by Kathy Reichs
“No. And his blood alcohol level was .08. Is the guy legal?”
“Cuervo held both U.S. and Ecuadoran citizenship.”
“Any family here?”
“Apparently not. He lived alone on Greenleaf, operated a shop called La Botánica Buena Salud off South Boulevard. The INS has no permanent address for him either here or in Ecuador.”
“Makes it tough to track next of kin.”
Larabee zipped the bag and we exited to the corridor.
Back in my office, I dialed Slidell.
“I’ll be a sonovabitch.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
For a full thirty seconds, the only sounds I heard were phones ringing on Slidell’s end of the line.
“This morning I did some canvassing along that road leading to where Klapec was found. You’ll never guess what’s tucked away in those woods.”
“Why don’t you tell me.” Though the freezer had calmed my tremors and settled my stomach, already I was perspiring and my head was starting to rumble. I was not in the mood for Twenty Questions.
“A camp. I’m not talking Camp Sun in the Pines, you know, canoeing and hiking and ‘Kumbaya.’ I’m talking Camp Full Moon. As in witches and warlocks baying at it.”
“Wiccan?”
“Yep. And, according to the neighbors, who ain’t exactly thrilled with all the jujuism in their backyards, things were cooking the night before Klapec turned up.”
I started to ask what that meant, but Slidell kept on talking.
“Drumming, dancing, chanting.”
“The activity could be completely unrelated to Klapec.”
“Right. A friendly little wienie roast. I want to see Cuervo.”
“Come on down.”
Slidell hesitated a beat. Then, “And I want your take on something Eddie wrote.”
I’d barely hung up when my cell phone sounded.
Nine-one-nine area code.
Larke Tyrell.
My fragile gut clenched in anticipation of the upcoming conversation.
I’d just qualified for certification by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology when Tyrell was appointed the state’s chief medical examiner. We met through work I was doing for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, reassembling and identifying two drug dealers murdered and dismembered by outlaw bikers.
I was one of Tyrell’s first hires as a consulting specialist, and though our relationship was generally congenial, over the years we’d had our differences. As a result, I’d learned that the chief could be cynical and exceedingly dictatorial.
I drank water from the glass at my elbow, then, carefully, clicked on.
“Dr. Brennan.”
“Tempe. Sorry to hear you’re not feeling shipshape.” Born in the lowcountry to a Marine Corps family, then a two-hitch marine himself before med school, Tyrell spoke like a military version of Andy Griffith.
“Thank you.”
“I’m concerned, Tempe.”
“It’s just a flu.”
“About your outburst with Boyce Lingo.”
“I’d like to explain—”
“Mr. Lingo is irate.”
“He’s always irate.”
“Do you have any idea the public image nightmare you’ve created?” Tyrell was fond of the rhetorical question. Assuming this was one, I said nothing.
“This office has an official spokesperson whose responsibility it is to interact with the media. I can’t have my staff airing their personal views on medical examiner cases.”
“Lingo foments fear so he can make himself look like a hero.”
“He’s a county commissioner.”
“He’s dangerous.”
“And you think throwing a tantrum for the press is the way to neutralize him?”
I closed my lids. They felt like sandpaper sliding over my eyeballs.
“You’re right. My behavior was inexcusable.”
“Agreed. So explain why you ignored my direct order?” Tyrell sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “You’ve lost me.”
“Why would you brief a reporter when I requested you cease all contact with the press?”
“What reporter?”
I heard paper rustle.
“Allison Stallings. Woman had the brass ones to call my office for confirmation of information that should have been confidential. Tempe, you know that data pertaining to a child is particularly sensitive.”
“What child?”
“Anson Tyler. It’s beyond my comprehension how you could have shown so little respect for that dead little boy and his poor, grieving family.”
The sweat felt cold on my face. I had no memory of talking to Allison Stallings.
But Monday was a blank. Was it possible I’d made contact, hoping, in some boozy delusion, to clear up the misconception that Anson Tyler’s death was connected to that of Jimmy Klapec? To clarify that the Catawba River headless body was not linked to the Lake Wylie headless body? Or to the cauldron head we now knew to be Susan Redmon’s?
