Dead Last (33 page)

Sawyer stood up, staring at Thorn, then back at Frank.

“Let me get this straight. Now the story is, Gus drowned his daughter and he and I are colluding in some kind of cover-up?”

“Do I think you’re in cahoots with Mr. Dollimore? At this point, I think anything’s possible.”

“Gus wouldn’t do that.”

“So bottom line, the story we’re staying with is, Dee Dee comes outside, falls overboard while puking?”

Sawyer moved his lips but couldn’t find anything to say.

“You know,” Frank said. “We might be getting close to that magic moment, son, when it’s time to hire yourself an expensive defense attorney.”

Sawyer took his seat again.

“I’m talking to you voluntarily. I’m not hiding anything.”

“Right,” Frank said. “I appreciate that. The entire law enforcement community couldn’t function without good citizens like yourself willing to share their knowledge openly and freely with folks like me. On behalf of—”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Thorn said. “But could I ask a question?”

Frank puffed up his cheeks and blew out a lip-fluttering breath.

“What took you so long?”

“I know I don’t have any special standing with you, Sawyer.”

Sawyer looked over at him and said, “Well, you got that right.”

“But maybe you could tell me one thing that’s been bugging me.”

Sawyer fixed his gaze on a tropical watercolor across the room.

“The Zentai Killer, the TV version, her name’s Valerie?”

“Valerie Braun.”

“What makes Valerie tick? Why’s she doing what she’s doing? Killing people, leaving the obits behind. Is it to get even with her twin sister? Because her twin is such a goody-goody big-time cop. Is that it, sibling rivalry that went out of control? Please don’t tell me she was traumatized in her youth.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Like who isn’t?”

“Sibling rivalry,” Sawyer said. “That’s a simplistic way to put it, but okay, that’s close enough.”

“I got to have things simple,” Thorn said. “Otherwise, it’s just
whoosh.
” He made a one-handed gesture, a projectile skimming over his skull.

“Is that all?” Frank asked Thorn.

“One more little thing, then I’m done.”

“Oh, good.”

“I saw the photographs on the wall of the garage apartment. When you and Flynn were kids, all the games you played. Archery, bocce ball. Kind of a unique assortment of sports. What I didn’t see was anything with a ball and glove. So I was curious. You ever play catch with anybody? A glove, a baseball, throwing it back and forth? Hit some groundies to each other.”

Sawyer combed a hand through his disheveled hair. It stayed disheveled.

“Never,” Sawyer said. “Never played baseball. Never interested me.”

“Well, it’s not too late. Maybe you should give it a try sometime.”

TWENTY-SIX

AGENT ALICE RIVLIN WAS WAITING
by Frank’s Taurus. When they arrived, she came around the front of the car with a sheaf of papers in her hand. Short, lithe, carrying herself with the proud and fluid stride of a young matador. Fierce but relaxed, glancing through the windshield at Thorn with something less than goodness in her heart.

Outside the driver’s door she and Frank huddled for a moment. Rivlin passed him the papers. Frank studied them, they exchanged a few words, he nodded at the woman, gave her a pat on the shoulder, and they parted.

Walking away, Rivlin brushed at her blouse where Sheffield touched her.

Frank got behind the wheel and stretched around to set the papers on the seat behind him.

“She’s sadly disappointed in me. That’s what she said.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m acting so goddamn unprofessionally.”

“You are?”

“Carting you around. A citizen. Letting you sit in.”

“Maybe I should speak to her, show her I’m harmless.”

“Oh, yeah, that would go over big.”

On the drive back to Spring Garden, Frank drifted off, started mumbling to himself, nothing specific Thorn could catch, though he recognized the tone. Taking both sides of some logical argument, the back and forth, presenting a thesis, tearing it down, brick by brick. Mumbling it all out as if Thorn were elsewhere.

On Dixie Highway Sheffield swung into a fast food drive-through, didn’t ask what Thorn wanted, just ordered four fish sandwiches and fries and two Cokes, put his bag in the back and dumped Thorn’s sack in his lap, and kept on driving.

