The Ways of the Dead (8 page)

“’s why I said please.”

The cop took the card, looked down at it, and motioned to the marshal. The man took it and walked back into the house. He reemerged a few minutes later, flicked his finger at Sully, and escorted him into the foyer. It was high ceilinged, spacious with stone floors, a mirror in a heavy frame on the wall and a small credenza. Thick carpet started in each room off the foyer, and the staircase was just ahead. It was oppressively quiet.

“You are in a world of shit,” the marshal whispered to him. He was a tall, chubby man, his black suit coat buttoned, his brown eyes bright and harsh. He stood about nine inches from Sully’s face, leaning in from the waist. It was the stance and position of men in authority, and Sully resented it as much as he recognized it.

He pursed his lips as if to kiss the agent on the lips, and the man recoiled, stepping back.

“Thought so, tough guy.”

The agent glared and motioned him to follow down the carpeted hallway. At the end, he knocked softly on a door, swung it open, and motioned for Sully to enter. It was the judge’s home office. David Reese sat behind a heavy desk. His tie was still knotted at his throat and his jacket was still on. There were framed diplomas on the wall. The place had the air of a funeral parlor.

“I honestly cannot believe your temerity,” Reese said, as soon as the agent closed the door. “I cannot believe you would send some sort of cryptic note to my family at this hour. The only reason I allowed you in was so I could document your behavior to your employers, who will be informed of this, at the highest level, within the hour. I can assure you that my graciousness will not be so profound this time.”

“The last time we had dealings, David, you lied about what you told me, then tried to get me fired, so let’s cut the foreplay,” Sully said, sitting down, uninvited. “I am truly sorry about your daughter. Honest to Christ. Now. If you’re going to call my bosses and tell them I’m the only hack who got into your house today by handing a cop a business card and telling him it was important, they’re going to be more impressed than pissed. But go ahead. Eddie Winters’ll take your call. I just talked to him. The phone’s right there.”

They looked at each other.

“Go ahead,” Sully said. “I’n wait.”

“There is some point to this,” Reese said.

“Yeah. There is. It’s an off-the-record visit. I’m not reporting anything about coming to your house or what it looks or sounds like in here. I’ll report what you said in the driveway and that’s it. I came to tell you that apparently at some point today, or perhaps early tomorrow, police are going to arrest the three men or boys who were in Doyle’s Market when Sarah was there.”

The man rocketed to his feet, knocking his chair back. “How do you know that? No one has told me any such thing.”

“It’s going to happen very soon. But that’s not the point. The point is that, as a matter of decency, I did not want your family to put much faith in those arrests. They’re not going to stand. You’re a prick, David, but I thought it was the decent thing to do, for your wife if nobody else, to let her know to condition her expectations.”

“How could you even know about the arrests, much less if they’ll stand?”

“It’s a long story.”

Reese shook his head. “I don’t trust a goddamn thing you’re saying.”

Sully stood up and nodded. “Doubt I would if I was you, either. But I wanted to let you know. It seemed right to me. Do with it what you want. I am sorry for your wife. I mean that.”

He backed out of the room, opened the door, and was escorted to the edge of the property by the marshal.

“Soon, and very soon,” the agent said.

“Blow it out your ass,” Sully said.

Sully took the
bike back downtown, feeling the energy, the adrenaline coming up now. By the time he peeled off 395 and onto South Capitol, the building itself in his rearview, he was where he needed to be, ready for the shit to start.

He turned right onto O Street SW, one block short of his destination, maybe a mile from the waterfront docks and clubs and restaurants, and a good cannon shot from tourist country. He passed Half Street and then turned south on First, approaching the intersection John had given him. Two white Chevy Caprice Classics, parked illegally, four men in each, screamed that he was in the right place. He went back up to the McDonald’s on East Capitol, got a Coke and called John Parker again, getting the answering machine.

A blue Olds Cutlass sat in the parking lot, the engine running. He would have sworn he’d seen it in his rearview on the GW Parkway. “You got to be kidding,” he said out loud.

