All The Way Down

by DaveKearns

  I was fuming. "Can I at least get into my brother's house and car? Are you through with those?"

  "Yeah, you can use the house and car. We're done with 'em."

  "I'll need the keys."

  "I'll have Officer Burroughs drop them off at your motel in a little while. Try to stay out of trouble ‘til then. If that’s possible."

  "Sure," I said. "I’ll try not to cause any more crime waves this afternoon." I slammed down the phone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I got some change off the night stand and went along the balcony outside my room to the vending machine by the stairs to get another soft drink. I pulled the drapes on the window to let some light into the room. I needed to do laundry badly. My dirty clothes and the threadbare carpet made the room smell musty and old.

  I pulled the door open to let some air in. The heat flowed in with the noise from the highway but I didn't care. I'd be out of there in a few minutes. I'd move into Brick's house for a while until I could sort some things out. I stood out on the balcony for a while, leaning against the wrought iron railing. I sipped my drink and watched the traffic on the interstate. I spotted a cruiser in traffic a couple of minutes later and waited on the balcony while it pulled into the lot and parked.

  Sandy Burroughs had on her black and grey uniform and wore a pair of wraparound mirrored sunglasses. Her mouth was set in a tight grimace. She looked lean and tough, like a smaller, meaner version of Bullard.

  She came up the stairs and walked towards me along the veranda. Her grimace turned into a tight smile as she approached.

  "We meet again," she said.

  "Sorry. I didn't ask Bullard to send you over here."

  "No problem. I wanted to see you again anyway." She held out the keys Bullard had given her to deliver to me. "Bullard said you yanked his chain on the phone. Told me to tell you to watch yourself."

  "He's a complete ass. But you already know that."

  She took her sunglasses off and leaned against the rail beside me. I noticed that she didn't wear any makeup.

  "I wanted to ask you a couple of things. Off the record," she said.

  "Okay".

  "How long were you in the house before Bullard showed up?"

  I shrugged. "Half an hour or less."

  "Where did you spend the time? On the sofa? Back yard?"

  "I looked around out in the garage, went through the bedrooms. I checked out the camera stuff in the bathroom. Why?"

  "Did you touch anything?"

  "Sure," I said. "Doorknobs, handles on a few drawers, light switches. I probably put my hands on the countertops. I didn't know it was going to be fingerprinted or I wouldn't have been in there. Bullard told me on the phone that my prints were all over the place." It struck me at that moment that I had never seen a camera, just the set-up for developing film. I wondered where the camera was.

  Sandy was still for a second. Then she stood straight and arched her back like she was stretching out a kink. A hot breeze blew past us on the balcony, and she pulled a stray strand of hair back from her forehead. She watched my face while she talked.

  "I didn't find any useful prints in the house or on the car," she said. "I pulled Bullard's prints off the aquarium glass, and I found a few of yours on a big wrench in the garage, and that's about it. The rest of the place and the car had been wiped totally clean."

  Chapter Seventeen

  I wanted to sit down and think. We went into my room and got the A/C going. I sat on the unmade bed, stunned. Sandy took a seat in the chair by the door and fidgeted with her sunglasses.

  "Either you wore gloves and your brother was a neat freak," she said. "Or Bullard wiped the place down when I took you to get the rental car. I can't see why you'd lie about what you told me. Then again, I can't see why Bullard would lie about it to me, either."

  "Because he likes to make your life unpleasant? And make it look like you don’t know how to do your job?"

  She looked concerned. "True, but not good enough to account for destroying evidence."

  "Well," I said, "maybe I wiped off all the fingerprints to pique your curiosity, so you'd come by my hotel for an afternoon rendezvous."

  She cracked a small smile. "That’s a lot of trouble to go to. You could just ask me to go out for a drink with you."

  I shrugged. "I know what," I said.

  "What?"

  "Did you check the shower in the master bath?"

  She gave me an irritated look. "Yeah."

  "No offense intended. I opened the shower door and noticed that it had been recently scrubbed. There was a can of scouring powder in there. Right?"

  "Right."

  "Well, I couldn't have known that the thing had been cleaned or that the scouring powder was in there unless I'd opened the door, so there would have to be some of my prints on the handle to the shower door. Right?"

  "Unless you had gloves on, that's true. I can't think of any reason for you to wander around your brother's house with gloves on."

  "Me either. Or drive Brick’s car with gloves on."

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. "Then again, you could have wiped all the prints down yourself. Which would mean you’re involved in all this in some way."

  "I guess. Before Bullard got there I went through the house and wiped down all the surfaces so that the police couldn’t figure out who killed Brick, shot up my car, or broke into Brick’s house. Makes sense when you put it that way."

