I get a few steps away, then he stops me. “Hey, March, you sure you’re okay? You’re walking kind of funny.”
“It’s nothing,” I say. “I must have twisted something the other night when I took that spill.”
“Get it looked at,” he says, turning away.
All during the runoff election last year, he’d been an absentee boss, present in body but absent in spirit. Things got better, but never back to normal. Now there’s a hollowness to him I don’t like to see. Maybe it’s just knowing that he’s not long for the job.
“I’ll do that, sir,” I say. “Thank you.”
His eyebrows raise a twitch at the thanks, but he doesn’t say more. He heads back to his shuttered office as I run to catch up with Lorenz.
———
The sign pushed into the grass in front of Brandon Ford’s house says FOR SALE, so the first thing Lorenz does is snatch a flyer from the plastic dispenser. The address has taken us all the way out to Katy, to a neighborhood offering LUXURY LIVING STARTING IN THE 300s, so new it could have been thrown up overnight. The brick-fronted houses squat massively on their lots, their wide concrete drives free of cracks and unspotted by grease. Instead of the typical suburban grid, they hunch beside gently curving streets arranged concentrically around a man-made lake. I see ducks swimming out there, and a spout of water that shoots up thirty feet.
“Price is a little high,” Lorenz says, handing me the flyer. “But at least there’s a pool.”
To my surprise, the flyer gives the construction date as four years ago. In all that time, the surrounding properties have managed to stay pristine. Only half the houses along the road yield signs of habitation—a freshly waxed Tahoe, some abandoned toys, a yard card in the shape of a soccer ball giving the jersey number of the child within. One or two in addition to Ford’s have Realtor signs, and even some that don’t sport the empty drives and naked aluminum windows of homes completed but never occupied.
We walk to the front door, peering inside through the unobstructed side window. Past the carpeted stairway, there’s a high-ceilinged great room with a gas fireplace and rustic-looking twisted iron chandelier and French doors that open onto the back patio. There’s no furniture inside, no decoration on the towering walls.
“If he ever lived here,” I say, “he doesn’t anymore.”
Lorenz heads around one side of the house and I take the other, glancing in windows, testing doors. The house is locked tight, but the garage door isn’t. I push through into the stifling heat of the enclosed space. There are no vehicles inside. A wall of cardboard boxes three deep and five or six high occupies one side of the garage, each one labeled in black marker: OFFICE, CLOTHES, SHOES, CHINA, BEDROOM, TOYS. The list goes on. I run my finger over one of the boxes, leaving a trail in the dust. They’ve been in storage for a while.
Using my lockblade, I open a couple of the boxes to see if the labels and contents match up. They do. There’s a box marked PHOTOS, which contains baby albums, framed wedding portraits, and stacks of loose pictures. I grab some and start sifting. The man in the tux kissing the bride, the man cradling the newborn in the crook of his arm is the same one in the photo Bea Kuykendahl gave me along with the file. This is a lot of trouble to go through to build a cover. Too much.
“What did you find?” Lorenz asks.
“A bunch of photos.”
I’m about to toss them back when one of the images catches my eye. It’s a photo of Brandon Ford flanked by two other men, his arms draped over their shoulders. Behind him, an older woman looks into the camera, her eyes red from the flash. There’s something about the expression on their faces—maybe the confidence of youth, maybe the camaraderie—that speaks to me. Here’s my victim, alive and happy. Seeing him that way helps to humanize him. I tuck the picture inside my jacket and close the box.
“I’m gonna call the ex-wife, since she doesn’t seem to live here.”
“I’ll make the call,” I say. “You drive.”
I dial the number from the front seat of the car, the air-conditioner blasting. She answers after five or six rings, sounding frazzled and breathless. I can hear cartoons in the background, children’s voices. I keep it brief, identifying myself and asking for a location where we can meet face-to-face. She gives me the address of an apartment complex on Westheimer outside Beltway 8, maybe halfway between our present location and downtown if we swing down south a ways. I tell her to expect us within the hour.
