CHAPTER 28
You get to the point where you’re just empty. Empty of feelings and thoughts. Of bone and flesh and blood. Empty of hope and despair.
You aren’t dead. But you aren’t living, either.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
“You’re hiding him, Delia,” I said from across the bar.
Delia looked even more tired than she had two mornings ago. Her ponytail hung loose and her bangs lay flat with grease. The bags under her eyes had grown to the size of steam trunks. She’d swapped the Close Encounters T-shirt for one that read I HATE BEING SEXY, BUT SOMEBODY HAS TO DO IT.
The Royal wasn’t any cheerier the second time around. The pool table was empty, and the handful of customers gathered on their stools at the far end of the bar looked like mourners at a wake. Outside, behind the tavern, a dog barked. I’d gone around back to check on it before I walked into the Royal. Figured it was probably the same dog I’d heard on my first visit.
Now, in the low haze of smoke, Clyde’s tail flagged. Maybe he picked up on the desolate vibe, too. Or maybe it was the dog out back, barking, barking, barking.
Delia folded the bar rag she’d been using when Clyde and I walked in and shook her head at me. “You think I’d be working double shifts if I had Fred Zolner stashed somewhere like a backup bag of M&M’S?”
“I think you’re tired because you followed him to Gillette Friday night so he could leave his truck up there. Because that’s the kind of person you are. Always ready to help a friend in need. Especially when that friend is single and comes with a pension.”
She flushed and rubbed at an invisible bit of dirt. “You’re talking crazy.”
“Almost seven hundred miles, round-trip. I’m guessing you guys stopped for gas somewhere between here and there. Probably somewhere remote because Bull was worried about being followed. He wouldn’t want to take a chance anywhere near Denver.” I gave her a heavy look. “Am I going to have to pull every security camera at every gas station between Denver and Gillette?”
She licked her lips. “You want to give me a ‘why’ to go with your crazy story?”
“What ‘why’ did he give you, Delia? Did he let you know that by helping him, you might be putting yourself in danger? If he really wanted people to think he was in Gillette, he should have at least pretended to check into a room.”
She was blinking rapidly now. “What kind of danger?”
“You familiar with the term psychopathic killer?”
She mustered up a derisive snort. “What I think is that you’re crazier than he is. Now I need to get back to work.”
All at once, I’d had enough. The exhaustion and anger came boiling up, a toxic sludge of fury and frustration. When Delia made a move to walk away, I reached across the bar, grabbed her by the arm, and held tight. Clyde barked, and outside the other dog howled in response.
“If you walk away from me,” I said, “I will bust you on code violations. The cigarette smoking. That pool table blocking the back exit. I’m sure I can find a lot more. The city will shut you down so fast you’ll get whiplash.”
Her face paled. “You wouldn’t.”
“Maybe they’ll only shut you down until you clean everything up,” I said. “But that might turn into forever because you won’t be able to make payments without any money coming in. After that, I’ll find a reason for the police to search your home. Maybe for some recreational drugs, or a notice of unpaid taxes. I’m sure there’s something in your past I can work with, Delia. This is a matter of life and death. Do not,” I finished, “fuck with me.”
The stricken look on her face almost made me ashamed. But I got over it.
One of the zombies down the bar stirred and blinked in our direction. I leaned in close to Delia in case he had his hearing aids in. “You’ve seen the news reports about the missing child.”
Some life came back into her eyes. “Lucy Davenport? What’s that got to do with Bull?”
I released her. “He’s got information that might help. Maybe something he doesn’t even know he has.” It was probably a lie, but I wasn’t feeling particular. “So it could be he’s hiding from his gambling debts, or from whoever killed the Davenports. I don’t care. I just need to ask him some questions.”
Down at the other end of the bar, one of the zombies opened his mouth. I was sure I could hear it creaking.
“Delia!” the zombie called. “Another beer if you’re done yapping.”
“Be right back,” she said to me.
I forced myself not to grab her by the throat. I watched as she headed down to refill the guy’s glass. Clyde looked up at me to see if we were ready to go. I’m sure he found the stink of the smoke almost unbearable.
