J Mark Bertrand

by Back on Murder (v5)

  I wait until the shift ends, then call from behind the wheel of my car. A woman’s voice answers.

  “Is Joe there?”

  “No, I’m sorry. Can I take a message?”

  “Is this his wife?”

  A pause. “Yes, it is.”

  So what Wilcox said is true. He really has put his marriage back together. The same woman who divorced him is now waiting at home by the phone. I can’t quite fathom how a life so shattered can be put back together like that, but remembering Charlotte’s words this morning, the idea gives me hope.

  “Do you know where I can reach him?” I ask.

  “Ah . . . can I ask who’s calling?”

  “Just a friend.”

  She’s about to hang up, and for some reason I don’t want her to. I have this crazy notion all the sudden that she can tell me something.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” I say.

  “Stephanie.”

  “Hi, Stephanie. Listen. I heard Joe’s taken up sculpting?”

  She clears her throat. “Yeah . . .”

  I can tell from her tone that she’s a little perplexed by my call. Nix’s words about sneaking up come to mind. Time to end this.

  “Never mind,” I say. “I was just thinking . . . Anyway, it’s great that you two are back together. It’s great about the . . . art.”

  “Thanks.”

  After I hang up, a strange laugh echoes in the car. It’s me, only I can’t think what’s so funny all the sudden. Maybe it’s the desperation of my phone call, trying the guy at home instead of waiting for him to touch base. Now that I’ve put in an appearance at the office and chatted with his wife, Thomson’s bound to come out of the woodwork. When he does, I’ll tell him what Wilcox said. Putting the Morales case down is all well and good, but there are bigger fish to fry. If he wants the written assurances I collected from Internal Affairs, he’s got to give me nothing less than Reg Keller.

  Perhaps the reason I’m laughing is because, for the first time, I’m starting to believe Thomson will actually be able to deliver.

  CHAPTER 14

  Working cases from behind a desk, while some might consider it an art form, requiring as it does the carefully orchestrated ferrying of witnesses back and forth, the adept use of fax and phone – not to mention a comfortable chair with adjustable lumbar support – has never been my style. Task force headquarters is starting to resemble a teenager’s bedroom, paperwork and debris stacking up on every available surface, including a tower of mostly empty pizza boxes from I don’t know when. Cavallo and I have staked out a corner, but even here the chairs aren’t comfortable and the white noise of nonstop conversation grows increasingly difficult to tune out.

  I’m ready to get out on the street, to go anywhere for almost any reason, but my partner seems glued to the interviews. She hunches over her dwindling stack, head propped on hand, her face veiled behind a curtain of hair. She stares at the page, but I’m pretty sure her eyes don’t move.

  “Cavallo,” I say. “Are you even reading those things?”

  She flips the page, ignoring me.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “And go where?”

  “How about the school?” I throw it out there, a random suggestion, the first thing that comes to mind. “We could re-interview some of these people. Instead of just rereading the original notes.”

  “Something’s here,” she says. “We just need to keep looking.”

  “No, what we need is to shake things up.”

  She leans back in her chair, throwing her arms into a leonine stretch. “What we need,” she says, “is more coffee. It’s your turn.”

  At the far end of what we’re jokingly calling the catering table, two chrome vats of lukewarm coffee beckon, the constantly diminishing regular and the untouched decaf. While decanting the leaded version into Cavallo’s styrofoam cup, I glance through the open door of Wanda Mosser’s temporary office, a converted conference room. She and Villanueva watch Nancy Grace on a portable television, volume muted, while a series of angry voices on the other side of the speakerphone carry on an indecipherable argument.

  Noticing me, Wanda slips out for a refill, not mentioning her departure to the superiors downtown. Behind her, Villanueva mimes a cup with one hand, pointing with the other for emphasis. I give him a nod and pull a fresh foam vessel from the nearby stack.

  “How’s it going, cowboy?” Wanda asks.

  “I’m gonna hang myself if I don’t get out of here soon. My new partner thinks they’re handing out toy surprises for whoever gets through the most paperwork.”

