Hidden Fire, Kobo (21 page)

Sarah waited. Janie stared into space.
There was more, but Sarah couldn't bring herself to press. "Maybe the new
rule is temporary," she said.

"Maybe." Janie rubbed her
temples. "All sorts of things to think about. I guess I should get
started." She put her purse on the table and unzipped it. Her hands
trembled.

"I'll take care of the check,"
Sarah said. "I invited you, remember."

Janie gave a weak smile. "Thanks.
Next time will be on me." She plucked her cell phone from her purse and
pressed a button. Phone to her ear, she rushed out of the café.

Randy gripped the phone to keep from dropping
it. "You're positive?" Silence. "Sorry. Of course you are. I
didn't mean to imply you didn't know your job. But I was convinced Garrigue was
our vic."

"Sorry it didn't turn out the way
you expected. He's got a reputation as a temperamental artist, but he's
respected. Would be a shame if he was dead, especially like that."

"Of course. Occupational hazard. Too
much forest, not enough trees."

"If I see Garrigue, I'll let you
know," Rachel said.

"Thanks again. I'll see what the
county sheriffs have to say."

The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office
passed him from pillar to post, offering him many opportunities to leave voice
mails, but eventually he found a live deputy who took the time to search the
reports.

"Nothing on record. How long's he
been gone?"

Randy let his mind go back through time.
Sarah had tried to reach Garrigue on Thursday, he thought. "I don't know
exactly. An associate said he'd gone to visit family, but she didn't speak to
him directly."

"And why would you think he's not
where he said he'd be?"

"No reason anymore. But there was a
burglary in one of the shops where Garrigue's work was for sale and we're
trying to track him down to ask him a few questions."

"Without a missing persons report,
there's nothing we can do for you, Detective. Sorry. A burglary in Oregon isn't
exactly a biggie here."

"I understand." Which he did,
but he didn't have to like it. "Wait," he said to the deputy. "Do
you have a missing persons report with any relation to pottery or craft shops
or art galleries where they sell pottery? Anything. We've got a victim, male,
about six feet, two hundred pounds, with potter's clay under his nails. No
identifying marks, no hits on his prints. Shot. Blew his face off. I'm trying
to follow any leads while we're waiting to hear from CODIS, ViCAP and the rest
of the alphabet."

"I'll let you know."

Randy thanked him, hung up and unscrewed
the cap of his Tums bottle. Nothing like the helpless feeling of waiting on so
many agencies—busy agencies—to keep the acid flowing. He popped a couple in his
mouth and crunched as he opened the desk drawer and stared at the pile of
message slips. Not yet. Might as well see what he could do about the CSI
reports. He shoved the drawer closed and made another list. Time to visit
Lorinda.

He ripped the sheet from the tablet,
folded it and stuck it in his jacket pocket, then changed his mind, cramming it
into a back pocket of his trousers along with his Pine Hills badge case. He
loosened his tie and slipped it off, hung his sport coat on the back of his chair
and rolled up his shirtsleeves before heading for the lab. He stopped at a
vending machine and bought a pack of gum. Chewing two sticks, he sauntered to
the lab. A plump woman, in her twenties Randy estimated, sat at a desk.

"Like, hi," she said, flashing
a wide smile when he approached.

"Like, hi," he echoed, leaning
onto the counter. "Lorinda?" Up close, he added five years to her
age.

She nodded.

"I'm Randy. I'm new here. Just moved
from Portland."

"ID?"

He looked down at his shirt in mock
surprise. Patted his pockets. "Crap. I must have left it upstairs."
He gave her a pleading look. "If I go back up there empty-handed, I'm
toast."

She pursed her lips and narrowed her
eyes. "Don't forget it again."

"Thanks. The suits want some
reports." He pulled his list out of his pocket and made a show of reading
it. "John Doe on the city-county line. Wednesday night." He snapped
his gum. "Like, if I don't get them upstairs like yesterday, my ass is
fried, you know? Because they're sworn and I'm a civilian, they all think they
can give orders. No different from Portland. But after ten years, I know the
drill."

He offered her his pack of gum and she
took a stick, wiggling it in the air in front of him. "I hear you.
Everyone needs their stuff. No regard for the paperwork, but if something goes
missing, who gets the blame?" She unwrapped the gum and popped it into her
mouth. "Let me see what we have."

Randy waited while she studied her
computer, keeping a smile on his face.

"Got it," she said. "Okay,
that's Case 070824376. We've got shoe prints, tire tracks, autopsy, lots of
trace. Most of it went to the state for analysis."

"Any of it come back yet? Keep the
guys upstairs off my case?"

She looked some more. "Give me a
minute." She flashed a smile. "Shoe prints and tire tracks are
processed here. You can go back and talk to Dave or Cyndi if you want. Room
five. By the time you're done, I should have more for you."

"You might have saved my job,
Lorinda. Thanks." He glanced over his shoulder as he walked down the
hallway, giving her a thumbs up. She smiled again and went back to the
computer. Once her attention was occupied, he tore a scrap of paper from his
list and wrapped the gum in it, rolled down his shirtsleeves and adjusted his
collar. He clipped his badge case back on his belt and found a door numbered
five. He tapped gently, then walked in.

Two techs, one male, one female, both in
black cargo pants and gray uniform polo shirts, looked up from a central
counter.

"Randy Detweiler, Pine Hills Police,"
he said, gesturing to his badge. "Working on Wednesday night's John Doe.
Lieutenant Eldridge sent me down."

The woman, who Randy assumed was Cyndi,
sighed. "What do you need?"

"Anything," Randy said. "We
haven't got an ID, so any trace that could point us either to him or his killer
would be greatly appreciated. I worked the scene for a while and I know it was
a challenge."

