Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) (6 page)

“I don’t know,” he says.

I look at him, but he doesn’t look back.

“It wouldn’t require much. Just put the story out there, make a little bit of an effort. If that’s enough to get her insider off the hook, maybe it’s worth doing.”

“You’re serious, sir?”

He grips the wheel thoughtfully. “I think I am. That girl, I like her spunk. She’s putting it on the line and I don’t feel like disrespectin’ that, not if we don’t have to.”

“I’d rather know whose murder I’m really investigating.”

“You’re a detective, March. Go find out.”

The file feels heavy in my hand. Bending the rules doesn’t bother me, and in a good cause I don’t mind a little trouble, but I can’t think when I’ve ever been in a situation like this. It doesn’t feel right.

“What do I tell Lorenz?” I ask. “What do I tell the captain?”

He sighs. “Listen here. I wasn’t gonna
say nothing, but since keeping secrets is the order of the day. The captain’s turning in his papers.”

“
What
?”

“You remember last year, during the runoff elections? He got sucked into the politics and started making alliances. Well, Drew Hedges is a good man, but he’s no kind of politician. What he did is, he alienated a lot of people. Burned himself good. And the result is, his job is up for grabs. There’s a shakeup coming, and he’s out. That’s all there is to it.”

“Hedges is out? But he’s a cop’s cop.”

“Between you and me, he’s ready. He told me after Ordway’s retirement party that he felt like a dinosaur, and if he was never moving up, then what was keeping him from moving out?”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“That’s the job. It got to him.”

“So what does this mean?” I can hardly keep up, hardly process it all. “Who’s moving into his office—you?”

He gives a mirthless laugh. “That what you think? No, man, it’s not gonna be me. Maybe when Lee Brown was still mayor . . . but no. I don’t have no idea. All I can tell you is, you need to ready yourself. And don’t dump any of this on the captain now. He doesn’t need the headache.”

The sun beats down on us the whole drive back. I can feel myself getting hotter and hotter. Maybe the air-conditioning’s giving out. Maybe the ozone up above is spread particularly thin. Or maybe I’m out of my depth for once, not sure what I’m about to get myself into. A man’s life is at stake, Bea said, and for me that’s new territory. Avenging the dead is my job. With this new mission I don’t know where to begin.

And now the ground underneath me isn’t solid anymore. Hedges gave me a second chance when everybody else—Bascombe included—wanted to kick me to the curb. One thing I never imagined was that I’d outlast Drew Hedges in Homicide.

The file from Bea Kuykendahl’s office
rests in my battered leather briefcase along with my old Filofax, a couple of digital audio recorders, a camera, some cuffs, a spare mag, and a mess of loose pens and paper clips and plug-in chargers. When I reach my desk, I transfer the file to a locked drawer for safekeeping, then hang my sport coat—an unlined, lightweight hand-me-down from my wife’s father—on the back of my ergonomic chair.

Lorenz pops over the cubicle wall, a satisfied grin on his face.

“What?” I ask.

“Take a guess.”

“Come on, Jerry.”

He produces a stack of paper from behind his back. “While you’ve been off doing whatever it is you do, I’ve got a name for JD. The match came back a half hour ago, and I’ve been doing some research. Guy’s name is Brandon Ford. Age thirty-four, six-foot-one, and there’s a Houston address. And guess what he does for a living. No? He’s a gun dealer.”

I take the printouts from his hand, flipping through the pages. Agent Kuykendahl is sure making this easy. But what kind of strings do you have to pull to seed the criminal database with false information? I wouldn’t have credited her with having this kind of pull. And if she does, what was the point of bringing me into the picture? Handing the stack of pages back, I sink into my chair.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” he says. “We need to get moving on this. I found a number for the victim’s ex-wife, so we can start with the death notification.”

“Right.”

But there won’t be an ex-wife, of course. Brandon Ford only exists on paper. That’s why Bea Kuykendahl needed to clue me in. She realized that with a little digging, we’d discover soon enough that we were investigating a lie.

“You ready to roll?” he asks.

“I just got here.”

“What’s the deal? You don’t seem too jazzed about the big break. Yesterday we had nothing and now—”

“Okay, okay. Just give me a second and I’ll catch up.”

While he grabs his gear, I head to Bascombe’s office to let him know what’s going on. The computer match doesn’t sit right with me. The more I contemplate the matter, the less I believe a special agent in the Houston field office can snap her fingers and make something like that happen. Whatever’s going on, I know Bea wasn’t straight with us this morning.

The lieutenant’s office is empty. I ask around, and one of the new detectives points in the direction of the captain’s door. The blinds are shut, so I approach with caution, tapping lightly on the doorframe. No answer.

Just leave it.

I turn to go. Heading out, I see Hedges coming from the break room with a steaming mug of coffee in hand. He gazes at his feet like he’s afraid of tripping or possibly lost in thought. Based on the news Bascombe shared, I’m sure he is. As I pass, I’m almost afraid to interrupt.

