Aware that his arrival had been noticed, Bran walked into the cramped front office. The buttery smell of popcorn made him glance into the small waiting room. Currently unoccupied, a few vinyl and metal chairs were squeezed in, all aimed at a wall-hung television playing a raucous talk show.
The pop machine was in the office, along with a short counter and a calendar featuring vintage cars. As tense as he was, Bran smiled at that, remembering a similar picture he’d mooned over when he was a kid. Zach had called it his pinup.
A skinny, older man appeared from the garage. “Carlos Avila. That’s quite a car you have out there. It been damaged?”
“No.” Bran introduced himself and showed his badge.
Avila’s eyebrows went up. “What can I do for you?”
Bran handed him the drawing. “I have reason to believe this man may have worked for you.”
Avila studied the face. “He wasn’t here long. I had to let him go.”
“Why?”
The shop owner shrugged. “Bad attitude. Always thought he knew better than anyone else. Came on to any pretty woman bringing her car in, too. I gave him a trial month, let him go. He didn’t appreciate it.” He handed back the drawing. “Can’t say I’m surprised a cop’s looking for him. He was the kind that felt entitled. You know?”
Bran saw plenty of those. “Do you recall his name?”
Avila scratched his head. “Something a little different. I’ll have to look through my files.” But instead he stepped to the doorway leading into the first bay. “Howard? Got a question for you.”
A well-built, graying man about the same age as his employer separated himself from the others and came to the office, nodding at Bran.
“You remember that guy from this spring who only lasted a month? Had an earring.” He touched his lobe.
“Tag?”
“Yeah, yeah, that was it. Don’t suppose you remember his last name, too? Detective Murphy here is looking for him.”
Howard pondered the question. “Something real ordinary. Figured that’s why his parents gave him such a different first name. Not Smith.” He stared into space, finally saying, “I want to say Jones.”
Avila’s expression cleared. “That was it. Thanks, Howard.”
He nodded, looking at Bran. “What year is that Camaro?”
“’73.”
“Nice. Do the work yourself?”
“I did.”
It became apparent that Howard was a vintage car enthusiast. His baby was a ’55 Chevy Bel Air. The gleam of a fanatic in his eyes, he encouraged Bran to consider entering the Camaro in a classic car show being held in June. Bran took the information even as he was thinking how much his life would have changed by then. He’d be a father.
Unreal.
Carlos Avila had disappeared into a tiny office as the two men talked. He emerged with a tattered file folder covered in greasy fingerprints.
“Hope to see you there,” Howard said and went back to work.
Avila handed over the file. “Here’s what I have. There’s not much.”
“Anything is more than we’ve got.”
From Bran’s perspective, it was all gold. The application had to have been filled out by Tag himself. It would have his fingerprints on it. He’d supplied not only an address and phone number, but a social security number and previous employers.
“Did you check his references?” Bran asked, glancing up.
“The most recent.” The shop owner nodded at the application. “I made a note there. See?” He pointed to a scribble that had to be some kind of personal shorthand. “Means I talked to someone there. Wouldn’t have hired the guy if they’d had anything bad to say about him. Can’t say I remember what I was told, though.” He looked apologetic. “I hire a lot of young guys, which means turnover. It gets old.”
“I understand.” Bran picked up the folder. “Can I take this?”
“It’s all yours.”
Fifteen minutes later, Bran was behind his desk in the bullpen. His first call was to his brother, who had been expecting him. Zach didn’t argue about priorities.
“I’ll have to let you know whether I can get away to go talk to Greaver,” Bran added.
“Good enough. If you need me to, I can pick up Lina.”
This was a different kind of backup from what he was used to on the job. He wondered if he would ever learn to take it for granted.
Charged with energy, Bran went online, looking for a driver’s license—and found one for a John Taggart Jones. It felt unreal, seeing that face, photographed by someone at the DMV. He was younger than he had appeared to Lina, for good reason. The license was due to expire in a year, which meant he’d gotten it six years ago.
Bran shook his head. He didn’t know how the artist created such realistic likenesses, but this wasn’t the first time she’d been dead-on.
From there, he searched for the two companies that had previously employed Tag Jones.
The first one, an autobody shop in Puyallup, not far outside Tacoma, was legit. A manager who remembered Jones came to the phone and said without much enthusiasm, “He was all right.” Like Carlos Avila, he had to pull Jones’s personnel file for details while Bran waited. “He worked here a little over a year. Tell you the truth, I was glad when he quit. Competent enough, but he kind of wore on the nerves. I guess I’d have given him an okay reference, but I don’t remember ever getting a call.” The address he had for Jones matched the one on the driver’s license.
He’d left the job in September of the previous year and gone to work at The Car Doc here in Clear Creek in March. He must not have lasted long in the intervening job.
Bran took down the references Jones had given to the shop in Puyallup, although he didn’t have a lot of hope for them.
