Back on Murder rm-1

by J. Mark Bertrand

  “Keep the doors locked,” she says, like she’s afraid someone might come along and snatch me.

  I sit fiddling with the radio for a while, avoiding anything that promises to develop into a news update. Two meteorologists are arguing on an AM call-in show about the severity of a hurricane building out in the Caribbean, so I let them talk. My hearing seems back to normal, but I snap my fingers a few times just to be sure.

  As I’m waiting, a squeaky shopping cart rumbles past. I crane my neck around to watch. Last time I found myself sitting in a car, somebody tried to kill me. It seems like a long time ago, but it was only a few hours. The sun is just now setting on the near-fatal day.

  My phone rings. Checking the display, I see it’s Bridger.

  “You heard, huh?”

  “Everything’s all right?”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, “I won’t need you to do my autopsy for a while yet.”

  “Actually, I think Dr. Green has first dibs.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “Listen,” he says. “Are you sitting down? I have the results of that dna test for you.”

  My back straightens and I press the phone tight against my ear. “Go ahead.”

  “Sheryl did the comparison, but I went in and double-checked, just to be certain. We worked up the swab from the mother, got a profile, then made the comparison with the samples taken from the sheets at your crime scene.”

  “I understand the process, Alan. What did you get back?”

  “The results are pretty conclusive. .”

  “You’re killing me here, man, and I was already in some pain. Just tell me. Is the girl missing from my scene a match for Hannah Mayhew?”

  He lets out a long sigh. “No, Roland. It’s not a match. Not even close, I’m afraid.”

  The driver’s door opens and Charlotte leans in, asking me to reach over and pop the hatchback button. She turns, then does a double take, leaning further into the car.

  “Roland, what’s wrong? What are you doing?”

  Her eyes are wide with alarm. I glance down. My free hand is clutched around my bandaged thigh, squeezing hard enough to make the blood seep. I don’t feel pain, though.

  “Bridger,” I say into the phone, “I’ve gotta go now. Thanks for letting me know.”

  I close the phone and toss it onto the dashboard while Charlotte leans over my leg, clamping a hand over her mouth.

  So that’s it. My long shot proved too long. Of course it did. A coincidence like that, how did I ever convince myself it might pan out? I’m a fool. They all knew it. Hedges and Bascombe with their convulsive back-patting, the long-suffering Cavallo indulging my idiotic whim. It would have made for such a neat, simple conclusion, but then there are no simple conclusions or neat ones, either. I want to hit something, even shoot something — only I’ve done that already today, and it didn’t seem to help.

  Charlotte loads the groceries, then studies me for signs of collapse.

  “You are all right, aren’t you, Roland?”

  “I’m fine.”

  If I were the sort of man to learn from his mistakes, I would be fine. I could go home with my beautiful wife and let her prop my leg up and proceed to baby me, passing the next couple of days in a well-earned anesthetized haze. Then I’d go back to the job practically a hero, having fought off single-handed a pair of stone-cold killers, no doubt gang muscle, hardcore enforcers.

  Instead, as Charlotte drives quietly toward our neighborhood, as the sun’s orange hues deepen and the first fat drops of rain break across the windshield, I steel myself for a nighttime errand. Once she’s satisfied that I’ve been squared away in front of the television, confident enough for a glass of water and a couple of sleeping pills, I’ll dress quickly and limp out to the car, keeping a rendezvous with my last hope.

  Joe Thomson, if he’s going to drop in on me, won’t do it at my house. He’ll be waiting at the Paragon for me to show. And after today, there’s not a chance I’ll disappoint him.

  The girl tied to the bed and Hannah Mayhew are not one and the same. But Thomson’s still dangling the names of the shooters. My path back into Homicide just contracted into the tightest of crawl spaces, but it’s still there. And no matter what it takes, I intend to squeeze through.

