Two deputies were standing guard at the foot of the stairs, and Maines stopped to give them some instructions. I peered out into the bar. The place was empty.
“This way,” Maines said, indicating the office door.
We went through to the alley. Parked there was a tan four-door with cherries on top and a county insignia on the driver’s side door. I went around and got in the other side, trying not to think about what might be sticking to my bare feet. Maines slid in behind the wheel. “Teresa has a secure line in her office,” he said. “I’ll call the Marshal’s office from there tomorrow morning and find out what to do about your situation.”
The rain had made the night air heavy, and a smell of ripe garbage wafted from the alley. I nodded, and the sheriff let another lengthy pause go by before saying, “What do you know about her relationship with Guerra?”
I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I was pretty sure it was expressionless anyway. “You can’t seriously suspect him.”
“Why can’t I?” The sheriff’s voice was mild and curious.
“The man’s a basket case,” I said. “Let’s see you fake an asthma attack and shock.”
Maines put his elbow on the window ledge, not saying anything. The closed interior of the car amplified the sound of his breathing and his odor of grocery store soap, and I had a sudden, unpleasant sense of intimacy.
“She’s been up there at least twelve hours,” I added, impatient with his silence. “There were maggots on her, and her scleras were cloudy. Why would he leave her all that time, and then practically lead me to the body?”
Maines gave me a leisurely visual examination. “I guess you got a little forensics training on your husband’s case.”
I shrugged. I didn’t really want to tell him how many dead bodies I’ve seen.
“Doc gives me twenty-four hours ago as a preliminary time of death,” Maines said, looking at the dashboard clock, which glowed 3:48. Right around the time I’d heard Teresa arguing with Hector. I knew I should tell Maines about it, but I wasn’t all that inspired by what he was doing with the information he already had.
The sheriff rubbed his chin with a long hand, narrow across the knuckles and meaty at the heel. It made a dry, sandpapery noise. “What did the chief think about this business with Silvia Molina?”
“When I talked to her about it on Friday, she didn’t think it was any big deal. She told me she’d go over and see her, but I don’t know if she ever got around to it.”
Maines shifted in his seat, a slow fidget. I listened to his breath bouncing off the windshield for almost a full minute, and then he got out of the car and stepped over to the fire doors, which he’d left open a crack, and stuck his head in. He called a muffled name, and one of the deputies appeared. The two men came back over to the car, and Maines leaned down into the door opening. “I want you to come and see me first thing when you get up tomorrow. Samuels here will keep an eye on you until then.”
The deputy got behind the wheel before I could say yea or nay. Maines peeled off and went back into the bar, letting the metal door fall shut behind him with a quiet clank.
Samuels drove me the block and half to my truck, then followed me home to Teresa’s. I felt a twinge of conscience that the guy would have to spend the night parked alongside the driveway, but it hadn’t been my idea.
III
I was again awakened, too early, by someone banging on my apartment door. This time it was Jesse Reed. He looked scared. “Is it true?” he breathed at me through the screen.
I nodded. His fashionable pallor intensified, and afraid he might pass out, I gestured him in. He went over to the dinette and dropped into a chair. I got the kettle off the drainboard and filled it.
“Did Richard do it?” he asked.
I threw a surprised look at him.
He swallowed audibly and said, “The other night I came home late—like, five in the morning—and I saw the basement door standing open—”
“You mean Friday morning?” I cut in, remembering the noises I’d heard.
Jesse nodded and went on. “So I go over to check it out, and Richard comes driving up, sees me, and pitches a complete fit. I tell him I found it open, and he goes tearing upstairs, hollering for Teresa.”
The brain flashed on it; if he’d killed her, why was he looking for her two hours later? “For Teresa? Why?”
“I dunno.” Jesse shrugged. “She was letting him hold on to her key until he got all of his stuff out of there, and the other day she told him if he didn’t step lively, she’d change the lock and put it all out on the curb. I guess he thought she was making good on it.”
The kettle started to boil, and I flicked off the gas and spooned some loose tea into the pot, the radar squirming. Richard could have been making a production so that Jesse would remember it later and give him an alibi. “Have you talked to the sheriff about this?”
“Like Maines’d do anything,” Jesse snorted.
I remembered Benny’s nepotism remark. “Is he related to Teresa somehow?”
Jesse shook his head. “Richard. They’re cousins or something.”
I counted to sixty, removed the strainer, and took the pot over to the table. Jesse seemed puzzled as he watched me pour him a finger of tea. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he said, glaring at the almost-empty cup.
“I like it strong,” I explained. “That’s for you to taste and make sure you want more.”
He lifted it with a wry smirk, sticking out his pinkie.
“Yes, yes, very amusing,” I snarked in reply. It felt oddly comforting to be shuffling around a morning kitchen, defending my gastronomic quirks to a man again. I brought the sugar over and sat down. “Are they close enough that Maines would try to pin Teresa’s death on somebody else, if he thought Richard had done it?”
Jesse leaned back in his chair, considering, then made a face. “I doubt he’s smart enough for something like that.”
“Can’t say that I was liking him for a Pulitzer,” I admitted.
