Gumshoe for Two

by Rob Leininger

  “How about those other times you saw it?” I asked.

  “North, south. Both ways. Passin’ through.” He looked up at a clock. “Well, gotta go. Probably got a line of trucks at the station. Usually do, mornings. Nice talkin’ to ya.” He took off. It was a one-minute walk to the station from the casino. I’d know where to find him if I wanted to talk to him again, which I thought was likely.

  “Think that was Allie in the car?” Sarah asked. The pallor had evaporated and color was back in her face. She looked good, starting to draw stares again. We were waiting for Reno police but Corti’s was still open for business, only place in town that served food. The hand on the table, presumably the hand of an honest politician, had been covered with a tablecloth. Deputy Roup kept folks away from it.

  I shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  “That the girl in the picture you showed me last night?” Roup said. “That high school kid you asked about?”

  “Uh-huh. Two years older now.”

  “Well, then, I’m sorry I didn’t stop at the station yesterday, get a better look at her. And that SUV.”

  Me, too.

  Another fifteen minutes crept by.

  It was an indication of who’s got the money that first on the scene was a helicopter—Channel 2 out of Reno. Second on the scene was another helicopter—Channel 8. Deputy Roup went outside to say “No comment” half a dozen times and keep cameras out of the restaurant, although reporters came in, ostensibly to get coffee. Took them less than five seconds to notice me, the guy who’d located missing persons left and right last July. People who’d ended up dead. They looked at me like ravens eyeing road-kill. Great. Twenty minutes later county cars started pulling up. They had made the run from Reno in just under ninety minutes. Car doors slammed outside. Moments later the casino door swung open. First guy through said, “You!” so I said, “Me!”

  Our standard greeting.

  Detective Russell Fairchild and his behemoth sidekick, Officer Day, stood smoldering at the entrance. At least Fairchild did; Day looked more like a block of cold concrete with eyes.

  Hell of a way to start the day.

  “You’ve really done it this time, Angel,” Fairchild said, which is what he always says when he doesn’t have a clue but thinks he does. He probably sees lethal injections in his sleep, hates it if the alarm clock goes off before the drugs take effect.

  “How about you tell me what I’ve done,” I said. “And this is county, not city, so how’s it your jurisdiction?”

  A puff of wind left his sails. “It’s not. I was invited. When the sheriff heard it was you, he asked if I’d come along.”

  “And you brought the behemoth,” I said, looking behind him. “That was thoughtful.”

  Officer Day rumbled, deep in his throat. Three hundred thirty pounds—he’d gained a ham hock or two since I’d last seen him.

  Less than two months ago I’d been a national sensation. Then it had been Reno PD’s problem, but the entire country had followed me like they follow Kardashians, so it was likely that Washoe County Sheriff John Burnley’s eyes had bugged out when he heard the name Mortimer Angel mentioned in the same breath as Harry J. Reinhart during an early-morning 911 call.

  I had no actual knowledge of that, but I assume his eyes had bugged out because that’s what they did when he barged in twenty seconds after Fairchild and caught sight of me—although Sarah was sitting beside me so I might’ve been wrong.

  Burnley was fifty-two years old. A massive gut overhung his belt, so his NRA competition buckle was a trophy—it was said—that had gone to waist. He had brush-cut gray hair, hard eyes, a black automatic on his hip. His uniform shirt was tucked into blue jeans and he had on Nike running shoes, so he’d scrambled out of his house in a rush and wasn’t his usual photogenic, uniformed self, a fact that might bite him in the ass in next year’s election.

  To forestall a whirlwind of questions, I said, “Over there on the table, Sheriff. It was on my doorstep yesterday evening at about eight o’clock, I picked it up, put it in the backseat of the car, we drove up here to Gerlach, and the package spent the night in the car. We opened it here in the restaurant at about five thirty this morning, and that’s absolutely all I know about it.”

  He didn’t look impressed. “We,” he said. “You said we. Who’s we?”

  “I opened the package, Sheriff. I did that.”

  “Uh-huh. Again I ask, ‘who’s we’?”

  “Me,” Sarah said. “I got it out of my car and brought it over here this morning.”