“Hang in there, pal,” I said.
Delia had finished pouring. Now she slipped her phone out of her pocket. Bingo. Speed dial to Zolner, no doubt. Maybe she’d talk him into meeting with me. If not, I’d start breaking the place apart until she told me where he was.
The conversation was a hot and heavy one, it looked like, with Bull doing most of the talking. But after five or six minutes, she slid the phone back in her pocket and returned to me.
“He’s awful pissed,” she said.
“Then everything’s normal.”
“He’s in a room in the back.”
CHAPTER 29
We all have our price. If we’re lucky, we never learn what it is.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
Bull sat on a cot in a storage room behind a makeshift screen of stacked beer cases. The room consisted of a concrete floor and walls, with metal rafters high overhead, all weakly illuminated by the light of a gooseneck lamp. Set high in the wall behind him was a narrow rectangle of window, which even during the day probably let in almost no light.
Bull was fat and fleshy with that gone-to-seed look you find in ex-cops who have no desire to keep up with the physical. His hair was close-cropped, his nose red with broken capillaries. His good eye watched me coldly; he wore a patch over the other. He looked like an immense, bloated spider sitting at the center of a web that was empty of all but the wreckage of dreams.
His head swiveled to follow me as Clyde and I entered the room. He wore shorts and a wife-beater shirt. The room reeked of beer and the overpowering stench of days-old sweat. Beneath that was the sharp tang of Bull’s fear, like electrical current running behind a wall.
Beyond the cot was a desk, and on top of that were piles of food wrappers and a small fan laboring to circulate the stale air. Outside the weak halo of the lamp, the room was black as pitch.
Bull’s eyes stayed on mine. “You’re Jake Parnell’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
I downed Clyde next to the boxes of Pabst and Budweiser. I was carrying a bottle of Rebel Yell and a glass. I walked past Bull to the desk, set down the glass, and opened the bottle.
I showed him the booze. “Am I right in guessing this is your poison of choice? Beer and Rebel Yell?”
“Only liquor I drink. Your dad tell you that?” His eyes followed my hands. He licked his lips. “I remember when you weren’t much taller than my knee. You were a spitfire. Heard you stayed that way when you grew up.”
Bull chattered, but his uncovered eye remained flat. His accent was as long and drawled as I remembered it. The only thing gentle about him.
I handed him a glass with a finger of bourbon in it.
“Go on,” I said. “Drink up.”
He gulped the liquor and held the glass up to me. I poured more. He drank that, too. I poured a third glass, but held it out of reach, then snagged the bottle. I spotted a folding chair leaning against the wall, popped it open, and sat down. I put the bottle and the glass of bourbon on the floor.
“Let’s consider that a warm-up,” I said.
“I don’t know what you think I have to do with that little girl.” His eye made a sticky click when he lowered and raised the lid. Like a snake’s third eyelid. “But I swear I
don’t know anything about her. I’m not so far gone I wouldn’t tell you if I knew.”
He struck me as a man who was as far gone as it was possible to go. But still, I believed him.
“How long you been on Hiram’s payroll, Bull?”
The change in topic didn’t throw him.
“I retired eight years ago,” he said.
“Not that payroll. I mean the one that covers your gambling debts. The one that has you doing things that fall a little too far on the wrong side of the line.”
He eyeballed the bourbon. I passed him the glass, and he tilted his head back and drank it down in one gulp.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“What I think, Bull, is that you’re not a bad man. Sure, you’ve got a bit of a gambling problem, but who doesn’t have some sort of addiction? Pills, alcohol, sex. Television or solitaire. There’s something that gets to all of us. It’s not our fault. We’re just wired that way.”
He was nodding as I spoke. He’d probably told himself this story a million times. And from what I knew about addiction, it was at least partially true.
“So I can understand your wanting to pick up a little extra work,” I said. “A railroad cop’s pension doesn’t go very far, does it? I mean, I would know.”