Thorn watched the summer sky filling with honeyed dust, a fine powdery light that filtered through fronds and clusters of arecas and flooded the canopy of oaks and black olives with a mellow radiance. At that hour of the late afternoon, the sky was choosing and discarding pigments every minute, from a dusky wash of burnt rose smeared with plum sauce to wispy clouds with the smoky luminescence of a sheet of surf running up a white sand beach. Hawks and herons and egrets rode the high currents, taking their sweet time, luxuriating in the last moments of daylight.

Nothing the city fathers could ever build, nothing any developer could devise, no magical architecture, no wild aquatic designs, no sculptured neon or gleaming towers in the sky, no man-made extravagance could ever rival the simple interplay of tropical light and salt-laden maritime air that was freely provided every day. They might as well stop trying.

As Frank turned onto April’s street and they saw the carnival of trucks parked from one end of the block to the other, Frank broke the spell.

“You buy any of that? Sawyer’s version.”

“I’d like to,” Thorn said.

“I know you’d like to. That’s the problem.”

“What problem?”

“You’re going to have to go home, Thorn, back to paradise. This isn’t going to work, Sawyer and Flynn, this connection you have.”

“I can still be objective.”

“No, you can’t, but it’s more than that. There’s the volatility issue. The chance you’ll flip out and do something crazy just increased by a factor of ten. Plus, with you riding along, it’ll jeopardize any legal action down the road. Halfway decent defense team gets hold of the fact the father of those two young men, a civilian, is mooching along with the agent in charge, man, no matter what kind of case I put together, that’s a free pass for everybody.”

“If either one of those boys is guilty of anything, that might be a problem. But they aren’t.”

“See, that’s what I mean. You’re biased. You’re no help to me.”

“Is this about Rivlin or me?”

“I think I got all the mileage I’m going to get out of you. You’re done.”

Frank pressed the gate opener and looked straight ahead while it rolled open. The newshounds were fast-walking down the sidewalk. Frank drove in and clicked the remote toward the gate and sent it rolling back the other way. Just in time to shut the news guys out.

“I can go places you can’t,” Thorn said.

“Like where?”

“Like deep into that house.” He nodded at the Moss residence.

“I can manage without that.”

“I’ve got an inside track, Frank. I’m a part of this family.”

“And that’s exactly why I’m cutting you loose.”

“You know I’m going to keep going at this anyway. You should want me on a short leash, keep me close so I don’t screw up your case.”

Frank looked in his rearview mirror at the gathering throng.

“I’m going to have to do a presser, throw these idiots some bloody meat. I need to go back to the office and write this up while it’s fresh.”

Thorn was silent, watching Boxley walk to the crowd of journalists assembled at the gate. The dog nosed around the bars but showed no aggression. Nevertheless, a few of them took a step backward.

“Jesus H. Christ, I must be losing my freaking mind. Okay, okay. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be here at nine.”

Thorn opened the door, stepped out, leaned back in to say thanks.

Frank said, “But you get the least little tickle, any warning sign you’re so much as about to sneeze, you call me first.”

“That wasn’t Dee Dee coming at me with a bat.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“That was a man. That was somebody who’d hit more than a few baseballs in his life.”

“You could tell that, could you?”

“Same way you can see from somebody throwing a ball one time if they’ve got a decent arm. This was a guy at home in the batter’s box. The way he cocked it above his shoulder, the way he gripped it, how his knuckles lined up, how loose he held his wrists. I could see that.”

“A guy trying to kill you, you noticed his batting stance?”

“It’s why I asked Sawyer if he’d ever played the game. You heard him, baseball never interested him. And unless Dee Dee risked her manicure playing organized ball, it wasn’t her. This was somebody with a practiced swing.”

Frank considered it, staring out the windshield.

“Interesting,” Frank said. “Eyewitness testimony is always interesting. Though rarely helpful.”

“I was there, Frank, I know what I saw.”

“You ever play ball, Thorn?”

“Freshman year high school, started shortstop.”

“Somehow I can’t picture you doing team sports.”

“Little League, junior varsity. Then that one year in high school.”

“You quit after that?”

“It got old.”

“Now that sounds like you.”

“Shortstop, batted clean-up. I used to have reflexes.”

“Didn’t we all.”

Frank shot a thumb toward the backseat where the papers lay.

