -'That's the question,' Carmel said.
Rinker had a room on the seventh floor. Inside, Rinker opened the mini-bar, took out two cans of Special Export. 'I got glasses,' she said.
'Can's fine,' Carmel said, popping the top. 'I really didn't expect you to come all the way back from… wherever. I just wanted to talk.'
'Yeah, well, I got a little problem of my own,' Rinker said. She sat on the bed and Carmel pulled the chair out from the tiny desk and sat down. 'The day before you called me, I got another call, at the answering service. A guy who was supposedly trying to get in touch with Tennex. But when the receptionist asked if he wanted to leave a message, he said no. Then two days later, the cops showed up. That's all I know -cops were asking questions. I don't have any easy way to find out more.'
'Huh.' Carmel thought about it for a minute, then took a cell phone out of her purse, and her address book. She checked a number, as Rinker watched, and punched it in. 'Calling my guy,' Carmel said to Rinker. Then, into the phone:
'This is Carmel. Anything else happen?' She listened for a moment, then said, 'I stopped by to see Davenport a couple of times. He's never in… Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, I'll probably stop and see him tomorrow, then. Okay. And listen, I'll send along another envelope. Keep your eyes and ears open; this thing is starting to scare me. I'm afraid they're setting me up on something. Uh-huh. Well, you know Davenport. Uh-huh. Talk to you tomorrow.'
'What'd he say?' Rinker asked.
'He said Davenport was out of town, and the rumor was, he was at the FBI headquarters. In Washington.'
'Shit.' Rinker said it sharply, expelling breath. 'What's going on? They're on to you and me? How could that happen?'
'I called you once from my apartment,' Carmel said. 'This last time, I called from a pay phone, but I did call Tennex that one time, the first time, about
Rolo, from my apartment. If they're looking at my long-distance billing, if they're checking everything…'
'Even if they were, how did they pick out Tennex? It's a goddamn messenger service.'
'Maybe they picked on it because they couldn't find anything behind it. Maybe just luck. What does Tennex mean? Would that mean something to somebody?'
'No. When we were setting this up, we were talking in the kitchen of this guy's restaurant down in St. Louis, and we were wondering what to call the company, and I saw this name on this air-filter thing he had there. Tennex. It sounded like something, so I said, "How about Tennex?" '
'So that's not it.'
'I don't see how,' Rinker said.
'All right. So we've got to do some prospecting.'
'Very carefully.'
'Very. And there's something else,' Carmel said. 'If it looks like I'm in trouble, why wouldn't you just shoot me and walk away? I mean, that's something we ought to talk about.'
'Well, I sorta think of you like… well, almost a friend,' Rinker said. 'I mean, we've done some stuff together, and we get along, and we're probably going to Mexico together, pick up some guys. So… I could ask you the same thing.'
'I don't know how to find you,' Carmel said. 'So I couldn't, even if I wanted to. Which I don't.'
'If you need some other reason, I can give you one,' Rinker said, swallowing beer. 'I gotta find out why I'm in trouble. These guys I work with – if the feds start snooping around, or your pal Davenport, all they've got to do is dump me, and they're safe. They have a couple more people like me out there, and I'd walk out the front of my apartment someday and boom, that'd be it. So I gotta find out. If the feds start bugging my guys, I gotta know, and take some precautions.'
'These guys are… Mafia?'
Rinker shrugged. She looked like a slightly over aged cheerleader, bouncing softly on the hotel bed. 'Yeah, I guess. If you're gonna put a label on them. I mean, they're Italian, most of them. Except Freddy, he's Irish, or his grandfather was. And I guess Dave is like a Polack, they're always giving him shit about it. They're sorta the Mafia, but they're more like a bunch of guys who watch NFL Monday Night Football and pick up stuff that falls off trucks. Some of them are pretty mean, though. Like Italian bikers.'
'Huh.' Carmel showed a small grin. 'I thought it'd be more dignified than that.'
'Maybe back East. Not in St. Louis,' Rinker said.
'So are you gonna be around?'
'In and out of town, until we figure out what's going on,' Rinker said. 'I'm going to Washington tomorrow. I want to talk to this woman who runs the answering service.'
'What if they're watching her?'
'Then I won't talk to her,' Rinker said.
'I'm gonna try to get in touch with Davenport tomorrow, if he's back. I'll see what he has to say for himself.'
'Be careful.'
'Always.'
Rinker gave Carmel the name she was using at the hotel, and as Carmel was leaving, said, 'Hey – this Davenport. Do you know where I could get a picture of him?'
Carmel shook her head. 'No. I mean he's probably been in the paper any number of times, but I don't
… wait a minute. I bet I do know. He also ran a company called Davenport
Simulations, computer simulation-things for cops. If you check the library, the business section, the local business magazines, I bet you'd find something.'
