by J. S. James
Exhaustion caught up as she rolled toward home.
The wheels of justice could wait.
31
Delia smacked down the snooze button before Selena got off the second bom of her Tex-Mex–reggae take on “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom.” The digits spelled out 11:00 and the sun was a fuzzy peach in the bedroom window. Ten hours that felt like ten minutes.
She treasured Selena Quintanilla’s message and music, especially after her tragic death. But please, not this morning. No lyrics about hearts going crazy. Sitting up, she watched the room spin. Almost wished she was dead. New fridge sticky note: Never chase Sominex with a big red wine.
Yesterday came flooding back, goose-bumping her bare skin. The idea of eking out justice on her own, together with the cold light of day, sent shivers up her arms. The room kept moving while she thought about the rule of holes and the one she was in. Maybe she should stop shoveling. Drive to Newport and see about getting on at Lincoln County Sheriff’s.
Definitely not KOKO, Chavez. Stay and dig. She was beyond hunch Grice was dirty. Not just “the little bite.” Dirty in a big way. Rubbing at her arms, Delia wondered whether she’d uncover anything, digging from the outside. At the least, she could find out why the one friend left on the inside had let Grice ambush her.
* * *
Only police vehicles and visitors were allowed in parking behind the Polk County Jail. A colorless overcast and the employee lot suited Delia just fine. Even better, two prisoner transport vans sat on either side of an open slot directly across from the dispatcher’s assigned parking. She backed Jehoshaphat into the stall between the camouflaging vans, rolled down the window, and cut the barely muffled flathead V-8 just as Annie’s rust-pocked Z-car caromed in.
While Annie parked, Delia slipped on dark aviators, yanked the keys, and took up a third-degree stance at the Merc’s front wheel well.
High heels clacked toward her. They scraped to an abrupt stop when Annie saw who was waiting.
“Oh, Delia. Hey.” Her glance meandered, then swept past, taking in the flashy car. She edged between the van and the Merc, her attention drawn to the name splashed over its fender. “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat?” She must have been off since the night before—sporting a new shoulder bag, manicure, and fresh hair touch-up. She still could have called. Given Delia a heads-up.
Hands on hips, Annie reared back at the waist. “Good God, Chavez. Have you got a Sancho on the side?”
Delia winced behind her glasses. No surprise Annie knew cholo slang for a secret lover—she got around. But this was the wrong damned day for guy-banter.
“They’re all yours, Cox. Every last one.”
Annie leaned in, a sharper green in her gaze. “What’s up?”
Delia shrugged. The air soured in the silence.
Annie nodded at the keys in Delia’s hand. “Gonna be back soon?”
“How about never? Is that fucking soon enough for you?”
Annie didn’t move, but her eyes went round. “Geez, girl. Who flipped your bitch switch?”
“Why the hell didn’t you warn me?”
Annie’s mouth went agape, her head tilting to one side. Good acting. “About what?”
“About Grice. That it was an ambush.”
“Delia, what happened?”
She felt Annie’s hand on her arm and shook it off. “Grice yanked my badge. I’m suspended, that’s what happened. Don’t act like you didn’t see it coming.”
“I-I really didn’t.” Annie lifted three fingers, Girl Scout style. “Truth, girl. Night before last, I left your report on the sheriff’s desk. He wanted to pull you in for a dressing down right then and there. I explained the close call you and Jerzy had on the river and got him to back off. He agreed to go easy on you and that’s where we left it. Swear to God.”
Delia ransacked her friend’s face. Read the honesty in her eyes. Felt sick for doubting her. “Okay, Annie. Sorry, but old Lizard Breath’s not stopping at suspension. He gets his way, I’m out for good.”
Annie broke into a chuckle. “Lizard Breath. Nice. I had Lard Butt.”
They laughed together, but sobered quickly.
“So what about Jerzy?”
“What about him?” Delia snapped.
“Whoa, easy. I just meant, is he in or out?”
Delia rammed her hands into her coat pockets. “Couldn’t care less.”
Annie peered into her face. “What am I missing? So … not a Sancho, but you and him?”
“Me and nobody. Grice put Castner in charge of the case … maybe Investigations. Reassigned Matusik to him.”
