Chapter Thirty-five

Nick flipped on the little shower radio to the jazz station and caught the end of the John Coltrane rendition of “My Favorite Things.” Damn if jazz didn’t always make him feel better. Even though he hadn’t had more than two hours’ sleep any of the past three nights.

He studied the case as the water massaged his skin, thinking about the latest stunt this guy had pulled. He had really gotten under Sam’s skin, and Nick was glad it was he who had arrived and not someone else. He didn’t blame her for thinking the box was a bomb, but reacting like that wouldn’t have gone over without some raised eyebrows at the station. He’d had the contents checked out, and it was nothing but chocolate.

Out of the shower, he made coffee and scrambled eggs loaded with salsa. It was supposed to be his day off, but as soon as he slept for an hour or two, he was going back to work on the case. With the stereo on, he kicked back on the futon as he ate and flipped through the paper. Halfway through his breakfast, his cell phone rang. He frowned. It was only nine in the morning and no one he wanted to talk to would call him on the cell phone. He thought about Sam. Maybe one someone.

“Thomas,” he answered.

“Yo, Nick. It’s Dougie D.”

Nick laughed. “Dougie D?”

“Yeah, man. You know. Dougie Harris.”

“Right, I know. What’s up with the D?”

“Ah, man, everyone’s going that way, you know. Down here, we got Leroy M and Bobby T. I figure I try it out.”

Nick took a long drink of his coffee. “What are you doing up so early, Dougie D?”

“When you say that shit, sounds all fucked up, you know?”

“Okay, Dougie. Why are you calling?”

“I been out last night, talking, you know. I heard some shit. Thought you’d want to hear.”

“I’m listening.”

“Nah, man. I can’t tell you over the phone. We got to meet, you know.”

“You saying you hungry?”

“Now you talking. I’m hungry, all right.”

Nick leaned back on the futon. “If you’re jerking me around, Dougie, I’m going to show you a world of hurt. You understand me?”

“Hey, I ain’t busting your chops. I got real stuff for you. It’s good. About the horses you talked about last time.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you at the diner. I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“That’s too soon, man. I got some business now. How about later—four o’clock okay?”

“Four’s fine. See you then, Dougie D.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you. And don’t be making fun of the name, man.”

“No fun. Later.” Nick flipped the phone shut and put it on the table. Dougie’s sickly, drug-fiend figure flashed through his mind. His eggs were cold now, and he’d lost his appetite. He was tired and should’ve slept, but now sleep seemed like a waste of time. They had solved Martin Herman’s murder, but he was still no closer to the killer he wanted.

Nick pulled a little black notebook out of his coat pocket and slumped back down onto the futon couch. He opened the notebook and found his notation of Sandi Walters’ death. July 12.

Eva Larson had been killed the night of July 21. The twelfth and the twenty-first. Was there some connection between the dates? He found a clean page and made two columns with the women’s names—Walters first, then Larson. Under Walters, he wrote “12th, abuser, eucalyptus, naked, Mt. Diablo, heroin, semen.”

Next he turned to Larson, filling in the same data: “21st, abuser, eucalyptus, clothes, home, no heroin, no semen.” Beside the dates, he wrote “opposites?” and then thought about the two women. There were some similarities—both of them single mothers, both accused of abusing their daughters, who were only children and were in early grade school. The mothers had both been known to use, if not abuse, drugs.

But besides the abuse, there wasn’t that much more in common. They lived in different neighborhoods, had different lifestyles. Eva Larson’s life had been spent from fix to fix. Sandi Walters had worked somewhat steady jobs and had had boyfriends. According to her mother, she’d even remained friends with her daughter’s father. He put a star by “abuse” in both columns and moved on. The fact that they were Sam’s cases still seemed to be the best link between them.

He moved down the list. Was there a reason the killer had used heroin with Sandi but not with Eva? Or had Sandi done that herself? Had the killer been angry enough to subdue Eva Larson without drugs because of the dead girl? Or perhaps because Eva Larson was so physically wasted? What did that say about him? The killer wasn’t very big? And while he’d have needed help subduing Sandi Walters, he could handle Eva Larson on his own? Nick wrote down his questions and moved to the next item on the list.

Had the killer gone to Eva’s home because he’d been unsuccessful in luring her out? Or had he simply become more brazen? He wrote again, smaller this time, barely fitting all the information on the page. There didn’t seem to be any answers—only more questions.

Laying the book beside him, he retrieved the phone and dialed the lab. He was still waiting to hear the results of some of the tests.

“Zimmerman,” his favorite lab tech answered. Linda Zimmerman radiated good cheer. In their line of work, it was as rare as innocence. She’d been with the department only two and a half years, and for a while many had suspected she wouldn’t last. No one so happy would really want to do police work.

But she was still there. She worked odd hours and occasionally brought in her seven-month-old son, Ben. Ben had inherited his mother’s disposition and a set of green eyes that would make most women jealous. He took to everyone, and Nick couldn’t help picking the little guy up when he was around.

“It’s Nick. Ben in there with you today?”

“Hey, Nick. Nope. He’s running errands with Daddy today.”

“What’s going on over there?”

“We’re working the holdup at West Sun Bank downtown. You hear about it?”

“I think I caught some of it on the radio. Catch the son of a bitch?”

“They ought to. He left his prints everywhere and smiled right into one of the outside surveillance cameras after dumping his ski mask.”

“That’s good news. Anything more on our eucalyptus guy?”

“I tell you about the blond hair that matches one taken from the Walters scene?”

“No. You done up a profile with the DNA yet?” Nick was waiting for the day when they could feed a piece of hair into a machine that would spit out a picture of their perp. Blond hair brought thoughts of Sam, and he hoped this wasn’t more evidence linking the case to her. The police had collected hair samples when they came to her house. He didn’t want to think about it.

