In the viewing room someone said, “They got the precipitin results. It’s animal blood.”
A murmur ran around the room. My knees sagged and I squeezed my hands together as relief spilled through me.
“Congratulations,” Bandoni said to Stern. “It ain’t Lucy’s blood.”
“I cannot pretend to be shocked by that.” She shifted in her chair and crossed her ankles. “Perhaps you ought to be asking yourself who would want to frame me. You have yet to tell me who implicated me in this. Or what you’re doing to locate him. Or her.”
“You have some names?” Cohen asked. “People who might want to hurt you? Outside of your cases, I mean.”
“I—no.”
“People who might be jealous of your attention to Ben Davenport?”
“I didn’t pay any attention to Ben.”
“Someone at work with a grudge? Either at SFCO or DPC?”
She turned the ring again. “Popularity has never been my goal, but it is also true that no one has any complaints.”
“What about would-be boyfriends? Someone particularly insistent?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Zach Vander,” Bandoni said. “Can you handle him?”
Her eyes flashed hatred at him. “How do you—”
“You filed a restraining order against him. Did you think we wouldn’t find out?”
She shook her head. “He was nothing but a nuisance. A railfan who overstepped.”
“A what?”
“A train buff,” Stern said. “I met him at a convention in Pennsylvania where I’d been asked to speak about crossing accidents. That was five months ago. For three months after that, he wouldn’t leave me alone.”
Bandoni threw up his hands. “Why didn’t you bring him up twenty minutes ago?”
“Because I didn’t even think of him. He moved away a long time ago. He’s been out of my life.”
“How was he a nuisance?” Cohen asked.
“He called me repeatedly at home and work. Sent e-mails. Photographs. I never took his calls or responded. But his messages were . . . rude.”
“Rude in what way?”
“Sexual. Suggestive. That’s why I called the police.”
Bandoni kept at her. “What were the photographs of?”
“Me.”
“Was he violent?”
“Only if you’re opposed to sadism.”
“What happened after you called the police?”
“An officer agreed to speak with him, based on his persistence and the level of distress he caused me. Two days later, the court issued a restraining order against Vander, barring him from contacting me or approaching within a hundred feet of me or my property. The officer told me Vander had agreed to stop all communication.”
“And did he?”
“I’ve heard nothing from him since. A month ago, I looked him up online. He’d moved to Florida.”
“Sadism,” Bandoni said. “That sounds extreme.”
“Locker room talk is how Vander referred to it. He told me I should be flattered, not offended.” Stern sank back in her chair. The heat from her earlier outburst had faded; she looked drained.
“Are we done?” she asked.
“Just one final thing.” Cohen pulled a second picture from his folder and set it on the table. It was an enlargement of the photo I’d taken of the dead man, shortly before the bomb went off.
Stern leaned forward, then jerked back.
“Sorry to have to show you this, Ms. Stern,” Cohen said. “But we’re trying to determine his identity. Have you seen him before?”
She shook her head, her hand over her mouth.
“Judging by your reaction, you know him.”
She shook her head again. She’d gone a bad color.
“You think he looks bad here?” Bandoni pressed. “You should see him now. Parts everywhere. We’re trying to identify him off one of the larger pieces. His thumb.”
She sucked in air. “I’m going to be sick.”
“We don’t mind,” Bandoni said. “We get that in here all the time.”
Stern gave a low moan. I didn’t know Bandoni could move so fast. He whipped out a paper bag from somewhere and shoved it into her hand. She did as she had promised and vomited.
Cohen left the room, came back with a damp paper towel and a glass of water. Stern wiped her mouth, drank the water.
“So you know him?” Bandoni asked.
She shook her head.
“You expect us to believe that? You all pale and throwing up?”
But Stern had regained her composure. “You show me a photo of a dead man and then act surprised when I’m affected?” She pushed back her chair, surged to her feet. Her suit jacket swirled around her in elegant pleats. “I’ve had enough. You want to ask any more questions, charge me, and then you can talk to my lawyer. And I’d like my car back.”