The most recent employer turned out to be fictitious. No such business had ever been licensed by the state, had a website or advertised in the yellow pages. When Bran looked up the address, he found it belonged to a Tesoro gas station that had been on that corner for years. The phone number was no longer in service. That raised the question: what had Tag been doing in those six months between jobs? Getting fired from someplace he didn’t dare give as a reference? Likely a friend of his had provided that recommendation to Avila.
Over the next hour, Bran discovered that the address in Puyallup had been for an apartment that, no surprise, had another tenant now. More interesting, the manager said Tag Jones’s name had never been on the lease. The name of the tenant at the time proved to be another dead end.
The phone number Jones had given Carlos Avila now belonged to a church. The address was for a rental house managed by a local real estate company. The woman Bran spoke to on the property management side told him the owner lived in Texas and did nothing but cash checks. The previous tenants had moved out in May of that year. It was a couple, she said, a Derrick and Melissa Cobb. She had no forwarding information for them.
“They had the house for almost two years and paid their rent on time. The house wasn’t as clean as I’d have liked when they moved out, but there was no significant damage.”
“Did you meet the Cobbs?” he asked. He was already running the name.
“Mr. Cobb. He dropped the check by a couple of times.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I...well.” Starting to get flustered, she said, “It’s been a while. He wasn’t very tall, I do recall that. Thin and...to tell you the truth... I’m not even sure I’d recognize him again.”
Having pulled up the Washington State driver’s license photo for Derrick Cobb, Bran had no doubt he was looking into the face of the man he’d seen on surveillance video casing two banks. “Did Mr. Cobb have anyone with him either time he came into your office?”
“Not that I recall.” She hesitated. �
��Should I be concerned if he reappeared?”
“I think it’s safe to say you won’t see him again, Ms. Rowman. However, if you do, please call me immediately.”
He’d just ended that call when Charlie walked in, chafing his cold hands together, his nose red and running. He left his parka on and headed straight for the coffeepot, despite his usual preference for a Coke.
“Damn, it’s cold out there!” He gave all three detectives present an obscenity-laced story about staking out a house in hopes the resident’s boyfriend would show, and freezing his ass off because if he’d started his car to run the heater, thanks to the cold snap the exhaust would have billowed. “Any passing idiot would have noticed me.”
“Did the boyfriend show?” Rich Delancy asked.
“No, goddamn it.” Scowling, Charlie cradled his mug of hot coffee and dipped his face almost into it to savor the rising heat.
“I can cheer you up,” Bran said.
He stopped. “How?”
Everyone looked up.
“Come and look.”
Charlie circled his desk and looked at the photo on the monitor. His eyes narrowed. “That’s not the guy your girlfriend described.”
“No, but I’d put money that it’s the partner.” Ignoring the eavesdroppers, he told Charlie about how Lina’s memory had been triggered and then everything he’d done since.
“Jesus,” Charlie murmured. “You have names. Have you called Novinski yet?”
“No.” He rolled his tight shoulders. A thought popped into his head. “What do you want to bet I’ll find a domestic violence call to that address?”
“The one Karl Ingebretsen told us about?”
“Yep.” His fingers flew. “And there it is. Derrick and Melissa Cobb.”
“Don’t suppose there’s any chance she’s gotten tired of being smacked around.”
“And left him?” A not-so-nice smile tugged at his mouth. “Now, there’s a thought.”
“I’m not coming up with anything current on him or her,” Charlie said a minute later, from behind his own computer.
“Or on Tag or Taggart Jones.” Bran stared at his monitor. “And—shit!—the social belongs to a Jones, all right, but not the right one.” He kept reading. “Edgar Jones is fifty-nine and lives in Miles City, Montana.”
“The father?”
“Huh.”
Edgar Jones didn’t answer his phone. Impatient, Bran called the Miles City Police Department and was lucky to hook up with a sergeant who admitted the population of his town was around 8,500 citizens. He happened to know Edgar Jones, who worked for a local company that did well drilling, irrigation, underground construction and trenching for pipelines. Within moments, the sergeant came up with a work number for Edgar, who answered immediately, sounding impatient.
“I have two sons. My older boy has gone into ranching. Haven’t heard from the younger in a good ten years. He was a worthless kid spoiled rotten by my ex-wife.”
Aware that Charlie was listening in, Bran asked, “And your younger son’s name?”
“John Taggart. Always went by Tag.”
“Were you aware that Tag has been using your social security number?”
“What?”
“You might want to check with your local social security office and find out whether any action on your part is required. Mr. Jones, would your ex-wife have stayed in touch with Tag?”
“She’s dead,” he said brusquely. “Passed away eleven years ago. I did my best with him, but he didn’t want to hear anything I had to say.”
He asked what that worthless son of his had done, and was disgusted at the possibility he might have robbed banks. “I washed my hands of him a long time ago,” he said. “Anything else you need to know?”
“I’d like your older son’s phone number, in case he’s heard from his brother.”
“Can’t imagine. They were never close.” But he supplied the number.
Nobody answered at that number, but Bran reached the voice mail for B & J Ranch. After leaving a message, he rubbed his face. His eyes were burning.