“It’s not enough to support a rat,” Bull agreed. “Not if the rat has any ambition.”
“And you want more. Of course you do. Hiram’s money gives you that chance.”
I watched a bead of sweat make its way through the hair on his right leg, the one he’d stretched out in front of him. His scalp shone through the buzz cut.
“What addictions do you think a man like Hiram has?” I asked. “A man who can have whatever he wants? What are his weaknesses?”
Bull smiled. The grin stretched his cheeks and flattened his face into the kind of visage you’d see in a fun house mirror.
“Power and pussy,” he said. His good eye glittered. “What any man would take if he could.”
I thought of Raya Quinn and Betsy King and Veronica Stern and wondered how many other women Hiram had been with. It was appallingly easy for a man in power to get what he wanted—from other men as well as from women. I wondered about Bull’s relationship with Delia. For a single woman with nothing but Medicaid in front of her, even a man like Bull had power. Queasily, I pushed the image out of my mind.
I offered more bourbon, and Bull held out his glass.
I said, “So Hiram’s sitting up there in his gold tower, commanding the world. And here you are, hiding like a mouse in a hole, waiting for the cat to find you. You did things for Hiram, followed his orders. And where has it gotten you?”
Bull watched me in silence. I could hear the second hand on my watch tick steadily. Noise from the television set in the bar filtered faintly through the walls. A ball game.
“I’m guessing at heart you’re a good man, Bull. And it eats at you, the things Hiram has had you do all these years. Unsavory things. Illegal things. Like sabotaging Lancing Tate’s trains.”
“I’m not confessing to anything.”
“Maybe some of the things he’s had you do even led to his family getting hurt and killed. And Lucy going missing. But here’s the deal.” I leaned forward, resting my forearms on my thighs, projecting an image of caring concern and hoping he wouldn’t see through it. “The thing I want you to know, right from the get-go, is that the only person in trouble is Hiram. Not you. Not anyone else he hired to do his dirty work. Hiram gave you orders, paid you a lot of money, and you did what you had to do. And that means I can protect you.”
He snorted, swiped at his nose with the bottom of his filthy T-shirt. “I’m not that naive.”
“It’s not men like you the FBI wants. It’s men like Hiram. You’re just the means to get to the really big guys, the trophy animals. You testify, and the Feds make all your troubles go away. Gambling debts. Killers like Roman Quinn—” Bull twitched at the mention of Roman. “Anything that’s a problem for you. The Feds can make it go away. Then, if you want, you can start somewhere new. Somewhere fresh.”
“Why are you telling me all this? What is it you want? I told you, I don’t know anything about the kid.”
“I know, Bull. I know you’ve got nothing to do with what happened to the Davenports. But the money Hiram’s been paying you went up recently—the Feds have already looked at your bank account. I think Hiram knew trouble was coming and he paid you to watch his son and his family. You’d done security work for him in the past, right? Now maybe you’ve lost your edge. Samantha must have seen you or sensed you—she thought you were a stalker.” I shrugged. “But so what? Watching out for someone isn’t a crime. I’m just wondering if you saw something you don’t even know is important.”
Bull shrugged. “Hiram got some threatening letters from the guy you just mentioned. Roman Quinn. Hiram said the guy’s story was a bunch of bullshit, but he was worried about his family.”
“Did he call the police?” I asked, knowing damn well Hiram hadn’t. Calling the police would lead to Roman, which would lead to the whole story getting out. Bad timing, when you were competing for billions in federal funding.
“He likes to handle things himself.”
“So were you watching the family last Friday? The day this started?”
Bull nodded. “It was a pain in the ass watching them, with everyone all over the place. I kind of moved around, rotated who I was watching. On Friday, I was watching Samantha. Beautiful woman, Samantha.”
I’ll bet you were watching her. “Where was she?”
“At her studio. I was about to leave, go check on the boys—they were at summer camp. Then Sam up and left by herself, without her assistant, so I followed her.”
“Where did she go?”
“That place near where she ended up dying. That old cement factory.”
A spatter of rain hit the window high up in the wall. Clyde lifted his head.
