Collateral Damage: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 19)

by Jenna Bennett

  Kyle swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s try this again. What’s Lance’s last name?”

  “I don’t know,” Kyle said.

  Mendoza waited a second, but when Kyle didn’t say anything else, he continued on. “So you drove to Nashville to do a favor for Lance. Lance told Rodney the door would be open. And Lance wanted you to do… what?”

  “Pick up the containers of Tannerite in the garage and bring them to him,” Kyle said.

  “Tannerite.” Mendoza sounded like the word was foreign to him. “What is Tannerite?”

  “Explosive,” Kyle said.

  “That’s right. It’s a binary explosive. Ignites with a shot from a .223 or higher caliber bullet.”

  Kyle nodded, his eyes lighting up.

  Or at least his eyes lit up until Mendoza asked him, gently, “What were you going to blow up, Kyle?”

  “Nothing,” Kyle said, as all the animation left his face. He slumped back in his chair, looking sullen.

  “No? What were you going to do with the Tannerite?”

  “Target practice,” Kyle said.

  Mendoza nodded. “That’s a lot of target practice. You practicing for anything in particular?”

  “No,” Kyle said.

  “Ever shoot anything not for target practice? Hunting or anything like that?”

  “No,” Kyle said. “Was—?”

  He stopped and clamped his lips together.

  “From what we can tell,” Mendoza said genially, “her neck was broken. One quick snap—” He demonstrated, “and—”

  “Gurk,” Kyle said, or something like it. He looked like he was going to lunge for the trash can, but he held it together.

  Mendoza leaned back in his chair. We were looking at the back of his head, so I couldn’t see his expression, but I could venture a good guess from the tone of his voice. “Know anyone who could do that, Kyle?”

  Kyle shook his head, his eyes huge. “No.”

  “Your buddy Lance didn’t mention that there’d be a dead body in the freezer?”

  Kyle shook his head. And added “No,” for the recorder.

  “You think he might have mentioned it to one of your friends?”

  “No,” Kyle said, sounding horrified. “Rodney…” He trailed off.

  “Rodney didn’t mention it? What about your other friend? Clay?”

  “Clay doesn’t know Lance,” Kyle said. “We only met him a couple days ago. If Lance told anyone…”

  “It would be Rodney?”

  Kyle nodded.

  “Would Rodney know and not tell you?”

  “No,” Kyle said, although he didn’t sound sure.

  “Maybe I need to ask Rodney?”

  Kyle nodded, relieved. “Yeah. Ask Rodney.”

  He sounded almost pathetically eager to throw his best buddy under the bus.

  Mendoza nodded. “Let’s go.” He pushed to his feet.

  Kyle stayed where he was. “Where?”

  “Back to the holding cell for now. Until I’ve talked to Rodney.”

  Kyle got to his feet, reluctantly. “Are you gonna arrest us?”

  “That depends on whether you tell me the truth,” Mendoza said mildly.

  Kyle’s mouth opened, probably to protest that he was telling the truth, and Mendoza went on before he could get the first word out. “Turns out your new buddy Clay has a record. Why don’t you ask him about it while I talk to Rodney? Have Clay tell you what it was like to spend a year in prison. And then, if you decide you have something else you’d like me to know, you tell me when I bring Rodney back.”

  He smiled as he opened the door so Kyle could go past him. And for being such a good-looking guy, it was a remarkably unhandsome smile. Kyle gulped, and looked anything but happy when he walked out into the hall.

  As the door shut behind them, Rafe turned to me and grinned. “That was entertaining.”

  “I felt almost bad for him,” I said.

  Rafe shook his head. “I don’t. He’s scum, and he deserves to rot.”

  No question, but— “You don’t think he had anything to do with the murder, do you? He looked like he was going to hurl when Mendoza asked him if he was there to pick up the body.”

  “I figure Lance killed her. Spur of the moment, most likely. Maybe she got around to asking what he was planning to do with the three tons of Tannerite he was keeping in her garage, and she didn’t like the answer.”

  Made sense. Or she already knew what he was planning to do with the three tons of Tannerite, and she was getting cold feet.

