by Kit Frazier
“Look, Cauley. We got most of what we need. You can come by the station in the morning and swear out a statement,” Cantu said.
I nodded, but my chest hurt, like someone was sitting on my sternum. I could feel a big crying jag coming on, and I really, really hate crying jags.
Cantu must have sensed it, because he said, “Come on,” and he put his arm around me and gave a quick hug. “The boy’s will take care of your car. Let’s get you home.”
Back at home, Cantu checked the house and gave me the all clear. I double-locked my door, something I never do, stripped my wet clothes in a puddle on the living room floor and then stood in the shower until all the hot water and most of my tears were gone.
Wincing, I stoically sprayed Bactine on my cuts, praying I wouldn’t come down with a bad case of some mutant, water-borne microbe. I stumbled over to stare at myself in the mirror.
Bruises bloomed interesting shades of blue and green all over my face and body, and I thought if I stood there long enough, I could watch them develop. But as I stared at my reflection, I watched something else develop. The realization that I had been attacked.
I had actually inflicted bodily harm on another human being, and I wasn’t entirely sure he’d made it out of the lake alive. I felt sick.
In my head, I knew it had been him or me, but my heart was saying “Something was taken away from me tonight and I will never get it back.”
I pulled an old football jersey over my head and crawled between my cool white sheets. In the darkness, I felt Aunt Kat’s old typewriter silently tugging at me in the dark. Write, it whispered.
“Not tonight,” I said to the empty room. “I can’t do this tonight.”
I curled my arms around the unoccupied pillow next to me and felt more alone than I’d felt since I sat on those cold, courthouse steps three years ago. I rarely missed being married. Dr. Dick was, after all, a dick. But sometimes I missed snuggling up to a warm body at night.
All I had to do was make a phone call and Mark would be at the door with warm milk and soothing words. He’d fold me into his arms and, for the time being, make the world go away. He was good at that.
I considered getting up and playing his old messages on my answering machine just to hear the sound of his voice. But that was the very same feeling that made me hide my cordless phone in the vegetable crisper.
I had made my own bed, so to speak, and now I was going to lie in it. By myself. I flopped onto on my back and stared at the ceiling.
Van Gogh had vanished. By now, some of Austin’s finest would be out searching for him. But Lake Austin is a long, winding bend in the Lower Colorado River. It’s lined with large-tracted neighborhoods and miles of thick, rambling woodlands. It would take time to find Van Gogh if he made it out of the lake alive.
Every time I closed my eyes, I could see him, big and bald and earless, glaring at me with that weird, beady stare. I could smell his rancid breath, feel his hands fisting my hair, clinging to my neck, dragging me deeper and deeper into the cold, weed-choked water…
A cold chill skittered up my spine. Climbing back out of bed, I put the phone on my nightstand in case Van Gogh made an unscheduled appearance, then I popped The Thin Man into my little TV/DVD combo near the foot of my bed. I plumped the pillow and snuggled in, but even Nick and Nora couldn’t take my mind off the events of the day. Besides, I should probably be listening in case Van Gogh showed up on my doorstep.
And what if he did? I had no car, no gun and nobody. I threw the pillow over my head. If I stopped to think about it, I was lucky. I was alive. And despite a profusion of bumps and bruises, I was relatively healthy. Everything seemed dark now, but I could work through my problems alone. Lots of women did. All I had to do was get through the night.
From down the hall, I heard a weird, creaky noise. My breath caught.
Tossing the pillow aside, I listened, straining against the thick silence.
Had I locked all the windows? I rarely lock anything. Cantu had gone back home to his family and Van Gogh was at large. Hell would freeze over before I called Mark.
I held my breath, but all I could hear were the sounds of the soft southern night. A silvery breeze whispered through the live oaks outside my bedroom window and echoed in the canyon below. In the near distance, the river gently lapped at the shoreline. The old house settled on a sigh. No ex-boyfriends. No ear-chopping, homicidal maniacs.