“What did she do there?” I asked.
“She just took a lot of pictures. I don’t know why. She already had a lot of photos of that place. It’s uglier than I am—why would anyone want to look at pictures of it?”
“Where, exactly, did she go in the factory?”
“She parked at the gate, walked in. There’s a gap there between the fence and the gate. She went by the beehive things—”
“The kilns?”
He shrugged. “Whatever. I followed her that far, but when she wandered in deeper with her camera, I decided to wait. I was afraid she’d see me. After half an hour or so, she came back out. She went right by me without seeing me, then got in her car and left. I was finishing up my cigarette, so I didn’t leave right away. I should have, though.”
“A man came,” I said, remembering the body outside the kiln and what Cohen had said about the ballistics not matching. “He surprised you.”
“You know about that?”
“The gun used on the Davenports was different from the one that killed the man at the factory.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “What kind of weapon you have, Bull? Man like you, it’ll be high-caliber. When the police find it—”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Bull said quickly. “Asshole came out of nowhere, running at me. I was already spooked as shit. I had my gun since I was on duty, watching out for that crazy Roman Quinn. I thought it was him. So I brought the gun up fast and shot him.”
“In the stomach.”
“Right. In the stomach. I didn’t have time to get my gun up more than that.”
“Did you call an ambulance?”
“Why bother? The guy was dead.”
“You have any idea who he was?”
Bull shrugged. “I checked his wallet. Dave something-or-other. He worked for some engineering firm.”
Alfred Tate’s surveyor. “Clinefeld Engineering?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Okay, Bull. Not your fault.” I kept my hands fisted tight together so I wouldn’t choke the life out of h
im. My heart was racing now. The threads of this case were so knotted I wasn’t sure we’d ever unravel all of them. But Bull was pulling at least a few of the threads free.
“What happened after that?”
“I snapped a photo, sent it to Hiram. He said it wasn’t him. Wasn’t Roman. I started freaking out, figuring I’d just killed some innocent guy. I went home to clean up. But there was a note on my door.”
“Go on.”
“It said, ‘I’m coming for you.’ It was signed with an X, which is how the letters to Hiram had been signed.”
“So you left town,” I said.
“Damn straight. I was supposed to wait around for some guy to break in and kill me in my sleep? Hiram didn’t pay me that much. Plus there was the guy I shot on accident. I had to figure out what to do about that. I needed time to think.”
The disappointment bit deep. I’d been hoping he’d seen Roman go into the Davenports’ home, maybe followed Roman and Samantha and Lucy when they left in Samantha’s car. I’d been hoping he’d have some clue to Lucy’s whereabouts.
I got to my feet and signaled Clyde that he was free to get up. I poured Bull another round. Why not? It might be his last. And we weren’t done yet. Not by a long shot.
While Bull had been talking, I’d been doing some mental fact-checking, running down what I knew about the night of Raya’s death. And what I knew about Bull.
“Deadman’s Crossing,” I said. “Does that ring a bell?”
“I remember it. It’s an overpass now, but it used to be a grade crossing.”
“Do you remember the last accident that occurred there?”
“Not in particular.”
“July 1982. A woman named Raya Quinn.”
Bull set down the empty glass and pushed the trash around on the desk until he found a metal nail file. He placed the tip beneath his thumbnail and scraped out a wedge of dirt. “I don’t remember.”
“Young. Beautiful. Had an affair with Hiram and bore him a son. That Raya Quinn.”
“Oh.” A smiled played around his lips. “That Raya Quinn.”
“You knew about the affair.”
He nodded slowly, the eye patch black in the dim light, like an empty socket. “I was the one set things up for him after she caught his eye. She was just a high school kid when it started. Sometimes I picked her up, drove her to a hotel. I’d watch out for them while they were inside doing the nasty. Then I’d drive her back home. Get her something to eat if she was hungry. I did a lot of things for Hiram Davenport back then, just like now. If he needed something, I took care of it.”
Dead Stop (Sydney Rose Parnell Series Book 2) Page 32