  CHAPTER 15

  I wait, alone at a table, quite still in spite of the movement all around. For ten minutes. For sixty. For half as much again, until the ice in my untouched glass is down to a pair of floating lozenges, murkily transparent. I wait as the crowd ebbs and wanes, as the music changes and the lights dim. The second hand on my watch crawls by, but I’m done with checking it.

  Either he’ll come or he won’t.

  If he doesn’t, then I’ll make it my business first thing in the morning to track him down. Regardless of my enforced leave, ignoring all the hoops still left to jump through after a good shooting, I will make Joe Thomson my focus, my case, my mission in life. If he doesn’t come to me, then I will go to him.

  The bartender’s playing one trance anthem after another, the rapid pulse insinuating itself into my leg, which doesn’t seem to know the difference between superficial and serious wounds, judging by the throb no quantity of prescription tablets seems to dissolve. No sign tonight of the waitress Marta, sparing me any potential drama. There’s only so much I can take in the space of a single day.

  All the televisions overhead are showing silent baseball highlights, except for the small flat-screen just over the bar, where the close- captioned news is running. My eye, drawn to the screen, anticipates the familiar images of Hannah Mayhew, her Ford Focus, the seventies Greenwood Forest mock-Tudor she and her mother call home. Or a clip from one of the local interviews Donna Mayhew finally submitted to — not Larry King, not yet, but she’s finally doing her duty to the public, to all those strangers out there acting, as Carter Robb said, in loco parentis, at least as far as the grieving is concerned.

  But they don’t appear. Instead, the usual montage of men in dark suits lit by camera flashes making carefully worded statements to the press, interspersed with the occasional defendant trying to shield his face from the lens as he’s hustled up the courthouse steps. Maybe people have grown tired of Hannah, or at least need a break.

  I think about her mother, remembering clenched hands over the crinkly, highlighted pages of her Bible. The physical manifestation of her hopes. Then I ponder my own recently dashed hope, the link between her daughter and the girl tied to Octavio Morales’s bed. Given the nature of my work, it’s not the first time my hopes have run perversely counter to the dictates of human decency. Donna Mayhew wants more than anything to see a living, breathing girl walk through the door — a miracle, more or less, under the circumstances — while I wanted nothing less than to establish Hannah’s death, to match her up to the unknown woman who suffered and probably died in our West Bellfort kill house.

  She wants her daughter back, and what I wanted was essentially to take Hannah from her. To make her fit into my rubric, the missing puzzle piece. In that sense I’m no better than the rubbernecking voyeurs tuning in for the latest Hannah updates. Probably worse.

  “You of all people” — that’s what Ann said at the dinner table. The words take on a special potency, imposing themselves like a mantra onto the haze of music, the noise of the people all around. You of all people, she’d said, as if they — the powers that be — ought to know better than to put me, me of all people, in a spot like this.

  Me of all people. They should know better. Or maybe I should know better.

  The sudden buzzing in my leg, which I first interpret as an alarming new symptom of the gunshot wound, turns out to be my ringing phone. Even next to my ear I can barely hear it, so I tell the caller to hold on, flick a couple of bills on the table, and head outside.

  “Thomson?” I ask.

  The caller fumbles his words. “Is this Roland March?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, good, I thought I got the wrong number ther
e for a second. Hey, Roland, it’s just me. I heard about what happened today, man, and I just wanted to check you were all right.”

  I struggle to place the voice, then it comes to me. Brad Templeton. I haven’t heard from him in more than a year, not since he realized my string of special assignments weren’t going to yield new book ideas.

  “Brad,” I say, “it was nothing.”

  “Getting shot is not nothing.”

  Standing outside the Paragon weighing the relative seriousness of gunshot wounds is not my idea of a good time.

  “You’ve caught me at an awkward moment,” I tell him. “But I appreciate the concern.”

  “Listen, I was wondering. . they’ll have you riding the desk now, right? Taking a few days off? It’s just, I was kind of hoping you and me could have a talk about this thing you’ve been working on, the Hannah Mayhew case.”

