No Place to Die

by James L. Thane

  “Now that it’s getting dark, we’ll tighten the net around the house and make sure there’s no way he can get out, even on foot, without us seeing him. Let’s get a warrant for the house immediately. The next time he leaves, we’ll let the team follow him away and keep tabs on him. Then we’ll go into the house and see if he’s holding Beverly Thompson in there.”

  “You don’t want to go in right away?”

  “No,” I replied, shaking my head, even though he obviously couldn’t see me. “There’s really no point. He’s not going to hurt anybody else as long as he’s in the house, and it’ll be a lot easier to grab him in his car away from the place. It’ll also be safer for Thompson, on the off chance that she is still alive. We don’t want him barricading himself in there and using her for a hostage. And if he hasn’t got her in the house, maybe he’ll lead us to her.”

  “Okay,” he sighed. “Keep me updated on a regular basis.”

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Carl McClain rolled the garage door down behind the Taurus, walked from the garage into the kitchen, and set his groceries, briefcase, and backpack on the counter. He returned the gun from the briefcase to the backpack, then put the steaks and the carrots into the refrigerator, grabbing a beer in the process.

  He dropped the backpack on the floor in the small bathroom off the hallway, then removed the wig and glasses he’d worn on his outing. He returned them to the box that also contained the gray wig and mustache that he thought of as his “middle-age” disguise and stuck the box back on the shelf above the toilet.

  That done, he wandered into the small living room, plopped into the easy chair, and put his feet up on the ottoman. He twisted the cap off of the beer, took a long pull, and wondered why in the hell Mike Miller hadn’t been home for his interview with “Jason Barnes.”

  The note had said Miller had to leave at the last moment because of a “family emergency.” He was sorry that he hadn’t been able to call and reschedule the interview but “you didn’t give me your number.”

  McClain had claimed to be an investigative reporter for New Times, the small weekly alternative newspaper, rather than pretending to be from the Republic or from one of the television stations, figuring that would make it easier to carry off the deception. Was it possible that Miller had nevertheless sniffed out his plan? But if that was the case, why hadn’t the cops been all over him when he got to Miller’s door?

  Driving home, he was seized by the conviction that he’d missed his chance at Miller, at least for the time being. He couldn’t risk pretending to be Jason Barnes or any other reporter again, in case Miller had tumbled to the ruse. And he didn’t think that the former detective was likely to fall for something as rudimentary as the gas-company trick. By the time he was five blocks away from Miller’s house, McClain had concluded that it was time for a break in the action—a vacation to Montana, maybe—while things in Arizona settled down a bit.

  He regretted the fact that he would have to postpone his revenge against Mike Miller. He remembered Miller as a smug, self-confident son of a bitch who was too lazy to do any real detective work. Once Miller and his idiot partner had found the hooker’s earring in McClain’s Pontiac, they’d taken the easy way out and refused even to consider the possibility that there still might be another explanation for the murder.

  Sitting in the cramped interrogation room, sweating like a pig and knowing that the rest of his life was hanging in the balance by the slimmest of threads, McClain had begged the two detectives to believe his story, swearing on his daughter’s life that he had not killed Gloria Kelly. But McClain had been a quick and convenient solution to their case, and once Miller and Quigly had sunk their teeth into him, there was no getting loose of them.

  Sixteen years after the fact, McClain still became enraged every time he thought of Miller, preening on the witness stand like he’d just fitted the glove to O. J. Simpson and solved the goddamn crime of the century. McClain had particularly looked forward to settling that score, and all other things being equal, he would have nailed Miller right out of the box.

  But of course, all other things were not equal.

  McClain understood that if Miller had been one of his first targets, the cops would’ve immediately gone back into the records, checking to see which of Miller’s arrests had recently gotten out of the joint, perhaps looking to get even. That would have brought his own name up on the radar a lot earlier in the game and would have made it that much harder for him to get at his other targets. Accordingly, McClain had decided to delay his gratification, put Miller farther down the list, and hope that the detectives investigating the killings would not make the connection among the victims before McClain could get to the retired detective.

  Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way. But regardless of his hatred for Mike Miller, McClain understood that the smart thing to do now was to stick to the original plan. The two weeks he had allotted himself for this phase of the operation would be up tomorrow, and there was nothing to be gained by being stupid and greedy. Miller and the last couple of jurors could wait on hold for a couple of months, but for the moment, all of McClain’s instincts were screaming that it was time to be packed up and gone.

  Which also meant that it was finally time to deal permanently with Beverly.

  He found, much to his surprise, that he was increasingly reluctant to do so. By the night he’d finally grabbed her, his fury against the woman had been building for seventeen long, hopeless, and hellish years. Virtually every night in prison, he’d drifted in and out of a fitful sleep, fantasizing about the ways in which he might punish her for the mistakes that had consigned him to that godforsaken hole. And on that Wednesday night, with the opportunity finally at hand, he had brutally exorcised those demons. At the time, killing Beverly’s husband was simply frosting on the cake because of the obvious additional pain it had inflicted upon her.