  “Or maybe he told her he needed to use her car to go to Columbia on Tuesday night. She asked why. He said to meet a new recruit. She asked what he was recruiting for. He told her he’s a neo-Nazi and is building the Fourth Reich. She wouldn’t let him take the car. He killed her and took the car anyway. Maybe he filled the trunk with as much Tannerite as it would hold. And then he sent Rodney and company back for the rest.”

  Maybe so.

  “He’s planning to do whatever he’s planning to do tomorrow,” Rafe said, “and then I’m betting he’s outta here. Off somewhere else. Never planning to come back. I’m surprised he’s still driving Jennifer’s car.”

  “He might not be. He might have killed her after he came back here on Tuesday night, not before he left. I don’t see him killing his girlfriend and then driving her car to Columbia, do you? So maybe he borrowed her car to go down there, and whatever happened, didn’t happen until he came back.”

  Rafe nodded. “There’s a BOLO out on Jennifer’s car, both here and in Maury County, but I don’t think anyone’s seen it yet.”

  “Maybe it’s in Rodney’s auto shop getting a new paint job and a new VIN,” I said. “And maybe Lance is driving Rodney’s car. Clay said they took his car to Kyle’s house, right?”

  Rafe nodded. “I should touch base with Tammy. And make sure that BOLO extends to Lawrence, Lewis, and Giles.”

  “Too late,” I told him, nodding to the door in the other room. “Here they come.”

  Here they did. Rodney first, and unlike his buddy Kyle, he did manage a creditable swagger as he entered the room. While Mendoza detoured around the table and gave us a look through the mirror, Rodney made himself comfortable in the other chair. Kicked back, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  After he had stated his name for the record—middle name Wilson—Mendoza went right for the jugular. “Both your friends tell me you’re the one who’ll be able to tell me how to get in touch with your buddy Lance.”

  Rodney smirked. “What d’you want with Lance?”

  “Arrest him for murder, to begin with,” Mendoza said pleasantly. “Although if I can’t find him, you’ll make an acceptable substitute.”

  “You can’t prove I had anything to do with that woman in the freezer,” Rodney said, and unlike Kyle, he didn’t sound worried about it, either.

  Mendoza leaned back. “Who told you that?”

  “What? That there was a body in the freezer?”

  “That we can’t prove you had anything to do with it,” Mendoza said calmly. “Did someone tell you that? Say, Lance?”

  But Rodney shook his head. “Clay did. When he came down after you talked to him. He said there was a dead body in the freezer, but nobody could prove we had anything to do with it.”

  “That depends on whether you did have something to do with it,” Mendoza said, still calm. “Unless you wore gloves when you snapped her neck, your fingerprints will still be on the body. They don’t go away just because the body’s frozen.”

  “Is that true?” I asked Rafe.

  He shook his head. “Might be some DNA. That lasts. But it’ll take a while to get those results back.”

  So Mendoza was bluffing. I turned back to the window.

  “That’s bullshit,” Rodney said. “I didn’t have nothing to do with the body. Kyle and Clay woulda told you that.”

  “They said they didn’t know about the body.” Mendoza put
emphasis on ‘they.’ “But they also said you were the one in communication with Lance. So if anyone knew, it would be you.”

  “I didn’t know nothing,” Rodney said.

  “Lance didn’t tell you?”

  Rodney shook his head.

  “I guess you’re not that close?”

  “We’re close—” Rodney began, and then seemed to think better of it. He subsided back into the chair, but still managed to look truculent.

  Mendoza leaned back, too, casually. Or at least the back of him looked casual. We were looking at Rodney’s face and the back of Mendoza’s head. He had nice, healthy hair, jet black and a little wavy. Much like Rafe’s when he lets it go, except a little darker. Rafe’s hair looks black when it’s cropped short, but it’s actually more like an espresso brown when it gets a little length.

  “Tell me about Lance,” Mendoza said.

  Rodney didn’t answer, and Mendoza added, “Did he ever mention his girlfriend to you? Did they have problems? How long had they been together?”