A board squeaked. I stifled a scream and grabbed the phone from the nightstand.
A bounce at the edge of the bed sent the breath clogging in my throat.
And then I heard it. A soft whirring noise, followed by the pressure of tiny paws pressing into the mattress.
“What are you doing?” I said to Muse as she made her way to the head of the bed. “You hate me.” Fresh tears stung the backs of my eyes as the cat bumped her head against my chin. She curled her warm, fuzzy body into the crook of my neck.
“Oh, cat,” I said, and then I let loose with an honest-to-God crying jag. “I never cry. Well. Almost never.”
Muse wriggled, turned twice then settled in, brushing my tear-streaked cheek with her long, curled whiskers, and then she softly purred me to sleep.
Chapter Six
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. My alarm clock shrieked at the crack of seven and I woke up swearing. After a night of wrestling with a homicidal maniac, I couldn’t imagine going to work. I wondered if it was possible to write obituaries by osmosis. Does thinking about writing count?
My whole body felt like I’d been beaten with a ball bat and I thought about calling in dead, but then, I was back to who would write my obituary. Rolling, over, I smacked the snooze button. I felt a tickle on my cheek and I smacked that too and then swore when I realized it was Muse.
“Shit!” I swore. She glared at me with the profound animosity mastered only by cats, and I reached out to scratch her little round chin. “I’m sorry, cat. I didn’t know it was you.”
She cast me a mutinous glare then leapt out of bed, the tip of her tail twitching as she sashayed down the hall.
Great. Now I was a cat beater who may or may not have left somebody to die in Lake Austin. I wasn’t sure which was worse.
The phone rang, and I thought about letting the machine pick up, but it could have been Publisher’s Clearinghouse calling to say they were circling the block with a big fake check for a million dollars. Hey. I’d barely survived an attack by an earless bald guy. My luck was bound to improve.
“Hey, chica, que pasa?” Mia’s voice rang over the receiver.
“What’s happening?” I flopped over on the bed and dragged the pillow over my head. “I’m dying a slow and painful death,” I mumbled through the pillow.
“Oh, good, then I didn’t disturb you. I got the CliffsNotes on what happened yesterday at the standoff thingee. Sorry I wasn’t there,” she said, her voice soaked with sympathy. “But see? I told you your horoscope said you would meet a dark, mysterious man.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said, thinking of Van Gogh.
“What you need is a smudge ceremony, you know, where you burn little bundles of sage in the wonky parts of your house to clean up all the bad karma.”
My eyes crossed involuntarily. “Mia, I’m not setting a brush fire in the middle of my aunt’s living room.”
“We’ll get this taken care of,” Mia said. “Asi esta bien.”
Under the pillow, I shook my head. Mia’s Colombian roots tangled wildly with her Texas upbringing. She’d always been wired different than most but I was convinced it was that extended stay at aromatherapy camp that pushed her over the edge.
“Maybe later,” I said, my voice muffled by the pillow. “My Jeep and I took a swan dive into Lake Austin last night. I need to figure out how I’m going to get to work.”
“I could be over there in an hour,” she said brightly. “I could bring you some tea.”
I almost perked up. “Not green,” I said, but she’
d already hung up. Be here in an hour my butt. Mia was never on time.
I rolled out of bed and checked my windows and doors for latent signs of Van Gogh, then called Cantu on his cell. He had no real news to report, except that they were going to release Scooter from the hospital that afternoon.
Almost as an afterthought, I said, “What’s up with the FBI?”
“Tom Logan,” he said on a growl.
“You boys and your pissing matches,” I said, and decided to take a chance. “Hey. Why would the Feds care about a local suicide threat?”
There was a long silence on the line, and I figured either Cantu couldn’t tell me or he didn’t know. Sighing, I thanked him anyway, told him to say hey to Arlene and clicked off the phone. Stumbling into the shower, I rinsed off and wrapped myself in a towel before wandering to the vanity, where I stared at myself in the mirror.