“You’re shitting me. Castner? Man’s got a mind like a steel trap—welded shut. He botches traffic arrests, for God’s sake.”
Pulling off her glasses, Delia let out a chuff. “Wanna hear the funny part? Grice called me incompetent.”
Annie spun away, stormed out from between the parked vehicles, turned, and stalked back. She took in Delia’s jeans and sweat shirt, likely the circles behind her eyes. “When’s the last time you ate? I mean, food with protein?”
“I dunno, I—”
“Here’s what you do. First, drive over to the Doo-Wop and get yourself a real breakfast. An egg sandwich, at least.” Annie stepped past and opened the driver’s side door. “Get your mind off things for the day. Go shopping. Shoot targets. Whatever. Then meet me at Harvey’s. After my shift’s over.”
“At Harvey’s, huh?” Delia let the question float like a bobber and hook.
Annie masked whatever else was going on with a hook of her own. “Yeah. Time we brought you into our little cabal.”
* * *
Relief washed over Delia when she saw no police units in sight at the local cop hangout—no Castner act-alikes in browns, no city roosters in blues to cock-a-doodle-doo over her lowrider, or worse, over the blindside from Grice.
Starving, she wheeled into the Doo-Wop drive-in, parked under its swept-wing roof, and pulled the swing-arm order kiosk in close. She hit the speaker button and broke into the Motown sounds of Little Eva urging everyone to do the locomotion. Listen to that stuff a zillion times and it grew on you.
Nobody there? Duddley must be out back having a smoke. She waited, letting her thoughts wander, wondering whether, more like hoping, the conspiracy Annie and Harvey were hatching pertained to Grice.
A red pickup pulled into the stall opposite her kiosk. Zack slid over and rolled down the window.
“Good news, Detective.”
“What kind of news?”
“The sort-of kind. I remember you saying you had no crime scenes to go over—”
“And?” She flipped the speaker out of the way. “Have you got something?”
“No, but the river’s gone down. I can get you out where that sumbitch … you know.”
Where Charlie was killed. The excitement mounted inside her, then sloped off. “I don’t have to go by boat, do I?”
A vertical wrinkle showed between Zack’s eyebrows and disappeared. He slid back over behind the wheel.
”You okay following in that pearly white lead sled?”
“Let’s go.”
* * *
Delia had enough trouble navigating the boulder-strewn gravel bar between the Santiam and Willamette Rivers on foot, let alone while shouting questions to Zack.
“Hold up where you think Charlie might’ve been … when he confronted the perpetrator.”
Ahead, Zack walked a scum-encrusted waterline, stopping suddenly.
“Here! Where Charlie dropped his shotgun.”
She’d parked Big Juan’s Mercury coupe on the Marion County side of the Willamette and continued in Zack’s pickup along a farm access road, where it ran out just north of the Santiam.
Delia caught up with Zack and swiveled around, scanning, looking for something, any item that didn’t fit with the stink and ugliness of every dead thing deposited at the confluence. She could probably stop wishing she still had her evidence bag.
But that dry lo
g above her had been there awhile, before the last high water. She sighted between Zack, now standing with his head bowed where he thought Charlie had gone down, and up to that log. The angle was about right. Worth having a look.
Careful not to slip and bang her knees, Delia negotiated the rocks and got close enough to scrutinize for details. To her shock, one stood out right away, a branch too straight to be a branch.
“Zack, up here.” The enthusiasm she voiced drew him to his feet and brought him stumbling up to her.
“Holy crap. Look at that thing. That’s what … got Charlie?”
“No.” It was SOP not to share autopsy photos with relatives. “But this jives with how two other victims were killed.”
“Then why’s it here?”
“That I don’t know.” She studied the wicked gleam of its point, embedded in the log. “Wasn’t Charlie’s hunting coat sliced through at the top of one shoulder?”
“You think this quarrel did that?”
“Could be a miss. You told me you heard Charlie’s gun go off. Suggests to me he put up a fight.”
He looked at her. “Well, that’s something I can hold on to. But it’s not near enough.”
“I know, Zack. I’ll get him. If it’s the last thing I do.” Who knew how close she might come to speaking truth.
