She mouthed, Claudia.
He nearly dove at her, his hand out to take the phone, but she shook her head and mouthed, Not yet. Dripping, he walked past her to MAX, pressed several keys, and plugged a wireless earphone into his ear.
“Where am I? Question is, where are you guys? Moses says you’re hiding from us. Are you?”
“No, Claudia, not in this lifetime.”
“Come on now, sweet cakes, how is Moses going to give you the business if you disappear, and we can’
t find you? Hey, is your man there? We could get together if you’re close by.”
“Sure, my man’s right here.”
“Well now, that’s good because Moses wants him close. Did Moses tell you what he’s planning for you?
”
“I really don’t care, Claudia. Where are you and Moses, by the way? Under an extra-big rock so you can hide together?”
“We don’t do no rocks, you little bitch. We’re in a nice big Hilton, in a suite. I can hardly throw a football across the living room it’s so big. I’m going to make you scream through that smart mouth of yours. I told your gorgeous husband that I’d have you watch while I screw his brains out. Then he can watch what I do to you, that brain of his all mushy. Every man I do ends up grinning like his brains have melted.”
“I’ve got to tell you, Claudia, I’m surprised you’re that experienced with men at your tender age. Shouldn’t you be in school learning how to read? How old are you, fifteen?”
“I can read, bitch, and I’m eighteen.”
“Yeah, right. From what I’m hearing you sound barely fifteen. I’ll bet your mama had you when she was real young, and you ended up on the street, and that’s where Moses found you. And here you are, a little girl acting all grown up, hooked up with that creepy old man.”
“Shut up! You won’t think you’re so smart when Moses gets to you.”
“Okay, if he didn’t find you shooting up on the street, then how’d you meet him, Claudia? He follow you home, maybe butcher your mama?”
“I’m not fifteen and my mama was over forty when she died, you hear me? She was smart, a schoolteacher, but some tattoo-tongued gangbangers raped and beat her because she wouldn’t screw their leader. She died.”
“I’m really sorry about your mother, Claudia. You said she was a schoolteacher?”
“Yeah, a math teacher, and she was real smart. I was sorry when she died, I really was. I mean, she could have flushed me down the john, right? But she didn’t. You hear me, bitch?”
“You’re screaming so of course I hear you. You’re out of control, like a little kid throwing a tantrum. Why would she have flushed you? Where was your daddy?”
“My mama slept with this jerk who left her. There wasn’t any daddy.”
“Where’d you learn to talk so dirty, Claudia? From your mama or from that saliva-dripping old man you’
re with now?”
“My mama didn’t cuss!”
“After she died, what did you do?”
“I took off. I wasn’t going to let those freak social service people take me. And I picked up Moses, not the other way around. He was standing over this filthy old tramp, blood all over his hands and his old army fatigues, and those black boots he wears, and he was laughing his head off. I asked him why he beat the bum like that, and he told me the guy wouldn’t share his Ripple. I figured someone like that could protect me, so I offered him some of my bourbon. All I remember is waking up in a motel room in the morning.”
“What were you doing in Atlanta, Claudia? Running from juvie?”
“Nah, it wasn’t Atlanta, but what do you care? I’m going to hurt you, lady, more now for dissing me and my mama.”
Sherlock laughed. “Sure you are, Claudia. You sound like one of those playground bullies who’s all mouth. Why don’t you tell me where you are, and we can get together and talk things over before Moses gets you killed, or you end up in a state prison until your hair turns gray?”
“Next time we get together, I’m going to pull your tongue out.”
“Now there’s a real grown-up threat. You’re young enough to still have a chance, Claudia. Stay out there and you’ll end up a drugged-out hooker. All that booze will make you look as old as Moses in a few years. Is that what you want for yourself?”
“I’ll tell you what I want, bitch. I’ll tell Moses to do you first, to do whatever he wants, just for me. And I
’ll be there to watch.”
Sherlock heard a man’s voice, and a scuffle. “What are you doing, Claudia? Who is that?”
“Don’t you hit me, Moses!”
There was a crackling sound, and the phone went dead.