  She laughs. “I told you she was uptight. And those interviews aren’t the only thing she’s been reading.”

  “You mean The Kingwood Killing? I already know.”

  “She was asking me all kinds of questions this morning.”

  “Spare me,” I say. “Though come to think of it, I’d rather she ask you than me.”

  I refill her cup, then hand it over along with the one for Villanueva, who still listens silently to the squawking phone. Before I can make good my escape, though, she steps closer.

  “You know something, Roland? It’s nice to see you putting your heart into the work again.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “Looks that way to me.”

  She goes back to her crisis management meeting, leaving me to ponder her words. If this is my heart in the work, I have to admit it doesn’t feel much different. Rather than an increase of passion, or a single-minded focus, what I’m left with is more frustration spread thin along a wider front. The Morales killing, Hannah Mayhew, Thomson’s pending defection, all of it promising enough, but so far nothing has actually delivered. Charlotte’s unexpected announcement yesterday morning, her declared aims for our future relationship, pending apparently on a solution to the tenant crisis – a problem which, after Tommy’s assist at the Paragon the other night, I’m reluctant to even address. No, if this is my heart in the work, I’d just as soon keep it out.

  Cavallo accepts her coffee in both hands, as if they need warming in spite of the temperature outside, which is threatening to creep into the lower nineties, with a heaping side order of humidity. She sips while giving me an interested look, like her off-duty reading is coming back to her.

  “March,” she says, “can I ask you something?”

  I fumble for a response, but then the ringing in my pocket saves me. With an apologetic shrug, I flip the phone open and press it to my ear.

  “Detective March,” I say.

  “You the one assigned to Octavio Morales?” The words are precise, though heavily accented, a male speaker probably in his twenties, I’m guessing.

  “That’s right.”

  “I got some information for you, okay?”

  “May I ask who’s speaking?”

  My tone arouses Cavallo’s interest. She puts her cup down and leans forward, eyebrows raised. I motion for a pen.

  “You want the information or not?” he asks.

  “Go ahead. I’m just getting something to write with.”

  He gives me an address on Fondren not far from the Sharpstown Plaza shopping center. “I’ll be on the side of the road with a red bandanna. You pick me up. And come alone or I’ll just walk, okay?”

  “When?” I ask.

  “Now, dude.” Then he abruptly hangs up.

  Cavallo asks for the incoming number, then walks it over to one of the support staffers to run a computer search, which comes back with the news that my caller used a public phone at Sharpstown Mall.

  “The phones still work there?”

  She smirks. “Anyway, this sounds kind of cloak-and-dagger.”

  “I called in a favor yesterday hoping for some street-level intel, and I guess it paid off.”

  Frankly, I wasn’t expecting Salazar to follow through on his promise, not after the awkward confrontation with his boss. Wilcox hadn’t seemed very impressed with him, but it looks like Salazar is
a stand-up guy after all.

  “Are you really going to meet this informant alone?” Cavallo asks. “Don’t you have protocols for this kind of thing in Homicide?”

  “I’m not in Homicide,” I say.

  “Maybe I should tag along.”

  Eager as she sounds, the last thing I want is Cavallo’s company on this errand. The drive to Sharpstown would give her plenty of time to ask whatever questions her reading The Kingwood Killing has raised. I hate that book. I’d only agreed to be interviewed as a favor to Brad Templeton, a former Houston Post reporter turned true-crime writer, never realizing he’d turn the case into a lurid movie-of-the-week thriller, complete with me in the role of hero, something I’ve been trying to live down ever since.

  “You know, I think those interviews need another going over.”

  “What, I’m not good enough backup for you?” She frowns. “Should I mention this to Wanda, considering it has absolutely nothing to do with the case?”

  “I think it does,” I say. “And when those test results come back, you’ll think so, too. In the meantime, I have a friend down there who can lend me a hand. Ever heard of Sergeant Ed Nixon?”