Or had Stallings called me? Was that why I’d shut down and shoved my mobile into a drawer?
Tyrell was still talking, his voice somber.
“—this is a serious breach. Disregarding my order. Disclosing confidential information. This behavior can’t be ignored. Action must be taken.”
I felt too weak to argue. Or to point out that Stallings was not a reporter.
“I will think long and hard what that action should be. We’ll talk soon.”
I put the phone down with one trembling hand. Finished the water. Dragged myself to the lounge and refilled the glass from the tap. Downed two aspirins. Returned to my office. Took up the Klapec report. Set it down, unable to think through the pounding in my head.
I was sitting there, doing nothing, when Slidell appeared with a grease-soaked bag of Price’s fried chicken. Normally, I’d have pounced. Not today.
“Well, don’t you look like something the dog threw up.”
“And you’re a picture of manly vitality?”
Unkind, but true. Slidell’s face was gray and a dark crescent underhung each eye.
Placing the chicken on the file cabinet, Skinny dropped into a chair opposite my desk. “Maybe you should go home and rack out.”
“It’s just a bug.”
Slidell regarded me as a cat might a sparrow. I was sure he could smell the wine sweat coating my skin.
“Yeah,” he said. “Those bugs can be a bitch. Where’s Cuervo?”
I led him to the freezer. He asked the same questions I’d asked Larabee. I relayed the information the ME had provided.
Back in my office, the fried poultry smell was overwhelming. Slidell dug in the bag and began on a drumstick. Grease trickled down his chin. It was all I could do not to gag.
“Sure you don’t want some?” Garbled.
I shook my head. Swallowed. “What is it you want me to read?”
Wiping his hands on a napkin, Slidell pulled papers from a pocket and tossed them on the blotter.
“Eddie’s notes. That’s your copy.”
I unfolded and scanned the pages.
Like the man, the handwriting was neat and precise. So was the thinking.
Rinaldi had recorded the time, location, and content of every interview he’d conducted. It appeared that those he’d questioned either lacked or withheld contact information. Ditto for surnames.
“He got only first names or street names,” I said. “Cyrus. Vince. Dagger. Cool Breeze. And no addresses or phone numbers.”
“Probably didn’t want to spook the little freaks by pushing too hard.” Slidell’s jaw muscles bunched. As though suddenly devoid of appetite, he shoved a half-eaten chicken breast into the bag and sailed it into my wastebasket. “Probably figured he could find them later if needed.”
“He used some kind of shorthand system.”
“Eddie liked to get his thoughts down quick, but he worried some
scumbag defense attorney might latch on to his first impressions and make a big deal of them in court if they later turned out to be off. So’s not to provide ammo, he kept his comments cryptic, that’s what he called it. Cryptic. I thought maybe you could make something of it.”
Rinaldi had questioned a chicken hawk named Vince on Saturday. I read the entry.
JK. 9/29. LSA with RN acc. to VG. RN-PIT. CTK. TV. 10/9-10/11? CFT. 10. 500.
“Vince must be the informant Rinaldi mentioned when you talked by phone as we were leaving Cuervo’s shop. Maybe he’s VG. JK could be Jimmy Klapec. RN could be the john Vince described as looking like Rick Nelson.”
Slidell nodded.
“The numbers are probably dates,” I went on. “LSA is standard code for ‘last seen alive.’ Maybe September twenty-ninth is the last day Vince remembered seeing Klapec with this Rick Nelson character.”
“So far we’re on the same page,” Slidell said. “But Funderburke first spotted Klapec’s body on October ninth, called it in on the eleventh. If that’s what this Vince is saying, where’s Klapec from late September until early October when he gets himself dead? Assuming Funderburke and his pooch ain’t totally wacko.”
I was too busy running possibilities to answer.
“CFT would be Cabo Fish Taco,” I said. “He was meeting Vince there at ten. Maybe Vince wanted five hundred dollars for his information.”