  In the nine days since, though, he’d begun to secondguess himself. The judge, the prosecutor, and the cops all deserved what they were getting—of that he had no doubt. And so did the jurors. Watching them during the trial, he concluded that he’d never seen twelve dumber, lazier, more closed-minded people assembled together in one small space.

  Four old retired farts, three housewives, two completely ignorant welfare mothers, a school teacher on her summer break, a car salesman, and an assemblyline worker who obviously saw the trial as an interesting and restful diversion from the boring routine of his everyday existence. Only one of them was under thirty. And this was supposed to be a jury of his fucking peers?

  For four and a half days, they’d sat on their fat lazy asses in the jury box, mesmerized by the case that Harold Roe was building up against him and totally unimpressed by the faltering defense offered by McClain’s young and inexperienced PD. And in the end, anxious to get home for the weekend, they’d deliberated for only five and a half hours before finding McClain guilty of all of the charges against him.

  McClain was still consumed by a burning hatred for the lot of them, but he was less certain now that Beverly was equally culpable. Maybe she had done her best. Maybe no one else would have done any better. And maybe he had punished her enough already.

  It would be simple enough to pack up and get out of Dodge, leaving Beverly tethered to the cable in the bedroom. He could start south, in the direction of the Mexican border, and get twenty or thirty miles away from town. He could call the cops from a pay phone, tell them where to find Beverly, then double back north and take Highway 93 all the way up to Lakeside, Montana, for a brief but rewarding reunion with Ed Quigly.

  But could he really afford to do that?

  Beverly couldn’t tell the police much of anything that they didn’t already know, but she could give them a much better description of him than anything they were working with now, and that was the real danger. Leaving her alive to collaborate with a talented police sketch artist would almost certainly be a fatal mistake. And no matter the second thoughts he might b
e having now, that was one mistake he could not afford to make.

  As the light slowly faded from the sky, McClain sat in the darkened living room for another twenty minutes or so, pondering his dilemma. Finally, he drained the last of the beer, went back to the kitchen, and dropped the bottle into the garbage can under the sink. Then he walked down the hall and retrieved his wrenches from the side pocket of the backpack.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Beverly was sitting on the bed, leaning back against the wall and reading the Sara Paretsky novel, when she heard McClain’s key in the door a little after six o’clock. He walked into the room wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of tan dress slacks rather than the jeans and T-shirt that constituted his usual uniform. He had his wrenches in one hand and was returning his keys to his right pants pocket with the other.

  Beverly put down the novel and scooted over to the edge of the bed. McClain looked at the book.

  “You finished When the Sacred Gin Mill Closes?”

  She nodded. “Earlier this afternoon.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yes, I did. The only other Block novel I’ve ever read was one in the series about the burglar. This one was a lot darker, but I thought it was a much better book.”

  McClain squatted on the floor in front of her and propped her foot on his knee. “Yeah, I agree. Especially once I got to Lewis, I discovered that I much preferred lying in my bunk with a book to hanging out in the TV room listening to the morons argue over which mindless fuckin’ programs they wanted to waste their lives watching.”

  Setting to work with the wrenches, he continued, “Anyhow, I discovered Block pretty early on and managed to read just about everything he ever wrote. And while I like all his stuff, I agree that the Scudder series is far and away his best work. I love the complexity of the character and the way he’s evolved over time.”

  He finished removing the cable and set her foot on the floor. “So anyhow, I guess that’s something I got out of all of this—at least it reinforced my love of reading.”

  Beverly nodded. In a soft voice, she said, “Well, I’m sorry that’s what it took, and again, I’m sorry for my part in putting you there.”

  McClain rose to his feet and looked away to the wall at the head of the bed. “Yeah, well…”

  He turned back to Beverly. “I bought a couple of nice rib eyes for dinner. How would you like yours cooked?”

  “Medium-rare please.”

  “I’ve got a bottle of Cabernet to go with the steaks. Do you want a glass while you’re waiting?”

  She shook her head. “No thank you, Carl. I’m fine for the moment, and I think I’d like to anticipate having the wine with dinner.”

  “Okay,” he nodded. “I’ll go get things started. Let me know if you change your mind.”

  McClain walked out of the room, leaving the door open about a quarter of the way. A few moments later, the radio in the kitchen came to life in the middle of a Van Morrison song. Moondance had been one of David’s favorite albums, and Beverly winced at the memory.

  She grabbed the Paretsky novel and moved to her seat at the card table from which she had the best view out into the hallway. For a few minutes, she listened to the sounds of McClain puttering around in the kitchen. Then the noises suddenly stopped.

  Pretending to read, Beverly watched over the top of the book as McClain walked past the door, headed toward the other end of the hall. Five minutes later, he walked back toward the kitchen, now dressed in a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt and carrying a book of his own. She heard a few more minutes of noise from the kitchen and then nothing, save for the classic rock playing softly on the radio.