Linda laughed. “Soon, I hope. For now, you’re going to have to bring me a live suspect.”

“Damn.”

“Sorry I don’t have more.”

“Hey, no problem. Good luck with the robbery,” Nick said, keeping the disappointment out of his voice. He knew how these cases went. If it wasn’t solved in the first forty-eight hours, the chances for solving it decreased exponentially.

He set the phone on the couch and pulled himself to his feet. His mind was back where it should be—on the case. But the case wasn’t going anywhere. He dialed the station and got put through to one of the clerks.

“Anything on tracking who sent the package to Special Agent Sam Chase yet?” he asked.

“Hang on,” she said, smacking gum in his ear. “We heard anything on a package to a Sam Chase?” she screamed across the room.

Nick waited while people talked in the background.

“Nothing yet,” she said, popping the gum as she hung up.

Nick slapped the phone against one palm, trying to make sense of everything that had happened to Sam. Was it possible that someone in her office hated her enough to target her? He had to agree with Sam—somehow the trouble there felt different than the murders, more personal. Less violent.

The Sloan case felt all wrong, though. Sloan’s lawyers had stalled on the wrongful death suit and Nick knew it was just a game they were playing. Sloan had been as guilty as Nick was male. No, this was something different. He had a hunch it couldn’t be traced back to Sloan at all. He shook his head. But besides one lousy hunch, he couldn’t make any sense of what was going on.

Nick picked up his plate and set it in the sink with three dirty glasses. He turned the water on and let it fill the dish. He didn’t bother to do the dishes—he still had another glass and a few plates before he ran out.

His eyes drooped and he padded toward the bedroom. Stopping by the stereo, he turned the music up and lay down on his bed, exhausted. He closed his eyes and pressed his face into a pillow, promising to sleep for only an hour and then get up and stir up some ideas on the case.

This bastard wasn’t going to get away.

Nick pulled into Alf’s diner at five to four and dragged himself out of the car. He was too old to be staying up all night and sleeping all day. His bedroom had western exposure, and the afternoon sun had streamed through his shades. It was too hot to sleep comfortably. Instead, he’d tossed off his blankets and gotten his ass to the shower. The only things keeping him moving were that Dougie had some news for him and that he would see Sam in three hours, if only briefly. He was picking Rob up for practice tonight, and he hoped she would be at home.

Nick met Dougie coming in the door and they made their way to a back booth without speaking. Nick was relieved to see that Dougie looked healthier this time and hoped whatever he’d been on last time was in his past.

As was their tradition, they ordered before talking business. Dougie ordered the works, as always, and Nick ordered a Coke instead of coffee. He figured it would be a stretch for them to make that worse than the coffee.

Dougie slumped against the red vinyl of the booth and let his head drop back as though it had taken all his energy just to order. Nick waited.

The waitress returned with their drinks and Nick took a sip. Too much syrup and not enough fizz. He put the drink down and reminded himself to stick with coffee next time.

Propping his elbows on the table, Dougie took a long drink of his own Coke. Nick kept his head angled at Dougie, but checked out the diner with his peripheral vision.

Dougie pulled the picture of Lugino from his shirt pocket and slid it back across the table, face down. “I talked to my boys on the street about that horse.”

Nick took another sip of the awful Coke to give him something to do.

“None of ’em sold to your guy in the photo.”

Nick didn’t tell Dougie that he was nearly two weeks late with that info. “Who’d they sell to?”

Dougie looked around and then leaned forward. “Heat’s on with the smack out here, you know.”

Nick narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, rumor is you get caught selling heroin, you go down harder than some other shit, you know?”

Nick nodded. He could believe it. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying no one’s selling it now.”

“Someone’s selling it,” Nick countered.

“Yeah, man, sure. But no one’s admitting that they are. It’s bad news. So I talked around, but people are—” He zipped his lip. “You know what I’m saying?”

“So you didn’t find out who bought the shit?”

“People ain’t talking about it. That’s why I didn’t get back with you sooner. Last night, I was down by the tracks with some guys. Real fucked up, you know, bitching about some lady he’d been selling to—real strung out.”

“What did the lady look like?”

Dougie shrugged. “Just some lady.”

Nick wondered if Sandi Walters had gotten her own heroin. “Can you get a description of her?”

“Uh, white.”

Nick leaned forward. “I need more than that.”

“Blond.”

“That could be a thousand people. I need more.”

“All I know is she was a blond bitch and some asshole on a motorcycle was following her.”

“What kind of motorcycle? What was the guy like?”

Dougie shook his head fast and hard. “No way, man. That’s all I know and I can’t ask for more. They’re not talking. I’m telling you, they’re spooked. I raise it again and they’ll figure me for a snitch.”

Nick didn’t remind him that hewas a snitch. He pulled a picture of Sandi Walters out and slid it across the table. “Bring this around. Let me know what you find out.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Do it, Dougie, or the free meals are over.”

“Yeah, man. I’ll try. I promise.”

Nick took out his wallet and pulled out a ten and a five to cover the food. He was frustrated that Dougie hadn’t offered him anything more specific. “Tell them not to sell that stuff anymore, Dougie. I mean it. It’s bad shit and they’ll fall hard.”

Dougie raised his hands in defense. “I don’t sell it, man. I swear.”

“Pass the word on, then.”

“Yeah, man, sure. I just told you they don’t. The heat’s on, man. The heat is on.”

Nick heard a tune in the back of his head and pushed it away. He passed the waitress carrying Dougie’s platter of food, and, handing her the cash, murmured thanks. Heading home, he felt as deflated as the fizzless Coke.