Assumption (15 page)

“You look like shit,” Felton said.

“I feel like shit,” Ogden said.

Bucky Paz stepped into view. “Ogden, come in here.”

Ogden followed the fat man into his office.

“Sit down. Santa Fe got an ID on the woman in the car. Her name was Carol Barelli.”

“I take it she wasn’t Irish.”

“Nope. She was Denverish. She was picked up for prostitution up there once. Still no ID on the woman in the cabin.”

“Anything on Carla Reynolds?”

“Last known address was in Chicago. The cops there checked out the address. No one there by that name.”

“Surprise, surprise.”

“Caitlin was a hooker, eh?”

“One of those on the Craig’s List.”

“Craig’s List. Guess I’m going on Craig’s List.”

Ogden sat down in front of the computer on his desk.

Felton looked over. “You on the computer? Who died?”

“A bunch of people,” Ogden said.

Ogden stared at the computer screen. “What is Craig’s List?” he asked. “I typed it in and nothing came up.”

“It’s one word,” Felton said. “No apostrophe. Haven’t you ever bought anything online?”

“As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”

“That’s where I found my car. Got a great deal. What are you looking for?”

“A prostitute.” The page came up and Ogden stared at it. He found the Denver site. He looked in the section of women ­seeking men and men seeking women, but that just turned out to be people in various stages of loneliness or desperation seeking friends or dates. Then he saw the word “adult” under the heading “services.” There he found not-so-veiled advertisements for prostitutes. Listings with headings like “Curl Your Toes” and “Hot to Trot” and “Your Place in Twenty Minutes” and “Cum on My Face.” Many had pictures of fairly rough-­looking women, some looking like addicts, some worse, and pictures of extremely young-­looking Asian women. He looked through them all, one at a time. He grew sadder with each face he saw. The rough ones looked sad enough and he could see the futures of the young ones. He was completely and thoroughly depressed by mid-­morning. Then he saw the face of Carla Reynolds. The heading read, “Giving Two Heads is Better Than One.” She was posed beside another woman who was holding the camera to take their picture in a mirror. The ad said that their names were Destiny and Petra. Carol Barelli seemed to be the one called Destiny, best he could tell. There was a phone number and no address. Ogden looked around the office, feeling dirty, feeling stupid for feeling dirty, feeling silly for finding himself embarrassed to dial the number. But he did. A woman answered.

“I’m calling for Petra,” Ogden said. He asked for Petra because he believed Destiny to be dead.

“You want to make an appointment?”

“No, I would like to talk to Petra.”

The woman hung up.

“You never have had any luck with women,” Felton said.

Ogden stood and walked to Bucky’s open door. “Sheriff, I think I need to drive up to Denver.”

Bucky Paz studied his desktop. “You want to take Warren with you?”

Ogden shook his head.

“Okay, go ahead.”

Ogden stopped by his mother’s house and told her he’d be gone for a few days. Her house was frigid. “What’s going on in here?”

“I’ve got the damn thing on the lowest setting,” she said about the air conditioner. “And it’s turning the place into an icebox. I want to take it back.”

Ogden leaned over to the look at the control panel. “Well, you do have the fan on low, but you’ve got it set to its coldest.” He adjusted the knob.

“Thanks.” She led the way into the kitchen. “You want to eat before you go?”

“I’m okay.”

“Two young girls. How awful. Is that why you’re going up to Denver?”

“Yes, to see if there’s anything to find out.”

“I made some scones. They’re plain, but they’ll be good road food. Want a thermos of coffee, too?”

“Sure, thanks.”

“You’ll be careful, son?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Four scones enough?”

“That’s great.”

Warren Fragua pulled into Ogden’s yard while he was setting his bag in the back of his pickup. “I hear you’re driving all the way up to Denver for a hooker.”

“I heard that’s where they keep them.”

“I’d offer to go, but, well, you know.”

“Your wife doesn’t approve of you looking for hookers. Doesn’t she know it’s the twenty-­first century?”

“She’s a prude.”

Ogden fell in behind the wheel.

“Give a call if you need help,” Warren said.

Ogden nodded.