“Sir?” I ask.

He pauses, steadying his mug with his free hand.

“I’m looking for the lieutenant. He’s not with you?”

Stupid question. He glances side to side and cracks a halfhearted smile. “I don’t see him. Do you?”

“Never mind.”

“Is everything all right?” he asks.

I should be asking him the same question. “Fine, sir.”

I get a few steps away, then he stops me. “Hey, March, you sure you’re okay? You’re walking kind of funny.”

“It’s nothing,” I say. “I must have twisted something the other night when I took that spill.”

“Get it looked at,” he says, turning away.

All during the runoff election last year, he’d been an absentee boss, present in body but absent in spirit. Things got better, but never back to normal. Now there’s a hollowness to him I don’t like to see. Maybe it’s just knowing that he’s not long for the job.

“I’ll do that, sir,” I say. “Thank you.”

His eyebrows raise a twitch at the thanks, but he doesn’t say more. He heads back to his shuttered office as I run to catch up with Lorenz.

———

The sign pushed into the grass in front of Brandon Ford’s house says
FOR SALE
, so the first thing Lorenz does is snatch a flyer from the plastic dispenser. The address has taken us all the way out to Katy, to a neighborhood offering
LUXURY LIVING STARTING IN THE 300
s, so new it could have been thrown up overnight. The brick-fronted houses squat massively on their lots, their wide concrete drives free of cracks and unspotted by grease. Instead of the typical suburban grid, they hunch beside gently curving streets arranged concentrically around a man-made lake. I see ducks swimming out there, and a spout of water that shoots up thirty feet.

“Price is a little high,” Lorenz says, handing me the flyer. “But at least there’s a pool.”

To my surprise, the flyer gives the construction date as four years ago. In all that time, the surrounding properties have managed to stay pristine. Only half the houses along the road yield signs of habitation—a freshly waxed Tahoe, some abandoned toys, a yard card in the shape of a soccer ball giving the jersey number of the child within. One or two in addition to Ford’s have Realtor signs, and even some that don’t sport the empty drives and naked aluminum windows of homes completed but never occupied.

We walk to the front door, peering inside through the unobstructed side window. Past the carpeted stairway, there’s a high-ceilinged great room with a gas fireplace and rustic-looking twisted iron chandelier and French doors that open onto the back patio. There’s no furniture inside, no decoration on the towering walls.

“If he ever lived here,” I say, “he doesn’t anymore.”

Lorenz heads around one side of the house and I take the other, glancing in windows, testing doors. The house is locked tight, but the garage door isn’t. I push through into the stifling heat of the enclosed space. There are no vehicles inside. A wall of cardboard boxes three deep and five or six high occupies one side of the garage, each one labeled in black marker:
OFFICE
,
CLOTHES
,
SHOES
,
CHINA
,
BEDROOM
,
TOYS
. The list goes on. I run my finger over one of the boxes, leaving a trail in the dust. They’ve been in storage for a while.

Using my lockblade, I open a couple of the boxes to see if the labels and contents match up. They do. There’s a box marked
PHOTOS
, which contains baby albums, framed wedding portraits, and stacks of loose pictures. I grab some and start sifting. The man in the tux kissing the bride, the man cradling the newborn in the crook of his arm is the same one in the photo Bea Kuykendahl gave me along with the file. This is a lot of trouble to go through to build a cover. Too much.

“What did you find?” Lorenz asks.

“A bunch of photos.”

I’m about to toss them back when one of the images catches my eye. It’s a photo of Brandon Ford flanked by two other men, his arms draped over their shoulders. Behind him, an older woman looks into the camera, her eyes red from the flash. There’s something about the expression on their faces—maybe the confidence of youth, maybe the camaraderie—that speaks to me. Here’s my victim, alive and happy. Seeing him that way helps to humanize him. I tuck the picture inside my jacket and close the box.

“I’m gonna call the ex-wife, since she doesn’t seem to live here.”

“I’ll make the call,” I say. “You drive.”

I dial the number from the front seat of the car, the air-conditioner blasting. She answers after five or six rings, sounding frazzled and breathless. I can hear cartoons in the background, children’s voices. I keep it brief, identifying myself and asking for a location where we can meet face-to-face. She gives me the address of an apartment complex on Westheimer outside Beltway 8, maybe halfway between our present location and downtown if we swing down south a ways. I tell her to expect us within the hour.

“What did she sound like?” Lorenz asks.

“She sounded young. She sounded confused, maybe a little worried. I could hear kids in the background. There were two in the photos.”

While he drives, I kill time going through his research. Brandon Ford has a gun dealer’s license, but he doesn’t seem to have a storefront. Instead, he works out of a rental office on a by-appointment basis, specializing in exotic longarms for collectors, everything from elephant guns to high-powered sniper rifles. According to his website, which Lorenz printed in its entirety, he also travels to a variety of Texas gun shows where he operates a booth.

“I printed out pictures from the site,” he says.

