Tahoe Blue Fire (An Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller Book 13) (25 page)

THIRTY-NINE

After I was done talking to Adam, I drove over to the industrial yard where the city stored the rotary blowers, let myself in the gate, and left it open.

Emilio came over to me. He held what looked like a sealed bearing assembly that had the seals removed. The bearings were caked in dirty grease as were his fingers.

I nodded at him.

“Te recuerdo. I remember you,” he said. “You are to see Brann?”

“Please. He in?”

The man nodded, then tipped his head toward the little metal shed I’d previously visited. Then he walked back to his project.

I walked under the pole building, over to the shed, and pulled open the door without knocking.

Brann Crosen was sitting at a desk that faced the door. He was staring at a laptop screen that only he could see. He looked up at me, startled, his face instantly reddening. He quickly tapped several keys, then shut the laptop.

“Working hard?” I said, unable to combat my prejudice toward him. If a guy embezzles five thousand bucks, we put him in jail. If a guy uses a lawsuit to scam his employer for a hundred thousand, we happily pay out hoping he goes away. Then his lawyer uses the award for bragging rights to get more business. And if our conscience or fury causes us to make the mistake of saying anything bad about either of them, they can sue us for defamation. I knew that the legal system protects and helps many honest people, but I was confident that this guy wasn’t one of them.

“Still pursuing your death-by-snowblower idea?” Crosen’s grin had a touch of sneer. His face color was shifting back to normal. The light caught his face. His front teeth were capped. In the light, his eyeliner and eyebrow edges looked more like tattoos than makeup. Probably used the lawsuit money for all three. Good to know he had his priorities in the right place.

“I heard you changed your name when you lived in Southern California,” I said. “What was that about?”

Crosen’s face began to redden again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You were given the name Brann Crosen at birth?”

“Who else would I be?”

I thought about Mario Montana, the man who tried to kill Street and me in Italy, and Montana’s friend Scozzari, who Speranza had said was a Cosa Nostra soldier who grew up in L.A. “How about Scozzari?” I said.

Crosen paused as if wondering where I’d gotten that information.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He opened his laptop. “I have work to do.”

“You had an employee here named Adam Simms,” I said.

“We sure did. That was an interesting experiment.”

“How do you mean?”

“You try to train a big, dumb football player, and you’ll see what I mean.”

“He’s not dumb,” I said, feeling instant anger.

“Right. He walked around here like an old man who can’t find his pants.   He’d talk to himself, always looking for something but not remembering what he was looking for. Once in awhile he’d act like he had half a brain. But that was rare. About one to four, most of the time.”

“What does that mean?”

“One good day for every four bad days. We could tell each morning when he showed up. Norman would usually see him first. Then he’d let us know. He’d say, ‘up day,’ if Simms had his half brain on. Or, ‘down day’ if Simms’s brain was absent. Sometimes we’d place bets at night about whether the next day would be up or down.”

“You bet on the state of his dementia?”

“Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

“Yes, I do.” I was gritting my teeth.

“So that’s, like, some politically incorrect thing? Guys can’t joke around?”

“No, it’s a decency thing. Joking about someone who’s struggling with a severe disease is rude and obnoxious.”

“Like I thought. You’re politically correct. Like Emilio out there. He doesn’t like to joke, either.” Crosen picked his nose, watching me watch him. Then he flicked his finger so that whatever was on it flew onto the floor. “Simms could lift stuff, though, I’ll give him that. I’m told he could play football twenty or thirty years ago.” Crosen guffawed. “Imagine that. The guy’s so big, no way could he move fast.”

I tried to suppress my anger. “I’m here to ask if he ever drove one of the rotaries.”

Crosen stared at me, frowning, then got a knowing smile. “Oh sure. I showed him, and he cruised it across the yard. He was like a little kid. He even crabbed it left and right. I let him eat one of the snow piles in that corner over there.” He pointed. “The guy was a natural.”

“Would you say he was good enough driving the rotary that he could have borrowed one?”

“Absolutely. In fact, if I had to guess who might have done your victims, I would have said him. All the other guys in the yard have ethics. But Simms, I don’t think he knew the difference between right and wrong. ’Course, I wouldn’t normally say that, but you asked. Anyway, it was too bad we couldn’t keep him.”