My bruises were so bright they were almost festive, and my hair was an unmitigated disaster. There wasn’t much I could do about either, so I didn’t. I’d wander next door to Beckett’s later to see if he could perform one of his miracles on my hair.
I was headed back to my bedroom when the phone rang again, and I was surprised to hear Diego DeLeon on the other end of the line.
“Cauley?” he said in a smooth Latino accent. “Can you spare an evening for a friend?”
My eyes narrowed involuntarily. Friend was stretching the meaning of the word. “Any particular reason?”
Diego chuckled. “The policeman’s daughter, suspicious as always. Can’t we say, just for old time’s sake?”
I supposed I could, but I’m not a big believer in coincidence. “Fine,” I said. “Where and when?”
“Tonight, then, bonita. It’s all arranged. I’ll be over to pick you up at seven.”
I started to say that I’d had a rough couple of days and didn’t feel up to an evening out, but I was talking to a dial tone.
Resigned, I snapped the phone back into the charge stand and laid a pair of shorts and a tee shirt with the Sentinel logo on my bed. Austin didn’t invent business casual, but it certainly did its part to sink the concept to exciting new lows. The only people who wear suits in Austin are Feds and morticians. And speaking of Feds, I wondered how on earth I was going to find out why a federal agent was interested in Scooter Barnes. Scooter was my friend, and whatever he’d done to attract the attention of the Feds had to be a mistake. Besides, there were rules about federal jurisdiction, and while the Patriot Act had broadened some of the Bureau’s power, they still had limits. I wondered what those limits were. Perhaps I’d just hunt down a certain FBI agent and find out.
I wrapped my towel more tightly around me, retrieved the phone book from library and flipped until I found the number to the FBI’s Austin field office. According to the listing, the office was located near the Arboretum the Mecca of Central Texas shopping. I picked up the phone and dialed.
When a bored female voice answered, I asked for Special Agent Tom Logan and was immediately channeled into his message system, where I listened to the sound of his voice. He really did have a nice voice.
I didn’t leave a message. Law enforcement-types typically mistrust media in any form, and funnel even the most simple requests through Public Information Officers.
PIOs are journalists who’ve gone over to the dark side. Getting useful information out of a PIO is like teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
I punched “0” for operator.
“Federal Bureau of Investigation, Austin,” she droned.
“Hi,” I said. See? Cheery. Harmless. “My name is Cauley MacKinnon and I’m with the Austin Sentinel.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie, but I rarely find it helpful to announce that my job with the Sentinel is confined to the Death Page.
“Media?” she said. “You have to talk with our Public Information Officer.”
“Wow,” I said into the phone. “You’re very good. What was your name again?”
There was a long silence on the line. “Jennifer James.”
“Jennifer,” I said, just to keep her talking. “Thanks, Jennifer. I was just sitting here wondering who I should talk to. Who is your PIO, anyway?”
“Susan Grimes.”
“And Special Agent Logan is white collar crime?”
“Agent Logan’s in Organized Crime, but you’re going to have to talk with Special Agent Grimes about that.”
I would have smiled at my own cleverness if I hadn’t been so stunned. Organized Crime? What the hell had Scooter done that would draw the attention of the FBI’s Organized Crime division? And was Logan’s interest professional or personal? I wasn’t sure which was worse.
The best approach, I figured, was the direct approach. I’d just go find Agent Logan and ask him. And, if I couldn’t weasel my way in to talk to Logan, I could swing by the Arboretum for a new pair of Manolos once I got my insurance check cashed. And my Jeep back.
Still wrapped in my big bath towel, I opened a can of tuna for Muse and filled her champagne glass with fresh water. My aunt had started this little compulsion with her cat, and now the animal goes on a Ghandi-like hunger strike if she isn’t wined and dined in her customary cut-crystal.