  She shifted her weight slightly to get more comfortable in her chair. "All right. Tell me everything that's happened to you since you hit town," she said. "Don't leave anything out."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Sandy followed me over to the car rental agency. I dropped the car off, charged the bill onto my credit card, and climbed back into the police cruiser with her. She didn't say anything on the ride back over to Brick's house. Maybe she was talked out from our conversation in the motel room, or maybe she was trying to decide what to do about having a commanding officer who destroyed evidence. There was occasional chatter coming from the radio and I listened to it, trying to interpret what was being said. She turned the volume on the radio down when we got close to Brick's house.

  "When you talk to Bullard, don’t mention our conversation this afternoon," she said.

  I watched her face in profile for a couple of seconds. Her jaw was set in grim determination.

  "Okay."

  We turned the corner onto the street Brick had lived on. I saw Brick’s car in the driveway and felt the anger flooding through my blood. Bullard was part of what I hated now. I didn't know if he was responsible for Brick's death, but he had wiped down the house after Sandy and I got out of there, which meant that if the house had been broken into and searched like I suspected, we would never find any fingerprints. He'd seen to that.

  She pulled the cruiser to a stop at the curb, facing oncoming traffic. I could see gray dusty spots on the door handles and the trunk of Brick's car. Sandy shifted the cruiser into park, leaving the engine running.

  "What are you going to do about Bullard?" I asked.

  "I haven't decided yet," She said. "I need to know more about your brother's death. What Bullard's team has found so far, leads anyone has. I was just called in to do the fingerprinting. Bullard and Collins are working the investigation."

  "Will you tell me if you find anything out?"

  She sighed quietly. "That depends. If Bullard's dirty and I can prove it, I'll turn it over to the state Attorney General and let him clean up the mess. Maybe he was just trying to piss me off by wiping down the prints. Who knows?"

  "I mean about who killed Brick."

  She gave me an appraising look. "Are you asking for a chance to settle the score?"

  I thought about it for a couple of seconds. The prospect of revenge on whoever had killed Brick gave me a little jolt. I knew that if I had the chance to get even I would do it without hesitation.

  "No. I just want to know if it's a hopeless case or not. I wa
nt to feel like someone's actually trying to find out what's going on."

  I hadn't been paying attention to the radio chatter, but Sandy must have heard her unit number called because she snatched the microphone off the clip on the dash and responded to a call.

  "I've got to go," she said. "My advice to you is to keep a low profile for a while. Whoever shot up your car may try for you again. That must have occurred to you, right? You've been square with me so far, so I'll tell you what I can about your brother's investigation. Don't get your hopes up, though. It might take a while. Some cases take months or even years."

  I opened the car door to get out, and she called to me before I shut the door. "Hey," she said. "Will you be staying here tonight?"

  "Yeah. I'm moving my stuff over. I've had it with motel living."

  "Just wanted to know where I could find you. Bullard says you’re a one man crime wave. I need to keep tabs on you."

  "I’ll give the crime wave a rest for a day or two. Drop by any time."

  "I just might."

  I closed the door and watched the black and white accelerate down the block to the stop sign. She slowed for the sign, and then she hit the lights and siren and kept right on going. I stood there in the street for a minute looking at the house and listening to her siren recede.

  Chapter Nineteen

  My plan was to drive the Ford back to the motel to get my things, but when I got into the car, there was fingerprint dust on the steering wheel, the armrests, even on the radio buttons. I stripped my T-shirt off and used it to wipe the dust off the surfaces. When I had most of the dust wiped down I drove back to the motel with no shirt on.

  I took the outside stairs to the room, avoiding the lobby in my shirtless state. I collected my dirty clothes into a pile and carried them out to the back seat of the car. I remembered seeing a washer and dryer over at Brick's house in the garage. I figured I'd just do a couple of loads over there.

  I pulled the final clean polo shirt out of my suitcase and put it on. I got my luggage, clothes, and pocket change out of the room and carried it out to the car. I went to the front desk and squared my bill, which was over four hundred dollars. My credit card was within a thousand dollars of being maxed out.

  It was a little after four when I started back over to Brick's house. I stopped at a supermarket and picked up some things. I hadn't looked in Brick's refrigerator, but I didn't want to count on there being much food in it. I knew Brick used to eat most of his meals out, and I thought that I'd be lucky to find a TV dinner in his freezer.

  When I got to Brick's house, I unloaded the groceries and got laundry started in the washing machine. Then I took a look at the kitchen and decided to wipe off the fingerprint dust before I started working on dinner. I found a spray bottle of glass cleaner and a roll of paper towels under the sink. I went over the surfaces in the rooms, painstakingly wiping off the grey smudges Sandy had left behind when she looked for fingerprints.