  “We didn’t talk about it,” Rodney said.

  Mendoza nodded, understandingly. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No,” Rodney said, flushing.

  “You dated a girl named Natalie Allen in high school. Until she was murdered.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with this!” Rodney said.

  “You were questioned in connection with her death.”

  “I had an alibi! And anyway, the guy who killed Natalie is in prison.”

  “Steven Morris went on trial for Natalie’s murder, and was acquitted. And ended up dead the next day. You were questioned in his murder, too.”

  “Same guy did it!”

  Mendoza went on as if he couldn’t hear Rodney, or didn’t think what Rodney was saying was worth listening to. “That’s three murders you’ve been involved in now, Rodney.”

  “I wasn’t involved in any of them!” Rodney said, his voice shrill. “I didn’t kill Natalie. I had an alibi! I had an alibi for Morris’s murder, too. And I didn’t even know there was a dead body in the freezer until the cop told me!”

  “Lance didn’t mention the fact that he’d killed his girlfriend and put her body in the freezer?”

  “No!”

  “Don’t you think that’s something he should have shared with you, instead of letting you walk into a house with a dead body in it?”

  “Yes!” Rodney said.

  “It’s a little suspicious, after all. Almost like dead bodies follow you around.”

  “I told you…!” Rodney began.

  Mendoza waved it aside. “So Lance told you to go to the house. And he said the door would be open. But he didn’t tell you about the body. What were you there for?”

  “To pick up the—” Rodney began, and then stopped.

  “Body?”

  “No! Why don’t you listen? I didn’t know nothing about the body! We were there for something else.”

  Mendoza nodded. “As it happens, I already know. Your friends told me. So why don’t you go ahead and say it, for the record?”

  Rodney shifted on the chair. The handcuffs rattled. “We went there to pick up the Tannerite.”

  “Who does the Tannerite belong to?”

  “Lance,” Rodney said. “Lance bought it and stored it in his girlfriend’s garage.”

  “Did Lance’s girlfriend know that she was storing enough explosive to blow up a building?”

  “Dunno,” Rodney said. “Never met her.”

  Mendoza let that hang for a second before he said, “It’s a lot of Tannerite. What was Lance going to do with all of it?”

  “Target practice,” Rodney said, and a smirk hovered at the corners of his lips.

  “Does he practice a lot?”

  “He’s a sniper,” Rodney said.

  I glanced at Rafe, who arched a brow. “True?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Could be. If it is, it’d make it easier to identify him.”

  It would. But that wouldn’t tell us where he was or what he was doing now. Even so, I nodded and turned my attention back to the window.

  “So maybe he doesn’t need practice,” Mendoza was saying. “Is it the rest of you who practice?”

  Rodney shrugged.

  “What are you practicing for? Are you planning to join the military?”

  Rodney lips curved. “No.”

  “Go hunting?”

  “Yeah,” Rodney said. “Hunting.”

  Rafe made a disgusted noise. I wanted to, as well. Mendoza didn’t. I’m sure he could hear the gleeful tone in Rodney’s voice, and he could guess what kind of hunting Rodney was talking about, but he didn’t let it show. “I need to talk to Lance about his dead girlfriend, Rodney. Where can I find him?”

  “Dunno,” Rodney said.

  “Where was he when you last spoke to him?”

  “He texted me,” Rodney said, “and gave me the address. I don’t know where he was.”

  Mendoza fished a bag out of his jacket pocket, and shook a cell phone out onto the table in front of Rodney. “That’s your phone.”

  Rodney reached for it.

  “Call Lance and ask him where he wants you to bring the explosive.”

  Rodney looked at him.

  “Or I can charge you with conspiracy to commit murder. You were there, in the house, with the body. You went there on Lance’s orders. It’s a short step from there to making the case that you were going to move the body. And that takes it into conspiracy.”

  “We weren’t! We were only getting the Tannerite!”

  “You can explain that to a jury,” Mendoza said. “Or you can call Lance.”

  Rodney scowled at him. Mendoza waited. It took a few seconds, but eventually, Rodney began stabbing at the phone, his movements sharp and annoyed.