  Burnley stared at her a second longer than I thought necessary. Only one second, which indicated a level of professionalism and control I couldn’t begin to touch. “Who’re you?” he asked.

  “Sarah Dellario.”

  Burnley looked at the two of us. “You two’re what? Father-daughter? Friends? An item?”

  So much for forestalling a whirlwind of questions. Sonofabitch. This was going to drag out, and it was going to drag me and Sarah along with it like roadkill under a car. I was going to be a household name again, all across the land of the free. Make that we. We were going to be household names, Sarah and I.

  But . . . father-daughter?

  Shit, that hurt.

  A techie of some sort got fingerprints off the hand using a little scanner that sent them off to the FBI via satellite. Man, I could use one of those. More techs got my gun out of Sarah’s car, gave it an official sniff test—three of them stuck noses to the barrel and inhaled—determined that it hadn’t been fired recently, not that the hand had bullet holes in it.

  Sarah and I were separated, put in opposite ends of the room. There we wrote out statements and signed them. Then Burnley and a woman by the name of Carla Estes—forty-something, flat-chested, with a bland, innocuous look belied at times by a suspicious squint—read our statements and together she and Burnley came up with a list of questions that Sarah and I answered, again separately. Fairchild listened in. Fairchild, I imagined, because he had experience dealing with Mort Angel, PI. By far the most interesting question was why Sarah and I had come to Gerlach, of all places, as if Gerlach was akin to a leper colony. This brought up the topic of the search for Allie and Allie’s phone call yesterday, which had the benefit of dragging Fairchild deeper into the periphery of this mess since it was RPD’s detective squad who had given short shrift to Allie’s missing person case.

  “Should’ve asked me to look into it,” Fairchild growled at me.

  “I didn’t ask anyone to look into it,” I told him. “Sarah did, and it was over two months ago.”

  “Not then. You should’ve contacted me yesterday when you got that call.”

  “That would’ve been a grandmaster move on my part. RPD is swift like the eagles.”

  At that, Burnley laughed, Estes smiled, and Fairchild gave me a look that would have killed a lesser man. Burnley didn’t have a dog in that fight, and I gathered there was some healthy competition between RPD and county law enforcement that served them well, kept everyone on their toes.

  A digital recorder sat on the table between the four of us, red light glowing. “You and this girl, Sarah, you stayed the night here in Gerlach?” Burnley asked. “At the motel?”

  I nodded, then said, “Yes, we did,” since the recorder wasn’t for shit when it came to nonverbal communication.

  “What rooms were you in?” His pencil hovered a quarter inch above a small spiral-bound notebook.

  “Nineteen.”

  Burnley looked up. “Nineteen?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Was that a gleam of respect I saw in his eyes? I’d like to think so. On the other hand, Ms. Estes tried without success to hide a moue of disapproval, as if she’d discovered a desiccated roach in her Cheerios right before that first spoonful. Fairchild, of course, being a true detective, wanted more.

  “In what capacity were you two there?” he asked, which told me he hadn’t gotten his quota of beauty sleep that morning.

&nb
sp; I gave that two seconds’ thought, said, “About a gallon,” and stood up. “We done here?”

  Burnley stuck his notebook in a pocket. “Guess so. Unless . . .” He turned to Estes. “You got anything?”

  She pursed her lips and was thinking about it when a deputy—not Roup—came over and whispered something in Burnley’s ear.

  “Well, shit,” Burnley said. “This stinkin’ job doesn’t pay nearly enough.” At which point he stared at the recorder then turned it off. “This is not for public consumption,” he said. “But fingerprints confirm that the hand in that package does in fact belong to Senator Reinhart. So this day—no, this month—is now pure dogshit.”

  Sarah and I were instructed to say nothing but “no comment” to reporters, which would incite them to no end and make the two of us look guilty as hell about something. It might also make us look like an “item,” which would boost my recognition quotient around the country. If Reinhart were still alive, I could whip his sorry ass in a presidential primary. His wife—Julia—was a good-looking woman twenty-six years his junior, but in that T-shirt, about to get national exposure, Holiday as the next First Lady would be unbeatable. If, of course, we were an item.

