The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller (16 page)

“Right.”

“So I’m in there, I see all these listings for computer parts. He’s got these headings:
Part Number, Description, Supplier. Distribution
—a column for that. In
Supplier
and
Distribution
he’s got these initials, people I know, or some of them. There’s Freddie—F.M.C.—and Izzy.” He said the last name with contempt.

“Izzy’s he just wrote ‘Izzy’ for. That’s why I paid attention at all, because of Izzy’s name. I’d heard Greg talk to him on the phone. So then I pay more attention to what’s in the database. I look in the last column. I had to scroll over, you know, to the right because it all didn’t fit on the screen. He’s got dollar amounts there. It was, like, ‘Page one of thirty-four.’ All this money, subtotaled on every page. We’re talking money here. This is the hardware, not the software. The software, man, that alone…”

“Did you see the final amount?”

“I paged down, two, three of them, then Greg comes home. I start to tell him what’s up, me using his computer, and he flies into this
rage
. I mean, I thought he was gonna trash me right then and there. He had me up against the
wall
. Little guy, he’s not that big, not that strong, but I thought I’d had it. I stayed out of his way for two days.”

The waves were huskier now and nearly reaching the foot of the stairs below.

“About the murder…” I said.

“I’m getting there,” he said. “Can we go in? It’s cold…”

“Good idea.”

We got back in the car. I didn’t start the engine.

“I don’t know details,” he said. “I just know they happened.”

“Tell me, best you can.”

“What I’m going to say
now
is that I don’t
know
he had anything to do with it, okay?, but I
know
.”

“Oh David.”

“See?” He turned to me, emotion twisting his face.

“Wait. I believe you, okay? Let’s go from there.”

“So things kind of got back to normal. Exams were coming up, winter break. Jason…I forgot to tell you…we used to have another roommate, a guy named Jason. Jason had sense. He never came back from break. He asked me to send him a box of his stuff, and I did.
He
wasn’t involved, I know that.”

“You mentioned the name Freddie.”

David took a deep breath, then said, “I saw him in the cafeteria one time and once in our apartment. Happy guy, neat guy. I asked him, ‘What’s your major?’ He says, ‘Huh?’ I says, ‘Major, major.’ Greg says ‘Freddie’s major is pussy,’ and laughs.” David threw me a glance and said, “Sorry.”

“That’s all right.”

“He wasn’t a student, I found out later.”

“And you think he’s dead.”

“There was a sketch in the paper last week.”

What he told me next was the name: Freddie Cordillo. The Turtle Rock Doe.

He phoned his father the night he saw the picture. He knew it was Freddie but just couldn’t tell his dad. Then Joe had his heart attack and David knew he would never tell him.

I said, “It’s a long way from stealing things, David, to murder.”

“Is it? You don’t know. You just don’t know.”

“Who else is going to be hurt?” I asked. “You said…”

He shook his head and looked out the window on his side.

I started the engine and slowly pulled away. David put his head back on the headrest and promptly fell asleep, or seemed to. This boy was in deep waters, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

Back home, I offered to let him stay on the sofa and he took me up on it. I lay awake knowing I should go to one of the investigators promptly. I’d never lain down on a case before. But I decided for once the dead could wait. The living needed taking care of.

In the morning, David sat in his undershirt with the sheet and blanket curled over his shorts and his bare legs hanging out. “I’m not a morning person,” he said, when I handed him a glass of orange juice.

A few moments later I said, “What do you want to do about this, David?” He knew what I meant.

“Give me a little more time.”

“I’m afraid if I let you think about it, you won’t come.”

He said, “Maybe I’d like to come around ten, if that’s all right.”

“Are you somebody who keeps his word?”

“If I say I’ll be there at ten, I will,” he said, no annoyance in his voice. He nodded toward the TV and asked, “What’s on the news?”

Okay, he’s had enough for now, I thought, tossing him the remote.

When I was out of the shower, I could hear a cartoon channel on. Big kid still on the couch probably, mouth open, propped on an elbow like his dad. “Is that Taz cartoons you have on?” I shouted from the bedroom. “Or doesn’t he come on till afternoon?”

I toweled my hair, slipped underwear on, jockeyed through the closet to find some slacks and a blouse I liked, and blew-dry my hair for about thirty seconds, then got a funny feeling. I walked barefooted to the living room.

He had scooted.

NINTEEN

N
early five hundred people have died from hypothermia and sunstroke in the last seven years while crossing the border from the south, and that’s not to mention drownings and other casualties. That’s what a U.N. Special Envoy for Immigration Issues was saying on his sound bite that morning.

Yes, yes, but does that have anything to do with our Juan Does? What would ol’ Stu have waiting for me today when I got into the lab?

And now there was David. He knew one of them, even if slightly. When I left the house, the empty orange juice glass with pulpy flakes clinging inside was on the counter with a paper towel under it and the word
Thanks
printed on it in blue ballpoint. I felt a little responsible for David, yet was also locked in indecision. I’d call his mother, that’s what I’d do, soon as I got to the lab.

I rolled a plastic bloodshot eyeball around on my desk while dialing numbers to find out which real estate firm she worked for. The eye’s green iris wobbled within the sphere.