He’d always been a patient man, but he couldn’t seem to deal with the brick wall he’d slammed into. He knew he was being unreasonable. The breakthrough was real: thanks to a brave and observant woman, they had the names of both men who’d pulled off at least five bank robberies before becoming killers, too. But he’d have sworn he had the scum-sucking son of a bitch. Instead, the unrelenting stress would continue to chew like acid at his stomach, steal sleep, break down barriers that held back unwanted feelings.
He swore. “Guess there’s nothing to do but call Novinski.”
“They do have resources we don’t.”
“Yeah. Shit.”
The way this day was going, he wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer her phone and he had to leave another message. Time to pick up Lina, and give her the good news: sorry, babe, your best friend’s killer is still out there, still stalking you, and I can’t find him.
* * *
BRAN FLATTENED BOTH hands on the scarred countertop that separated the public from the inner workings of the Clear Creek Police Department and leaned toward the fat ass on the other side of it. He must look as pissed as he felt, given how Detective Scott Wiegand shrank back.
Bran had figured Zach deserved to be here, too. They’d both gotten the run-around often enough from the CCPD, who had investigated—if you could call their bumbling around that—Sheila’s murder. After talking to Zach, he had decided this should come ahead of confronting Rob Greaver again.
The empty waiting room was Wiegand’s only lucky break so far. The only audience was the desk sergeant.
“Here’s how it goes,” Bran said, voice low but projecting all the menace he could summon. “Either you cooperate now, or we take one of two other options. Number one, we get a court order. Two, we go to the press. Either way, your whole department will look bad. You have my personal guarantee.”
Scott Wiegand had put on some serious weight in the twenty-five years since he was primary investigator in the murder of Sheila Murphy. Sweat dripped down his face and darkened the underarms of the white shirt that stretched across a substantial belly.
“Threats won’t get you anywhere,” he blustered. “You don’t have any jurisdiction here. Why don’t I just pick up the phone and call your boss.”
“Feel free. But, you know, since we’re here as private citizens, I don’t see how Sheriff Brown can help you.”
“We ran an honest investigation. It’s too damn bad we couldn’t make an arrest, but you know why that was.”
“Yep.” Bran straightened. “You decided right out of the gate that my father was your man, and you never looked very hard at anyone else.”
“You can’t prove that.” The detective’s voice didn’t come out as strong as he’d probably been hoping.
Hearing his cue, Zach slapped down a familiar manila envelope on the counter. The meager contents were the sum total of what the detectives had accomplished back then—or what they were willing to admit to having done. And he’d acquired even that limited info through a back door. “You’re the one who has to do the proving,” Zach said. “What’s in this file is laughable. But we’re willing to go easy on you about that. You and Nolte were young. This is a small police department. It could be you didn’t get the training you should have had.” His voice hardened. “But this is an open case. If you can’t produce all evidence collected from the murder scene, I’d call that actionable.” He shrugged. “Or if we go the route of getting in touch with KOMO or KING 5 news, I’m going to guess some heads will roll here. You might want to start thinking about early retirement, Scott.”
“It’s not going to look real good if you have a lead you’re not sharing,” he shot back.
The man act
ually had a point there, Bran reflected, but he and Zach had given Wiegand plenty of opportunities to join them in reopening the investigation.
“Oh, we have leads.” Zach was on a roll now. “But see, we developed them. In the absence of cooperation from the Clear Creek Police Department, which is apparently afraid the original investigation might look inept if it were to see the light of day.”
Wiegand snarled an obscenity and launched himself at the swinging half door that separated him from getting his ass kicked. A scuffle wasn’t what Bran had had in mind, but burying his fist in that tub of lard might release some of the tension wound so tight he was ready to snap.
A man appeared from the short hall behind the desk sergeant’s domain. Detective Doug Easley moved fast, clamping his hand down on Wiegand’s shoulder.
Wiegand whirled on him, a fist lifted.
“Whoa.” Stocky and half a head shorter than his fellow detective, Easley took a prudent step back. “It’s just me.”
“This is none of your goddamn business!”
Easley stayed rock steady. “Sure it is. I have a stake in this department. Now, don’t make me call the chief down here.”
“Butt out!” Wiegand snapped.
“Let’s have a quiet word.” He looked at Bran and Zach. “If you gentlemen will excuse us.”
“We’ll be waiting,” Bran promised. Battle-ready, he didn’t like standing down, but this behavior wasn’t like him. And, damn it, Bran had had dealings with Detective Doug Easley before, and found him to be competent.
Turning his back on the desk sergeant, Bran kept his voice low. “You knew Easley. Did you ever ask him to check what’s been saved?”
His brother shot him an impatient look. “Of course I did. He said Wiegand is the detective on record, and I needed to deal with him. And we know how that went.”
Zach, constitutionally unable to hold still, took to pacing. Better able to hide his own tension, Bran leaned against the counter and watched the wall clock. Waiting for the minute hand to inch forward was agonizing. He wondered if he was getting an ulcer.
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