I scavenged an old purse out of the back of my closet, a useless gesture, since all my earthly purse-type possessions were languishing at the bottom of Lake Austin. If the cops dragged the lake for Van Gogh, I wondered if they’d mind looking for my purse. I only had one credit card to cancel thanks to Dr. Dick, but I was going to have to go down to the DMV and stand in line for three and a half years to get a new driver’s license. Sighing, I fished a spare house key out of the junk drawer and wished like hell I had my Jeep.
And then what? Go to the office, sit in front of the computer, glassy-eyed, obsessing about the past twenty-four hours? I thought about Scooter’s pale face in that shed and the ghastly face of Van Gogh, interrogating me about anything Scooter might have said, and for the first time, I considered the hideous thought that I might have actually had to write the obituary of a friend.
Shivering against a sudden chill, I wandered into the den and booted up my desktop and Googled Scott Barnes, hoping to find something, anything that might be a clue that would explain what Scooter had gotten himself into.
Muse hopped up onto the desktop and peered at the monitor as the search results appeared.
“Thirteen-thousand hits?” I sighed. “Well, I’ll do better when I hit the search engines at the office.”
Muse didn’t say anything. I scrolled through the top ten results. The first three hits were inane statistics from Scooter’s brief brush with fame through NFL.com, followed by a two-page Lone Star Observer spread regarding Scooter’s marriage to Selena. There was also an article on the grand opening of Scooter’s pet store.
Just for grins, I entered “Earless German Guy” into the search engine.
There had to be a link between Scooter and Van Gogh, or some perceived link. Otherwise, why would Van Gogh care what Scooter said in the shed, and more importantly, why would Van Gogh think Scooter had something that didn’t belong to him? And then there was the ear thing. While I’ve had more than my fair share of men mad at me, none of them had ever threatened to chop off one of my ears.
That, and the FBI involvement-thing really bothered me.
The search on earless German guys came up with a couple of role-playing computer games and a link that turned out to be a truly disgusting S&M site.
After a brief moment of trying to figure out why anyone would want to see stuff like that, I printed the articles on Scooter, grabbed a manila file folder from the drawer and moved to the living room so I could spread the articles out on the living room floor and see if I couldn’t stumble over a clue.
Tucking the towel more tightly around me, I popped a copy of Casablanca into the DVD player. I always think better with Bogey growling in the background.
Settling onto the Turkish rug, I skimmed a short clip and photo of th
e pet store grand opening. In the picture, Scooter stood behind a big red ribbon, flanked by his father and mother Coach and Golly Barnes. I looked closer at the photo. Where was Selena? Surely a person’s wife would be present at such an event.
Sighing, I laid the printout near the file folder where Muse sat, twitching her tail.
Rifling through the rest of the printouts, I wished like hell my mini recorder wasn’t rusting at the bottom of the lake. Maybe Scooter really had said something important and I’d missed it.
I picked up the clip of Scooter’s wedding, which featured a full page wedding photo of the happy couple racing through a hail of rice in front of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It also featured an inset of Selena as first runner up in the Miss Texas pageant.
She looked very much like she had in high school, only more so. Fine blond hair and delicate cheekbones. Her big, morning glory eyes practically melted the camera lens.
Not knowing what else to do, I got a legal pad from the desk in the library and made a flow chart of the timeline with players and possible connections. Scooter, Selena and a mysterious FBI agent. And an ear-chopping homicidal maniac.
When I got back to the Sentinel office, I’d run a proper background check with public records and possible police connections. Of course, I’d have to do it during my lunch break…
I stared down at the printouts and my notes, strewn about the Turkish rug. The business article about the pet store grand opening was bugging me. It was pretty ironic that a big, testosterone-pumped running back would open a pet store, although anybody who knew Scooter knew he was a gentle giant around animals. He seemed so happy in the photo.
What in his life could be so awful that Scooter would go on a bullet binge? Sure, he had been a ball player, and he’d blown his knee. He’d lost out on a million dollar contract, and I supposed that was enough to make anybody suicidal. But as far as I knew he seemed to be doing okay. A year ago, he and Selena changed the name of the store to The Blue Parrot and started importing all kinds of funny little animals.