“Why not?”

“We had to let him go for incompetence. Big is good. Dumb is not. We have standards.”

“What was your official reason for letting him go?”

“Like I said, incompetence.”

I walked away without saying another word, my blood pressure pulsing in my temples. Crosen had irritated me in every way a person could. As I headed out of the yard, I walked by Emilio. “You ever see Adam Simms drive a rotary when he worked here?” I asked.

Emilio glanced over toward the shed where Crosen was. He turned a bit so he was facing the opposite direction. “Not that I have saw,” he said.

“You think he maybe drove it when you weren’t working?”

“I don’t think. He love big machines, so powerful. If drove, he would be talking about all the time.”

When I was back in the Jeep, I called Adam Simms.

When he answered, I said, “McKenna, here, at the city yard where you worked. Brann Crosen told me he fired you.”

“I told you, I quit. He didn’t fire me.”

“Crosen said they let you go,” I repeated.

“No. I quit. I realized that I was starting to lose it. It wouldn’t be fair to keep working under those conditions.”

“Crosen also said you drove the rotary,” I said.

Simms said, “I never drove one. I looked inside the cab. I imagined driving one. They are amazing machines. I wanted to drive one, but I never did.”

“Why would Crosen want to spread lies about you?”

“I don’t know. He had it in for me from the beginning.”

“Why?”

“One of the guys was trying to start the forklift so he could move the salt shaker.”

“What’s a salt shaker?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s the salt and gravel spreader they put on the back of the dump trucks. So Leroy said, ‘why not just have Simms move it?’ And Crosen said, ‘no way could Simms move a salt shaker.’ And Leroy said, ‘wanna bet?’ So they started placing bets on whether I could move it, like they were betting on the horses or something. Crosen got dug in on his position, betting something like two hundred dollars that I couldn’t move it. So I just walked over, picked it up, and put it where they wanted it. Crosen hated me after that.”

“You’re confident in saying that Crosen’s a liar.”

“He is,” Simms said.

“How ’bout we talk to him about it. I could come and pick you up.”

“What’s the point?” Adam said. “Crosen’s a jerk. So what?”

“He’s spreading false information about you. He should know we’re onto him.”

The phone was silent a moment. “I have to go to the supermarket. We could meet.”

“Okay.”

I told Adam where I’d be and then hung up.

We met, and Simms got in his pickup and followed me as I drove to the yard. We parked on the street and walked past Emilio who was outside of the gate looking under the hood of a pickup that was parked on the street. It had a city logo on the doors and a custom utility body.

Simms and I walked into the yard and over to a workbench where Crosen was leaning. His arms were crossed. He had a smug look on his face.

“You’re a liar,” Simms said to him.

Crosen unfolded his arms and moved his feet apart into a wide stance. “Nobody calls me a liar. I’ve got principles.”

“You didn’t fire me, I quit,” Simms said.

“Sugar coat it all you want, but we fired you.”

“No. I told you I was leaving before the end of my probation. And I told you why, because I thought my memory problems were making me ineffective.”

“Ineffective,” Crosen said. “Big word for not doing your job.”

Simms took a deep breath as if to calm himself.

“And I never drove the rotary.”

Crosen made a half smile. “Sure, you did. You don’t remember? Must be like all that other stuff you could never remember.”

Simms said, “I’m the first to admit when I can’t remember stuff, but I can tell if an experience is familiar or not. I never drove a rotary. I looked inside. I asked about the controls. I remember being interested in the joystick for crabbing the rear wheels. But I never drove one.” He leaned toward Crosen and said, “You lied.”

“I told you, Simms. I don’t lie. You’ll pay for that.” Crosen looked ready to throw a punch. He was a muscle-bound kid with hormones and attitude. Adam was a giant in his fifties. Whatever the result of an altercation, it wouldn’t be pretty.

“C’mon, Adam,” I said. “We’ve established that he’s a liar. Time to go.”

I reached my arm out, touched Adam’s shoulder, and gently steered him away. We walked back across the yard. As we turned to go through the gate, I saw that Crosen was on his cell phone. He was gesturing with his free hand, stabbing his finger toward the ground, anger emanating like smoke. I could guess what he was saying, and it felt bad.

