The Ten-Mile Trials (16 page)

With one voice, they said ‘No.'

‘And did you both read my report about my lunch with the coroner?'

Again, like good children in school, together they said ‘No'. And Ray said, ‘But you told me about that, Jake.'

‘But I didn't tell Rosie. See, we're already wrecking the new system. We all have to keep up this log and read it often, so we'll all know the same stuff!'

‘Jake, we're too busy to keep sticking our heads in the computer,' Rosie said.

‘It's quicker than coming in here and getting yelled at, isn't it? Listen to this.' I scrolled back till I found my notes about lunch with Pokey. As Rosie fidgeted and Ray sat wrapped in gloom, I read them Pokey's thoughts about the Cyrillic alphabet on the card and the lesions on the scalp of the deceased. ‘Now then,' I said, ‘which bright, enterprising detectives in this room think it's time they started working together and using the assets in front of their noses? Beginning with a call to Bo Dooley to get some advice about tracking those shipments, followed by another conversation with our man in Phoenix to see if he's found any more evidence of funny-talking gangs doing refined burglaries in other cities?'

Winnie was so late getting back from the pawnshop I was beginning to worry, but when she clattered in on her stumpy platform-soled stilettos she looked unconcerned.

‘I stayed as long as I dared,' she said. ‘Made up a lot of stuff about family-heirloom jewelry . . . Anybody interested in the going rates for jade? I've got a whole list.' She pulled it out of her purse and waved it like a flag. ‘But our guys never showed.'

‘Probably never found another house to hit after they got spooked into dropping the Anderson loot,' Kevin said.

‘Well, that's it for you at that place,' I said. ‘We've pushed our luck far enough.'

‘I'm convinced the bad-suit guys are in on some of the burglaries at least,' Kevin said. ‘But I don't have a shred of proof yet. And the only thing that connects them to the grow garage is a story by an admitted addict who's in treatment.'

‘We need a picture or a recording,' Winnie said.

‘Maybe somebody else,' I said, ‘on another day.'

‘The trouble is,' Kevin said, ‘I don't have any more bright ideas for going proactive. I hate feeling like I'm just sitting here waiting for them to make a mistake.'

‘We're not. We've got the employee line that Chris and Julie are following, and Rosie's drug investigation, and Ray will get more from BCA soon. Something will pop. We'll make a list of all our loose ends in the morning and then prioritize, decide what to go after first.' He looked at me like he knew I was blowing smoke.

‘Yeah. Well, I have to pull all that tape off myself, I better get going,' Winnie said. ‘Is Rosie around to help me?'

‘Yes. I'll call her,' Kevin said. Rosie came hustling down the hall toward us, spouting questions at Winnie, and the two of them disappeared into the Ladies. She didn't make eye contact with me then, nor a few minutes later when they came out and walked past my door together, deep in a conversation punctuated by gasps and chuckles. Their friendship seemed to be getting more solid every day. Rosie had never complained about working in a homicide crew with only men, but I could see it worked really well for her, now, to have another woman in the section.

I drove to Marvin Street past yards full of flowers blooming stupendously after the rain. The storm had been good news for roofers, too: several lawns were strewn with split shingles, and the crack of hammers sounded above the traffic noise. In Maxine's yard, where her old house had, amazingly, withstood the wind with hardly any damage, Nelly and a smaller girl who looked vaguely familiar were perched on the platform in the tree. Inside, Eddy was helping Maxine make meatloaf, and the two three-year-old girls, Brittany and Brianna, were competing fiercely to drape the most scarves and junk jewelry on to their dolls, out of a glorious mess they had spread on the floor.

‘Hey,' I said. ‘They look pretty fancy. Are they going to a party?'

‘They're going to the
ball
.' Brianna said.

‘Cinderella gotta stay home,' Brittany said, pointing to an abused-looking doll sitting naked on a doll bed.

‘Too bad,' I said. ‘Where's the ball?'

‘At the . . . at the . . .' Brittany said.

‘Fairground,' Brianna said.