  The written statements and the preliminary questioning over with, Sarah and I were allowed to drive back to Reno in the same car, alone. Fairchild might have suggested it. I wouldn’t put it past him. Sarah and I had told our stories. Now, if either story changed, they’d nail us to the wall. That might have been his hope. I was making him look bad, finding missing persons right and left.

  I drove. Three county cars were ahead of us, six behind, no lights, no sirens. Earlier, when the name Harry Reinhart had come up, they’d scrambled like B-52s in a nuclear alert, but now it was just a casual run back to Reno. I’d gassed up the Audi at the Texaco station. I gave Hank my cell number, told him to call if he saw that Mercedes again, or the girl, or, in fact, any girl that might fit Allie’s description. What better person to keep an eye out for a girl than an alcoholic who doesn’t much notice “the girls” anymore?

  By ten thirty we were on the road, empty desert on both sides, a caravan of white cars front and back, the Audi—still fire-engine red—looking like a ruby in a cheap bracelet.

  “Sorry about last night,” Sarah said.

  “What about it?”

  “You know. All the hassle.”

  I shrugged that off. “No sweat. It made for an interesting night.”

  “ ‘Interesting.’ That’s a tepid word.”

  “How about memorable? That better?”

  She smiled. “Really?”

  “Hell, yes. I hope never to repeat it.”

  Silence for two miles. Then: “It was that bad, huh?”

  “Well, no. It was . . . different.”

  She leaned her head back, eyes closed. “Anyway, I’m glad we didn’t end up sleeping in the car. That would’ve sucked.”

  We weren’t done yet. This time the interrogation took place at the Washoe County jail. For the record, their rooms are ventilated better than those at RPD. The one-way mirrors are cleaner, too.

  Due to the nature of the victim, the questioning was handled by the FBI, although Sheriff Burnley and Carla Estes were also present.

  “Who is Abe Handy?” asked a humorless, no-nonsense agent introduced as Agent Morrison, referring to the return address on the FedEx package. Humorless, I figured, because I had to tell him Abe undoubtedly referred to Abe Lincoln, and when that didn’t register, I said Honest Abe? And when he didn’t get that, I had to tell him that Reinhart’s hand was billed as the hand of an honest politician, but that theory and practice might have little in common in this case—this guy was like trying to hold a conversation with a can of paint. And Handy? He wanted to know about that. Well, Agent Morrison, if you’ll remember there was a hand in that package—sonofabitch. The guy probably had to have every joke in A Charlie Brown Christmas spelled out to him.

  “How about that address, Hacksaw Road?” he asked.

  Even Estes rolled her eyes.

  “Think about it,” I said. “It’ll come to you. Maybe.”

  But I wasn’t about to explain it. If I did, he might think all this tricky insider knowledge was proof of wrongdoing. Agent Morrison made IRS agents look like revelers at a New Year’s party.

  Then came the questions, a few hundred of them, but Sarah’s story and mine hadn’t changed, so they cut us loose at four twenty that afternoon. They test-fired my gun then gave it back, reluctantly, since I had a carry permit, and they had nothing to compare the slugs to. Yet. Sarah drove me to my house on Ralston, which was a bust due to eight media vans parked out front—eight of them, a new record—and three cop cars and a forensics van. Turns out, you can’t find part of a presidential candidate without attracting attention. My neighbors would probably circulate a petition to have me removed by Monday.

  “Where to now?” Sarah asked. I slunk down in the Audi as she went past the house, turned left at the corner.

  “Dunno.”

  “How about my place?”

  Now there was a sterling idea. “No way.”

  “Why not? I’ve got a nice apartment just the other side of the university. It’s only about a mile away.”

  I thought about that. Knowing where she lived might be useful. I didn’t know why, but being a damn good detective, I decided not to turn down free information.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay, great.”

  Down University Terrace, across Virginia Street to Ninth, then Evans, around the ring road that circles the campus, then a right onto Highland Avenue, a left onto Beech, and there we were at Sierra Sky Apartments, two-story brick and clapboard, cream with blue trim, nice landscaping, decent parking. A high-end place compared to a lot of apartments in Reno.