“Your car will take a day or two, I’m afraid,” Cohen said. “We’ll notify you when it’s available.”
For a moment, Stern looked so miserable that even I felt bad about it.
“In the meantime,” Cohen went on, “we will have an officer escort you home and stay with you while we locate Zach Vander.”
Stern’s hands flattened across her stomach. She suddenly looked very young. “You think he might have done this?”
“If you can wait here for a few more minutes, I’ll arrange for that officer.”
With the interview over, Mac said good-bye and left quickly. She and her team had something to run with now. I wasn’t sure how the Feds and Denver PD were splitting the work, but I figured everyone would be after Zach Vander. They’d put out a BOLO, check whether he was still in Florida, and talk to any family or friends in Denver. I found myself crossing my fingers. If it was Vander who’d set up Stern, the police and the feebs should make short work of finding him. And if he was the killer, then they would find Lucy as well.
I stayed behind in the room while everyone else filed out, gearing myself up to visit Hiram Davenport and mentally running through a list of questions I’d squeeze in before he sent me packing. But when I pulled out my phone, there was a text message from someone named Jeff, advising me that Hiram had suffered a minor medical setback and would see me the next morning at eight.
Relieved and disappointed both, I considered my options, then looked up the number for the Adams County sheriff. When a woman answered, I identified myself and asked to speak to anyone who could answer questions concerning railroad crossing accidents that had occurred in the county twenty-eight years ago.
“You want Rick Wolanski,” the receptionist said. “He retired five years ago, but came back last month to start digitizing our old investigation reports.”
“Perfect. Can you transfer me?”
“Not until tomorrow. Rick’s at the end of a fishing trip in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. He flies home tomorrow morning. I can have him call you as soon as he’s back.”
“He have a cell?”
She laughed. “Rick’s afraid of technology. I think the sheriff only asked him to digitize those files because Rick was always hanging out here anyway, distracting the deputies.”
I bit down on the frustration. “Can I drive up there and go through the files myself?”
“I’m sorry, but they aren’t here. Rick took them home to do an initial sorting.”
“Is there someone at his house who can let me see them?”
“Rick’s an old bachelor.” She sounded impatient. “I’ll have him call you just as soon as he gets in tomorrow.”
I thanked her and hung up. For just a moment I debated breaking into Wolanski’s house and helping myself to the files. But that wouldn’t help us locate Lucy, and would render anything I found inadmissible in court. So with few options and fewer leads, I decided to check on Zolner again. A call to the Royal Tavern confirmed him as a no-show, and he still wasn’t answering his phone. But my mind kept going back to the man the neighbor had seen. And
Bull’s truck. You don’t leave a $100,000 vehicle in your driveway unless you’ve got no choice.
I didn’t care about whatever hole Bull might have dug for himself. All I wanted was any information he had about that crossing—information that might explain the killer’s interest in it. I decided on a drive-by. Maybe it had all been a miscommunication, and I’d find Bull supervising the installation of shiny new aluminum siding.
Cohen caught me as Clyde and I were coming out of the observation room. Clyde did his best impression of the Leaning Tower of Pisa against Cohen’s leg, and Cohen buried his fingers in Clyde’s fur. Therapy dog.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think that either she knows that guy . . .”
People jostled by us, and we stepped back against the wall.
“Yeah?” Cohen said.
“Or she’s pregnant.”
Cohen’s mouth opened. Closed. I watched while he connected the dots. Another detective came down the hallway. “Meeting in five,” he told Cohen.
Cohen nodded that he’d heard. “The suit jacket. It bells out. Isn’t that the fashion?”
“Not for decades, I don’t think, although I’m the wrong person to ask. But it was more her reaction to the photo. That’s Stern’s job. She sees people in far worse shape than that, and in person. Why would a photo of a dead man make her sick?”