  I heard the buzzer on the washer go off out in the garage. I transferred the load to the dryer and got another load started in the washer. Then I gave Michelle a call at home. It was 5:30 and I expected her to be home by then, but Michelle's mother answered the telephone. I told her who I was, and she seemed genuinely pleased that I had called. She said that Michelle wasn't home yet and that she'd called to say that she was working a little late that evening. I thanked her and hung up. Then I called the quarry switchboard and asked to speak with Michelle. Michelle must have been close to the phone because it only rang once before she picked it up.

  "Hello?" she said.

  "Hi, Michelle, this is Del."

  "Hi, Del. How are you doing?"

  "Fine. Busy day today?"

  "Too busy. I was tied up in meetings with the benefits people until after four. I'm just now making copies of the work schedules for the drivers. Apparently the crew manager had to prepare one for the police, so he just gave me a copy of it. I'm also printing out the list of cars that entered the plant through the security gate that day."

  I thought about the card key on the console of the Ford.

  "Great. I really appreciate it, Michelle. I hope helping me won't cause you grief from your boss."

  "My boss isn't too wild about any of this, either. Some of the drivers are calling in sick and staying home."

  "What, as some kind of protest?"

  "Dean said that he thinks the drivers probably think that what happened to Brick could happen to them, and they don't want to get caught in the middle of whatever got Brick killed."

  "Oh. Okay. I wanted to tell you that I'm staying at Brick's house now."

  "Had enough of the motel?"

  "I was starting to see the wallpaper in my sleep."

  "What? Tired of the wagon wheel and cactus pattern?"

  I laughed. "Well... I'm just getting started on making dinner. If you'd like to stop by on the way home, I could put a steak on for you."

  "That sounds terrific. Why don't I give my mom a call to see if she can take care of Rosalie tonight? I think this is one of her nights off, but I'll make sure."

  She hung up and then called back a couple of minutes later. I had found some place mats in one of the kitchen drawers and was putting them on the kitchen table when the phone rang.

  "My mom doesn't mind watching Rosalie. I'll pick up the printout and be over in about half an hour."

  "Great. See you then."

  I turned the oven temperature to "Broil" and headed for the grocery store to get another steak.

  Chapter Twenty

  When the steaks were done, I turned the oven off and left the oven door ajar. The potatoes still had several minutes to go in the microwave, and I tore lettuce for salads into small bowls. Then I pulled glasses from the cupboard and loaded ice cubes into them.

  The doorbell rang. I answered the door, and Michelle was standing on the porch in a plain blue skirt and a beige cotton blouse. She had a bottle of red wine in her hand.

  I held the glass storm door open for her. She gave me a small kiss as she entered, and handed the bottle of wine to me. Until that moment, I hadn't thought about how uncomfortable it might be for her to be in the Brick's old house again. She walked stiffly into the kitchen and began looking at dinner. She had an inch thick bundle of green and white computer printouts under her arm. The microwave beeped that the potatoes were ready.

  "You're not bad for a bachelor," she said.

  "Thanks," I said. "I hope you like your steak cooked medium."

  "Yup," she said. She laid the printouts on the breakfast bar and carried the glasses over to the faucet to fill them with water. She turned on the tap and brown water came out of it.

  "Gross," she said. "The water's rusty again."

  She left the tap running and pulled a green plastic pitcher from the refrigerator. She poured ice water into the glasses and put the pitcher back in the refrigerator. I was watching her, wondering how many times she had been in the house before, how she knew the pitcher was there. I turned the tap off as she put the tumblers on the table. The water was clearer now.

  We talked about Rosalie for most of dinner. Michelle told me that Rosalie was born the summer of her sophomore year in college. Her mother had cared for Rosalie while she finished college and tried graduate school. I didn't ask what had happened to the father. I figured that Michelle would tell me in her own time.

  She poured a little more red wine into my glass.

  "I think you're very polite," she said "not to have asked me where Rosalie’s father is. Most guys I see more than once want to know."

  "I'm curious," I said. "But I figured you'd tell me when you were ready to."

  "My boyfriend in college was very sweet and at the time I thought I loved him. When we found out I was pregnant, he even offered to marry me. He wasn't mature enough to be married to anyone, though, much less be a father. I did a lot of soul-searching with my mother's help and decided to keep Rosalie. You can see that I made the right decision."

  "Ye
s I can. She's a beautiful little girl."

  "She's very fond of you, Del. She carries that golf ball everywhere now."

  I laughed. "I like her too. She seems to have a problem with sharing cookies, though."

  "We just need to make bigger batches," Michelle said.

  We cleared the kitchen table after dinner, and loaded the dishes into the dishwasher. She laid the printouts on the kitchen table. I pulled one of the chairs around to sit beside her so we could look at the printouts together. She had a stapled stack of paper from the security office, too, and she set that off to one side.