“Couple of weeks ago”—Jesse grinned, coming forward again and propping his elbows on the table—“an alarm goes off in one of my square buildings. Middle of the night. Benny goes over there, and it’s Maines. Just walked in to take a look around, he said.” Jesse laughed, shaking his head. “County sheriff, unclear on the concept of breaking and entering.”
The caffeine had barely begun making its way into my central nervous system, but the brain jumped at what he’d just said. “One of your square buildings?”
He hesitated, sizing me up through his long lashes, then said, “Yeah. On Main, next door to the bar.”
“You’re Milestone Properties?”
I could tell immediately that he didn’t like me knowing it, but he wasn’t scared, just nettled. He showed me his snaky grin again, this time with fangs. “Well, look at you, just getting right up to speed on all the local news.”
I flickered over his faded T-shirt and scuffed high-tops. “Do you have a trust fund or something?”
“Like I’d gamble with my own money,” he scoffed, still watching me with wary ease.
“What’s the buy-in?”
He lifted his fingertips off the table, dropping his head forward in a gesture of polite refusal.
“Come on,” I said. “Another sixty thousand wouldn’t do you any good?”
“Capital isn’t a problem for us,” he insisted. He hadn’t even blinked at the amount; he must be working with a lot more zeros.
“Who’s the ‘us’?” I tried.
He made a derisive noise. “Why do you think we incorporated? This downtown thing isn’t popular with everybody. Some of my investors would rather their name isn’t, ya know, printed on the letterhead.”
“What’s unpopular about it?”
“You’ll have to ask your boss. He’s the pinko leading that particular revolution.”
That surprised me. Government-sponsored development seemed like something that would be pretty ta
sty to a socialist. Obviously, I didn’t know as much about politics as I thought I did.
A heavy sliding sensation, like tectonic plates shifting behind my eyes, shut off the buzz in my stomach. The brain had caught up.
“Did you hear about that cadaver hand we found behind the bar the other night?” I asked Jesse.
“Uh, yeah,” he replied as if I’d just asked him what year it was. “Who didn’t?”
“The cops think somebody threw it off the roof.”
He cocked his head like a dog with an itchy ear. “And?”
I smiled at him, and he got it. “Hector wouldn’t sell me his place if I left an entire dead body at his door.” I twitched, and his expression went apologetic. “Sorry. Going off on all this other stuff, I forgot about Teresa.”
And I’d forgotten that I was supposed to be in mourning for the Amazon. Worried that my face might talk, I got up to go back over to the stove and noticed the brain out in left field playing with the idea that the cadaver hand had something to do with Hector’s past.
This radar of mine can be a double-edged sword; it essentially picks up everything, and I have to depend on my slower-moving gray matter to sift out what’s valuable. By the time the brain has assembled my random impressions into actual facts, the original source of those impressions is often long forgotten. This idea was one of those. It felt like it had been caught in the works for a while, so I didn’t think the conversation with Jesse had spawned it, but I couldn’t put my finger on what had.
“I hope I’m wrong about Richard,” Jesse said behind me. “This downtown thing is dead in the water if he gets mixed up in this mess.”
Almost automatically, I asked, “Is Richard one of your investors?”
“Nice try.” Jesse smirked. “City council members aren’t allowed to own any property—or interest in any property—in the development district. The one guy who does, they don’t let him vote.”
“He can lobby, though, right?”
“Well, sure. I mean, everybody with a stake is trying to swing the thing their way, including me. I’m not buying Richard drinks because I like him.”
I gave him room to keep talking, but he got up and said, “I’d better get going.” He went over to the apartment door and paused with his hand on the knob. “You doing OK with all of this?”
I wasn’t sure of the answer to that question yet, but he wasn’t really asking. I gave him the brave nod he was looking for, and he said, “If you need anything, I’m right upstairs.”
The words were meant to be kind, but he wasn’t looking at me like a philanthropist.
IV
I followed Samuels in my new truck, not wanting to get stuck someplace out in the boondocks with no way to leave, but my worry was wasted. He led me to the courthouse and pointed me into the police station. Davis was on duty. He told me Maines was in Teresa’s office and pointed toward an open door at the back.
The sheriff was sitting with his boots up on the corner of a big oak desk, his hat tipped forward. Behind him, three high windows gave a worm’s-eye view of Main Street. Water pipes gurgled somewhere overhead. It was like being in the hold of a big stone ship.
“Did you talk to the feds?” I asked by way of checking if he was awake.
The boots came down one at a time, and he poked back his hat, creaking forward in the chair. “We’re playing phone tag. This secure-line business is a pain in the ass.” He pulled a manila folder lying on the blotter toward him. “Got the coroner’s report this morning.”
“That was fast,” I said.
The sheriff’s eyes moved languidly behind his flat lenses. “It’s just preliminary.” He flipped the folder open and, to my surprise, read aloud:
“Time of death, between three and five a.m., Friday, November second. Victim ingested an undetermined amount of”—Maines paused to peer at the page, enunciating slowly—“flunitrazepam, approximately forty minutes prior to death. Cause of death was exsanguination due to a single stab wound to the upper left thorax. Knife had Guerra’s prints on it.”