  As I gather my things and prepare to go, Cavallo stands there, arms crossed, like a disappointed mother watching as her teen gets ready to run away. But to her credit, she doesn’t tattle to Wanda or even wag a finger at me as I leave. Pulling out of the parking lot, I check the rearview to be sure she’s not following. She isn’t. Cavallo knows better. She’s probably back at her interviews, hoping that on the next read-through the words on the page will change.

  Sharpstown Plaza, just across Bellaire from Sharpstown Mall, boasts a strip of mostly vacated retail spaces and an empty swath of yellow-lined parking reminiscent of the oil bust back in the eighties, which left so much real estate unoccupied. They used to say back then that the difference between a Texas oilman and a pigeon was that one of them could still put a deposit on a Mercedes.

  Although the signs are now gone, I can still tell from the color-coded facades which chains used to operate here – pretty much the same ones that operate everywhere else. I pass by on the Southwest Freeway feeder, taking a right on Fondren as directed.

  I caught Nix at the end of his shift, after he’d changed into street clothes and squirted on cologne. He was happy enough to check out an unmarked car and tag along, and now he’s keeping way back, just in case.

  Coasting by the Wendy’s on the right, I spot my red bandanna. Five foot seven or eight, in wide black shorts with white stitching and a loose-fitting Rockets jersey, the bandanna cinched tight over his forehead, covering his eyebrows but leaving his scalp exposed. He sees me rolling up and snaps his phone shut, slipping it into a bottomless pants pocket.

  He opens the passenger door, slips inside. “Keep driving, homes.”

  “Yo, ese, you got a name or what?”

  He brushes me forward, not looking too impressed by my mastery of the lingo. “Just move, okay? We can’t be talking right here.”

  I let my foot off the brake and coast back onto Fondren. He smells of fast food and stale cigarettes. A hairline goatee rims his mouth, and he has an ominous teardrop tattoo under his eye. I get a strange vibe off the guy, but people who can name names in a murder are a different breed, and strange is the only vibe they give off. At Bellaire he motions for a left, and then another left onto Osage, into a shady residential block full of low-slung ranch houses, their backyards divided by pickets of sun-grayed fencing.

  “Park under one of these trees,” he says, pointing to a row of oaks overhanging the street.

  I slide the gearshift into park, then turn in my seat. “So what do you know about Octavio Morales?”

  He answers with the flash of a hand, his half-formed fist snapping against my jaw, knocking me back against the driver’s side door. I wince, my teeth rattled. His other hand comes up, and I see a glint of metal. The notched round cylinder of a J-frame revolver. He punches forward with the muzzle at my belly.

  I go for his wrist, seizing the bone just in time to push the muzzle wide. The hammer drops and the cabin fills with smoke, like a bomb’s gone off. All I can hear is silence, but my eardrums throb.

  I jerk his gun hand forward, blading my body to get my right arm between him and the revolver. He buries his hand in my hair, ripping backward.

  Another concussion and this time the driver’s window shatters. Glass everywhere, and I’m choking on the cordite-filled air.

  I trap his gun hand against the steering wheel, setting the horn off. It blares, but I hear the sound as if it’s coming from over the horizon. I cock my right arm back, smashing my elbow into his face. His chin snaps back, so I pound him again. And again.

  His fist tightens around my hair, pulling hard, but I barely feel the pain. My elbow rams back at him over and over, until I feel his grip on the revolver loosen. He shrinks back, letting the gun drop, then fumbles for the door handle.

  I catch a handful of jersey as he goes, but he twists free and starts running down the sidewalk.

  Then I’m outside, leaning into the crook of the open door, the front sight of my pistol lining up over his shrinking silhouette. I’m breathing too hard to take the shot.

  My hearing fades back in with a distant screech of tires somewhere behind me. I turn, ready to unload on Nix, who should have rolled up with lights flashing at the first shot.

  Instead, a massive red Ford pickup speeds down Osage, the tinted passenger window sliding down. I can’t make out the driver until he’s on top of me, at which point his face is hidden behind a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun.

  I drop to the pavement. A hurricane of buckshot blasts through the half-open window, showering me with glass.

