by P. J. Tracy
So why the fuck didn’t you think of plan B while you were being so careful?
Goddamnit, he needed a place to think, a place to rest for the night, a place to plan how he would start over this time.
After fifteen miles of driving a dark, desolate stretch of interstate, the beams of his headlights picked up a blue information sign that announced there was food and lodging at the next exit. It seemed unlikely, because all he could see along the freeway were pine trees and swamps, but he took the exit and followed the signs to the Hitching Post Motel, a small, depressing, cinderblock eyesore that squatted on the side of the lonely road under a weak sodium vapor lamp. It would only be memorable to any passers-by because of its ugliness, like a boil waiting to be lanced.
A partially lit, weakly flashing neon sign in a smudged window read: “Vac n y.” No shit. There was only one other car in the lot, an old Toyota Camry, and it probably belonged to the night clerk. The place was a dump, but it had two things going for it: it was private and it was empty. A great place to come up with plan B.
Gus didn’t know how such a thing was possible, but the lobby was even less inviting than the exterior, with torn carpet that might once have been gold, salvaged furniture that had probably come from a garbage dump, and buzzing fluorescent light fixtures that cast a stark, sickly hue on everything, including the kid who was manning the counter. A plastic wall clock in the shape of a fish loudly ticked away the minutes to three a.m. The most charming thing in the room was a cracked plastic display stand that held faded brochures aimed at fishermen. He wondered if anybody had killed themselves there. If you were headed in that direction, the Hitching Post Motel would take you the rest of the way.
“Good evening, sir,” the kid said politely. He was wearing a crisp blue polo shirt with a nametag that said “BEN,” and Gus immediately felt sorry for him. What was a clean-cut, polite young man doing in a shithole like this?
“Hi, Ben. I need a room.”
“No problem.” He pushed a piece of paper across the counter. “If you could just fill out this form, then I’ll get you set up.”
Gus wrote in the name John W. Harris and the Tustin, California, address that matched his vehicle registration and plates. “There you go.”
Ben looked at the form and got a wistful look on his face. “You’re from California?”
“Yep.”
“Is it as nice as everybody says?”
“It’s got something for everybody.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to California. What brings you to the most boring place on earth?”
Careful, careful, lay the ground work, use the cover story. “I work construction here in the summer. My job just finished, so I thought I’d see some sights before I head back to California.”
Gus slid his eyes toward the rack of brochures. “Do a little fishing.”
“That’s about all there is to do here. Unless you want to go to the Arcola Sculpture Park. Some farmer welded together a bunch of old tractor parts and other machinery into dinosaurs. It’s kind of cool. People seem to like it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Gus was getting impatient with the idle chit-chat, but Ben was clearly bored out of his mind and probably lonely, too. And a little human kindness never hurt. Sometimes, it could really make a difference in somebody’s day. “You get a lot of traffic here?”
“It’s pretty dead during the week, but summer weekends we can fill up with fishermen, like yourself.” Ben went to a pegboard and grabbed a room key. “This is our biggest room and there’s a vending machine right outside the door. Oh, and there’s a twenty-dollar deposit.” His eyes drifted toward the door and Gus followed his gaze. A squad car was pulling into the lot.
Jesus Christ.
“I hope there’s no trouble,” Gus said calmly, trying to ignore the hard lump that had formed in his stomach.
“Oh, no, that’s just Deputy Marlin. He stops by once or twice when I work the graveyard shift. It’s pretty remote out here, so he likes to check in.”
“Isn’t that the great thing about a small town?” Gus said, with forced brightness, nodding at the deputy when he walked in.
“Young Ben. Sir.”
Suspicious eyes, suspicious face, looking for trouble, just like every cop. Middle-aged, thinning hair, trying to keep in shape but losing the battle.
“Hi, Deputy Marlin,” Ben said cheerfully. “I got my first and only customer of the night. Mr. Harris here is from California.”
The deputy eyed him up and down. “Whereabouts?”
“Tustin. Orange County.”
“I’ve got a cousin in Irvine. Passing through or are you planning to fish?”
What was it with these people and fishing? “I’m definitely planning to fish. A buddy of mine told me the lakes up here are great.”
“Your buddy is right about that. Best walleye fishing in the state.”
What the fuck was a walleye?
“That’s just what he said.” Gus weighed his options. You didn’t offer up anything you didn’t have to, but people around here liked to talk and he didn’t want to stand out as a sullen Auslander. “Have any secret spots you’re willing to share with an out-of-towner, Deputy?”