  “Nice,” I said. “Which one’s yours?”

  “Number twenty-three. On the second floor.”

  “I’m gonna leave my gun in your car under the seat, so lock up. I’ll get it later. Don’t get it out and play with it.”

  “Like I’m gonna play around with a gun.”

  I got out of the car. She got out, locked up, and headed toward her apartment. I headed for the street.

  “Hey!”

  I turned. “What?” “It’s this way, Mort.”

  “Yup. Got that. Now I know. I’ll have to see it sometime. Right now’s not that time.”

  She watched me go. I thought she’d come after me, but she didn’t. I went past elms and a fence covered with honeysuckle and she was lost to sight.

  I was in the Green Room nursing a sarsaparilla when O’Roarke came on duty. He stared at my drink and said, “Hell has froze over.”

  I was considering a witty comeback, something like, “Screw you,” but I’m an adult.

  Sort of.

  But it wasn’t easy with Holiday still attached to my retinas, the way she’d looked in that room last night when the bed cover had tumbled down.

  “Okay, time for a Pete’s Wicked Ale.”

  “That’s more like it, spitfire,” O’Roarke said as he reached for a longneck.

  “May even your fleas have fleas.”

  “Rough day?”

  “You might say that.”

  “Heard something about it on the radio this afternoon. Don’t leave without autographing a napkin or one of my butt cheeks.”

  “Something I hope never to see.” I took a swig of Pete’s. “I heard somewhere that people still listen to radio. Really old people. Got any great-grandchildren photos?”

  He hit the remote, turned on the television over the bar. “Five o’clock news’ll be on in a few. Might be more fun today.”

  Avoiding it wouldn’t make it go away. “Turn up the sound,” I said. “Let’s see the damage.” I took a moment to check the picture I’d taken of the FedEx shipping label on my cell phone. I zoomed in and saw that it had been sent from Bend, Oregon.

  Then the news came on.

  First up was Mortimer
Angel and Sarah Dellario, exiting Corti’s Casino in Gerlach through a snowstorm of asinine questions. That brought O’Roarke up short. “That’s Sarah Dellario?”

  “Yep.”

  “Heard the name on the radio. She looks a hell of a lot like your favorite hooker—Holiday.”

  “Doesn’t she, though?”

  “And that shirt she’s wearing. Man, that’s . . . something.”

  “You oughta see it in 3-D.”

  Which, then, he did, because Holiday-Sarah chose that moment to wander in and plop down on a stool next to me. In that shirt.

  “Thought I might find you here,” she said. “I mean, where else would you go?”

  “Like I’ve got no friends in northern Nevada, no life beyond this barstool. Thank you. Anyway, you’re really into that shirt, huh? Probably dangerous to try to get it off without a spotter.”

  She looked down at herself. “Snug little number, isn’t it?”

  O’Roarke said, “Reminds me of a slingshot I had when I was a kid. Powerful one, too. Kill a rhino with it.”

  “You’re probably remembering the stretch,” I said.

  Holiday suppressed a smile. “You two’re like what, thirteen years old? Anyway, I can’t get rid of it. It’s special.” She looked up at the television. “Oh, jeez. Is that us?”

  “Next time you go to class, you’ll be asked for your autograph. Or something.”

  “Well . . . that’s sort of a bitch.”

  “Better believe it. I’ve been asked to sign a butt cheek.”

  The news unfolded, talking heads barely able to conceal their delight now that the severed right hand of presidential hopeful Senator Harold J. Reinhart had turned up in a FedEx package early that morning, sent to private investigator Mortimer Angel, the same Mortimer Angel who found the severed heads of blah, blah, blah. There was a nice close-up of me, and an even closer-up of Sarah, braless in her new shirt. Networks were in the business of ratings and revenue. What she was or wasn’t wearing wasn’t their fault.

  “Oh, jeez,” she said.

  “Yup. Expect movie offers.”

  Right then my cell phone rang. Played a few bars of Light My Fire before I could swipe the screen. It was Jeri, no surprise. “Hi, there,” I said.