"Ya' think? Over two hundred samples
collected. And that's one crime scene. It's not like your John Doe was the only
person involved in a crime last week."

Randy held his hands up in submission. "I
know, I know. Everyone's overworked."

"And underpaid," the man said. "But
we do what we can. I'm Dave. Don't mind Cyndi. She's a whiz at technology but
she's been stuck in the lab too long."

"Hey, I'm not looking for favors."
Randy grinned. "Okay, so maybe I am. But I've got people breathing down my
neck, too. All I know is the vic had some kind of clay under his nails. We're
guessing he has something to do with ceramics."

"Well, that narrows it down to about
half a kazillion possibilities." Cyndi had her back to him now, peering
into a microscope.

Dave touched his elbow. "Let me get
you what we have. Come into the office."

Randy followed him along the corridor to
a small workspace. Dave moved a pile of file folders and started digging
through them. "Cyndi's husband deployed overseas two weeks ago. She's
working too hard to compensate and she's a little on the cranky side, but her
work is exemplary. She likes to get everything together on a case before
turning the reports in." He stopped about halfway through the stack and
opened a green folder. "Here we are. Nothing terribly exciting or
conclusive. Clay under the fingernails is available in half the craft stores in
the country. Bloodwork's not back yet, other than he was O positive, which we
did here."

"The most common type."

"Yep. Oh, here's something you might
be able to use."

Randy leaned forward, his pulse kicking
up. "What?"

"Shoe print. It's a size ten,
nothing helpful like a boot or sneaker tread pattern, but there's a distinctive
mark—looks like there's a wiggly cut on the left heel. If you have a suspect,
this would put him at the scene." He handed the page to Randy.

Randy studied the print and tried to
ignore his disappointment. "Around here, someone
not
wearing
sneakers or boots is unusual. But we can't arrest someone for wearing dress
shoes. And there's the other picky detail. We have no suspects." He sifted
the facts through his brain. "Hell, for all we know, this could have been
the victim's shoe print. He was barefoot, but nobody found any prints from bare
feet."

Dave shrugged. "We don't catch 'em,
we just find clues for you. I stick things in machines."

"Anything at all to point us
somewhere? So we can start finding real people to compare all this evidence to?"

Dave leafed through the folder. He handed
Randy some more pages. "Here's a copy of the tox screen. Elevated alcohol
levels. Also looks like someone sedated your vic."

So he might have been drugged before he
was shot. That was something to add to the ViCAP search. "Can I have
these?" Randy asked.

Dave nodded. "Those are Homicide's
copies. Like I said, Cyndi likes to wait until she has everything and I should
have intervened and gotten these upstairs as they came in, but we've been
swamped."

"Understood. Ken Hannibal is lead on
the case, but he's been swamped, too." He waved the folder and stood. "I
appreciate this. I'll get it upstairs and see if I can make some pieces fit."

Head down, Randy breezed past Lorinda's
desk and went up to his own. He perused the reports, jotting notes, his
frustration rising. Finally, he called his chief.

"You have something for me?"
Laughlin asked. "Since we're back to square one with our vic."

"What I have is a problem. Look, I
understand the position you're in, but County's spread too thin and it's worse
at the state level. It could be weeks before all the reports are in and
meanwhile, there are gaps in what reports I have because some of it's here,
some's still in Pine Hills. I'd like to set up a meeting with Kovak, Connor and
the detective here, Ken Hannibal. Conference call would work, but a face to
face might be more productive."

Randy waited out the silence on the other
end of the line.

"I'll talk to Eldridge," the chief
said.

So much for cutting red tape. "Right.
I take it there's no good news from the bean counters."

"Well, no news is supposed to be good
news, but it's still not looking promising."

"Chief, I can tell you firsthand,
there's not enough manpower here to cover what Pine Hills needs. They're
already further behind than we've ever been."

"My gut says the council will
counter that our contracting out to County will allow them to hire more
deputies."

"You know that's not going to
happen. They'd increase staff, but it wouldn't begin to cover what we need."
Randy's head throbbed in counterpoint to the acid churning in his gut.

"I'll see what I can do. You can
report what you've seen, but don't hold your breath."

From the tone of Laughlin's voice, Randy
suspected he'd already met with the council. And then it hit him. The chief
would be out of a job, too.

* * * * *

Sarah lingered over coffee, contemplating
a plan of action before returning to her boutique. The front of the shop was
orderly, albeit a bit barren. Could she open tomorrow? Not likely. Bob from the
insurance company wasn't satisfied with her proof of what had been stolen and
wanted to go over her sales records for the past year. As if she'd try to sneak
an extra candlestick or picture frame into the claim. Still, he hadn't
threatened to cancel her policy, so she might as well jump through his hoops.
She paid the lunch bill and drove back to Pine Hills.

By four, after matching sales records to
spreadsheets to what had survived the fiasco, her brain was fried and her eyes
couldn't take any more. She might as well blow off the day—heck, the rest of
the week—and see if she could get some more consignment inventory.

Yeah, right. "Hi, it's Sarah. I was
robbed a few days ago and I wonder if you want to send some merchandise my way."
The reality of Saturday night settled in her gut like one of her Aunt Delia's
meatballs.

Shoving those thoughts aside, she locked
up and went home, thinking about her lunch with Janie. Maybe she should invite
the Kovaks over for dinner this weekend. Maybe something at Randy's house where
their kids could come too. Her apartment wasn't particularly child-friendly.
She'd have to ask him after he got back from work. Maybe he'd get home early
enough to join her at Saint Michael's.

And would he tell her what it was like
working out of the Sheriff's Office? Would he be an outsider over there? Low
man on the totem pole, not like his status in Pine Hills? Would he care? Would
he tell her if he did?