My Tahoe’s cameras zoom in on . . .
A silvery winged skull with ruby eyes . . .
A coiled snake . . .
A gothic wedding band . . .
The jewelry is smaller than what the hitman had on when I saw him dead inside his Denali. But it’s similar if not matching, and I watch her hold out a 20-dollar bill, telling the cashier to keep the change as I continue making assessments.
She’s ordered enough for two, suggesting she’s not eating alone, and that leads me to suspect she’s meeting someone since no one else is in the car with her that I can see. Striking me as vain and haughty, she’s a bit girly-gaudy, and I don’t like that she told the clerk to keep the change when there hardly was any.
“Why are you so interested in the Jeep?” Lex stares at it in front of us, and his question is the perfect opportunity for me to cue ART that I could use a little help.
“As I mentioned, I may have seen it before,” I reply. “And I’m wondering if whoever’s driving it might have a connection to the dead man in the Denali.”
“That’s pretty sick,” and Lex looks intrigued. “Why don’t you radio for backup?”
“The last thing I want is anything about this going out over the air.”
“You want me to take a picture of whoever’s driving? I could jump out and do it real fast.”
“I most certainly don’t.”
“Maybe we should follow it!”
“Absolutely not. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re in custody and not my partner,” and as I say it, I can tell I’ve hurt his feelings.
“But you can’t let it get away!”
“I have no probable cause to do anything about it,” I reply as the Cherokee drives off. “More important, I have you in the car with me. And I can’t let anything happen to you.”
“Oh,” he says, and he seems pleased.
Picking up my phone, I call Fran because I can’t ask ART to do it when Lex is sitting in the truck with me.
“Major Lacey.”
“You’re on speakerphone.”
“He’s still with you?”
“We’re grabbing something to eat,” and I explain to her about the Cherokee as I watch it take a right on Commander Shepard Boulevard.
I give her the tag number and suggest she get someone to tail the pearl-white SUV and see where it goes.
“Obviously, we don’t want whoever it is alerted,” I add. “We can’t be sure what we’re dealing with and need to be careful.”
Ending the call, I pay at the drive-through window, taking the piping hot bags and boxes. The aroma is making me insane as I set everything in Lex’s lap.
“My favorite ever since I was a kid,” I let him know as we dig in rather savagely. “I’m afraid I’m a frequent flyer, which is why I spend a lot of time in the gym.”
“A frequent fryer, you mean,” he attacks a wing, licking his fingers.
“Well fried is a food group, at least to me, unfortunately. And nothing’s as good as what my mom makes,” I drape napkins over my lap. “I don’t know if she’s ever cooked for you when you’ve visited the farm.”
“No,” taking a slurp of chocolate milk. “Penny doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“What makes you think that?” and we’re back on Commander Shepard Boulevard, the pearl-white Cherokee nowhere to be seen.
“She doesn’t trust me. Never has. I can tell,” he tears apart another wing as if he’s not eaten in days. “She was okay with me at the beginning of my internship but didn’t like it when I started hanging out with George.”
“Why wouldn’t my mom trust you?” I ask as if this is news to me.
“Because she doesn’t trust your dad,” and while Lex may be on the money, the subject also isn’t open for discussion.
“Does your grandmother like to cook?” I’m already starting on my second biscuit, driving one handed, increasingly startled by his observations.
“Nonna can’t do much in the kitchen,” Lex says while ART shows me in my lenses that in Italian the name means grandmother in case I couldn’t figure that out on my own.
“Sounds like you’ve got an awful lot going on for someone your age,” I’m stunned by what he picks up on.
It’s true that Mom doesn’t trust Dad, and in most departments I don’t either. He means no harm, and I realize that’s what people say about those who cause it routinely and repeatedly.
“I don’t mind taking care of most things. I’m pretty good at fixing stuff, cleaning and cooking,” Lex says, paper crinkling as he wipes his hands. “I make really good tacos and spaghetti. I like to bake, and my bread is awesome. And unlike your dad, I know how to shop. I tell him not to use convenience stores. It’s way too expensive just like fast food. But he would buy stuff anyway the same way you just did.”
“How did you learn to be so practical and self-sufficient?”
“My parents,” he says. “But also, TV and the internet. You can teach yourself pretty much anything these days. Even if you don’t have anyone to show you in person.”
“Does Nonna have a car? Is she able to drive you on errands?” I ask, passing the speedway again, its stadium darkly silhouetted against the night.
“Not anymore,” Lex says, the pavement swishing wetly beneath my tires as I put on my turn signal. “The bus I’m always taking? You can catch it right there,” he points as I slow down at the entrance of Lost Farm Mobile Home Estates where I’ve been on any number of calls over the past three years.
The complaints have been the usual garden variety prowlers, domestic disturbances, shots fired, larcenies, public drunkenness, dogs running loose. Nothing special like a drug lab or homicide, and I have a feeling that’s about to change.