Cohen palmed his forehead. “Okay. That’s good. We’ll let her recover, then have another go at her. Anything else?”
“I think she’s lonely.”
“I saw that, too.” He tapped his notebook against his thigh. “It was something on her face when she talked about Ben. It was only there for a second. But if I had to give it a name, I’d be tempted to call it love.”
CHAPTER 11
I was twelve when my grandmother brought the news about my mother. That she’d been diagnosed with cancer while serving a twenty-year sentence for murdering a drunken lowlife named Wallace Cooper, who’d assaulted her. And that by the time the doctors knew of the cancer, she already had one foot in the grave and was getting ready to step in with the other.
When my grandmother finally found the courage to break the news to me, there was nothing left to do but go to the funeral.
I was angrier than I’d ever been with my grams for telling me too late.
But I was even angrier with my mother. For landing herself in prison. And then for dying.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
A single light burned at the back of Zolner’s house.
At four in the afternoon, a brand-new batch of storm clouds were bunched over the distant mountains, rushing the day toward dusk. The road still gleamed from the recent rain. Headlights swept shadows along the pavement, and the wind shook raindrops from leaves and telephone wires.
I pulled to the curb across the street from Bull’s house. The place was even less appealing in the dying light. That morning it had been washed up and resigned. In the cloud-shot evening, it had jumped camp into malevolent. The upstairs windows brooded sightlessly out onto the street, while the red front door gave off a wet sheen, like a bloody mouth.
There wasn’t a siding salesman anywhere around.
I raised my binoculars. A trace of light shone around the edges of the drapes covering the front window. I didn’t think there’d been a light shining in Zolner’s house earlier, but the day had been brighter then. The same red pickup sat in the driveway from that morning, still blocking the garage. Maybe I just hadn’t noticed the light.
Or maybe Bull had lied to his neighbor, hidden his Dodge in the garage, and was now inside the house, keeping a low profile. In the neighborhood I grew up in, people got creative at hiding, whether they were avoiding a sheriff’s deputy serving child-support papers or a bail bondsman looking to collect a debt.
Or siding salesmen who might be something else.
Clyde, sensing something important was going on, moved his gaze from the house to me and back again. I left my duty belt in the truck but removed the flashlight and clipped it to my belt loop.
“Let’s go fishing,” I said.
The instant I opened the door, Clyde’s hackles went up. He leapt out of the truck with his ears pricked and his nose raised to catch a scent.
Alarmed, I said, “Boy?”
Clyde looked at me, waiting for my command before he took a single step. But he was on high alert. Not the death fear. Something else.
I frowned and my hand went to the butt of my gun. Silently, I signaled Clyde and we moved toward Zolner’s house.
As we had that morning, we went up the weed-choked driveway to the front door. I kept my eyes on the house and yard and my hand near my gun. Clyde was all sinewy watchfulness, his head and ears swiveling. But whatever had caught his attention, he didn’t deem it an immediate danger.
I knocked on the door. My hammering echoed, then died away, and the only sound was the wind rustling through poplar trees in the yard. I knocked again, then Clyde and I turned away and eased around the house to the gate we’d used that morning. I watched for a signal from Clyde that this was a bad idea. But he didn’t escalate from hypervigilant to crazed, so I pushed the gate open and we slipped into the back.
On the concrete patio, light falling through a gap in the curtains at the sliding glass doors etched a faint white line on the ground. Clyde and I made our way past the piles of dog shit to the edge of the concrete slab. I leaned against the house, straining to hear. Far down the street, a dog began a frantic, high-pitched barking, and a man called to a kid named Joey to come inside now, goddammit. The dog yelped, a door slammed, and both the dog and the man fell quiet.
Clyde grew easier. Whatever he’d sensed seemed to have melted away into the gathering gloom. He wouldn’t have reacted to another dog with such alarm. Maybe it had been coyotes or a bear—they wandered into the city now and again. I hoped Fido’s yelp meant only that his owner had dragged him inside.