  She debated for a few minutes the idea of going to the bedroom door and trying to sneak another look up and down the hall. But based on what she’d seen before, she was sure that there was no way that she could get out of the house without having to get past McClain, and she was also certain of what his reaction would be if he were to catch her outside of the bedroom. If she was to have any chance to escape, it was critically important that she contrive a way to remain free of the cable for the next several hours. For now, that had to be her priority.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  At six forty-five, a patrolman delivered Walter Kovick to the truck we were using as our command post. The landlord was somewhere in his late fifties, a heart attack waiting to happen. A white XXL T-shirt strained against his stomach, which in turn hung precariously over a pair of chinos that were cinched up a good several inches below what would have been his natural waistline. The guy smelled of beer and cheap cigars, and he’d slopped portions of what looked like several meals onto the front of the T-shirt.

  Maggie and I climbed out of the truck and walked Kovick over to the patrolman’s squad, where we’d have more room to talk and where we wouldn’t have to compete with the distraction of the communications chatter. We put Kovick in the passenger’s seat, and Maggie took the back.

  “I put a classified ad in the Republic, and I posted it on Craigslist,” Kovick said. “I don’t know which of the ads Fischer saw, but he called me on November fifth and asked to see the house. I showed it to him that afternoon. I remember that he asked a lot of questions about the neighbors.”

  Maggie leaned forward from the backseat. “What sort of questions, Mr. Kovick?”

  The landlord turned back to look at her and shrugged. “He wanted to know if it was a quiet neighborhood. He asked did the neighbors mind their own business—that kinda thing.

  “Hell, looking at the fences and the security bars on these houses should have told him the answer to that, but I told him that they did, and he agreed to take the house starting right then. He didn’t even haggle about the rent; he just wrote me a check for the security deposit and another to cover the rent for the rest of the month. On the twenty-fifth, he mailed me a check for the December rent.”

  I handed him one of the photos that Brenda Perkins had taken of “Jason Barnes” earlier in the afternoon. “Is this Fischer, Mr. Kovick?”

  Kovick held the picture under the dome light and squinted at it. “Well, it sorta looks like Fischer, only younger. Fischer has gray hair and a mustache. And he doesn’t wear glasses.”

  “Is Fischer about the same height and weight as this guy?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’d say so,” he nodded. “But this guy still looks younger to me.” He handed the picture back to Maggie. “Of course”—he shrugged—“I only saw the guy the one time.”

  “So you haven’t been in the house since the day you rented it to him?” Maggie asked.

  “Nope. Haven’t had any reason to, as long as he pays the rent on time and doesn’t call to bitch about the fact that the stove’s stopped workin’ or some damn thing.”

  I nodded. “And there are secure bars over all the windows?”

  “Yeah,” Kovick sighed. “It makes the tenants feel better. In case you hadn’t noticed, this isn’t one of the city’s more prestigious neighborhoods.”

  I handed him a pencil and a yellow legal pad. “Why don’t you draw us a rough sketch of the house, Mr. Kovick? Give us the general floor plan and show us where all the exterior doors are.”

  We sat in silence for the next several minutes as Kovick hunched over the pad under the dome light and worked on his sketch. “There’s really not much to it,” he said, handing the pad back to me. “A kitchen with an eating area, the living room, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms.”

  I looked at the sketch. “And the only two ways in and out would be either through the front door in the living room or through the kitchen into the garage and out from there?”

  “Right.” He pointed to the sketch with the pencil. “You could go through the door here on the side of the garage, or of course you could open the main garage door to the driveway and go out that way.”

  He handed me the pencil and looked from me to Maggie. “So are you telling me that I rented my house to some damned crook?”

  “Righ
t now we don’t know the answer to that, sir,” Maggie replied. “We’ve just got some questions for the guy.”

  “Well, shit,” the fat man sighed. “I sure as hell hope not. This goddamn house is a pain in the ass to rent. I swear it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

  We sent Kovick back home with the patrolman, warning the landlord not to discuss our interest in his renter with anyone, and threatening him with dire consequences should he ignore the warning. Now that the darkness had settled in completely, we tightened the circle around the small house, and Maggie and I slipped into the surveillance van that was parked closest to it.

  Light showed around the edges of the blinds that were drawn tightly closed over the windows in the rooms at the front of the house and which Kovick had identified as the kitchen and the living room. Greg Chickris had joined the Special Assignments team that was watching the back of the house where the two bedrooms were located. He reported that that the back of the house was completely dark.

  I grabbed my radio, called Al Harris back in the command truck, and asked him if we had a microphone that we could surreptitiously attach to the outside wall of the house.

  “We’ve got one,” he replied, “but I’m not sure it would be worth the risk of trying to use it. Depending on how thick the exterior walls of the house are, and depending on how well they’re insulated, I don’t know that we’d be able to hear that much. And almost for sure, we wouldn’t be able to hear anything more than noises from the one room where the mic was attached.