“What did she sound like?” Lorenz asks.
“She sounded young. She sounded confused, maybe a little worried. I could hear kids in the background. There were two in the photos.”
While he drives, I kill time going through his research. Brandon Ford has a gun dealer’s license, but he doesn’t seem to have a storefront. Instead, he works out of a rental office on a by-appointment basis, specializing in exotic longarms for collectors, everything from elephant guns to high-powered sniper rifles. According to his website, which Lorenz printed in its entirety, he also travels to a variety of Texas gun shows where he operates a booth.
“I printed out pictures from the site,” he says.
“I see that.”
They are low-resolution images. One depicts a tall curly-haired man in a blue polo shirt standing behind a table laden with imported tactical rifles. Not the AK-47s that Bea mentioned. These appear to be top-dollar European models. In the second photo, the same man wearing the same shirt poses with an old school FN FAL battle rifle mounted with a massive starlight scope, cutting edge in the seventies and eighties and no doubt highly collectable now.
“I’m surprised you can make a living that way,” Lorenz says.
“Was he making a living? His house is on the market.”
“What I mean is, it’s weird people buy and sell this stuff.”
“It’s weird people buy guns in Texas?” I ask.
“This kind of gun, yeah. I mean, I’m on the front lines every day and I don’t have an arsenal like that. I couldn’t afford it, for one thing. Can you imagine knocking on this guy’s door? He’d have the SWAT team outgunned.”
I’m not interested in getting into an argument about guns. That’s something I don’t do anymore. I grew up with them, and to me you either get it or you don’t. And if you don’t, fine. Brandon Ford, if he really existed, would have gone through enough of a background check to put my mind at ease. He wouldn’t worry me any more than the club members at Shooter’s Paradise do. But I wonder what Lorenz would think of my extracurricular activities. All those armed citizens might freak him out.
Then again, maybe not. He surprises me sometimes. But there’s no point in getting into all that. Brandon Ford doesn’t exist. The photos, along with everything else, were staged. That’s what I’m meant to believe, anyway. The question is, for whom? The way Bea made it sound, somebody wanted a big shipment of assault rifles, which suggests the Mexican cartels. The headlines have been full of Federal cases against dealers shipping their wares down south, profiteering from the drug war. The only problem with that theory is that a sting operation making use of a fake gun dealer would be designed to snare the buyer. If the buyer’s a Gulf Cartel drug lord, what’s the point? It’s not like the Policía Federal or the DEA don’t have enough on those thugs already.
“Is there something wrong?” Lorenz asks. “You’ve been funny all morning.”
“Everything’s fine.”
Leaning over, he opens the glove compartment and shakes the ibuprofen bottle in my face. “Are you off your meds, is that it? I thought the leg was doing better.”
“Just keep your eyes on the road,” I say, shifting in the seat. “It’s not my leg, anyway. It’s something in my back. The pain is just a symptom. I must have pinched a nerve.”
“All right.” He tosses the bottle into my lap. “I just wish you’d get your head in the game. I can’t be carrying you on this.”
I flip on the radio, scanning the dial for some music.
“Hey, man.
I’m just kidding. I’ll carry you as far as I can.”
He smiles and I smile back just to make him stop.
———
The woman comes to the door barefoot, wearing cuffed shorts and a white T-shirt. She says her name is Miranda Ford and she has a driver’s license to back it up. She ushers us into a cramped apartment, a real step down from the house we’ve just seen. In the living room, a dark-haired toddler I recognize from the box of pictures scribbles on construction paper while a younger kid in a playpen watches him. She walks us past them to a kitchen table that’s been set up as a home office. Underneath the table, there’s a box like the ones stored in the garage, this one labeled CRAFTING, its flaps gaping. The table itself has been converted into work space. At one end there’s a big flat-screen computer, and at the other a sewing machine lit up by an adjustable work lamp clamped to the table’s edge. Lorenz asks and she explains that she makes purses and other bags and sells them online.