Savich looked at her, watched her punch off the phone. “I’m going to call the Hoover Building, see if they’ve located these two specimens.”
“I heard noise in the background. Lots of voices. Maybe they were in a restaurant.”
Savich nodded. He was talking with the communications chief a few seconds later. “We did much better this time, Savich. It was a third-party provider, using a wireless prepaid card, but Sprint was able to track down the directory number and get us a location about twenty seconds before you lost the connection. It was a good, fixed signal from a GPS-equipped phone, so we have his location within ten meters. It’s a Denny’s on Atherton Street in Milltown, Maryland. Units should be there any minute.”
Savich punched off the phone. “Cops are on their way to Moses’s location. You were right, it is a restaurant, a Denny’s. We’ll know soon if they arrived in time. It sounded like Moses didn’t know she was using his new phone. You can bet they headed right out.” Savich sighed. Sherlock gave him a long look. “You didn’t tell me Claudia plans to screw your brains out.”
“She’s certifiable, and what makes it worse is that she’s so young. Why would I tell you something that disturbing?”
“Marlin Jones was disturbing, Tyler McBride was disturbing, Günter Grass was disturbing. But Claudia?
I feel sorry for her, because of her age. But you should have told me.”
“You feel sorry? She and Moses dug out Elsa Bender’s eyes, Sherlock. She helped pose Pinky’s body over that skeleton at Arlington National Cemetery. She’s a psychopath. The thought of her anywhere near you scares the sin out of me. There was no reason to tell you about their ridiculous fantasies. You shouldn’t have talked to her, Sherlock. It was unprofessional.”
“Unprofessional? Me? This ought to be good. Do tell me what you mean, Dillon.”
“First of all, you answered my phone, knowing full well it could be Moses. That phone is our only link to him, and you should have asked me first. At the very least, you should have given me the phone when I stepped out of the shower.”
“I happen to be a Federal agent who’s on the case with you. You could treat me like a partner, like I’m someone you respect as a fellow agent. Hey, on a good day, maybe even all of the above.”
“Dump the sarcasm. Of course we’re partners. Well, actually, I’m your boss, and I’m your husband.”
Whenever she got angry, Sherlock’s face turned as red as her hair. She could feel the heat rising from her neck, that miserable red stain creeping over her skin, and that made her even angrier because she knew he could see it. “Oh, you want to protect the helpless little wife? The meek little thing who should keep her precious ears unsullied by prurient threats from a crazy teenager?”
“Stop, Sherlock, and listen to me. You are my wife and I would protect you with my life.”
“And you’re my husband, you moron, I’d protect you with my life, too. What does that have to do with this?”
“Because you enraged her, you baited her, and you have her promising to come after you. How could you do that? I can’t believe you would pull something like that without discussing it with me first.”
“Oh, I see. I was to say, ‘Excuse me, Claudia, but I’ve got to ask my husband what to say before we talk.’ That is so infuriating.” She shoved
him hard on his bare chest, muttering under her breath, “The old double standard. That garbage coming out of your mouth burns me, Dillon. Stop being a macho ass.”
“Well, if I’m a macho ass, you’re just going to have to live with it.” He gave her a look of frustrated dislike, then stomped back into the bathroom.
She yelled through the door, “Because I’m a good cop, I goaded her into telling us about her mother, how she hooked up with Moses. You were listening, boss. And I would have kept her talking longer if Moses hadn’t grabbed the phone from her.”
Towel wrapped around his waist, Savich stomped back through the door, stopped right in front of her, and crossed his arms over his chest. He was doing it because he knew he looked tough and intimidating, something he was very good at. “I never said you weren’t a good cop, but you crossed the line on this one. This was an ill-advised stunt. I’m saying that as your boss, so suck it up. Let’s get dressed and get to work.”
She fluttered her hands. “Goodness, do you think I can manage that without fainting dead away? Maybe I should have a glass of water first, put my head between my knees, maybe call Dix so the two of you muscle-bound yahoos can go out and chop some wood while you decide what to do.”