After twenty minutes without a call back from John, the blue Olds still in the parking lot, he went back outside. He went to his bike, helmet in hand, then turned and walked rapidly to the Olds. There were two men inside, both white, jeans and sweatshirts. In this part of town.

“Hey,” he said, rapping on the passenger-side window, leaning in.

The window came partway down, the guy not saying anything.

“You should try the burgers,” he said. “I think this place, it’s gonna catch on.”

The window went back up.

•   •   •

A few minutes later, he ripped the bike back onto South Cap, giving it full throttle, up to ninety in less than two hundred yards, no way anything on four wheels could keep up, and then he braked and leaned hard to make the right onto M, took two other turns, blowing the stop signs and, less than three minutes later, was on P, the tail gone.

Parts of the job he liked: This.

Midway down the block one more time, he popped it into neutral, then hit the kill switch. The engine coughed and died. He made a show of pushing his visor up, looking down over the motor, to the left and right. He let the bike coast about fifty feet, distracting attention from his right hand, which he was squeezing ever so slightly, to apply the front brake and stop the bike before he passed an alley to the south.

The three-story brick building John had described was in a direct line of sight. Pulling off the helmet, he spit on the street, acting disgusted. He unlocked the seat, pulling the tool kit from the underside niche, and, taking a knee and pulling out a wrench, he loosened and tightened the screws of the frame that held the battery in place.

It didn’t take long. A car rolled up behind him, unnaturally close. He half turned and saw it was one of the white Caprices.

“’s the problem, Evel?” A low baritone.

Sully turned back to the bike and reached for a wrench. “’s it to you, ace?”

“Hey,” the voice said. Sully ignored it.

“
Hey
,” the voice said, and he heard a door open and it slapped into his back, knocking him into the bike.

He stood up and wheeled around, acting shocked, acting pissed, selling it hard. The cop, one of the SWAT team members sitting in the car, bulletproof vests under sweatshirts, held a badge up beside his face, but not outside the car.

“Get your broke-ass bike off the street,” the man said, nodding toward the badge.

Sully took a half step to look at the badge, peered at it, still with the dumb thing. “Well, Christ, dude, how was I supposed to know? Want me to push it over there?” He indicated P Street with a nod of the head.

“Further down,” the man said, motioning down First.

Sully figured he had about fifty yards to give and still be in eyesight of the apartment building. He heard a chopper overhead, somewhere in the distance.

“Let me get my tools up and I’ll push off.”

The cop flicked cigarette ash off his chest. “Put them on the fuckin’ bike and
move.
” He backed up until he got back in the car. They rolled off, went down the street, and made a left. Circling, Sully thought, back to their original spot.

He pushed the bike down First, watching the building from his peripheral vision, then stopped, pulling the wrench back. He kneeled behind the bike.

A few minutes later, a white cargo truck parked across the street in front of him. There was a pause, and then a heavy van with blackened windows rolled past him, wheeled hard onto P, and slammed to a stop. Four, five, six SWAT team members leaped out, running to the front of the apartment building, the first one carrying a Plexiglas shield, two behind him with assault rifles. At the same time, the back door of the cargo van rolled up and a jumble of agents leaped out, sprinting across a neighbor’s yard, leaping over a small boundary fence.

Percussive booms ran up the street and a puff of smoke emerged from the apartment building. Yelling. A window shattered. Two and then three flat pops. The overhead
thump-thump-thump
intensified, the helicopter directly overhead now. Sully ran to the street now, pretense gone. A cop turned, briefly put a gun on him, Sully stopped, hands up, and the cop turned back.

Officers boiled out of the narrow doorway of the apartment building, a handcuffed man between them, head down, pushing and pulling, yelling, swearing, an awkward run to the black van parked in the street. Another knot of officers at the apartment doorway, a plume of smoke trailing them, and a second man emerged, again in handcuffs, again force-marched to the van. Seconds later, a third man, feet dragging. He did not appear to be conscious.

Sirens hit full force, the vans and squad cars roaring out. Sully whipped out his cell and called Patrick on the desk.

“Suspects just got popped,” he said, giving the address and a few more grafs to get the story started.