  “Why, are you planning to write another book?”

  “The thought had occurred to me. So when I heard what happened today, then found out you’d been assigned to the task force, it seemed like a natural — ”

  “The thing is, I’ve spent the last five years living down The Kingwood Killing. Not to mention I haven’t exactly solved this thing. As far as Hannah Mayhew is concerned, there may never be a solution, though don’t quote me on that.”

  “I hear you, but look. . could we at least talk? There is some interest in this thing. I’ve already spoken to my editor about it, and her ears definitely perked up.”

  It’s hard to say no to Brad, mainly because of the relationship that developed during the book research. He was part of the family for a while, back when there was a gap to be filled, awkward silences that needed exactly his brand of unselfconscious banter to alleviate the strain. Even the things I take issue with in his book resulted from a kind of hero worship that, at the moment I was its focus, was profoundly gratifying. He’d reacted to our time together the way reflexively leftist journalists in the Iraqi desert responded to being embedded with troops, sloughing off whatever preconceived notions he’d had about law enforcement — and as a result “holding his manhood cheap,” a quote from Shakespeare he kept repeating until I asked him please not to anymore.

  I had no idea what the result of that idolization would look like on the page. The Roland March who dominates The Kingwood Killing goes through all the usual routines, but they’re described as if he invented them personally, and had mastered every one. Especially the one chapter, which I’ve never been able to reread, in which the intrepid March, cruising at high speed along the Atchafalaya River Basin, induces the confession of wife-murderer Donald Fauk, using his own tears of grief as a pry bar into the killer’s soul. Distorted by his awe, Brad got all the details right, and at the same time utterly wrong.

  “Look,” he says, probing my long silence for an opening. “I know you had mixed feelings about the book. I can respect that. But let’s at least talk, all right? For old times’ sake, if nothing else?”

  “This isn’t the right moment.”

  “Sure, I understand. I just wanted to see if you were okay. But maybe tomorrow I could give you a call? I could swing by your place, or maybe we could meet up for coffee. .?”

  Maybe I’m just getting rid of him, or maybe I really will answer his call tomorrow and meet him somewhere. Right now, I really don’t know. I just want to get him off the phone. So I say fine, give me a ring, I’ll look forward to it, then hang up before he has a chance to form an opinion one way or another on my sincerity.

  The biggest issue is Thomson, who hasn’t put in an appearance. I don’t know where the man lives, and even if I did, I’ve already done enough on that front. He’ll make contact when he’s ready, and so long as he doesn’t wait too long, I can be patient. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. We’ll see whether it turns out to be true. In the meantime, a thought occurs to me, a little visit I need to make, paid best at the dead of night.

  In addition to the nice boat Wilcox told me about, which must be housed on the water somewhere since I see no signs of it now, Tony Salazar owns a quaint mid-century ranch house in Bellaire, with a close-cropped yard edged in solar-powered night-lights. Behind the picture window, a silver arc lamp illuminates a small swath of interior space, a tulip table and some glowing plastic chairs, everything precisely arranged as if for a photo shoot.

  From my position down the street, the more telling details are only visible through my field glasses. Motion-sensitive area lights. Discreet video cameras mounted under the roof on one end of the house and the carport on the other. The fastidious little show house is not exactly a fortress, but Salazar has taken the usual precautions to ensure any guests, though uninvited, can never arrive unexpected.

  “Is this really such a good idea?” Cavallo asks.

  “You keep saying that. It’s almost like you don’t trust me.”

  “Bingo.”

  She didn’t appreciate the one o’clock wake-up call. But after some coaxing she emerged from her apartment complex near Alabama and Kirby, dressed head to toe in black and gray, like she couldn’t see a way for the evening to end apart from breaking and entering.