Emilio had the air filter off and was spraying WD-40 on a corroded metal component.

“Is Crosen always a hothead?” I said in a low voice as we approached. “Is he dangerous?”

Emilio looked out from under the hood, leaning so that he might glimpse Crosen back in the yard. His face showed fear, and I immediately felt bad for asking him. “I don’t know to say hothead,” he said in a low voice. “Señor Crosen is boss. I work hard, he gives me good schedule, gives me good lunch.”

“Lunch matters,” I said.

“Sí.”

Adam and I walked down the street to his truck. When Adam was inside, Blondie tried to squeeze between Adam and the steering wheel, wagging vigorously. I leaned in the open driver’s window.

“Don’t look now, Adam, but I can see that Brann Crosen is mad. He’s talking on the phone. Maybe it’s nothing. But my cop warning lights are flashing. I could be wrong, but I think he might follow you. Worse, I think he might be calling some buddies.”

“What, like he wants to rough me up?”

“Yeah.” As I said it, I noticed the smell of cigar smoke in the pickup. Adam’s ashtray was open. A half-smoked cigar protruded from it. I thought about the cigar butt that Spot had found on the mountain where Scarlett’s shooter had targeted her. I felt confused.

“I could drive to the cops, right?” Adam said.

“You could,” I said, thinking about the cigar.

Adam said, “But if I do that, Crosen and his buddies will go away and find me later, won’t they?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“What would you do?” he asked.

“I’d like to catch them. It would involve some risk. But I think it is less risk now when we sense they might come after you than it would be to wait and have them show up when you least expect it.”

“I don’t want them to come to the safe house, that’s for sure. Felicite could be visiting. Where should I go?”

“I’d like you to drive out of here and go to the college. Drive slowly and take your time. Pull into one of the most distant parking lots and park in a space that is farthest from anywhere. That way they’ll feel that they can come after you with little risk. I’ll be following at a distance. I have my phone. And Commander Mallory at the police department is only a couple of blocks from the college.”

“So the cops could come at the first sign of trouble.”

“Yeah. But Adam, I want to be very clear about this. If Crosen really does come after you, now or later, the risk could be substantial. You don’t have to do this now.”

Adam stared at the dashboard. He put his hands on the steering wheel. “But like you said, if not now, then he might come some other time. I’m not a liar. He should have to recognize that. I’d rather get it over with. I’ll see you whenever.” He started his truck.

I reached in through the window and put my hand on his shoulder.

“I’ve got your back,” I said, worrying that I’d set in motion something awful. But maybe some truth would shake out of it.

FORTY

I turned and walked to my Jeep, which was the other direction down the street.

Spot was excited to have me arrive, sniffing and wagging, no doubt smelling Blondie.

“What’s the big deal, Largeness? A few minutes without me and you decide to love me once again?”

He stuck his nose on my ear, and made a single swipe at my neck with the other-worldly tongue. I would have been fine if I’d brought a bath towel to dry off. Instead, I wiped my sleeve over the slobber, reached behind my head, and rubbed him.

I pulled out, drove off opposite the direction that Adam was going, and turned at the corner. I went around the block and pulled over at a spot where I could see the city yard.

I waited, peering through branches back toward the yard.

A pickup, black and shiny, shot out of the yard and turned hard. It looked like Crosen was driving. He went down the road the way that Adam had driven. I pulled out and followed at a distance.

The black pickup went through town. In the far distance, I glimpsed Adam’s pickup once. Crosen stayed back so that Adam wouldn’t know he was being followed. I stayed back from Crosen for the same reason.

Before we got to Al Tahoe Boulevard, the turnoff to the college, I saw a red pickup come out onto the road in front of me. It slalomed around several cars, then drew even with Crosen’s pickup. The drivers give each other the thumbs-up sign.

Crosen turned right on Al Tahoe, and his comrade followed. I remained at a distance. They turned into the college. A third pickup, this one white, came from the other direction. It too turned in behind the procession. In the distance ahead of them, I saw Adam’s pickup. Four pickups, all late-model, all freshly washed and coddled, one the prey, three the predators. I was the distant fifth vehicle, a dirty, bullet-shot, used Jeep.

