The Thrill of the Chase (Mystery & Adventure) (34 page)

For a long while, I stood there, bracing a hip against the counter. Cold sweat tightened my flesh into goose pimples and the robe did nothing to warm me. Ignoring the sensation, I forced myself to think nothing and instead concentrated on breathing more naturally, slowing my heart rate back to some semblance of normalcy. Finally, kneading my eyes with my thumb and forefinger, I pushed off of the sink and hobbled back to the bedroom, leaving the empty glass in the sink behind me.

I crawled back into the bed, berating myself – partly out of frustration, partly out of personal humiliation. What in hell could have made me so jumpy over a goddamn nightmare? Sure, it could have been the scotch, or maybe something else – maybe something resulting from a disturbance on the emotional plane, but neither seemed a likely candidate. Maybe the dream was simply a product of my failure to speak my heart to Jill earlier that evening, and regret had spawned a nightmare.

But why?

Robert Mendoza's words came back to me one final time, ringing off the inside of my skull, echoing incessantly, faintly disturbing. What he'd said was driving me mad. If I didn't speak my heart to Jill, I was quite literally going to go crazy.

I laughed at the thought and scratched at the shadow of stubble on my neck with fingers that still weren't quite steady. I'd often heard it said that love was something too complicated to keep inside – that eventually you would
have
to let it out. Self–pity had always kept me believing that I would take my love to the grave with me and never share it with anyone, but now that seemed impossible.

If you haven't already lost the chance forever.

"What the hell?" I asked aloud, furious with myself. "Where's this bullshit coming from?"

The blackness surrounding me had no comforting answers to offer.

I forced a laugh for the sake of reassurance, but it came out high and uneven, shaky and unnatural. That ominous feeling of impending doom tightened my guts almost painfully, and I rolled over onto my stomach, burying my face in the pillow and praying that I would just fall back to sleep. In the morning, I'd have forgotten the nightmare completely and find myself wondering over cereal just how in hell my knee had gotten so black and blue.

Several minutes passed and I was still staring at the uneven stitching of the white pillowcase. Impatient, I flopped over onto my back and lay still, trying to think nothing. Somewhere in the distance, a dog was barking to come inside. The heater was rattling tonelessly in the hallway, a harmless metal monster. The lights of a semi waxed and waned across the ceiling, there and gone, a fleeting spirit of companionship. My body ached almost everywhere, spitefully determined to keep me conscious after the beating it had just undergone.

Sleep had been driven far from me.

I blew out a sigh of painful recognition.
Well, now what?

It was only 2:34 in the morning. There would be nothing good on TV, I had no current novels to dust off and resume, I wasn't about to take the opportunity to go jogging, and the paperboy wouldn't come to deliver until four.

How convenient,
I thought, rolling over onto my side.
Awake in time for nothing.

The curtains over the window drifted lazily in the draft from the floor vent, sympathetic to my plight. They had witnessed my suffering and understood what it was like to be trapped and impatient.

And speaking of suffering…

I threw open the bathrobe and gently prodded my knee with a finger. The pain was still fresh and sharp, although hobbling around in the kitchen seemed to have reduced the initial agony to a dull throb. Hopefully I hadn't really shattered the bone. Nothing would be gained from a broken limb – especially not in the middle of a case.

How would I explain
that
one to Slyder? "Sorry, Chief – I was attacked in my sleep. Yeah – that's right, Kev. Attacked by the goddamn floor."

I sighed, rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. "Sleep, sleep, sleep…"

But it was obvious that sleep was no longer an option. I would have to occupy my time in another way. Groaning, I sat up and stared around at the room, discerning nothing but shadows dappled with silver moonshine. I looked down at the floor and saw faintly the scraps of paper I'd scattered over the carpet with my fall. Index cards and shreds of paper had scattered everywhere.

And I just organized those no more than two hours ago,
I thought, simultaneously enjoying and despising the irony.

Now that I was seated comfortably, my mind rejected the idea of getting up again, but I growled low in my throat and swung my legs over the edge of the bed anyway. I staggered to my feet, putting most of my weight on my right leg. Thankfully, the pain wasn't as bad as I'd imagined, but it still took a minute for me to screw up my courage and finally kneel down on the floor. Once I was seated on my haunches, I began snatching up the crumpled notes and scattered pages. I gathered it all into my lap, then stood slowly and laid the pile back on the surface of the desk. Nothing was organized anymore, but that was alright because I wasn't planning on doing anymore thinking just then. As a matter of fact, I'd just begun to feel sleepy again, so I figured that I would just quickly separate my things from the evidence belonging to the SPD and then crawl back into bed for another attempt at sleep.

I reached out and clicked on the desk lamp to shed some light on the situation. After quickly scanning the floor to be sure I'd picked everything up, I looked down miserably at the pile I'd gathered together and my eyes fell on the two slips of paper that had ended up on top. It was either a stroke of fate or divine intervention that I didn't simply gloss over them in my groggy state. It was a miracle that my eyes focused, that my brain devoted all due attention.

I straightened sharply, blinking rapidly, wondering if my eyes
had
focused or if they were just playing cruel tricks on me.

The two slips of paper – crumpled, but intact – were the note Slyder had found in Finigan Thawyer's bedside table and the scrap of napkin bearing Robert Mendoza's phone number and the simple words, "Good luck". There was no apparent similarity at first glance, but upon closer investigation, one noticed an interesting fact.

The handwriting on each was identical.