  “Put it on speaker,” Mendoza told him.

  Rodney shot him a look, but did it. We could hear the ringing, and then the fake-friendly, canned voice. “I’m sorry. The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is out of service...”

  “Dammit,” Rafe said.

  I nodded. “I guess, when they didn’t come back last night, he figured out that something was wrong.”

  “Must have.” He said another bad word, as he leaned his hands on the sill of the double-sided window and stared longingly at Rodney. “Wish I was in there.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to get him to admit to something he doesn’t know.”

  He shot me a look. “I know that. But I’d still enjoy trying.”

  No doubt. “It’s like you said. If all Lance is doing is stringing Rodney and Kyle along, and using them to do his menial stuff, then it makes sense that he wouldn’t tell them anything important.”

  “Maybe,” Rafe admitted. Although he still looked wistfully at Rodney like he was picturing grabbing him by his scrawny neck and shaking him like the rat he was, until he coughed up the information Rafe wanted.

  I patted him on the back. His muscles were tight through the soft cotton of his shirt. “You probably wouldn’t be able to manhandle him anyway, you know. Not with your injuries.”

  “Sure I would. He prob’ly doesn’t weigh one-thirty soaking wet.”

  He probably did—because if he didn’t, it meant he weighed less than me, and I couldn’t quite condone that. But it wasn’t by much. While Rodney was into his twenties, he looked like a teenager, as slender as a snake, with no discernible shoulders or muscles to speak of. Without his injuries, Rafe could have squashed him like a bug in five seconds flat. And even as it was, I wouldn’t bet against him.

  Not that he’d get the chance. At least not today.

  “I’m going to have a talk with the district attorney,” Mendoza was telling Rodney. “He’s back there.”

  He gestured with his thumb to the window. The corner of Rafe’s mouth turned up.

  “He’ll tell me whether we’ve got enough evidence to arrest the three of you.”

  “We didn’t touch her,” Rodney p
rotested. “We didn’t open the freezer. We didn’t even know she was there!”

  “Breaking and entering,” Mendoza reminded him, getting to his feet. “The intent to remove property that doesn’t belong to you. It adds up.” He gave Rodney a not-at-all reassuring smile. “Just sit tight.”

  He walked out. Rodney watched him until the door closed behind him, and then he looked at us. Or at the mirror, since he couldn’t possibly see us.

  The door into our room opened, and Mendoza stepped through. In the interrogation room, Rodney got tired of watching the mirror—of watching himself—and looked away. And realized that Mendoza had left Rodney’s phone lying in the middle of the table.

  With another look at the mirror, Rodney pulled it toward him. And dropped both hands, still cuffed, and the phone below the edge of the table and into his lap.

  “Did you want him to have the phone?” I asked Mendoza.

  He glanced through the window at Rodney. “I figured we might see if he uses it for anything. Just in case Lance has more than one number. I’ll get it back from him before he leaves.”

  “You can’t keep it, can you?”

  He shook his head. “Just long enough to see if he called or texted anyone else. Or emailed someone. If we’re letting him go, we’ll have to give it to him, though. Can’t keep the phone if we’re not keeping him.”

  He looked at Rafe. Rafe looked back.

  “I think he’s telling the truth about not knowing about the body,” I said.

  Mendoza nodded. “But we can still hang on to him if we want to.”

  “Even if the door was open and he was just picking up the Tannerite—which isn’t illegal—for a friend?”

  This time, they both nodded. “The situation being what it is,” Rafe said, “yeah.”

  “So is that what you’re going to do? Keep them and the Tannerite so Lance won’t have what he needs for whatever he’s planning to do tomorrow?”

  They eyed one another.

  “No,” Rafe said. “I vote we let’em go. And see what they do.”

  “It’s a risk,” Mendoza told him.

  Rafe nodded. “But if they go back to Columbia, the risk ain’t gonna be in your jurisdiction.”

  Mendoza’s face darkened. “Screw you,” he said, just not as politely. “Just because something happens outside my town, doesn’t mean I don’t want to stop it if I can.”