He dashed his hand through his wet hair. “This is ridiculous. Sherlock, close it down or I’ll beat your butt.
”
She assumed a martial arts position and beckoned him with her fingers. “This is no time to mess with me, macho boy. Try it and I’ll flatten you.”
She was wearing a thick oversized hotel bathrobe, wrapped nearly twice around her. Her feet were bare and her hair curled wildly around her head. Her face was red with rage. And she wanted to fight him. How had it come to this? He laughed even as he wrapped his arms around her waist, threw her over his shoulder, and tossed her onto the bed. He fell on top of her, pulled her arms over her head, and held her down.
He said an inch from her nose, “Stop sneering at me. I know threats don’t work with you, so I won’t bother. Why don’t you tell me where you think we should start with all the info you extracted?”
It was terrible that she couldn’t indulge her anger at him, but she recognized the olive branch—really more of a twig—and the fact was, business was business. She saved her anger for later.
“Get off me, you baboon, so I can breathe.”
Savich rolled off to the side, but kept one leg on top of her.
“All right. My guess is that all that stuff Claudia told me probably happened in the past year or two. We have a number of details about Claudia’s mother that must have led to an investigation. And maybe Claudia is her real name. So you need to fire up MAX and get on it. Now let me go before I get seriously upset and hurt you.”
He leaned over and kissed her, still angry and frustrated, then rolled off the bed. He looked down at her for a long moment, brooding, before he walked back into the bathroom and shut the door. He heard her laugh and yell, “Hey, Dillon, maybe you should call Director Mueller, fill him in on what I got Claudia to tell me.”
Savich stood in front of the bathroom mirror, a razor in his hand. He’d heard every word quite clearly; Sherlock had a piercingly clear voice when she wanted to. But beneath that laughter, he thought, she was still angry at him, perhaps as angry as he was with her. He sighed as he soaped up his face. He was not in a happy place. He cut himself twice.
His phone rang again ten minutes later with the news that Moses and Claudia were no longer at the Denny’s.
Savich called Jimmy Maitland to give him a report, then Dix to say they wouldn’t make it for dinner. They had a lot of work to do.
CHAPTER 26
SHERIFF NOBLE’S HOUSE MAESTRO, VIRGINIA THURSDAY EVENING
RAFE MOWED ACROSS his corn on the cob without stopping. Rob, not to be outdone, managed an even wider swath of his own, four rows of kernels at a time. For a moment, Ruth thought he was going to choke. She clapped him on the back and handed him a glass of water, then gave him a thumbs-up when he sat back and smiled contentedly at his brother.
“Neither of you took a single breath,” Ruth said. “That’s remarkable. Next time I’m going to find really, really big ears of corn and test your limits.”
Dix looked up from his own corn at his boys, then over at Ruth. The boys acted natural around her, not at all prickly, as they often did when they thought a woman was threatening to take their mother’s place. She’d known them since Friday night. It was amazing how comfortable they all were. Dix said, leaning back in his chair, “Do you know I can’t remember ever felling an ear of corn in under six seconds?”
“We did it faster, right, Ruth?”
Ruth laughed. “I wasn’t timing you but I bet you beat that. My older brother and I always competed to see who could be the grossest as well as the fastest. Drove our parents crazy.”
Rob said, “Grandpa Chappy usually laughs when we do a gross-out for him, like stuffing chewed-up green beans in front of your bottom teeth and peeling down your lip. Uncle Tony gets all uptight and Aunt Cynthia looks like she wants to lock us in a closet.”
“How about your uncle Gordon?” Ruth heard the words come out of her mouth before she even realized what she’d asked.
“Uncle Gordon? Hmm.” Rob looked over at Rafe, then said, “Fact is, we’ve never been gross around Uncle Gordon. He always looks so perfect, you know?”
“So does your grandpa Chappy,” Ruth said.
“It’s not the same,” Rafe said, shaking his head. “And when the two of them are together they’re so busy fighting we might as well not even be there.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Ruth said.
“How about you, Ruth? What did you and your brother do that was real gross?”