I saw Crosen turn into one of the parking lots. The two pickups behind him followed. As I approached, I saw Adam pull into a space at the far end of the lot and stop.

I passed the turn and continued on to the next lot. I sped up, and pulled into a space between two other vehicles so that I’d have a bit of cover. I jumped out and let Spot out. I took his collar so he couldn’t run. We trotted to the end of the lot and stepped between some trees toward the lot where the three pickups had pulled in behind Adam’s pickup, blocking him in.

A young kid of maybe twelve was leaning against one of the trees near me, playing some kind of game on his phone.

“Hey, you want to make a quick forty bucks?” I said to him.

He looked at Spot with fear and me with suspicion.

“Don’t worry about the dog,” I said. “He’s friendly. I’m a detective. I could use help on official business,” I said.

“You mean, like cop business?”

“Yeah.”

“What do I have to do?”

I pulled out my phone. “I don’t know how to use this very well. Can you tell me, does it shoot video?”

“Of course,” the kid said.

“How many minutes does it go?”

“Depends on how much memory you’ve got left.” He reached for my phone, tapped multiple times. “Looks like you don’t even use this thing. You could take a couple hours of video.”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’m guessing I’ll only need maybe five minutes.” I pointed over to the next lot. “See those guys?”

He looked, nodded.

“The three smaller guys are chasing the bigger guy.”

“The big black guy,” the kid said.

“Yeah. I’m worried they’re going to fight. If they do, I need you to record it all on video.”

The kid looked worried.

“The most important part will be the very beginning. So if it looks like someone is about to throw a punch, start shooting. Or, if I make a sign to you with my finger, that means start.”

“Got it,” he said.

“Stay here near these trees.”

“I can zoom from here,” he said.

“Good.”

I pulled on Spot’s collar and trotted toward the men.

All four of them were out of their vehicles. Adam was standing alone, the other three made a shallow triangle with Crosen at the tip. His legs were slightly bent, his arms in a martial arts position. He was shouting at Adam.

“You called me a liar. No one calls me a liar.”

“You lied,” Adam said.

Crosen screamed, “No one calls me a liar!” Crosen shook with anger.

I raised my hand behind me so the kid with my phone could see. I held out my index finger and dropped it as if to say, ‘go.’

Crosen shouted, “I don’t care that you were a football player a million years ago. I’m gonna kick your ass.”

He feinted a one-two punch, then spun, his upper body dropping, his leg rising as he rotated. His foot struck Adam a powerful blow on his shoulder. The kick drove Adam a foot to the side. Adam reached up and rubbed his shoulder. Crosen came in again, did a front snap kick to Adam’s thigh. Adam pulled his leg back as the kick landed, reducing the blow a bit. Adam seemed surprised. He was big, but he obviously wasn’t a fighter.

Crosen shouted at him. “Fight, you coward!”

I was approaching from behind and to the side of the three men, trying to decide how to intervene. The man closest to me was almost my height, much heavier, and fifteen years younger. I touched Spot’s neck to prep him, then put a light foot tap at the back of the man’s knee. He started to collapse to the ground, then caught his fall. He spun around, ready to dismember me.

“Growl, Spot,” I said.

The man hesitated a moment as Crosen and his other pal looked over.

“Watch him!” I said to Spot as I pointed to the man I’d knee-tapped.

Spot growled. It wasn’t much, but the man’s eyes went wide.

“C’mon, Spot. Don’t be shy. Show him your stuff.” I tapped Spot again on his throat.

Spot upped the growl. Deeper and louder.

“Show him,” I said again.

Spot cranked the volume. The man started backing up.

I said to the man. “You try anything, you run away, you make a little bird peep, he rips your throat out.”

I touched Spot’s throat again. He lowered his head, lowered his stance, lifted his lips so that all of his fangs showed, and he started walking toward the man, his growl loud enough to rattle the man’s chest. The man stepped backward, tripped, landed on his butt. Spot took another step, his bared teeth a foot from the man’s face, which was pale with primal fear.

I turned to the other men.

Crosen shouted at me. “You think you’re gonna save this guy? I’ll show you what’s coming to him.”

Crosen punched Adam again. Adam had his hands up in defense. It was luck that Adam’s hand took the blow, which slapped his hand back against his chest.