“I’m coming with the rest,” he said, looking over his shoulder. Cops on the perimeter were looking at him, talking into their fingers, starting to move toward him.

He cursed, rushing to put the tools back, hearing a siren start
whoop-whoop-whoop
ing, and saw a patrol car start to make a U-turn. He cranked the bike, and it roared into life, and then he had the helmet on, leaning over the gas tank as he hit the throttle to keep the front end of the bike from rearing into the air as he shot forward, leaving the patrol car behind.

A block down, blowing the stop sign, the bike flying past sixty, now to seventy, he saw the blue Olds parked at the curb, waiting, not bothering to give chase.

•   •   •

Five hours later he was sitting at the mahogany bar in Stoney’s at the back end of the long L-shaped fixture, the Sazerac in front of him, the glass chilled, the lemon peel at the bottom like a little pickled fish.

“Wait,” the guy at the other end of the bar was saying. “Turn it back up. They saying something.”

Sully looked up in time to see Dmitri, working the bar, trying to clean up and close down, reach above the mirrored glass and turn the sound on the television up.

“—and have just released the names of the three suspects apprehended today. They are Reginald Jackson, seventeen, of the District of Columbia; D’onte Highsmith, eighteen, also of the District; and Jerome Deland, twenty-two, of Prince George’s County.” The man was looking down at a sheet of paper reading. “According to a police spokesman, all three have criminal records. Deland has four arrests, for assault, battery, unlicensed use of a vehicle—that’s the District’s charge for car theft—and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Court records show he was on, ah, parole. Highsmith has two arrests, both on drug possession charges, and had been released five weeks ago to await trial. Police say Jackson was at Oak Hill, the city’s juvenile detention facility, and escaped two weeks ago. They were apparently at a neighborhood basketball court just before the Sarah Reese killing, and then again minutes later, and were found to have an item of Sarah’s in their possession when arrested earlier today at—”

“What is ‘item’?” Dmitri said. “Why don’t they just say?”

“’Cause the police didn’t tell them,” Sully said. “They didn’t tell me, either. Why bother? It’ll come out in court. What they want—what the police want right now—is for people to go to bed thinking it’s all over.”

Dmitri turned the sound down. “You want another?”
Vant
. Sully tapped the top of his glass in response. Dmitri raised his eyebrows at the man three seats down, who shook his head no. Dmitri made another Sazerac and told him that would be the last one. Sully said sure and then his phone buzzed.

“How did you know?” Melissa.

“Lucky guess.”

“Look, if you’re just going to be an ass—”

“So glad I was out at the Reese house taking dictation while your boy was killing it on the investigation.”

There was fifteen seconds of silence. Then, “I
said
you were right, okay, but—”

“I wouldn’t get real excited about these arrests, either,” he said, jumping ahead to keep her off balance. “They look screwy.”

“Screwy? Eddie said you were on about this. These morons were just out of jail when this went down. Something happened in that store and they—”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me about it tomorrow,” he said, and clicked off the phone.

A bartender had materialized from the back room, walking the length of the bar, turning the sound down on the television, sliding around Dmitri in the narrow space, her shoulder-length brown hair swinging as she did so. She walked up to Sully and put one hand, then two, on the bar between them. She took his whiskey glass and took a pull of the Sazerac.

“Dusty,” he said, “as I goddamn live and breathe.”

She was in
the shower, talking behind the curtain, the door to the bathroom closed, the mirrors steamed over. He had already gotten out of the shower and was sitting on the closed toilet seat, a towel wrapped around his waist. Two bourbons, ice melting in the glasses, were sitting on the top of the toilet tank.

“So you’re saying, if I’m following this, the person who killed the judge’s kid is still out there? And Sly rigged it that way?”

“More or less.” He liked her being in the shower. He liked listening to her voice and the water and the sound of the spray hitting the soft plastic of the curtain. It wasn’t often there was a voice in the house besides his, and hers, in its softer inflections and higher pitches, in its laughter and warmth, made the place seem better than it was.

“So why? Why would he do that?”