“Manifests of the Miami–Dallas flights on Saturday, the twenty-fourth, and Miami–Atlanta on the tenth. Got Sawyer Moss riding first class on a flight to Dallas out early on the twenty-fourth, returning Monday the twenty-sixth at eight
A.M.
”

“Which he admitted to.”

“No Dollimores on the manifests, which, as I say, proves nothing.”

“It wasn’t Dee Dee with the bat, Frank. That was a guy who’d taken a lot of rips at well-thrown balls.”

“Okay, so tomorrow we dig into Ms. Dollimore’s sports history. But Thorn, at this moment, our prime suspect is deceased. In second place, I’ve got Sawyer Moss, who also spent time in Dallas on that fateful weekend, and could’ve made the trip to Atlanta by car. Maybe those two teamed up, one goes here, the other goes there, confusing the issue.

“So hey, if you can’t accept that hypothesis, then fine, go your own way. Otherwise, I’ll see you at nine.”

“You want to hear my hypothesis?”

“Not really.”

“Somebody wants
Miami Ops
on the front page. So they invent this copycat killer to put the spotlight on the show. Only problem is, the crimes have to be discovered for the plan to work, and at the same time, the killer doesn’t want to get caught.

“So he does dumb stuff like tearing up receipts for a murder weapon and leaving it behind near the crime scene, gets the cops on the trail. He gets impatient, time is running out on the show, his breadcrumbs aren’t panning out fast enough, so he makes a phone call, gets the news people whipped up. The investigation begins but it’s all a tease. Breadcrumbs here, breadcrumbs there, leading this way and that. This suspect and that suspect, while the killer’s sitting back reaping the rewards.”

“You ought to apply for a job, Thorn.”

“The Bureau looking for more whiz kids?”

“I was thinking the TV show. A moonbeam like you’d fit right in.”

Frank put the car in gear and Thorn watched him ease through the crowd of reporters, window rolled up, face forward. The gate rolled closed behind him. Boxley went back on patrol.

Thorn walked to the front door and knocked.

A few moments later, April opened it. The look on her face was rigid and vacant. Drained by the pressures of the news crews, exhausted by worry about her sons, and confused by this man on her doorstep, her feelings toward him, his intentions toward her, and probably a dozen other competing emotions Thorn couldn’t guess.

“Could we talk?” Thorn said.

“Not tonight.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You mean aside from all this?” She waved at the mob on the street.

Thorn shifted the fast food bag to the other hand and stepped back.

April said, “I’ve started the obituary.”

“Good, but we need to run it by Frank, check the location he wants to use. The name of the target, the weapon.”

“I’ll have it for you tomorrow. My deadline’s six
P.M.
to make the Monday edition.”

“First you have to consult with Frank. How he wants to set it up.”

“I know how to do my job. I’ll have it tomorrow.”

She backed into the foyer and slowly closed the door.

Thorn climbed the stairs to his garage apartment. He unlocked the door and went in, set the paper sack of fish sandwiches and the Coke on the small dining table.

The overhead lights were on, the ceiling fan turning fast. He hadn’t left it that way. He remembered clearly shutting everything off.

He scanned the room, stood still, listening. He made a careful circuit of the space, smelled something he couldn’t identify, a gamy fragrance like damp feathers mingled with the sulfurous muck of a tidal flat.

Before he’d left that morning, out of a lifetime of habit, he’d made the bed and pulled the flowered quilt up and tucked its border underneath the pillows. Now, sitting like smooth polished stones on each of the two white pillows, was a single brown egg about double the size of what a chicken would lay. Two eggs.

The rat catcher’s calling card.

He turned from the bed. The bathroom door was closed. Another goddamn bathroom door, only this one opened inward. He stepped closer to it and caught another odor, sweet and sickening, something well past its prime.

He was expecting a handful of dead rats strewn around the bathroom, but when he cracked open the door, a low growling snarl rushed through the opening and brushed his ankles as it loped across the room and halted before the closet door.

A raccoon, extra-large, with a thick, handsome coat, well fed and pissed, hunched up and bared its teeth at Thorn.

He edged to the entryway door while the raccoon grumbled louder with each step Thorn took. Some of them could be rabid, and cornered like this one, they could get aggressive, but Thorn had cleared more than one raccoon from his dwellings over the years. All they needed was a clear path to an exit and some small encouragement.