Clyde and I glided forward until we stood next to the patio doors. I peered through the opening where the curtain stopped short of the jamb.
I was looking into the kitchen. A battered table and two chairs sat in the center of the room, the table covered with half-crushed beer cans and two heaping ashtrays. Beyond the table I made out an old white stove, splotched with stains, and a section of countertop, also covered with beer cans.
The light came from a swing-arm floor lamp placed next to the table. A cord ran along the floor. By leaning back and angling my head, I could just make out where the lamp plugged into a white-and-gray timer that sat in the electrical socket.
Deflated, I pulled back. Maybe this was what amounted—in Bull’s alcohol-addled brain—to a theft deterrent. And probably it was sufficient. It was hard to imagine anyone being motivated to case this particular joint and break in, unless they were looking for aluminum cans to recycle.
I signaled Clyde, and we returned to the front of the house. I stopped at the single-car garage door.
“Achtung,” I whispered. Watch out. I grabbed the garage-door handle and yanked up. The door groaned and creaked and came off the ground eight inches before refusing to budge any farther. I eased it back down and walked over to the pile of discarded cinder blocks I’d spotted near the edge of the driveway. Maybe Bull was planning some home improvements. I selected one and returned to the garage. This time when I wrestled the door up, I wedged the block into the gap, then lay down on the cement and shone my flashlight inside.
The light picked out a few rusty-looking garden tools against the back wall, a gas can, and a snowblower. The rest of the space echoed with emptiness. So Bull really had taken off in his black Dodge. And now I understood why he hadn’t pulled the monster truck in. It wouldn’t fit, even if he folded in the side mirrors and climbed out the back. It must have killed him to leave it behind. And the only reason I could think for him to do that was because he was on the run; the truck was way too flashy to serve as a getaway vehicle.
I stood, push
ed the block free, and eased down the door. Clyde looked up at me and gave a small whine that sounded like the canine version of Let’s blow this Popsicle stand.
“One more thing,” I whispered. I walked to the F650, stepped onto the running board, and shone my light through the driver’s window, bracing myself for an alarm to sound. But the world remained quiet. The truck was empty, as clean inside as out.
I gave Clyde a signal and we headed back toward my truck. We were halfway across the street when Clyde growled—a low, soft threat that upended a gallon of ice water down my back.
I stopped and pulled my weapon. Clyde’s focus was firmly in the direction of my truck, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I backed up a few yards and directed Clyde across the remainder of the street. As soon as our feet hit the curb, I halted him and studied the truck from the other side.
I saw nothing other than a cracked and broken sidewalk, a neighbor’s empty yard, and a mailbox that had been staved in by drive-by vandals.
Clyde’s hindquarters relaxed a millimeter or two. He remained tense, but again, I got the sense that whatever had been here only seconds ago was gone. He and I continued our approach to the truck.
I hustled Clyde into the vehicle through the driver’s door, threw myself in after him, and yanked the door closed. Once inside the cab, I took a few hard breaths.
“The hell was that, Clyde?” I said.
Clyde kept watch out the window. His hackles were coming down, but he wasn’t happy.
I hit the lock and waited for something to show itself. A coyote, a bear, the abominable snowman. But the afternoon remained quiet.
My phone gave a soft buzz. I looked at the screen—a message from my boss.
Don’t forget therapy in an hour. Job requirement so they don’t fire your ass. Hang in there.
Trust Mauer to get straight to the point.
Furious at the strictures DPC had put on me for just doing my job, I considered blowing off the appointment. I was starting with a new therapist this week, and maybe he or she wouldn’t report my absence—the VA wasn’t exactly a model of efficiency. On the other hand, maybe I’d get suspended, assuming Hiram Davenport didn’t fire me first. How much help would I be to Lucy then?
Dead Stop (Sydney Rose Parnell Series Book 2) Page 17