“Well, my favorite gross-out was chugging a Coke while I was ice skating. You come to a fast stop in front of one of your friends and belch really loud right in their face.”
The boys laughed. Dix knew that until tonight his sons had been putting up a brave front, trying to act as natural as they could while all hell was breaking loose around them—three people murdered in their town in less than a week while their father was the one responsible for finding out who killed them. Rob stopped laughing first. He looked down at the pile of baked beans on his plate. Well, impossible to ignore reality forever, Dix thought. He said easily, “Thanks for the visual, Ruth. When we go skating, no soft drinks allowed,” but the boys looked thoughtful. Rafe said, “I saw Uncle Tony scratch his armpit once, and when we were playing baseball, he was standing out in center field and he scratched—”
Rob cut his brother off. “Not in front of Ruth.”
“You’re right, Rob, too much information,” Ruth said, and saluted him with her glass of tea. Dix scooped another spoonful of green beans onto his son’s plate. “Eat and don’t smash them in front of your bottom teeth.”
Rafe shot his father a wary look and said faster than Brewster could swing his tail, “I went to see Mr. Fulton, you know, see where we might stand with his hiring me, you know, when my report card comes out.”
“This is a hardware store, right?” Ruth asked.
Rafe nodded. “Mr. Fulton said only six days had passed and nothing was any different at his store, and when would I have proof that my grades are up in English and biology.”
Brewster was trying to climb Ruth’s leg. She leaned down to pet his head and slipped him a bit of hot dog. But Brewster wasn’t hungry, he wanted attention. He rubbed the hot dog on her shoe until she had to lift her feet off the floor to avoid him. The boys laughed until she scooped Brewster up and hugged him against her chest. “What are you up to, smearing hot dog all over my shoe, making everybody laugh at me? I thought you were my hero.”
“Some hero,” Rob said, piling more potato salad on his plate. “Brewster was so small when he was a puppy we were afraid we might roll over on him during the night and squash him.”
Dix chuckled, one eye on Brewster. “He was hero enough to find Ruth. I’ve rolled over on
Brewster myself and he’s survived. Now, Rafe, what did Mr. Fulton say about the job?”
Rafe swallowed a mouthful of hot dog bun. “Mr. Fulton asked me to spell ‘valedictorian.’ That wasn’t fair, Dad.”
“Did you even attempt it?” Ruth asked.
“Yeah, I did. I missed the e in the middle. It wasn’t fair,” he repeated. His father said, “I gather Mr. Fulton didn’t hire you?”
“He told me to bring him my next report card. Then he’d speak to you again.”
“Stup Fulton is full of surprises,” Dix said to Ruth.
“Ah, he asked me what you’re doing about all this violent stuff, Dad. I told him you and the three FBI agents are working real hard on it. He just harrumphed.” He looked down at his plate. This time his voice was as thin as the kitchen curtains. “And there’s the kids at school. They’re saying that you’re not as good as everyone says you are, that everyone in town’s getting murdered.”
“Well,” Dix said, “you don’t look banged up so I guess you didn’t get into any fights.”
“It was close,” Rafe muttered.
“I understand. But you managed to walk away?”
It was Rob who said, “Sure, Dad. Right.”
Ruth had noticed the bruise on Rob’s knuckles. It couldn’t have been all that bad a fight if his knuckles weren’t skinned. She smiled brightly. “Hey, I saw a baseball and glove in the hallway. Who’s the Barry Bonds?”
Rob said eagerly, “Me. Didn’t Dad tell you I’m going to be the starting pitcher on the high-school team?”
“Sorry, Rob, I didn’t, but I sure intended to.” Not that Rob really cared whether he had, Dix thought as Rob rushed on. “The thing is, Ruth, I’m only a sophomore. Billy Caruthers started last year as a junior, and he’s totally pissed the coach picked me.”
Dix gave his son a long look.
Rob cleared his throat. “Ah, Dad, everyone says it. Okay, Billy Caruthers was being a jerk—”
Dix said, “Rob, remember how your mom once washed out your mouth with soap? That real strong soap that could peel the skin right off your hands?”
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