“That way I can stay home with the boys.”
“And that’s your only income?” I ask.
“I get money from my ex,” she says, “and I work part-time for a friend of mine who opened her own shop.”
I keep stealing looks at her, half expecting a wink of the eye or some other acknowledgment that this is all a sham. But if it is, they’ve gone through a lot of trouble. You don’t stick a woman in an apartment with a fake ID and two prop kids on the off chance someone will go digging into a cover story.
She offers us something to drink—the options include water, Diet Coke, and apple juice—then clears some chairs for us to sit. I glance back at the children, not wanting to make a scene in front of them. For her part, Miranda Ford gives no sign of anxiety. As if the police are always dropping by and she’s only mildly curious about our reasons.
“I wonder if we could talk somewhere private?” I ask.
“Of course.” She looks around, then frowns. “Only there’s not really any place besides the bedroom or the boys’ room.”
“Why don’t we go out on the steps?”
She follows us reluctantly, telling the toddler she’ll be just outside. He goes on ignoring our presence, scribbling hard with his crayon. On her way out, she turns up the volume on the cartoons.
The apartment’s on the second floor. Lorenz and I descend the stairs a little ways, letting her sit on the top step. I show her the photo I took from the house.
“Can you identify this man?” I ask, tapping Ford’s face.
“It’s Brandon,” she says. “My ex.”
“And when was the last time you talked to him?”
She stops to think. “Maybe a week ago? I’m not sure. I can find out, though.” She digs a phone out of her pocket and thumbs through the menu. “No, it was more like two weeks ago. He was doing a show and called from the road.”
“A gun show?”
She nods. “Down in Corpus Christi. He wanted me to go pick up the house keys from his mother, in case the Realtor did any showings. We’ve been trying to sell our house. When there’s a showing I go over and bake some cookies so the house smells good.”
“Was he planning to be out of town long, then?”
“He travels a lot.”
“And you haven’t heard from him since that call?”
“If you’re trying to find him,” she says, “I’m not really the person to ask. You should check with his mother—that’s her in the picture.” She takes the photo and holds it toward me, her finger on the older woman with the red eyes. “Hilda. That’s where I drop the kids when he’s supposed to take them. The two of us don’t really keep tabs on each other. We have our own lives. It’s better that way.”
Lorenz crouches down and takes his sunglasses off. “Ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but we have some bad news.”
As he goes on to break the news, Miranda’s lip starts to tremble. A thick tear slides down her cheek and she wipes it away. I watch her, convinced the reaction is genuine. He explains when the body was found and where, but doesn’t go into detail about the mutilation or torture. He doesn’t need to. The shock of her ex-husband’s death is enough.
Lorenz glances my way, gives me a questioning shrug. I nod for him to continue with his questions. Like a trouper, she endures them, answering in as much detail as she can. After a while, I tune them both out. I’m back in Bea Kuykendahl’s office, reviewing everything the FBI agent said and left unsaid. None of it really makes sense. There’s no way Brandon Ford isn’t real, no way this shaken, bereaved girl isn’t really his ex-wife.
I need to get out of here. I need to think. I need another talk with Agent Kuykendahl, too, and I want real answers this time around.
Miranda clears her throat, wipes her eyes one last time. “Am I—? I mean, is it me that’s responsible for the arrangements? I don’t know how it’s supposed to work, but if we’re not married anymore . . .”
“You mentioned his mother?” Lorenz says. “Hilda . . . was that her name?”
She nods and gives him an address and phone number, looking very relieved. But then her face clouds again. “What am I going to do? I rely on him to make ends meet.”
“How long were you married?” I ask.
She stops to think. “He proposed after Tate was born. It lasted three years almost. We weren’t happy, though. Brandon saw other women.”
As we start to go, she watches us from the top step, her entwined hands pressing down against her stomach. She’s looking at us, but I don’t think she sees us. Her eyes are focused on the past. She seems to have forgotten us entirely, so I’m surprised when she calls down.
