by John McMahon
Hartley ran a hand through his reddish-brown hair and placed a briefcase down in an empty office on the far side of the floor. The chief disappeared into a stairwell.
“What the hell?” I said, moving past Remy.
I hustled out of my office and across to the opposite stairs. Took them two at a time up to the next floor. Followed Senza into his office.
“Chief,” I said, “you got a second?”
“You already got something on your double?”
“No, not yet,” I said.
I pulled his door halfway closed as I entered. “Lauten Hartley.” I pointed down. Cocking my head.
I was still getting to know Senza, and he had this way of taking a deep breath while he nodded. Signaling that he was following you. “Sure,” he said. “So, Vicky Goff is leaving the police oversight board. You knew that, right?”
This was the civilian position. The lead position on the board.
“I heard whispers.”
“Well, the mayor’s been looking to replace her,” Senza said. “You remember Hartley from last year?”
“You kidding?” I said. “How could I forget? He worked pro bono to sue the department.”
Senza motioned for me to close his door all the way. Which I did.
“And the mayor’s got two thoughts on that, Marsh,” the chief said. “One, if Hartley sits on the board, he’s conflicted, so he can’t sue us again. Make your enemy your friend.”
“And two?”
“This is what the public wants these days, P.T. It’s the age of transparency. Honest reporting. Body cams. So the type of public servant who would work pro bono against a police department—just because he believed in a cause—that’s the type of guy the public wants running an oversight board.”
A cause? I squinted at Chief Senza.
The issue that we got sued over last December wasn’t a cause. Some degenerate’s sister was suing the department for her brother’s death. Her brother who shot Remy in the arm. Then held me underwater until I nearly blacked out. Somehow I found the energy to fight back. Which ended in his death, instead of mine.
I did my best to nod at the chief. But the reality was—politics eluded me. Not the simple practice of them. I’d learned long ago how to compliment people’s kids and wives. How to play nice at work. But the advanced stuff—the counterintuitive moves where you took one step back for six months to take two steps forward later—I guess I just lacked the discipline to sandbag myself and those around me for some theoretical future gain.
“You’re following me, P.T.?” the chief asked.
I hadn’t been listening for about thirty seconds.
“Sure,” I said. But all I was thinking was that if Hartley was a member of the board, he’d have unlimited access to any case in the department, including anything that Remy and I would find looking into his own movements.
Which might be his purpose here at the hall of justice in the first place.
“I know you’re still raw about that settlement against the department,” the chief said. “And I am too. But I’ll tell you what. Go down there now. Introduce yourself to Hartley. Be the better person. Tell him, ‘No harm. No foul. Welcome to the team.’”
“It’s okay.” I put my palms out. “We don’t know each other—”
“Even more reason,” Senza said.
I hesitated, looking to the boss’s closed door.
Did I want to get into this with Senza?
“That’s an order, Detective,” he said. “Go on now. Take the high road.”
I nodded and left. Headed to the stairwell. As I came down the steps, I found the office where Hartley had put down his briefcase.
I knocked on the open door, and he raised his head.
The attorney had the body of a wrestler. Not as tall as me, but a compact figure and thick, wiry arms. He wore a black suit, cut tight against his strong frame.
“Paul. Thomas. Marsh,” Hartley said.
I closed the door behind me.
Hartley stared at me then, saying nothing more. And I said nothing back. A long moment passed. What Remy and I called “S.T.F.U. time.” And generally when we shut the fuck up, the other guy talks first.
“I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here,” he asked.
His hair was bushy along his temples, and I studied his face. His eyebrows were like unkempt wires in an abandoned house. The color of old copper turned brown. Same as the hair that covered his head.
“You like to work pro bono?” I asked.
Hartley grinned like a cat. “Nope. The truth is, I prefer a paying case. I like money.”
He laughed then. A deep and confident laugh. One you’d want to join in on, if you were in on the joke.
“But,” Hartley continued, “I figured the department could use the help, so I was asked to join the board. And here I am.”
I felt air settle against the dry area at the back of my mouth.
“I hope there’s no hard feelings,” he said. “From last year and all.”
Be cool, Purvis said.
“’Course not,” I answered.
“’Cause there’s lawyer stuff you gotta do when you’re a lawyer, Detective,” he said. “Antagonism is part of the game.”
Inside, a storm was taking shape. An updraft of energy feeding something unknown. Then a pull-down revealing a front of gray. I knew this guy was dirty.
“That’s why I came by,” I said. “Clear the decks. Let you know that we’re good.”
Done, my bulldog said. Now walk away.
The area between Hartley’s eyebrows came together. Folded to form a crease. His smile curved upward. He didn’t buy a thing I was selling.
“Well, I hope we can become friends,” he said. “But at the same time, you understand I gotta do my job on the board, right?”
“That’s why you’re here,” I said. “Just like I’m here to investigate crimes. New ones . . . old ones.”