Ogden drove north out of town and stayed on that road until he came to Interstate 25. It was only a five-­hour drive, but he felt like shit by the time he arrived. It was just becoming fully dark at nine o’clock and it was starting to rain. He checked into a Motel 6, stretched out on the bed, and fell asleep for what felt like the first time in weeks.

The next morning he grabbed some of what passed for breakfast at the Waffle House next door and then drove to the Denver Police Department. It was a big city and everyone moved like it was. Still, it was Denver and his cowboy appearance didn’t seem odd to anyone. He stepped up to the desk and asked if he could speak to someone in Vice.

“What, you get rolled by some hooker and her pimp?” the man at the counter said.

“No.” Ogden showed the man his badge. “I’m just the lowly chump deputy from a Podunk little county in New Mexico that got sent up here to find something out about a murdered woman. A woman who was arrested here for prostitution last year.” Ogden felt he’d diffused what contempt or simple ridicule the man might have directed at him with the words
chump
and
Podunk.

The man studied Ogden briefly. “Vice is down that hall. You’ll see it written on the door.”

“Thanks.”

Ogden did find the door and he walked in. A woman detective was seated on the edge of a desk, just hanging up the phone. She was tall, what his mother would have called a horsy woman. She wore her sidearm, a .38 special, butt facing forward on her right side. “What do you want?” she asked.

Ogden introduced himself and noted that she was even less impressed with him than he was with himself. He went on. “We’ve had two murders and I’m here to see if I can find out something about one Carol Barelli.”

“Destiny,” the cop said. “How does she fit into your case?”

“She’s one of the dead people,” Ogden said.

The cop whistled, shook her head.

“You knew her?” Ogden asked.

“Picked her up a few times. Busted her once. She was an alright kid. Smart.”

“Maybe,” Ogden said.

“I’m Detective Hailey Barry,” the woman said. She reached up and shook Ogden’s hand. “Don’t even mention my name.”

“What about your name?”

The woman cocked her head and looked at Ogden. “Halle Berry, the actress?”

“Listen, Detective, I find pot growers and throw sticks for my dog. I don’t know much about movies. I just found out about Craigslist this morning.”

Detective Barry smiled briefly. “So, what happened to poor Carol Barelli.”

“Shot. I believe by a man with one hand. Do you know of anybody with one hand?”

“Sounds like you got yourself a mystery.”

“Could you ask around a little for me? And do you know anyone called Petra? Another hooker, worked with Carol.”

“No.”

Ogden showed her the picture he’d printed from Craigslist.

“Don’t know her.”

“Do you have an address for Carol Barelli?” Ogden asked.

Barry sighed and looked at her computer screen, typed a bit. “I’ve got one here, but I’m sure it won’t do you any good.”

“Mind if I take a look at her arrest report?”

“You sure ask for a lot.”

“Sorry.”

Barry turned the screen so Ogden could see it. He wrote down the address and read quickly through the report. There was nothing that struck him as unusual. “Well, you were right about her being smart,” Ogden said.

“Very bright.”

“I didn’t have her pegged for a hooker.”

“Drugs,” the detective said.

Ogden nodded.

“She really wasn’t like the rest of them,” Barry said. “I shouldn’t say that. She was a lot like the rest of them.”

“You know anything about a guy with one hand?”

“Yes, he’s a drug dealer. They call him, if you can believe it, One Hand.”

“Know where I can find him?”

“No. I’ve never seen him. He’s never been busted here in Denver as far as I know.” Barry pushed herself away from her desk and looked at the ceiling.

“Also, I just wanted to let you know that I’m in town and I’ll be asking some questions, probably pretty clumsily. I don’t mean to step on toes.”

Barry nodded. “Mind if I ask where you’re going next?”

“I guess I’m going to find myself a hooker.”

Ogden used his cell phone that he always refused to use at home. He was sitting in his truck in the police parking lot. He called the number from the Craigslist ad.

“You want to make an appointment?” the woman asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She gave him the address.

He looked up the address in his Thomas Guide and drove the twenty minutes across town. The neighborhood was slightly industrial and the address he’d been given had a small sign that read N
O
P
AIN
C
LINIC
. There was N
O
P
ARKING
posted on the street, so he drove around the corner. It was just before ten. It seemed an odd time to call on a hooker, but the woman had answered the phone.