“Other women,” she says, like she’s finishing her thought from before. “There was somebody with him the last time. Somebody new. She waited in the car while he dropped off the kids. This was at Hilda’s, and I’d been waiting inside for almost an hour. When he showed up, he didn’t say anything about her, but I knew she’d been with my kids.”
I climb the steps again, pausing beside her.
“This was a new girlfriend?” I ask.
She shrugs. “While we were talking inside, I looked through the window and saw her. She got out of the car and was standing on the curb, talking on her phone.” Her eyes moisten. “That’s who you should track down. She’d know better than me where Brandon’s been.”
I ask her to describe the woman.
“She wasn’t pretty,” she says quickly. “Kind of small and bony. Androgynous. She had choppy blond hair, and kind of dressed like a man . . .”
“Did you ask your boy—Tate? Did he know her name?”
Her face hardens. “She told them to call her Trixie.”
“Like in Speed Racer?” I ask, showing my age.
She just shrugs. I thank her for the information and promise to get back in touch if we learn anything more.
On the way to the car, Lorenz scribbles down the name. “It’s not much to go on.”
“No, it’s not,” I say.
But it is. Given the fact that I met the woman she was describing just a few hours earlier, and that Trixie must be a preferable nickname for a woman whose parents saddled her with a name like Beatrix.
CHAPTER 6
As biker bars go, this one’s pretty tame, sandwiched between a supersized Spec’s Liquor and a retail chain cantina. The crowd packed onto the outdoor deck doesn’t look particularly tough, mostly white suburbanites. The only cowboy boots are on the miniskirted ladies, the only motorcycles plastic imports with bold racing stripes. I pick my way through, dodging a waitress loaded down with sweating Dos Equis and Coronas.
The music inside is live. That’s all it has going for it. Even the early evening drunks are having a hard time with the dancing. There’s a lot of neon on the walls, a lot of yelling from table to table. It takes me a moment, scanning the darkness, to single out Bea Kuykendahl.
She may be small, but she knows how to take up space. She sits in a lazy sprawl, one arm draped over the back of her chair and her cros
sed legs resting on the opposite seat. Thick-soled work boots, faded jeans, and a tight, cap-sleeved black T-shirt revealing more muscle definition than I would have expected, reinforcing my earlier impression that she looks more like a teenaged boy than a grown woman.
Circling around, I approach her table from the side. I grab the back of the chair her feet are under, then yank it free.
“Hey, that seat’s taken!” she barks. Then: “Oh.”
I spin the chair around and sit, crossing my arms over the back. “You can say that again, Bea. Or do you prefer to go by Trixie?”
“You followed me here?”
“I’m a man of many talents. I think we need to have a talk. I figured we might be able to converse a little more freely outside the office.”
She leans forward over the table. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t intimidate very easily. Throw your weight around all you want, Detective. Just be careful you don’t throw your back out.”
For a crazy moment I wonder if she’s heard of my fall. But there’s no way that could have reached her. Just a lucky jab.
“That story you told me, it doesn’t add up. When I got back to the office, we had a match on Brandon Ford. I have a hard time believing you’ve got enough pull to make the computer spit out false identifications. If you could, why bother bringing me and my lieutenant into the picture at all?”
“You tell me,” she says.
“At first I thought you had to, because with a little digging we’d have poked enough holes in the cover story to realize Brandon Ford wasn’t a real person. But he is real, isn’t he? I spoke to his ex-wife today, then I walked through his house. After that I did some asking around. The local gun dealers say he’s been around on the scene a couple of years. Either this is the most elaborate cover story in history, or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Or you lied to us this morning.”
“I lied to you? Knowing that you’d see right through me the moment you did a cursory check. Give me more credit than that.”
“Ford’s ex-wife gave me a description of a woman who was with him before his death. This woman told Ford’s kids to call her Trixie. That was you.”
Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) Page 6