He stared at me then, and I wondered if he was thinking what I was. That he was involved somehow with the Golden Oaks robbery. And that I knew it.
“Good.” He checked his watch. “So let’s start by making sure you don’t miss another therapy session.”
He got up. Walked closer, his face inches from mine.
And suddenly I was staring into the black waters of the Tullumy River at night. A gurgling sound. Water filling up a 2012 Jeep.
“’Cause, you know,” he said, his face serious, “you miss another appointment, and you’ll be put in front of the police board. And I run the board now. So who knows what could happen to you.”
14
I crossed through the farm of cubes from Hartley’s office over to where Remy sat, my mind spinning from back-to-back conversations with Senza and Hartley.
“I gotta take a walk,” I said to my partner. “Did Carlos get the Chevy Caprice yet?”
“Yeah.” She looked up. “But it’s only been an hour, P.T. I’m not sure he’s even had a chance to—”
I grabbed the murder book from Remy’s desk and headed toward the stairwell to the lobby.
“Everything okay?” Remy asked, following me.
I nodded, but didn’t speak. Flipped open the book as I walked, taking out a printout of a photo Remy had shot at the roadside.
Breathe, Purvis said.
“So this was a planned meet, right?” I said, once I realized Remy was following me. I held up a wide shot of the Caprice parked along 914.
In the photo, there were marks in the gravel that indicated a car had parked in front of the Caprice, where the two dead men were found.
“Our pro shooter pulls over in front of them,” I said, theorizing. “Gets out. Walks back toward their car?”
We got to the lobby, and my partner pulled out her phone. She showed me other pictures
she’d shot at the side of the road. There were skid marks kicking up gravel, like a car had left fast. But the marks could be days old. Or weeks.
“You’re thinking someone Vinorama and Dilmendes knew pulled over in front of them,” Remy said. “They welcome him into their car. Maybe they thought it was just for a quick second. Hence the driver never undoing his seat belt.”
“Exactly,” I said.
I moved through the lobby and onto the sidewalk. Outside, the sky was steel-colored, and the clouds looked like a series of white blankets that had been rolled military-tight and placed beside each other, in rows.
“I was thinking about that errant bullet through the back of the seat,” I said, walking the long way around the hall of justice. “You think Dilmendes turned? From where he was sitting in the front passenger seat?”
“If it’s an ambush,” Remy said, “he’d turn when he heard the first shot. The shot at the driver.”
I imagined the killer sitting down into the back of the Caprice. Making a few words of small talk before he pulled out a .22 and laid a single bullet into the back of the head of Juan Vinorama. It made sense that Dilmendes would turn suddenly as the gun moved in his direction.
In front of us was the edge of the mod garage, but my partner grabbed me by my arm, stopping me before we entered.
“P.T.,” she said. “You want to tell me what the hell’s going on?”
I nodded, my lips pursed for a moment. I had walked out of the station and a full block with Remy, all from nervous energy.
“That was Hartley,” I said.
Remy looked confused. “The guy setting up in that office?”
I explained about my conversation with the chief and with Hartley, and Remy shook her head. Here and there she asked, “He said that?” and then followed by asking, “What did you say?”
“I just tried to stay calm,” I said. “Give us a chance to investigate. That’s what you told me last night, right?”
“Right,” she said, her eyes big atop those curvy cheekbones. Realizing her words in front of my house last night weren’t hollow, but the start of a plan. A plan she couldn’t back out of now.
No one said anything for a moment, and suddenly Carlos was in front of us. He’d sauntered over while we had gotten into it.
“So yesterday you show up two hours after I get that Dodge Magnum,” Carlos said. “Today it’s one hour after I get this yacht?”
I held up my hands. “I just needed a walk, C,” I said. “Thought I’d check if you had anything early on the Caprice.”
“I actually got two things early,” Carlos said. “But then you gotta leave me alone. Give me some real time. Cool?”
“Cool,” Remy said. “Let’s hear ’em.”
Carlos walked over to the Caprice, and we followed him. He had all four doors splayed open at once and the car looked like some winged metallic animal, ready to take flight.
“Well, first off, the car’s a bit messy, right?”
We nodded.
“Candy wrappers. Haskell’s Burger wrappers,” he said. “Clothes. Here’s the thing, though. There ain’t a print inside.”
“What do you mean, ‘ain’t a print’?” Remy asked.
“Zero. Cero. Nada.”
I blinked. “Someone wiped it down?”
“Like a professional,” Carlos said. He held up an empty Skittles package with his purple gloves. “Even the candy wrappers. By the way, Wild Berry is my favorite Skittles, in case you ever feel like bringing me a snack as a thank-you.”
Remy and I went silent. For the first time since we’d arrived, I heard country music coming from an overhead speaker in the garage. A Cole Swindell song about a girl dancing in a nightclub. Carlos was humming under his breath to the tune, and I remembered something Abe once said to him. That Carlos couldn’t carry a tune if it was in a bucket with a lid on it. I still didn’t know what that meant.