She pointed to the stick that wasn’t a stick. “You called this a quarrel?”
“Or a bolt. Used in crossbows. This one’s a broad-tip with four hellish-looking razor edges.” Until now, Delia had been thinking spear gun. This made more sense. Hunters hunted on top of the water.
“Range?”
“I knew a guy could hit the sweet spot and down a deer at sixty feet with his souped-up pistol-grip crossbow.”
“Lay out two of those rags,” she said, drawing on rubber gloves from her pocket. She’d seen Zack stuff a packet of new grease rags in his coat.
Chain of evidence was out the door, but this quarrel might still point to the killer.
* * *
It was past four when Delia pulled to the curb at Harvey’s house, switched off, and gathered up the rag-wrapped crossbow arrow. She wanted to explore options with Harvey before turning anything like that over to Castner—who might toss it in his trunk and forget about it.
She got out, shivered, and zipped her coat. The temperature had plunged ahead of the clouds and a threat of snow. Annie’s Z was nowhere in sight, so she retrieved the arrow and hurried up the walkway to Harv’s sky-blue, bungalow-style craftsman. Its cheeriness mocked the peevish vein she’d mined into the late-afternoon shadows.
She banged up Harvey’s front-porch steps, harboring scant hope an invalid cop, a police dispatcher, and a likely-ex-detective might unfuck a completely fucked-up sheriff’s department.
Harvey met her leaning on a single crutch, his arms spread. The strain from hobbling around showed in his face as he looked past her, silently mouthing the name on the fender of her lowrider. Smiling, he said nothing. She stepped into his enfolding uncle hug and felt compensated for keeping on, at least momentarily.
“Crappy couple of days, huh, Dee-Dee?”
“The crappiest. Annie fill you in?”
He nodded, turning and motioning her in. “By phone. Let’s go sit so I can get off this leg.”
“Oh. Yeah,” she said, following him inside. “Your truck accident? No accident. Prints on the e-brake matched a drug peddler’s, named Moonshaft Nastry. Heard of him?”
The stress lines in Harvey’s forehead definitely flattened, but he kept going. “Uh-uh. Would’ve remembered that handle.”
They sat opposite each other in a living room defined by a fireless fireplace, his Big Man recliner, and a padded chair she’d dragged over from the dining room. A TV tray sat off to Harvey’s left. Carving tools and shavings littered the tray. A duck’s bill poked out of a wood block. She set down the rag-wrapped arrow.
He wanted her account, so she started in.
She was about to wrap up when there was a single knock and Annie breezed in like she owned the place, kicking the door shut behind her on the way into Harvey’s kitchen.
“Hey, Chavez. Hey, Handsome.” She put away a bag of groceries in the fridge and cupboards, then cruised over to Handsome’s recliner and plunked herself down on one of the arms. “You two get to the heart of the matter?”
Harvey made room, but the outside of his arm stayed in contact with Annie’s hip. That modest intimacy spoke more than if they had pawed each other.
Delia gave a mental tongue-click. Harv a confirmed bachelor and Annie a lover of cabana boys. A pair of redheads: one with kinky hair, the other just kinky.
Farfetched, but there it was.
Delia returned to her chair, feeling like a third wheel until Annie got up and scraped another chair close to hers.
Annie’s hands took hers and squeezed. “Delia, you have to know this dismissal threat’s a setup. Grice wants you out of the way, but we can’t figure out why.”
“Same here,” Delia said. “I’m convinced he’s playing a side game that’s somehow tied in with Bastida, that military fugitive, and those calls from Virginia you and I got curious about. When I confronted him, Grice fed me a bogus-sounding line that Bastida’s not only our killer, but he made off with a secret weapon.”
“Wow,” said Harvey. “Of course, we are in the era of super-whoppers. And I don’t mean burgers. But even if we had any hard evidence—”
“Oh-hoh. But we do.” Delia sprang out of her chair, adding, “Well, maybe,” over her shoulder as she booked it out the front door. Thirty seconds and she was back with the box of shredded paper she’d been chauffeuring for twenty-four hours. “Anybody up for a game of mix, match, and catch? Tape and glue, find the clue?”