“He’s home,” she said when I finally reached her. “Sleeping. I know you put him up last night. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

Her voice was modulated but I could sense the tension in it. I heard her puffing a cigarette. “He’s just had it with that roommate,” she said. “He’s been bouncing between friends’ apartments. Now he can stay with me. He says he doesn’t want to bother me.
Bother me? How can you raise a kid his whole life and then have him say something like that?”

“I guess they feel once they move out, they’re out.”

“The only revenge for parents is that the kids will get
theirs
someday, right?” she said with a nervous laugh.

“I suppose that’s true.”

“I’m going to urge him not to take so many classes next term. I think that’s a contributor. He’s so stressed. And now this with his father. You don’t have any children, do you? I mean, if you did, they wouldn’t be old enough for this type of thing, I mean.”

“I don’t have any children, no.”

“I thought that’s what Joe said. I couldn’t remember.”

“No, I don’t have any.”

“They can break your heart. I guess that’s a cliché. But it’s true, definitely true. Oh, there’s my other line.”

“Go ahead.”

“No, the light went off,” she said. “What were you saying?”

“Your son seems like a terrific kid, Jennifer.”

“Oh, oh yes, he is. I didn’t mean
that
. Unless you have one of your own though, there is no way you can really understand. Children can just drive—”

“When you talk to him, Jennifer?”

“Yes?”

“I think I’d be listening real hard between the lines.”

“What are you telling me?”

“Just, he needs you.”

“Okay-y-y. Nothing more than that?”

“I think I’d just be real open to him.”

“He’s told you something. What is it?”

“He…he’s just real confused.”

“As if he’s the only one. That’s the thing about kids. No one else has any problems. They are so completely self-absorbed. David is not usually like that, but it can come out sometimes.”

“I see.”

“Thanks for calling. We’ll be all right. If I can repay you in any way…”

“Don’t worry about it. Take it easy now.”

“I might see you at the hospital,” she said. Her voice trailed off. “I don’t know when exactly.”

“I hope so, Jennifer. Take care.”

David had his father’s looks and his mother’s high-octane emotions. I sat thinking about how David looked as he pleaded to be believed, his hair too cute-curly for a grown man and too flecked with gray for a young one, his eyes too stricken for anyone.

The eyeball on my desk bumped against the taxidermy book I had not yet brought back to the basement library. I can’t say why I took that book out to begin with, except that most of us here are just of the curious sort. The last thing I looked at was a chart of glass eyes for installing in the heads of critters. Gruesome, in a way, but at least these creatures had a type of immortality. For the anonymous victims of homicide there were no reminders of their time on earth at all. It was as if they had never been.

The closed folder for Froylan Cordillo was on my desk also. I sent the wobbly eye over to it. How would Jennifer feel, I wondered, getting a call from homicide investigators wanting to speak to her son? Lost in my moral quandary, I delayed picking up the phone to do what I knew I should. Again I flicked the plastic eyeball and watched it roll and shudder.

A forensic tech named Mitchell came into the bullpen where we have our desks, carrying a soft drink and a sheaf of papers. He sat sideways to his desk and put his feet up on a chair. He lipped a pencil fiercely as he studied a photo.

“Mitchell,” I said.

“Whassup?” His ponytail caught between his neck and collar as he swung his legs down and reached for a stapler.

“You’ve heard about all those Doe cases lately?”

“Yeah, a couple. Irvine, right? Sounds serial to me.”

“Sanders thinks it doesn’t exactly fit a serial.”

“Yeah? How’s he doing, by the way?”

“Pretty good. I saw him yesterday. I’ll see him again tonight.”

“Bummer-and-a-half,” Mitchell said.

“Yep,” I said. “What are you working on?”

He leaned his steno chair back to rock on its spring tension. “Vietnamese guy capped his girlfriend and little girl. Males kill daughters more than sons, females kill sons more than daughters. That’s what the new D.O.J. stats say. Wild.”

“Isn’t it?” I said flatly.

“Hey, now that I think of it, I believe there was a Doe found at the end of Sand Canyon yesterday.”

“He’s not a Doe,” I said. “Believe me, I checked.”

“Well, if I can help, give a yell. Hey, you see Joe, greetings from me.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Tell him I heard he’s so hard on the nurses they went out and bought him a Get-Well card.”

I went downstairs to put the taxidermy book back on the shelf. From behind a rack of books came Trudy Kunitz. Dangling from her ears were two enormous blue hockey pucks with
Mighty Ducks
lettered in white. I mentioned them.

“I decided: Dress happy, be happy,” she said. “Now, how do you like these?” She pointed a boot toe at me after lifting a long black soft-cotton skirt. They were red.

“Enough to borrow,” I said.

“Nothing doing.” She lowered her voice. “By the way, you’ll be happy to know I have found a place, a spa, where they do holistic health for people like me. Herbs and things. Meditation.”

“Trude, are you sure this is where you should be going?”

A frown sped over her face. Then she looked at me with tight, earnest eyes, and said, “Help me think positive, Smokey.”

Someone coming down the stairs called her name, and she told me she’d see me later. She was off, her skirt wending its way around her legs like a mob of cats at feeding time.

I successfully avoided calling Will Bright until almost noon. When I tried, he was out. Lucky me. I stopped by Stu’s to say I was going to see Joe at the hospital. He said it would be all right to be late. Not that I cared. He asked if I’d take along a block of pound cake his wife baked.

“What’s that you have there?”

“Pound cake, from Stu Hollings.”