“TV?”
“Vince had seen Rick Nelson on television?”
“PIT? CTK?”
“PIT is the airport code for Pittsburgh. Maybe those are abbreviations for cities.”
I logged onto the computer and opened Google.
“CTK is the code for Akron, Ohio,” I said.
“What’s the significance of that?”
“I don’t know.”
Slidell laced his fingers on his belly, dropped his chin, and thrust out his legs. His socks were Halloween orange.
“Eddie did some digging while waiting to go back out to NoDa,” he said. “Read his last entry.”
RN = BLA = GYE. Greensboro. 10/9. 555-7038. CTK-TV-9/27. VG, solicitation 9/28-9/29.
GYE 9/27?
I Googled the two three-letter combos.
“BLA is the airport in Barcelona, Venezuela,” I said, somewhat deflated. “GYE is in Guayaquil, Ecuador.”
“If he’s referencing cities by code, why write out Greensboro?”
It was a good point.
“The seven-digit sequence looks like a phone number,” I said lamely.
“It is.”
“Whose?”
Slidell’s answer was a shocker.
25
“I PUNCH IT UP, A VOICE TELLS ME I’VE REACHED COMMISSIONER Lingo’s office.”
“Why would Rinaldi have Lingo’s number?”
“Good question.”
I reread Rinaldi’s last entry.
VG, solicitation 9/28-9/29.
“VG could be Vince. Maybe Rinaldi learned the kid’s last name, and the fact that he was busted for solicitation.”
“Right around the time we’re guessing Klapec disappeared.”
“Why did Rinaldi think that was worth noting?”
Slidell shrugged. “Can’t hurt to pull arrest records for those dates. If nothing else, it might give us Vince’s last name. Kid’s in the wind, by the way. No one’s seen him since Saturday.”
“Where does he live?”
“His buddies ain’t busting their balls to share, but they think he was mostly sleeping on the streets.”
“Do you plan to pay Lingo a visit?”
“Later. Right now I’m retracing Eddie’s steps, seeing what I can score on this dipshit Vince.”
“Strictly regarding Klapec,” I said.
“Strictly.”
“Anything new on Asa Finney?”
“Unless I find a smoking howitzer in the guy’s shorts, he sees a judge on the bones rap, posts bond, and they kick him tomorrow.”
“What’s your take on him?”
Slidell snorted. “Could have been a stud except for the head-on with zits.”
I ignored the unkind remark. Finney couldn’t help the condition of his skin. “But a killer?”
“Finney’s a witch. Witch camp’s a spit from the Klapec scene. Neighbors report a lot of drumming and rattling the night before the kid’s body turns up. One says he saw a Ford Focus leaving the area long after the party was over.”
I remembered the car in the Pineville driveway.
“Finney drives a Focus,” I said.
“Don’t take a genius to connect the dots.” Again, the tensing of the jaw. “I’m thinking Finney’s wizard pals maybe also capped Eddie.”
“Why?”
“He was learning too much.”
As I started to reply Slidell shot upright in his chair.
“Rick Nelson.” A beefy finger jabbed the air in my direction. “Except for the zits, Finney’s a dead ringer for Rick Nelson. Think about it. The hair. The come-fuck-me smile. Sonovabitch.”
“You’re suggesting Finney is the violent john described by Vince?”
Slidell stood and circled to my side of the desk. The finger flipped the pages of Rinaldi’s notes.
RN-PIT. CTK. TV.
“Eddie was saying Rick Nelson with pits. Zit pits. That’s just what he’d say. I’ll be goddamned.”
“Maybe.” I was unconvinced.
“What? It describes Finney to a T. Maybe that’ll give us enough to hold the little prick on Klapec.”
“I’d still run the Akron angle.” I truncated Slidell’s objection. “See if Finney booked a flight or has ties there.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
We fell silent, staring at Rinaldi’s enigmatic code.
After several seconds, I sensed a shift in Slidell’s attention, felt his eyes crawl my face. I didn’t look up. Didn’t want to pursue the conversation I suspected was coming.