“I see that.”

They are low-resolution images. One depicts a tall curly-haired man in a blue polo shirt standing behind a table laden with imported tactical rifles. Not the AK-47s that Bea mentioned. These appear to be top-dollar European models. In the second photo, the same man wearing the same shirt poses with an old school
FN
FAL
battle rifle mounted with a massive starlight scope, cutting edge in the seventies and eighties and no doubt highly collectable now.

“I’m surprised you can make a living that way,” Lorenz says.

“Was he making a living? His house is on the market.”

“What I mean is, it’s weird people buy and sell this stuff.”

“It’s weird people buy guns in Texas?” I ask.

“This kind of gun, yeah. I mean, I’m on the front lines every day and I don’t have an arsenal like that. I couldn’t afford it, for one thing. Can you imagine knocking on this guy’s door? He’d have the
SWAT
team outgunned.”

I’m not interested in getting into an argument about guns. That’s something I don’t do anymore. I grew up with them, and to me you either get it or you don’t. And if you don’t, fine. Brandon Ford, if he really existed, would have gone through enough of a background check to put my mind at ease. He wouldn’t worry me any more than the club members at Shooter’s Paradise do. But I wonder what Lorenz would think of my extracurricular activities. All those armed citizens might freak him out.

Then again, maybe not. He surprises me sometimes. But there’s no point in getting into all that. Brandon Ford doesn’t exist. The photos, along with everything else, were staged. That’s what I’m meant to believe, anyway. The question is, for whom? The way Bea made it sound, somebody wanted a big shipment of assault rifles, which suggests the Mexican cartels. The headlines have been full of Federal cases against dealers shipping their wares down south, profiteering from the drug war. The only problem with that theory is that a sting operation making use of a fake gun dealer would be designed to snare the buyer. If the buyer’s a Gulf Cartel drug lord, what’s the point? It’s not like the Policía Federal or the
DEA
don’t have enough on those thugs already.

“Is there something wrong?” Lorenz asks. “You’ve been funny all morning.”

“Everything’s fine.”

Leaning over, he opens the glove compartment and shakes the ibuprofen bottle in my face. “Are you off your meds, is that it? I thought the leg was doing better.”

“Just keep your eyes on the road,” I say, shifting in the seat. “It’s not my leg, anyway. It’s something in my back. The pain is just a symptom. I must have pinched a nerve.”

“All right.” He tosses the bottle into my lap. “I just wish you’d get your head in the game. I can’t be carrying you on this.”

I flip on the radio, scanning the dial for some music.

“Hey, man. I’m just kidding. I’ll carry you as far as I can.”

He smiles and I smile back just to make him stop.

———

The woman comes to the door barefoot, wearing cuffed shorts and a white T-shirt. She says her name is Miranda Ford and she has a driver’s license to back it up. She ushers us into a cramped apartment, a real step down from the house we’ve just seen. In the living room, a dark-haired toddler I recognize from the box of pictures scribbles on construction paper while a younger kid in a playpen watches him. She walks us past them to a kitchen table that’s been set up as a home office. Underneath the table, there’s a box like the ones stored in the garage, this one labeled
CRAFTING
, its flaps gaping. The table itself has been converted into work space. At one end there’s a big flat-screen computer, and at the other a sewing machine lit up by an adjustable work lamp clamped to the table’s edge. Lorenz asks and she explains that she makes purses and other bags and sells them online.

“That way I can stay home with the boys.”

“And that’s your only income?” I ask.

“I get money from my ex,” she says, “and I work part-time for a friend of mine who opened her own shop.”

I keep stealing looks at her, half expecting a wink of the eye or some other acknowledgment that this is all a sham. But if it is, they’ve gone through a lot of trouble. You don’t stick a woman in an apartment with a fake
ID
and two prop kids on the off chance someone will go digging into a cover story.

She offers us something to drink—the options include water, Diet Coke, and apple juice—then clears some chairs for us to sit. I glance back at the children, not wanting to make a scene in front of them. For her part, Miranda Ford gives no sign of anxiety. As if the police are always dropping by and she’s only mildly curious about our reasons.

“I wonder if we could talk somewhere private?” I ask.

“Of course.” She looks around, then frowns. “Only there’s not really any place besides the bedroom or the boys’ room.”

“Why don’t we go out on the steps?”

She follows us reluctantly, telling the toddler she’ll be just outside. He goes on ignoring our presence, scribbling hard with his crayon. On her way out, she turns up the volume on the cartoons.

The apartment’s on the second floor. Lorenz and I descend the stairs a little ways, letting her sit on the top step. I show her the photo I took from the house.

“Can you identify this man?” I ask, tapping Ford’s face.

“It’s Brandon,” she says. “My ex.”

“And when was the last time you talked to him?”

She stops to think. “Maybe a week ago? I’m not sure. I can find out, though.” She digs a phone out of her pocket and thumbs through the menu. “No, it was more like two weeks ago. He was doing a show and called from the road.”