I sat down hard in the desk chair, staring at the two pieces of paper as though trying to burn holes though them. My mind was racing beyond my ability to process the information. Forgetting about the pain in my knee, forgetting about my sudden weariness, I fought to sort the jumbled pieces of ideas and thoughts and possibilities all swirling in my head into something comprehensive. In the end, I focused on one word – one name – and in the end that was the only thing that concentrated my thoughts on a singular goal.

Mendoza.

The handwritten messages were composed of the same uneven, chicken–scratch prose. The d's and g's were identical. The writing on each note slanted to the right.

Mendoza. Robert Mendoza. Robbie.

I stood abruptly, so deep in thought that I failed to notice the way my injured knee trembled involuntarily. It didn't all make sense, yet at that moment I knew beyond any shadow of doubt that Mendoza was the one behind the whole thing – the robbery at Miles', the murder of Ruby Daniels indirectly, the theft of his
own
car.

But why?
I thought, frowning.
What could he possibly gain from robbing middle class? Miles is at the low end of the totem pole financially, and Daniels wasn't that much better off. And on top of that, Robbie went all out, hiring criminals and covering all his tracks…

Unless he had a grudge against Miles, I couldn't piece together a motive. I didn't even know how they
knew
each other – if they did at all – which meant I couldn't safely assume anything, which
also
meant that I couldn't rightly accuse the man on any charges. His fingerprints weren't even on the note Slyder had found, although I was willing to bet that the partial the Chief had mentioned belonged to the hunter.

But it wouldn't be enough for a warrant – or a conviction. There's just no legitimate
proof
.

I stared hard at Mendoza's uneven scrawl. Now that I really thought about it, everything in the case pointed to him, from circumstance to location to means, and regardless of how unlikely it seemed, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was his handwriting on each note.

Okay, okay,
I said to myself, trying to order my thinking.
Robbery is definitely conceivable for Robbie. He told me himself he was having money problems. But if that's so, how could he afford to pay off the criminals he hired to hit Miles? Why not just rob Miles himself? And he only got a few grand from Mile's safe anyway. I saw the bank notes – Miles has got problems too. So Mendoza shelled out twenty-six thousand for practically nothing.

I scratched at my scalp and studied the floor.

And where does the Ruby Daniels murder fall into place? According the Thawyer and Harris, they acted on their own initiative, but what if they were lying? Robbie doesn't get what he wants from Miles, but he's still in the game, so he sends his cronies to hit the Daniels house too? But how is he connected to either of them – Miles
or
Daniels?

I came to stand before the bulletin board and gazed up at the pictures I had tacked there, searching for the answer to my question.

C'mon,
I growled in my head,
there's gotta be
some
thing here…

The silence in the room was accommodating but largely unhelpful.

Okay, new scenario,
I thought abruptly, turning away from the board. In my mind, I began laying out the scene.
Robbie obviously knows Miles somehow – most likely he knows that they're both struggling. But why
does he hire criminals to do a job he could do himself – more simply
and
cheaper? Mendoza has a personal vendetta against Miles? Any amount of money he'll pay to make
Miles
pay for whatever happened in the past. And Daniels too?

I shook my head.
Scratch that – too melodramatic. I need something concrete for a warrant. Slyder and Dempsey aren't going to accept late–night speculation as "reasonable suspicion". Focus. You need a motive, but to get a motive you need a link that connects all three of these people. If only I'd known them all before this whole thing began – it might have helped now.

Something in the back of my mind prodded me – a thought that had almost caught on, but then it was gone just as quickly. I'd almost had something credible, I could tell. My internal clue detector was beeping frantically.

So, sticking with that line of thought…
Do
I know either of them from somewhere? Maybe I met them in a deli together or at a party someplace?

It was unlikely because I wasn't a partier, and the only person who lived close to the deli I frequented was Miles. Perhaps involuntarily, I again searched the photos for an answer. My gaze fell upon a photograph of Rick Miles and his wife standing in their living room. It was nothing unusual: a cop had apparently snapped the shot while I'd been examining the safe – the tails of my long coat were actually visible in the corner of the image.

My thought clicked suddenly, and not for the first time my memory surprised me. I
had
seen Mendoza before all this mess – before taking up his "case", at any rate (which was obviously a complete sham). It had only been for a moment, a moment that must have lasted no more than a second, and that made it all the more noteworthy that I remembered his face.

Rick and Sandy Miles had a picture of Robert Mendoza on their wall – in the hallway leading from the front door to the kitchen. If memory served, he was manning a grill with Rick, and Rick's son was standing in the foreground of the portrait.

I was sure of it.

My excitement grew as I quickly removed all the photographs from the board except for the one of Rick and Sandy Miles and one of Robert Mendoza.
I can definitely connect them, then. So, were they friends? Relatives – maybe even step–brothers? Well, Robbie mentioned a cousin that lived in the same apartment complex as my mother at one point, so let's stick with that for the time being.

I moved the picture of Mendoza next to the one of Rick and Sandy and drove the tack directly through the hunter's eye – out of pure spite. I stepped back, cupping my chin in my right hand, my right elbow in my left hand.

So they know one another,
I thought carefully.
I'll assume they're cousins. What in the world would motivate Mendoza to hire men to rob his relative? Family feud?

Somewhat of an unusual factor arose in my mind – something that denied that possibility. When my uncle had served time for domestic violence charges and later on divorced my aunt, half of the Stikup family had sided with him while the rest had remained loyal to my aunt. My mother had always believed in her younger sister, and in a fit of righteous fury, she had torn a picture of my uncle from the wall and thrown it directly into the garbage bin.

So unless the Mileses are the forgiving type, they probably would have taken Robbie off
their
wall. So what am I left with, if not that? Cousin robs bankrupt cousin because he himself is going under financially? To bring Miles down with him? Misery loves company?