Annie was out of her chair, saying, “Damn, girl. You kept that?” Before Harvey could object, she’d swept everything off his kitchen table: sugar and cream bowls and salt and pepper shakers set aside, napkins gone flying. “Harvey, we need your company table leaves. Quick.”
“Hold it, where’d you get that?”
“Street dumpster,” answered Annie. “Nineteen eighty-eight court ruling. Fair game.” She never ceased to amaze Delia.
“All right, proceed.” As if either Annie or Delia needed a go-ahead.
It was anything but quick. Hours later, they had something on Grice. Three photos distinctly labeled by a naval inquiry board. Two depictions caused considerable mirth: images of him on his knees and buck naked in a Barranquilla bordello, a señorita in similar attire riding his back. Delia did some Googling with Harvey’s laptop regarding the third photo. It showed Grice in uniform with his arms across the shoulders of two men, one a Colombian general, later indicted for tipping off drug traffickers, the other a cartel kingpin brought down in 2012.
Unsure whether any of it could be used as evidence, Delia started a stack anyway. “I’d say they’re blackmail material on a sheriff running for office.”
Harvey tapped on the pile. “You can bet I’ll follow up on that naval inquiry. What else?”
“We have a winner!” Annie said, taping a last paper strip onto a blank page and handing it to Delia, who described as she perused.
“Two check stubs, dated in early October, from a Navy federal credit union in Little Creek, Virginia. Notice each one is just under ten thousand, the bank-reporting benchmark. I’d like to know for certain whether the signatory is that naval commander who called, and whether the checks are still coming.”
“Oh, hey.” Annie said, hunching over the table. “You know my brother, Cam.” Delia did. Cameron Cox managed the Dallas, Oregon, branch of the Far West Bank. Annie’d once tried to fix her up with him. Nice guy, but apples and kumquats. Not a good fit. “Well, that’s where Grice banks.”
“Uh, hold that thought,” Harvey said. “We’re bumping into fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree territory. Bankers can’t hand over personal bank records without a warrant.”
“Oh, I’m not gathering evidence, just intelligen
ce. I’ll casually mention the sheriff’s going to the bank a lot and play smiley-frowny face with Cam, like when we were kids. He won’t realize he’s giving me a thing. Cam should never ever play poker.”
Harvey flattened his hands on the table. “Even establishing a pattern, we can’t move ahead without a warrant, but we’ll have enough to go to Barsch.” He lowered his voice. “Grice knows he hasn’t a chance of getting reelected, but he’s got four lame-duck months to wreck the department before he waddles out of office. However, if Annie’s right and we get lucky”—he rapped his knuckles on the wood tabletop—“we might finagle an emergency filing for impeachment on gross malfeasance.”
He shifted toward Delia. “Dee-Dee, you’ve given us a ton to go on. Now you need to back off and give us time to work it.”
“I’m not going to sit this out at home, Harv. I’ve got promises to keep.”
“Just don’t give Grice a reason to jam you up.”
“There’s a wrinkle.” She stepped into the living room and came back with the roll of grease rags. “We still have a killer loose, and I recovered one of his customized toys. It could have his prints.” She unwrapped the bolt and laid it on his lap. “Careful.”
The razor-thin spiral blades gleamed jewelry-case bright, earning a low whistle from Harvey. She shook her head. “No way am I turning this over to Castner.”
“All right,” he said, rewrapping the shaft. “I’ll have my OSP contact run it through their lab. But please, stay out of the sheriff’s line of sight until we file.”
She was glad he didn’t bring up chain-of-evidence issues.
32
BOWMAN PARK ON THE WILLAMETTE RIVER
EIGHT WEEKS INTO WATERFOWL SEASON
Big Juan’s Mercury was no slouch. Topping one-ten in the straightaways, Delia covered the forty miles from Monmouth to Albany, Oregon, in thirty minutes. She rocketed off its west-side bridge under a cloud cover. Veering north, she tore up the main drag, blowing through intersections, hoping Zack had waited. Hoping she wouldn’t find him laid out on a boat ramp, skewered like duck hunter kebab. He was her last option, and like a good SME, he’d followed her lead.