I took the side chair next to the desk, not asking why he was letting me in on the case facts. “Fluni-what’s-it—that’s roofies, isn’t it? Was she raped?”
“There was semen present. Doc says no signs of forcible intercourse. But there wouldn’t be, since she was drugged. Nothing on the roof. Nothing on the body or weapon. Rain took care of that.” He made a noise halfway between a sigh and a grunt, closing the folder. “Not that I need any more evidence. There were traces of the dope in a wine bottle in Guerra’s kitchen. We also found her blood in several places inside his apartment.”
He waited, watching for my reaction. I didn’t give him one. I was busy trying to make sense of what I’d just heard.
“Any idea why she was on the roof?” I asked him.
Maines twisted his head from side to side, once. “No concrete evidence of a reason, anyway.”
“But you’ve got theories?”
The corners of his mouth twitched again. “I don’t do theories.”
As if I’d never heard it from dozens of other cops. Just the facts, ma’am. We don’t care why you did it, we just want to know if you did it. Tell me what you saw, not what you think.
“I’d like to verify some information,” Maines was saying, looking down at a legal pad that he’d dragged over. There was a chronological list of events on it, with gaps. “What time was it when she left the bar on Thursday night? After this hand business?”
“Right around two.”
Maines placed a check mark next to an item on his list. He held the pencil down close to the point, like a first-grader. “And what time’d you get home?”
“A little after three.”
Another check. “You’re in the efficiency. Behind the chief’s apartment. Right?”
I nodded. He took it in without looking up. “Did you hear her come home?”
I shook my head. Another technical truth.
“What time’d you go to bed?”
“Right after I got in.”
“Sleep through the night?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Maines’s head came up. “That right there is what we call an evasion.” His eyes seemed to float to the surface of his glasses, pressing through them at me.
“I heard some noise in the basement around four,” I admitted without any dramatics. “I looked out the window, saw the light on, figured it was Teresa’s husband picking up some of his stuff, and went back to sleep.”
Maines looked down at his pad again, setting the tip of the pencil against a line below a big blank spot. “Couldn’t have been. Richard was with Benny Ramírez at four.”
I remembered the two of them getting into Benny’s cruiser in front of the bar as Connie and I had come around from the alley. “Doing what?”
“Lost his keys,” Maines said, sitting back. “Got to his car after y’all closed and realized he didn’t have ’em. Benny helped him hunt around the square awhile. Then drove him out to his place up north to get his spare set. Took ’em half an hour to get out there, then they had to deal with Richard’s security system. Couple of hours with the locksmith. Benny dropped him off back here around four forty to pick up his car.”
“That’s a pretty good alibi,” I said, “but it still gives him twenty minutes to kill her.”
“Doesn’t track with the roofies,” Maines said.
“The lock on Hector’s apartment is broken,” I told him. “Richard was in the bar that night. He could have slipped up there anytime and spiked the bottle.”
“How’d he know she’d be the one to drink it?”
“She and Hector were having a thing,” I said. “Maybe he knew they made a habit of sharing a bottle of wine after closing time. Knocking both of them out would be pretty handy if he wanted to kill her and pin it on Hector.”
Maines made a dismissive gesture. “She was on the clock. Wouldn’t so much as read the newspaper on city time. That’s how she was.”
A minute glimmer swam across the sheriff’s colorless eyes. He had one of those mouths that cut straight across, with the corners fading off dead parallel to the ground. I watched them to see if they’d twitch again. They didn’t. He looked back at his pad and skimmed down a few more lines. “Guerra says you came by the next day. Around one. What was that about?”
“Richard woke me up at the crack of dawn, looking for Teresa. Her car wasn’t at the house, so I figured that she’d spent the night at Hector’s. I wanted to tell her to put a leash on her ex.”
Maines’s wet-stone eyes had come up, interested. “What time’d Richard wake you?”
I gave him Jesse’s timeline and calculated, “Jesse says he got home around five, so it would have been shortly after that.” Maines kept looking at me. I gave him a minute, then made it simple for him: “Richard made sure his appearance was memorable.”
The sheriff didn’t nettle easily, I’ll give him that. He watched me with the impassive curiosity of a scientist observing a new species, then went back to his pad. “What was Guerra wearing? When you stopped by on Friday?”
“Nothing.” I grinned, remembering. Maines appeared interested, and I realized that it was evidence. “His jeans from the night before were right there on the floor, and they were clean. No bloodstains.”
“Shirt? Shoes?”
I shook my head.
Maines made a couple of notes, then sat back and asked, “Why are you so quick to lie for someone you’ve known less than forty-eight hours?”
“What am I lying about?” I said, galled.
“Don’t know yet,” he replied. “Something.”
“You shouldn’t even be on this case,” I snapped. “You and Richard are related.”
Maines flicked a finger back and forth between the two of us. “So are we, if you go back far enough.”
“How do you explain Hector leaving her body up there, if he killed her?” I said, his deadpan humor wearing a sore spot on my patience.
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