“What about our two guys’ prints?” Remy asked. “Vinorama and Dilmendes?”
“Other than on the steering wheel.” Carlos shrugged. “None of their prints either.”
I stood back, inspecting the car with a fresh eye. It was odd enough to see a professional hit in Mason Falls. A complete lack of prints was even rarer. Someone had been in that car. Took their time looking around. And then removed any trace of themselves.
“I’m thinking the guys in the car were low level,” Carlos said. “Couriers probably.”
“Based on what?” Remy asked.
“Their dress,” he said. “My point is—the odds are better that they had something than they knew something.”
“You think their killer searched the car for something these two had?” I asked. “Found what it was. Then wiped everything down after?”
“Possibly,” Carlos said. “’Cept I don’t know about the ‘found it’ part.”
I smiled at Carlos. “You wanna take the car apart?”
“I do.”
“You think what?” Remy asked him. “Inside some tube in the engine . . . someone was searching for something they never found?”
Carlos nodded. He had a good instinct for these things. What my father-in-law called “horse sense.”
“Make it happen,” I said. “We’ll clear the O.T. with the chief.”
I took a step back and stopped. “Wait. You said two things . . . that you found.”
“Yeah,” Carlos said. “There’s this guy Nick who delivers stuff from the lab. He’s got a handful of those same shirts you found in the back. The ones with the stupid slogans on them.”
“Okay?” I said.
“So I called Nick twenty minutes ago. Asked him where I could get a shirt like his.”
“What’d he say?” Remy asked.
“He told me about some gift store about three miles from where you found this car. Big signs all over it. Ninety-nine cents this. Two for twenty that.”
“I know that place,” Remy said. “It’s not the only thing out there either. There’s a liquor store. A bar.”
“If these guys were staying in town for a couple days,” Carlos said, “that bar might be where they were getting their drink on.”
15
As Remy drove north on 914, I thought about what we had so far on the double murder and what open questions existed. But mostly I tried to avoid thinking about Hartley. Which meant I mostly thought about Hartley.
Should I have said more to the man? Less?
Gotten angry?
Demanded more from the chief?
The sound of tires crunching on gravel signaled our arrival, and I stared up at the building that housed Art’s Novelties and Gifts. The place was a large wooden structure, with an angled tin roof that had a sign every ten feet or so. One read T-Shirts $5, while another shouted We’ve got . . . what you forgot.
I looked around.
When you work in patrol, you get to know every seedy corner of town, and the rural shitholes too. That’s why you gotta work patrol at least two years before you can even apply for your detective’s badge. But I hadn’t been out this way in some time, and the store was new since then.
“What do they call this area nowadays?” I asked Remy.
“East Fork,” she said.
My dress shoes crunched underfoot. We were a hundred feet from the edge of 914, and I stared across the highway to the other side.
Two buildings sat across the road, their architecture mirroring the novelty store, except without all the crazy signs. One of the places was a bar by the name of Tandy’s. The other was a package store called Lucky’s Liquor.
Remy was almost at the front of the gift shop, and I caught up with her.
The door dinged as we entered.
Inside, the place looked like the love child of those temporary seasonal stores and your local ninety-nine-cent place. Along crowde
d shelves, it was Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, all at the same time. A giant sign suspended on two wires called the shop The stocking stuffer capital of Georgia. Never mind that it was still September, last time I checked.
“Christ,” I said under my breath, looking at all the crap you didn’t need.
A minute later, Remy motioned me over to a stack of tees.
The top shirt had a familiar message, but a different picture. I don’t have a drinking problem, it announced in a big bubbly font. Below that were four frames, drawn like a comic book. Each square contained a cartoonish-looking man. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down. No problem, the panels read.
I walked over to a woman in her late thirties at the register. She had a thin frame and freckles with big eyes set in a small head. She was pretty, but at the same time, like a caricature of someone else. A gaunt princess with two or three features that were unnaturally large. Her name tag read Nina.
“How you doing, Nina?” I smiled.
“Better now,” she said, her eyes landing on mine.
I flashed my shield and held up the T-shirt. “We’re looking for a guy who bought a handful of these.”
“Well, they’re pretty popular,” she said. “You know anything about this guy?”
I pulled out my phone and showed her pictures of Vinorama and Dilmendes. For Dilmendes, I used his DMV photo, but for Vinorama, the driver, I showed her the close-up of him in the front seat of the car.
“Holy shit,” she said. “Are they dead?”
A gaunt princess who cut straight to the chase.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Well, they were in here for sure,” she said. “Just the other day.”
There was an old-timey popcorn machine at the far end of the store, and the smell of imitation butter found its way over to us.
“Do you remember which day?” Remy asked.
Nina widened her stare at the picture. Her eyes were blue and wide with a perfect black circle inside, like a painted doll.
“It was right before closing,” she said. “Tuesday night.”
This was two nights before the men were killed.