'Cut the page out with a razor…'
'Don't get caught,' Carmel said. 'The library people can be mean pricks when it comes to people cutting up their magazines.'
Chapter Fifteen
Lucas was sitting in his office, pushing deeper into the Equality Report.
Reading the perfect, politically correct prose had become a Zen-like exercise.
The words flowed softly and without meaning through his brain, an unending stream of nonsense syllables that eventually metamorphos
ed into a cosmic hum, and allowed other ideas to bubble up.
He was on page ninety-four when Carmel knocked. He thought it was Sloan: 'Yeah, for Christ's sakes, come in.'
Carmel opened the door and stuck her head in. Surprised, Lucas stood up. 'Sorry about that,' he said. 'I thought it was somebody else.'
'A little mistake like that is nothing compared to what you're gonna get into,'
Carmel said, stepping into the office, pushing the door closed. She put one fist on her hip and said, 'A little birdie told me you stuck my face into a photo spread on that Dinkytown murder. The Blanca chick and the other guy. I want to know why'
'We were looking for photographs of long-legged blondes, and you were available,' Lucas said, his voice flat.
'Bullshit, 1 she said. Her mouth was like a short stretch of barbed-wire. She dropped into the visitor's chair opposite him, and stretched her legs out, but didn't really settle in: she was like a spring, all squeezed down and about to explode. 'So why? You are fucking with me, and if I don't get a good reason,
I'll see you in court and let the judge ask you why.'
Lucas nodded: 'It'd be an interesting lawsuit. I don't know what you could possibly sue us for…'
'Some of the best civil lawyers in the U.S. fuckin' A. sit down the hall from me, and I don't doubt that they could find ten reasons that a judge would like,' she said, her voice glassy-edged. 'For one thing, I represented Rolando D'Aquila and several of his associates in the past, and now you're hauling my picture around and showing it to people around this crime. Are you trying to discredit me as an attorney? It might seem so…'
'All right, you're smarter than I am, Carmel,' Lucas said. 'You want the real reason? The reason is that a witness who probably saw the killers described one of the women in a way that you resemble. And you admitted to several people that you knew and represented Rolando D'Aquila, and not only that, that you were representing a man suspected of hiring somebody to kill his wife – a murder committed by the same person or persons who committed the D'Aquila killing. So far, you are the only connection we can find between the killing of Barbara
Allen and the killing of the other three. And that's why we took the photos around; and if you don't like it…' 'What?' 'Tough shit.'
They sat staring at each other for a few seconds, then Carmel smiled quickly and said, 'All right. I wanted to know.' She stood up to leave. 'I didn't have anything to do with any of these killings. I've been trying to work out in my head how they could have happened, and I can't come up with anything.'
'I can't ask you what connection Hale Allen has with D'Aquila, because you're his attorney…'
'And it would be absolutely unethical for me to tell you, if there were any.
I'll tell you this, just between you and me and the door jamb – there isn't any connection. My theory is, Barbara Allen was killed by accident, or mistake, when she got in the way of something else. Something involving drugs and these latinos. Then the cop came along by accident and the whole affair went up in smoke. But my theory is, Barbara Allen had nothing to do with it – and what you really ought to be doing is looking for the other guy who ran from the Barbara
Allen scene. The guy that Barbara Allen got killed for seeing, and the cop got there too late to see.'
Lucas thought about it for a few seconds, then said 'We've gone over all of that.'
'And?'
'It worries us.'
'It should worry you, and you ought to go over it some more,' Carmel said. 'And stop showing those fuckin' pictures around.'
'There was only one witness, Carmel,' Lucas said. 'She gave you a clean slate.
She didn't even say, "Maybe."'
'Good.' And she was gone.
Lucas leaned back in his chair, fighting back the little trickle of adrenalin.
Carmel was a challenge. He picked up the Equality Report, and the zen-hum began again, while his head worked through Carmel's visit. If she hadn't killed anyone, would she have made the visit when she heard about the photo spread?
Absolutely. Would she have made it if she was guilty? He thought about it for three seconds. Absolutely, she would have. She had a fine, discriminating taste in the mannerisms of innocence. So he'd learned nothing.
But the cartridge: the. 22 he'd picked up in her apartment was a fact. Couldn't use it in court, couldn't even admit that it existed. But the slug in that. 22 said Carmel was guilty. Guilty of something, anyway. Just for argument's sake, say the bullet was usable in court. How would she defend against it? He turned it over in his mind: she'd say the bullet came from D'Aquila. That he'd stored a bag in her closet, or that he'd planted it for some reason…
D'Aquila. Another image popped into the back of his brain. He leaned forward, let his chin drop on his chest, closed his eyes, concentrated. After a minute, he pushed himself out of his chair and half-jogged down the hall to homicide.