‘Yeah, the fairground,' Brittany said, draping a fur stole around her doll's shoulders.

‘Gonna meet the Prince, huh?'

‘No, silly,' Brianna said, ‘at the fairground you ride on the roly-coaster.'

As usual with Brianna, I stood corrected. I turned to Maxine and said, ‘See you got a new client.'

‘Mmm,' Maxine said, strangely noncommittal.

‘Nelly
likes
her,' Eddy said, sarcastically.

‘Nelly's being nice to her on her first day, to help out,' Maxine said, ‘which is pretty sweet of Nelly. You ready to add the oatmeal? One level cup.'

‘I know, I know,' Eddy said. He was being a pill.

‘Your little guy's still asleep, I think,' Maxine said, walking in with me.

As we leaned over the crib together, I asked her, ‘Eddy doesn't care for the new addition to his harem?'

‘Tiffany Funk. Her mother went into detox today, and her grandmother doesn't seem to be in any hurry to help out. So I said I'd take her for a while, but . . . she's very shy and she kind of latched on to Nelly. So Eddy's nose is bent.'

‘That's too bad. I wish I had a few minutes to talk to him, but I think I better get Ben on the road.'

‘Absolutely,' Maxine said. ‘Don't worry about Eddy. We're going to chop up an onion now, he can work his mad off on that.'

I'd always liked Eddy, though because of the trauma of living with an increasingly crazy father who finally destroyed the whole family in one day, he was more sensitive than most kids and still suffered from fear and survivors' guilt, and who knows what else. We used to have good little visits, though, as he healed up and began to talk. He liked to play with my handcuffs and look at my shield.

I hadn't spent much time talking to him since Ben was born – I was always so busy now. And to be honest, now that I was a father, it made me uneasy to be reminded of Eddy's terrible childhood. I couldn't stand the thought of any of that bad stuff happening to Ben.

Now Maxine had another damaged child adding to the aura of waste and sorrow that was beginning to hang over her house. For a couple of guilty seconds I wished I had a babysitter with a happier clientele – as if Maxine was to blame for the trouble that sometimes got carried into her house. As if I wasn't lucky to have the best foster mother I ever had for a day-care provider. Shame on me!

I scooped up my son and hurried home with him, making grimly determined plans to give him a perfect life. About five miles east of Mirium, he lost faith in my ability to do that, and cried really hard the rest of the way.

Dead tired, that night I turned in right after Ben's last bottle and fell into a deep sleep that carried me far into REM country. In a recurring dream about prioritizing, I handed out lists of tasks to my crew. They all groaned in protest, but I insisted they get right on these jobs, and do them in the order I'd specified. Then something would happen that made me completely reshuffle the order in which the jobs had to be done, so I would trot around again, handing out new lists to increasingly hostile workstations. I was fighting off a direct challenge from Kevin – who was getting ready to throw a punch if I demanded one more change –when I woke up, sweating.

I lay still a few seconds letting my brain sort through layers of anger, frustration and guilt that it didn't have any further use for. When I emerged from the fog of sleep into real-time events, I heard a pair of owls trading owl bulletins in the trees outside my open window, and Ben, in his crib at the end of the bed, making the first, tentative snorts and whimpers of an infant about to demand a two o'clock snack. He had begun to sleep straight through some nights, but this was obviously not going to be one of them. The third sound I identified was the even breathing of Trudy, sleeping soundly beside me.

I slid out of bed, picked up Ben and a diaper, and beat it down to the kitchen, where I nuked a bottle while I changed him. As I sat down to feed him, I told myself not to get too comfortable – I was so tired I was afraid I'd fall asleep and drop him. Something about that combination – exhaustion plus determined alertness – put my brain into overdrive, and I began to have some quite interesting thoughts about the current crime wave in Rutherford. Ideas crowded around, waving for attention, each one pressing its claim to come first in the morning. I was too tired to write them down, though, or sort them in order of importance.

‘And the trouble is,' I murmured into Ben's warm ear while I burped him, ‘I'll probably forget all of this by morning.' He sighed as if he thought that was quite likely, and fell asleep on my shoulder.