23
“THE DEAD MAN you recognized in the photographs?” I ask Lex, stopping at the first intersection, not knowing where we’re going. “I need you to show me where you think he lived.”
“Stay on this street for now, and I’ll let you know when to turn. How come you don’t know who he is?” Lex wraps chicken bones in a napkin, placing them in a bag, cleaning up after himself. “I saw a driver’s license in one of the photos in the deputy chief’s office. The name on it was Hank Cougars, and the picture looked just like the man I’ve run into around here.”
“That might be his picture,” I reply, “but it’s not his real name.”
The homes we pass range from trailers on exposed cinder blocks to double-wides with wooden siding. Yards aren’t much more than patches of brown grass showing through churned-up areas of melting snow, and I’m seeing very few holiday decorations.
“He was a bad person, wasn’t he?” Lex says quietly, watching his neighborhood go by, a lot of American flags, aluminum sheds, aboveground pools and pickup trucks.
“I’m pretty sure,” I reply. “Even if he seemed nice enough. How long has he been living back here as best you know?”
“I first started seeing him this past summer after Birdman moved out.”
“Birdman?”
“The weird old guy who was living back there near the speedway when I moved here,” Lex says. “I called him Birdman because he had this really cool owl that he’d rescued as a baby. He kept it in a huge cage in the backyard, and it would land on his leather glove.”
“Do you know the name?”
“Mr. Owl.”
“I mean, the man’s name.”
“No, but he had a lot of scars on his hands and arms from Mr. Owl’s talons. And Birdman let me say hello to him once, not pet him even though I wanted to. Owls don’t like that. And there was a python inside the house, although I never met it. As you can imagine, Birdman didn’t have to worry about burglars.”
<
br /> “What happened to your parents, Lex?”
“A plane crash.”
“I’m very sorry. When was this?”
“July 4th, three years ago. My dad was a really good pilot. I don’t care what anybody says,” he adds, oddly defensive.
“And you’re the only child?”
He nods, his attention out the window again, and I’m reminded there are no streetlights back here, and it’s a black hole.
“Where were you living at the time?”
“Richmond, my parents taught at VCU. And then I moved in with Nonna,” he says as ART shows me the news blurbs.
Leo and Nan Anderson, ages 39 and 41, both of them were professors in astronomy at Virginia Commonwealth University. They were flying with another couple in the small prop plane Lex’s father often rented and piloted, and it had an engine failure over the Atlantic Ocean.
“This must be a hard time of year,” I reply. “And I know it must be a painful subject. But what do you think they’d say to you right now, Lex? What would they say about the burner phone in your backpack? The thumb drive, and what you did on the NASA campus today?”
“They’d say not to let anybody stop me,” he replies without pause. “And to take care of Nonna,” as he leans forward in his seat, pointing straight ahead. “That’s it right there. That’s his place and look! His Denali’s not there. No lights on. It doesn’t look like he’s been here for a while. Which fits with him being dead!”
“SHHHH!” I hush him again. “Let me do the investigating, please,” as I look out at a lot that backs up to thick woods, not a light on anywhere.
If this is where the hitman lived, he was close enough to the speedway that I don’t know how he stood the noise, the mobile home small and simple. White vinyl sided with a putty-gray metal roof, it has trellises and shutters painted black and peeling. I note the high-definition antenna on the roof, and the battery-powered camera mounted over the entrance.
The double lot hasn’t been touched since the blizzard started. There are no tire tracks or footprints, just a lot of branches and debris blown everywhere. The supercan and its black trellis enclosure are buried in drifted snow to one side of the swaybacked front porch, and I ask Lex what services are included in the mobile home park’s monthly rental fees.
“Water and sewer,” he’s keyed up as I pull into the unpaved parking area near a fire hydrant half-buried.
“And garbage collection?”
“It’s on Mondays,” he says. “So, either the night before or first thing in the morning you roll the can out to the curb or they won’t empty it. Then you put it back before it gets run over or blows off somewhere. He wasn’t home to do it, and that was a week ago. He’s dead for sure!”
“Rule number one, don’t make assumptions or exaggerate,” I reply. “Today is Sunday, so the garbage pickup was 6 days ago, not a week. And the snow didn’t start until after that. Therefore, all we can say definitively is nobody’s been in and out since the storm began. At least, based on what we’re seeing right now. Also, we don’t know if it was his habit to roll the can out or not. We don’t know much.”
“Right! The storm started 4 days ago, and that’s about when the man in the Denali blew his head off with his own shotgun,” Lex repeats what he overhead in Fran’s office. “I told you it was him! The guy who moved into Birdman’s place!”
“There you go swinging to wild conclusions again . . .”
“Why would he kill himself?” Lex is on a roll. “How can you be sure someone else didn’t do it? At first people thought Vera killed herself too. And she didn’t. Dr. Rong either did it or got someone else to but you’ll never prove it because there’s no evidence.”
00:00:00:00:0
OBVIOUSLY, Lex got quite the earful when Fran, Scottie and Butch were discussing the cases at headquarters, and that’s a shame.