Neither Sherrill nor Black was in, but the D'Aquila file was in Sherrill's work tray. He flipped through it, and found the coroner's photo of the fingernail gouges that D'Aquila had scratched into the back of his hand before he was executed. Lucas looked at it, turned it over, and thought, if you simply separated out some of the lines… if you realized that D'Aquila, panicked, tortured, facing execution, was not exactly writing in a notebook, and couldn't see what he was doing, then might resolve itself out this way: C loan.
Begin with a C. The next letter was an L, just a straight up-and-down line without the bottom line. The next letter, he thought, was intended to be an O, but was confused by the bar across it. If the bar were moved over one place, it would make an A – leaving the final letter as an N. C Loan.
'Goddamnit, Carmel,' he said.
The door opened behind him, and he turned to see Sherrill. 'Looking through my desk?'
'Looking through the D'Aquila photos,' Lucas said. 'Look at this.'
Sherrill was looking at him. 'Jeez, you're really pumped. What've you got?'
He laid it out for her. In ten seconds, Sherrill was convinced. Black, who arrived two minutes after she did, was not.
'The problem is, you could make anything out of those scratches, once you start disassembling them,' he said. 'I can see five or six different words in there.'
'Yeah, but none of them are words that are relevant to the investigation, except this one: C Loan,' Lucas said.
'Maybe that's because we haven't figured out all the possibilities,' Black said.
Sloan came in during the argument, looked at the photos and shook his head: 'I could take some recreational drugs and maybe believe it, but if you've got an unstoned jury, you got a problem,' he said.
'Well, it's a piece,' Lucas said finally. 'We get a few pieces and pretty soon we've got a case.'
Black and Sloan started talking to somebody else, and Sherrill said quietly, 'Is it possible that we can only see it because we already know} Because of the slug?'
'Nah, it's there,' Lucas said, shuffling through the pictures again. 'Goddamnit, it's there.'
Rinker flew into Washington on a Saturday afternoon, fifteen hours after Lucas had flown out of the same airport. She stopped at a magazine store and bought the best map she could find, picked up her rental car, and checked into the downtown Holiday Inn. From there, she called her bar in
Wichita and talked to the assistant manager, a shy cowboy named Art Durrell, and was assured that nothing had burned down, that the customers were happy, that the fat in the deep frier was hot enough, and the refrigerators were cold enough.
'When that asshole from the health department comes back, we want a hundred percent clean bill, Art,' Rinker said. 'You can never tell when those reports'll wind up in the local newspapers.'
'We're the cleanest place in town, Clara, and everybody down at the health department knows it,' Durrell said. 'Stop worrying. Enjoy yourself.'
At two o'clock, a rat-faced man with too-long, stringy black hair, wearing a denim jacket, jeans and cowboy boots – a man who looked the part of a movie
drifter – knocked at her door and, when she answered, handed her a package wrapped in brown paper that had been cut from a grocery sack.
'From Jim. The phone's probably good until Sunday,' he said, and left. She opened the bag and took out a Colt Woodsman, a silencer, a sealed box of. 22 shells and one freshly stolen cellular phone. The package had cost her eleven hundred dollars. She screwed a silencer on the barrel of the pistol, loaded the magazine, opened a window and fired a shot through the curtain. The gun made a loud 'whuff' and the action cycled. She stepped over and looked at the curtain, and after a second found the small hole made by the. 22 slug as it passed through. Everything worked.
Louise Marker lived in an apartment complex in Bethesda, an expensive place of three-story yellow-brick buildings arranged around a series of swimming pools set in grassy lawns. If government employees lived there, Rinker thought, they were generals. There were, however, no uniforms in sight. Perhaps a hundred residents, almost all of them young to middle-aged women, lay scattered around the pools in conservative one-piece bathing suits. None of them was Marker.
Marker had never seen Rinker, but Rinker had seen Marker, a couple of times.
She'd made a point of it, for just this occasion. Wandering casually through the people around the pools, Rinker punched Marker's number into her cell phone and a woman answered on the third ring. 'Hello?'
And Rinker said, 'Jean?'
'No… You must have the wrong number.'
'Ah, sorry.'
Getting into Marker's building was not a problem: she timed her step to a couple of women in bathing suits who were headed for a side door. She followed them through the outer door, just far enough back that one of them had time to use her key on the inner door. Rinker had her own keys in her hand, jingling, but caught the door, nodded, said thanks and kept going and the other two women thought nothing of it.
Marker was on two: Rinker took the stairs, did a quick peek at the door to make sure there was nobody in the hallway, then punched Marker's phone number back into the cell phone as she walked down to Marker's door. There was interference, but at least the phone should ring on the other end.
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