  Wilcox, equally unimpressed by the late hour, nevertheless coughed up the necessary information. In addition to the address, he volunteered the fact that Salazar lived alone, had paid cash for extensive remodeling to his pad, and owned a restored Chevy Corvair — presumably the tarp-draped form under the carport — and an extended-cab Ford pickup, of which there is currently no sign. I didn’t ask Wilcox why he had these details handy, and he didn’t ask why I wanted them.

  “So the plan is what?” Cavallo asks. “To knock on his front door and punch him in the nose?”

  “No, Detective. I’m guessing from the absence of light inside and the empty stall under the carport that nobody’s home.”

  “People turn off the lights when they go to bed,” she says. “You’d know that if you ever gave it a try.”

  “You’re welcome to knock on the door if you want.”

  The fact is, I don’t have a plan. I just want to see where the man lives, and to let him know that I know. I’ve already played the voicemail from Salazar to Cavallo. He must have left it while I was still at the hospital, though I didn’t think to check until I left the Paragon, already determined to reach out and touch him.

  “I heard what happened, man, and I just wanted you to know, whoever this dude was you met with, he was no informant of mine. In case you’re thinking I might know him or something. Yeah, I know I said I’d help you out and all, but after you left. . I don’t know, it just kinda slipped my mind. So I never even. . Well, anyway, I hope you’re doing okay, man. You can call me if you need to, but. . Anyway.”

  Funny thing is, if he hadn’t called, I might have given him the benefit of the doubt. As bad as it looked, as much as it looked like a setup, me getting a call from a would-be informant the day after I request an assist from Salazar, coincidences do happen. But for him to phone in with an alibi first thing, covering himself in case I shot my mouth off, all that does is solidify my suspicion. Wilcox tipped me that the guy was dirty. I should have believed him.

  “With guys like this,” I can hear myself telling Cavallo, “you can’t let things go unanswered. You have to look them in the eye, let them know that you know.”

  “Is that really smart?”

  “Maybe not, but you still have to do it. They have to realize that coming after you is gonna cost them something.”

  She processes the information, nodding slowly. “So what’s this going to cost Salazar? You can’t beat him down if he’s not at home.”

  “I’m not so sure I could beat him down if he was. He’s built like a welterweight and looks like he can take a few punches. And anyway, when a man tries to have you killed, you don’t put up your dukes and slug it out. This problem requires some lateral thinking.”

  I lift the field glasses again. They’re nothing fancy — my budget doesn’t stretch to night-vision ge
ar — just a pair of beat-up binoculars I keep in my scene bag just in case. Looking the property over, I run a few scenarios through my head. That picture window is crying out for a rock through the center, but minor vandalism won’t make my point. Something major would. He’s bound to have a grill out back, some accelerants handy, and I’ll bet his house, having been built in the heyday, is chock-full of asbestos. The idea of Salazar coming home to a bonfire. That starts to feel like retributive justice.

  “Just so you know,” Cavallo says, “I’m not going to sit here and be a party to anything illegal. If that’s what you’re thinking, you don’t know me too well.”

  “The man did try to have me killed. An eye for an eye, doesn’t the Bible say something like that?”

  Her smirk, glimpsed in the golden streetlight, mingles frustration and amusement. “Well, if you want me to hold him down while you put a round through his leg, okay. But I draw the line at damage to property.”

  I consider this. “Maybe he has a cherished pet in there.”

  “March.”

  I hand her the binoculars. “Any ideas?”

  She studies the scene awhile, then lowers the glasses. Her head cocks slightly. “You know, if Hannah were here, I think I know what she’d do.”

  “Or her friend,” I say, cracking a smile.

  The nice thing about being a cop for so long — or, depending on your perspective, the unfortunate, morally dubious, unconscionable thing — is that not only do you get to meet the worst sort of people but some of them end up being, if not friends, at least fond acquaintances. If Salazar can send a couple of gangbangers out with instructions to punch my ticket, I have to know somebody who could even the score up a little.

  “I’ll bet that car over there means a lot to him,” I say.

  “Well, I was joking about smashing up the car.”