  The truck screeches off, accelerating toward my would-be assassin, who crouches winded on the sidewalk. Looking down at my pistol, I find the hammer back and smoke rising from the muzzle. On the ground around me, a half-dozen silver shell casings, even though I don’t remember pulling the trigger.

  When I try to stand, a knife-like burn runs through my left thigh. My pant leg is damp with blood, but I can’t find a hole, just black wetness and the smoky char of a contact wound. Up ahead, the truck’s passenger door opens and the man climbs in. I raise my pistol one-handed, take a breath, and almost pull the trigger. But I don’t, not wanting to miss and send a stray round flying.

  As the truck moves away, laying down more rubber, I slump halfway into the driver’s seat, dropping the cocked hammer with the thumb release. On the floor beneath the brake, the shiny revolver lies smoking, flecks of blood on the metal.

  Sergeant Nixon’s unmarked car pulls alongside.

  “Did something just go down?” he calls out.

  “Yeah,” I say, holding my sticky fingers up for inspection. “I just got shot in the leg. But don’t worry, the shooter got away.”

  Nix looks at me like I haven’t answered him. Maybe I haven’t. All the sudden I have this incredible urge to lie down. I set my pistol on the floor mat and stretch out, staring up at the car’s ceiling. Somebody’s in the vehicle with me, making this high-pitched animal whimper. I glance between the seats, but there’s no one in back. It must be me.

  In the back of the ambulance I inspect my new wool cutoffs, the left leg shorn to reveal a crisscross of white bandages. The paramedic, looking pleased with his work, gives my knee a slap. Thanks to the pain medication, I barely feel it.

  “You’re lucky it caught the meaty part,” he says, talking loudly in deference to my temporary hearing loss.

  “I feel lucky.” I lift my leg to inspect the underside. “Are you saying I have fat thighs?”

  He chuckles, climbing out of the ambulance. Down on the pavement, Nix looks haggard under questioning from Captain Hedges, who, in spite of having farmed me out, responded with admirable speed when the news reached downtown. We don’t take an officer-related shooting lightly around here, even when it happens to an officer we’ve thought about shooting a couple of t
imes ourselves. Mosser is out there, too, and so is Cavallo, who keeps sending told-you-so glares in my direction.

  Bascombe hops up onto the fender, then slides alongside the stretcher for a look.

  “You want to tell me what happened?”

  “Come again?”

  He repeats himself, dialing up the volume.

  “What I really want,” I tell him, “is to eat. I’m starving.”

  “You can eat at the hospital. But seriously, if this guy drew down on you without no warning, then – ”

  “No hospitals,” I say, shaking my head. “Look, you’ve got his description and his prints will be all over that revolver. I didn’t get the license plate of the truck, but I’m thinking you’ll be able to recognize it from the bullet holes. When you catch the guy, you can ask him what he was thinking. Me, I don’t know.”

  “We are gonna find him,” he says. “That’s a promise.”

  “I know we are.”

  He looks at the bandages awhile, shaking his head. “And that’s everything?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “All right,” he says, scooting his way back to the ground.

  In fact, it’s almost everything. I left out only the part about my visit yesterday to Tony Salazar. That is one angle I intend to follow up personally.

  Despite my protests, the paramedics insist on transporting me to Herman, where Charlotte turns up in an understandably apoplectic state. Cavallo, perhaps motivated by some instinctive revenge impulse, takes her aside, and instead of glossing over the details, fleshes them out one by one, making sure no aspect of the life-or-death struggle escapes Charlotte’s notice. From my bed I can hear them out in the hallway, and every so often one or the other will glance inside, Charlotte’s nose and mouth hidden behind her hands, Cavallo shaking her head at me.

  The doctors troop in and out, displaying about as much sensitivity as homicide detectives hovering over a headless corpse. One of them, a youngish Indian with a posh English accent, assures me that in spite of the superficial nature of the wound, it’ll make for a nasty scar, as if he can already imagine me showing it off years from now, telling the story to my nonexistent grandkids.