Crosen followed it up with another punch. Adam’s hand was still up, blocking, and he caught Crosen’s second punch. Adam grabbed Crosen’s fist, reached out with his other hand, and grabbed Crosen’s wrist.

Adam apparently squeezed down, for Crosen cried out, half yell, half scream.

Maybe Adam broke Crosen’s hand, I couldn’t tell. But Adam took Crosen’s hand and arm and made a throwing motion as if hurtling a ball to the ground.

Crosen was jerked to the parking lot pavement as if pulled by his own hand and arm. He landed on elbows and knees, screaming with pain.

He shouted to his friend who was still standing, “Get him!”

The man advanced on Adam. I thought of leaping on him from behind when he exploded in a flurry of punches and kicks, mixed martial arts style.

Adam put his arms up, trying to block them. But many blows landed on him. His abdomen, his chest, his arms. He kept his arms up, forearms vertical, which prevented most blows from reaching his face. Like the man who was terrorized by Spot, the man doing the punching was bigger than Crosen.

The assault drove Adam back. He bent from the blows. With his head down, he took a punch to the face, another to his forehead. Then a kick grazed his ear.

Crosen, behind his man, was getting up from the ground, preparing to launch another attack.

Adam was lower now, taking more blows from Crosen’s man. Maybe it was his lowered stance that triggered a kind of muscle memory. He lowered farther, elbows near his knees, then exploded forward.

It was as if he’d transported himself back thirty years to his time as a Nose Tackle. He hit Crosen’s man low. His arms were out in a blocking position, and he was moving at sprinting speed. As he made contact, he lifted up, a classic move to get under the offensive guard. The man went into the air as Adam went through. As the man fell to the parking lot, Adam hit Crosen hard in the middle, his right arm around Crosen’s body. He continued forward as if sacking the quarterback. Crosen and Adam went down, Adam pulling his arm out so it wouldn’t get abraded as Crosen hit the asphalt. Adam landed on top of Crosen. Crosen’s head bounced off the pavement, and he went still.

Adam scrambled up and turned around, still in his football position, bent down, ready to explode forward again.

The man Adam had blocked got up and ran once again at Adam, listing a bit with pain, making a sort of crazed war cry as he tried to launch some kind of leaping kick. It was an amazing strategic mistake.

Adam charged toward him. He hit the man with his shoulder. The impact barely slowed Adam down. But the blow took the other man in the middle of his abdomen. There was a whoosh of air as Adam lifted up. The man bounced off Adam on an upward arc. It was like a bull catching a lion with his horns and tossing it into the air. The man traveled eight or ten feet before he landed on the pavement. He struck the asphalt with an audible thump and lay there motionless.

Adam continued to run, arcing around in a semi-circle even though the two men who’d attacked him lay unconscious and the third man was lying under Spot’s guard, frozen with terror.

I walked over.

Adam’s eyes were wild. He looked around as if counting all three men on the ground. Adam pointed at Crosen. “He lied to me. He was the liar, but he attacked me.”

“Yes, he did.” I turned sideways next to him and put my arm around his massive shoulders. It was like hugging an elephant. “You defended yourself,” I said. “You did what you had to, and you did it well.”

“I never wanted to hurt anyone on the field,” he said, his voice thick with sadness and distress. “I just did my job. But I wanted to hurt these guys.”

“Me, too,” I said.

The kid I’d given my phone to approached.

“Did you get it on video?”

He nodded. His eyes showed wariness but also amazement. He stared at Adam. “Are you Adam Simms?”

Adam nodded.

“That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

I took the phone and dialed Mallory.

While it rang, I noticed that Adam was holding his arm.

“Hurt bad?” I said.

He shook his head. “It hurts. But nothing like being hit by Mike Munchak,” he said.

“From the Houston Oilers,” I said.

Adam nodded.

Mallory answered the phone.

I said, “I’ve got some dirtballs for your men to pick up, one of whom will give you some satisfaction to charge with assault.”

“You got witnesses?”

“Yeah. Video, too.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were hauling the three men away in handcuffs. Crosen had regained consciousness. As they carried him past me, he silently mouthed the words, “You’re a dead man, McKenna.”