I must have fallen asleep, too, between his crib and my side of the bed – I woke up cold, a little before six, with most of the covers down around my knees. But at least my memory hadn't failed me: all my ideas were still there, clamoring for attention.

‘I don't see any way to prioritize them, though,' I told Ben over my shoulder as I drove to work. ‘I think I'm just going to go after everything as fast as I can and see what shakes out.' He waved his fists and kicked against the restraints of his car seat, and then, to make sure I understood how completely he was on my side in this argument, he blew a bubble made out of his own spit.

EIGHT

K
evin was typing fast when I walked into his office. I waited for him to stop. When he didn't, I said, ‘That Anderson kid, is he home from the hospital yet?'

‘I don't know,' he said, without looking up. His voice implied that he didn't care and couldn't imagine why I'd expect him to. I fixed him with my best approximation of Chief McCafferty's Twin Blue Laser stare, not easy to do with brown eyes and a face that looks like the last item left on the shelf after a doorbuster sale. It must have been close enough, because when he realized I hadn't moved, he looked up, blinked, and said quickly, ‘You want me to find out?'

‘ASAP,' I said. ‘And let me know.' I turned away, then turned back and added, ‘If he's home, tell him to stay there.'

I walked quickly down the hall to Ray's office, stood in front of his desk, and said, in more collegial tone, ‘I've been thinking about the Reddi-Kash pawnshop.'

He was reading something on his screen, but he swung his eyes up to me and said, ‘So have I.'

‘How long's it been at that location?'

‘Forever. Long as I've been on the force. Eighteen years, going on nineteen.'

‘And in all that time, have you ever had any trouble with it?'

‘Never.'

‘Neither have I.' I told him about my late-night conversations with Ike, back in the day. ‘So I wonder, is Ike still there?'

‘I don't know yet. I just started thinking about it. As soon as the Court House opens, I'm going to have Winnie call Records and find out if Reddi-Kash has changed hands.'

‘Why Winnie?'

‘I'm going to have her work in here with me today, making phone calls and bringing files up to date. That way she gets an overview of everything, and just possibly I get caught up.'

‘Sounds like a good plan,' I said. ‘Now talk to me about the bad-suit guys.'

‘OK. Wouldn't you like to sit down?'

‘Not yet. If the bad-suit guys really are the ones Gloria called the Screamers, they are very bad guys indeed.'

‘Agreed. And?'

‘If they're also the burglars that assaulted Ricky Anderson, maybe Mrs Anderson has a point about not letting them run around loose.'

‘We haven't got anything to hold them on. And we haven't got them, either, as far as that goes. Although I guess that could probably be arranged if— Have you thought of a plausible excuse to pick them up?'

‘No. But what I was thinking, if Darrell's dog matched them to the smell of something at the grow house, we could pick them up on the strength of that and Gloria Funk would ID them.'

He thought. ‘Gloria didn't actually see them kill anybody.'

‘So we might not get them on Murder One, but we could hang the drug rap on them for sure, and probably the assault on Ricky Anderson.'

For a moment he looked almost cheerful. Then he said, ‘But we don't have anything of theirs for a dog to smell, do we?'

‘I'm thinking there's a chance we could find something. Bring up that interview I did with Gloria Funk, will you? That first day.'

I didn't want to listen to the whole dismal thing again, so I fast-forwarded through as much of the weeping as I could. When I heard her say, ‘Pete said if I didn't want to see it, I could leave,' I stopped and backed up. And there it was, Gloria's face, swollen with weeping, saying, ‘Helped themselves to anything in the refrigerator, too, Never even asked. And left their filthy socks and underwear all over the place, changed clothes wherever they happened to be standing.'

I hit the pause button and said, ‘All that random undressing – isn't it possible there's a dirty sock or some skivvies lying around there somewhere?'

Ray said, ‘BCA pretty well cleaned that place out, Jake.' He had a little gleam in his eye, though, like a coyote following a rabbit.

‘If we got Gloria to come over and help us look—'