I wish they’d been more careful about exposing him to detailed information he’s encoded like artificial intelligence. But I’m not going to lie. Within reason I don’t want to misrepresent a very real danger.
“The fact is, we don’t know much and can prove less at the moment,” I shoot straight with him. “But two people are violently dead as you know, Lex. NASA was hacked. We had to destroy a rocket that could have taken out a city, and one of our astronauts in space could have been stranded.”
“I know,” he says simply.
“A lot of bad things have happened,” I’m emphatic. “All of us need to be careful. And most of all we have to be sure who we can trust.”
“Are you scared?”
“I’m too busy paying attention to what’s going on around me. If you’re prepared and sufficiently vigilant, you forget to be scared,” and I sound like Mom and Carme blended together. “Another important rule in policing and life in general is always know where the heck you are, and I don’t at the moment.”
Turning on the searchlight, I manipulate it with the joystick, finding the barely visible tarnished metal numbers crookedly attached to the trailer’s vinyl siding. Unattractively placed above a window and partially obstructed by a scraggly tree, they glint in a flood of 20-million-candlepower luminescence.
“Looks like the house number is 3-6-3. Although the 6 is so tilted it might be a 9. And we’re on Lost Farm Road,” I observe out loud for ART’s benefit as a large shadow darts over the windshield.
What the hell-o? I think but don’t say, checking my mirrors, looking around for the source of what just passed overhead as ART informs me that the address comes back to a civilian previously employed by Langley Air Force Base. Pebo Sweeny, a 79-year-old retired financial technician, and it doesn’t seem he has a current address.
Just this one where we’re parked, and that’s not making sense as I skim the data downloaded in my lenses. It would seem that 4 months ago in early August, he (or someone) had the utilities cancelled, the electricity, phone and TV service. Since then, there’s been no activity on his credit cards, no electronic trail, nothing to hint where he is.
The title and deed of the trailer remain in his name, as does the lease for his tandem lots on the edge of the woods. The fee continues to be paid monthly by a cashier’s check mailed from his local post office box, and ART must be helping himself to all sorts of electronic records.
Including the sale of a 2011 Dodge van for $6,000 in October, when Pebo Sweeny signed the title over to a used-car retailer. Or someone did, and I have a feeling his identity is but one of many the hitman has stolen.
“I don’t know where you live,” I announce to Lex, and it’s time to take him home.
I’m turning the Tahoe around as ART audibly alerts me in my earpiece that there’s a serious problem with the Aerial Internet Ranger, the AIR that’s been ghosting me all day.
Ranger Danger! Ranger Danger! flashes red in my lenses, and there must be a malfunction with my flying hotspot PONG.
It drives me crazy that I can’t come right out and ask what’s wrong. But I’m not about to disclose ART’s existence to Lex.
“I live close to the entrance, the first row in,” he says, staring wide eyed back at the trailer, way too curious for his own good. “I’ll show you. What will you do next? Are you going to search the place tonight? Can I help?”
“You said you first started noticing the bearded guy in the Denali this past summer,” I get back to that as I fret about Ranger. “What about Birdman? Do you remember the last time you saw him? And no, you can’t help. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re a suspect, not a cop.”
“I didn’t see him all that often,” Lex says. “Maybe back in July. Apparently, he decided it was time for the nursing home, and he rented his trailer to the man who’s now dead.”
“What about Birdman’s exotic pets? And by the way, it’s illegal to have a pet o
wl unless you’re a licensed handler. A python is okay.”
“I was glad to meet Mr. Owl but I didn’t really want to meet the snake. They were turned over to animal rescue.”
“And your info came from?”
“The bearded man who moved in. One time when I was riding by on my bike, he was unloading his Denali, carrying boxes inside the house. I asked him what happened to Mr. Owl and the old guy who used to live there.”
“And he told you they’d flown the coop.”
“You don’t believe his story,” Lex says.
“Nope.”
“You think something happened, don’t you?”
“I hope not.”
“That’s us right there.”
He points to the next street coming up, to the small lot with the trailer where he and his grandmother live, gray with a flat rubber roof, and latticework surrounding the foundation. It’s not much bigger than what I’d expect to see in a campground, a plywood handicap ramp leading to the front door.
Windows are covered with silver foil gift paper as Fran described, and I can feel the early stages of empathy washing over me. I remind myself that the kindest thing I can do for 10-year-old Lexell Anderson isn’t to feel pity but to keep him alive and out of juvenile detention.
“I’m coming inside long enough to meet your grandmother and get the thumb drive Vera gave you,” I tell him as we park in front. “And I’d like to see whatever electronic equipment you use.”
“You’re not going to take my computer, are you?” he asks in alarm.
“Probably not. But it depends. Is there something else I should know about? Anything like the thumb drive that could be a problem, Lex?” as we sit inside my dark SUV, the paper-covered windows blotting out light from inside his house. “Any other games like Helmet Fire that I should be aware of?”
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 19