Instead of commenting, Slidell yanked a spiral from his pocket, scribbled, then tore out and laid the page on my desk.
“My girlfriend used to catch a lot of these bugs. You feel like it, you call her.”
I heard footsteps. Then my office was still.
Again, shame scorched my face. Larabee knew. Slidell knew. Who else had seen through my pathetic flu story?
I was reading Slidell’s scrawl when the ME stuck his head in the door.
“Get in here quick—” Seeing my look, he stopped. “What?”
“Slidell has a girlfriend.”
“No way.”
“Verlene Something with a W.” The name was spelled Wryznyk.
“I’ll be damned.” Larabee remembered his purpose in coming. “Lingo’s foaming at the mouth again.”
“God almighty!”
I followed Larabee into the lounge. Every station was carrying coverage of the Rinaldi shooting. The TV was tuned to one of them.
Lingo was holding forth outside a cemetery. Police barricades were going up on the street around him.
“—no longer sacred? When lawbreakers butcher those who risk their lives to keep our city safe? Those brave officers who protect our homes and keep our children from harm? I’ll tell you what it is. It is the beginning of the end for decent society.
“I am standing at the entrance to Sharon Memorial Park. Detective Edward Rinaldi will be buried here tomorrow. He was fifty-six, a policeman for thirty-eight years, a beloved member of this community, a God-fearing man. Detective Rinaldi is not alone.”
Lingo read from a list in his hand.
“Officer Sean Clark, thirty-four. Officer Jeffrey Shelton, thirty-five. Officer John Burnette, twenty-five. Officer Andy Nobles, twenty-six.”
Lingo’s eyes rolled up.
“I name but a few of the fallen.” The porcine face creased in concern. “Does the fault lie solely with the evildoers?” Solemn head shake. “I think not. The fault lies with a system of laws designed to protect the guilty. With libertine scientists who undermine the efforts of
our brothers and sisters in uniform.”
I felt my innards curdle.
“Many of you witnessed the assault on my person last Friday. Dr. Temperance Brennan, employed by your university, by your medical examiner, institutions funded by your tax dollars. Dr. Brennan has seen the carnage. She knows of the battle raging on our streets. Does she work to convict those like Asa Finney? Those who have chosen the serpent’s path? Quite the opposite. She makes excuses for these criminals. Defends their pagan practices.”
Lingo drilled the camera with a look of heart-stopping sincerity.
“It is time for change. As your elected representative, I intend to see that change brought about.”
There was an aerial shot of the scene, then the program cut to an anchorwoman. Above her left shoulder, a street map diagrammed the course of the next day’s funeral procession.
“Services will begin with eleven o’clock mass at St. Ann’s Catholic Church. The cavalcade will then proceed along Park, Woodlawn, Wend-over, Providence, and Sharon Amity. Those streets will be closed to traffic until midafternoon.
“Since Sunday, members of law enforcement have been arriving from all over the country. Those unable to attend mass or to march in the procession will gather at the cemetery. Thousands are expected to turn out along the route to bid final farewell to Detective Rinaldi. Motorists are encouraged—”
Larabee snapped off the set.
“Who votes for freaking lunatics like Lingo?”
We both knew the answer.
“You did the autopsy?” I asked, steeling my voice, avoiding eye contact.
“Monday.”
“Any surprises?”
“One through-and-through gunshot wound at the T-12 level. Two XTP’s lodged in the thorax. I removed one from the right lung, the other from the heart.”
Larabee didn’t have to explain. I knew the bullet. Extreme Terminal Performance. A nasty little slug designed to expand for maximal organ damage.
Grabbing a Diet Coke, I returned to my office. The phone was blinking.
Both messages had been left by UNCC colleagues. Marion Ireland was returning my call concerning use of the scanning electron microscope. Jennifer Roberts simply asked again that I phone her.
I gulped more Coke. It was definitely helping to settle my stomach. But the headache was still off the Richter, and my enthusiasm for human interaction was low.