“Needed the cops off the street, or so he says. He knew where the suspects were, so he threw ’em to the cops.”

“Sounds like a setup.”

He was examining his toenails and wondered where the clippers were. “That’s what I just said.”

“No. I mean to cover his own tracks.”

“
His
tracks? You’re saying Sly Hastings killed David Reese’s daughter?”

The shower water turned off. She pulled the curtain back and reached for her drink. She took a long draw on it, then set it back down and reached for a towel.

“How should I know? He had time and opportunity, didn’t he? Did you ask him where he was? All that’s missing,” she said, stepping out of the shower, standing in front of him, her breasts at the height of his eyes, smiling playfully down at him, “is motive. Which you tell me no one ever really knows.”

He uncrossed his legs and swept the towel to the side, trying to be, what was the word, present. There was him, a chasm, and then everyone else. When that had come to be, he could no longer say, but he had first noticed it after Nadia’s death. Then, after the shell that had blown him up, it had become a yawning gulf, a canyon, a thing so broad that the other side was out of sight. The assumption he’d made was that this was the new normal and it would never change. But hope was a stubborn thing, and in the eight or nine months he’d been dating Dusty (sort of steadily), there had been times like this when he could feel it closing—the gap. When he was a child, his father had taught him to swim in the Mississippi and told him classes were over when he finally swam from side to side, Louisiana to Mississippi, more than a mile, the old man beside him in a johnboat with an outboard and a shotgun for the cottonmouths. Since then, Sully tended to believe that vast distances could be crossed if you only had the grit for it.

Dusty stepped forward and straddled his lap, sitting across him. He put his hands around her back, at the curve of her buttocks, and pulled her farther up on him. She leaned her head back, leaning into his grip, and used the towel to dry her hair. Then she leaned forward, draping the towel around her shoulders. She gently pressed her breasts into his face, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I missed you, I think,” she whispered into the top of his head.

He nodded, turning his head sideways, his eyes closed. She was warm, the space between her legs and the back of her thighs still damp. The shower dripped.

“I don’t see the percentage in Sly killing the kid,” he said. “Very high risk, for what reward? He’s got no beef with Reese.”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Not right now.”

“Why does it matter so much?” Her hands in his hair.

“Because it’s my job.”

“You’re off the clock.”

“Because it’s me.”

She held him, swaying the tiniest bit.

“Okay,” she said, settling her shoulders. She was trying to work him through it, he could tell. “So—so somebody who does have a beef with the judge hired him? He’s setting up the guys in the store to take the fall for him?”

“Well, one, people don’t hire Sly Hastings. He hires people. And, two, if he’s setting them up to take a fall, why tell me they didn’t do it? I don’t see the angle. He was mad Friday night. Somebody did something on his turf he didn’t want done, and he was pissed.”

“So the real killer is out there walking around?”

“I think so. I think Sly wants to find out who it is before the police do. I think he’s using me to help him do that.”

“’Cause he’s going to wipe them out himself? He wants you to help him figure out who to get rid of?”

“Not if I can help it. And I’d rather not think of it that way.”

She coughed, stifling a laugh, he thought. Then she said, “Is this supposed to be foreplay?”

He pulled his head back and smiled up at her, the spell the case had over him broken. “You Miami girls. So impatient.”

“Fort Lauderdale, you moron,” she said lightly. “It’s not the same place. Well? Is it?”

“Only if it’s working.”

“You got to be kidding.”

She stood up, pulling the towel around her body. She started out of the room. “Bring that massage oil, mister. You owe me for running out the other night. And bring my drink, too.”

“You think you’re giving orders?”

“Every day,” she said, voice disappearing down the hall to the bedroom.

He turned out the light and got the drinks. He took three steps before he remembered the oil. “You always talk that smack,” he said, “until I tie you up.”

He heard her getting in the bed in the darkness, saw her lying across the sheets in the slats of light coming in from the streetlights. She lay on her stomach, hair falling across her shoulders, her olive skin, her long, slender legs. She crossed her arms in front of her and lay her head across them.

“Louisiana boys,” she said, “talk too much.”