There was a buzzer button, but there was no knob or handle on the outer wrought-iron door. The inner wooden door opened. A middle-­aged Asian woman looked at Ogden, opened the metal door, and let him in. She didn’t speak, but led him by the hand through a dim room with a couple of sofas and into a room with what might have been a bed or a massage table pushed against the far wall.

“What do you want? Thirty minute, one hour?” the woman asked. She was anywhere from thirty to fifty, with a wide, almost pretty face and hair that was dyed light brown and streaked with a strange red. She wore a light blue smock over sweatpants.

“Thirty minutes,” Ogden said. “I just want to talk.”

“What?”

“Talk.”

“Wait here.” She left quickly.

Just as quickly, a younger woman came in. She was also Asian, pretty, with dark hair pulled back tight. She was dressed like the first woman. “Cindy don’t understand English good,” the woman said.

“I just need to talk to you for a minute,” Ogden said.

“To me?”

“Yes.”

“No, I Mama.”

“I want to see Petra.”

The woman stared blankly at him.

“Destiny,” he said.

Her expression changed slightly.

“I’m looking for a white girl.”

At first Ogden thought she was offended or angry. He could feel her tensing up, like a horse on the muscle. Then she laughed. “Oh, you want white girl.”

“Yes,” Ogden said.

“You don’t want white girl. You pick the girl you want. I bring in, you pick.”

“Do you know a white girl named Destiny?”

“No, no Desny.”

“Carol? Do you have any white girls?”

The woman’s feelings now appeared hurt. She walked out without a word. Ogden sat on the bed and waited. After about ten minutes, ten long minutes, a white woman walked into the room. She was not Petra and she looked none too happy to be there. She looked as if she’d just been roused and told there was a man there to fuck her. She ran a hand through her stringy blond hair and looked at Ogden with weak, blue-­green eyes sunk deep into her face.

“Okay,” she said, “what do you want?”

“What’s your name?”

“Shelly.”

“All I want is some information.”

“What? Are you a cop?”

“I am.”

“Ain’t no money changed hands.”

“I’m not interested in arresting you. I’m looking for someone who goes by the name of Petra.”

“What do you want with her? I mean, even if I did know her.”

“Listen, I’m not even a cop from around here. I’m from New Mexico. I’m just looking to ask Petra a couple of questions.”

“She’s not here.”

Ogden nodded. This was at least information. “Do you know where she is?”

“She used to live a few blocks from here. We was never friends. She shared some dope with me once.”

Ogden nodded.

“Do you remember the address?”

She shook her head.

“Can you describe the house, the building?”

“It was big and square and it had windows, like a building, you know. Yellow, it was yellow, hard to miss all that yellow. It’s on a really busy corner and there’s a big cyclone fence with wire on top down the street side.”

“You ever see a man around with one hand?”

“You mean One Hand?”

Ogden smiled. “Yeah, One Hand.”

The woman was either suddenly nervous or needed a fix of whatever fixed her, but she withdrew. “I’ve heard of him.”

“Is he a pimp?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’ve seen him.”

“Maybe. I don’t remember. Why do you want Petra?”

“She’s a friend of Destiny. Are you a friend of Destiny? Do you know Destiny?” Ogden did what he could to appear non­threatening. He remained seated. He avoided prolonged contact with the woman’s eyes, looking instead at her shoulders or hair.

“I know Destiny. What’s going on?”

“Destiny’s dead.”

“Oh, fuck, man.”

“She was killed in New Mexico. I’m trying to find out who killed her.” He pulled a copy of Carla Reynolds’s driver’s license from his pocket. “Do you know this woman?”

Shelly shook her head.

“How well did you know Destiny?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you do drugs with her?”

The woman said nothing.

“Thank you,” Ogden said. He didn’t want to scare her any more than he already had. He might need to talk to her again.

The big yellow square thing with windows that was a building was easy enough to find. A couple of young, rough-­looking men stood by the front door, smoking, leaning, staring at Ogden as he approached. Ogden was scared, but like when dealing with a bad horse, he had to keep his emotions, his fear, in check.