The deputy eyed him again, then smiled and grabbed a brochure from the rack.
CHAPTER
50
GINO FINISHED HIS fast-food breakfast biscuit and tossed the crumpled wrapper into the empty bag on the console of the car. “Goddamnit, we were so close to nailing that son of a bitch. All we’ve got now is Riskin maybe had a car, maybe worked construction, and he paid his rent in cash.”
“He’s also on the run, exposed, and vulnerable. Every cop in the five-state area has his mug shot. He won’t last a day.”
“That hour of sleep did wonders for your optimism.” Gino pointed out of the windshield at the lightening, pink-hued sky above City Hall. “Look at that. The sun’s already rising. Didn’t we just watch it set?”
“About ten hours ago.”
They stepped out of the car and listened to the relative quiet of the awakening city for a moment. It was almost peaceful, if you ignored the grind of garbage trucks making early-morning pick-ups or the engine noise of the first wave of commuters filtering onto the streets from the suburbs. You could even hear birds singing.
“Still humid as hell,” Gino observed, lifting his face to the rising sun. “I thought this heat was supposed to break.”
“It will.”
“Good morning, Detectives.”
Gino cringed, then turned to face Amanda White. “You’re up bright and early.”
“I didn’t sleep last night and, by the look of you two, neither did you.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.” Gino looked her up and down. She was wearing a different skirt suit this morning, but her helmet-hair was a little limp. “At least you got a chance to change your clothes. Still stalking us, huh?”
She gave them a thin smile. “That’s my job. Care to comment on why you were at an FBI terror raid early this morning?”
“Nope.”
“I’m sure it’s not connected to your case, just like Milo Parr isn’t connected to your case.”
“That’s exactly right. We asked a buddy tonight if he believed in coincidences.”
She arched an over-plucked brow. “And what did he say?”
“He said no. But sometimes coincidences happen. Us being at the raid was just a coincidence.”
She let out a petulant sigh. “You obviously have a person of interest in the Norwood murder.”
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing obvious about this case,” Magozzi said, thrilled that his phone chimed at that moment with a text alert, saving them all from any more pointless conversation. He grabbed Gino by the arm and steered him toward the doors. “We have to go. Have a good day, Ms. White.”
“One more thing before you go.” She gave them a toothy, shark smile that telegraphed her next question would be the zinger that brought them
, weeping, to their knees. They would then disclose every detail they had on the case and Amanda White would solve it, be a media hero, and go national within a week. “Care to comment on your interest in August Riskin?”
Gino and Magozzi didn’t fall to their knees weeping, but they didn’t say anything either.
To her credit, she didn’t look smug, just inquisitive. “Don’t look so surprised. You put out a BOLO on him. It wasn’t hard to backtrack to the Norwoods.”
“If you tip our hand now, this whole thing could blow up in our faces. Yours included,” Magozzi said carefully.
She deliberated for a moment. “How much time do you need?”
Magozzi sensed that Gino was about to explode next to him. Part of him wanted to let him do his worst; the more rational part of him understood the benefits of a symbiotic relationship with a media mouthpiece. “However much time it takes to get him into custody. Ms. White, we’re at critical mass with this. If Riskin’s name gets out to the public right now, we could lose him.”
She nodded grudgingly. “I won’t tip your hand, but now you really owe me. I want an exclusive.”
“We’ll give you that.”
“Thank you. Good luck.”
“I don’t trust her,” Gino fumed, once she’d left. “Goddamnit, she’s like a nippy little Chihuahua, snapping at our heels.”
“At least she’s not a depraved, disgusting parasite, which is more than I can say for some of her colleagues. Besides, she doesn’t know Riskin changed his name. She’ll be floundering around for a long time, just like we were.”
Gino grunted. “Like we still are, you mean. Who texted you?”
Magozzi checked his phone. “Pitkin County. Clara Riskin’s murder book is waiting for us.”
* * *
McLaren looked up from his computer with weary, bloodshot eyes when Gino and Magozzi entered Homicide. “Bomb squad cleared the building an hour ago.”
Gino grabbed a donut from the box on McLaren’s desk. “The feds made some arrests this morning.”
Freedman walked in with a cardboard tray of coffee. “We know. It’s all over the news. Where have you guys been?”
“Chasing Riskin. He cleared out of his apartment before we got there.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Any progress on your homicides?”
“Lloyd Nasif took a bullet to the head, just like Jim Beam, the delivery driver. Same caliber, probably the same gun. We’re waiting on ballistics, we’re waiting on prints.” Freedman slurped his coffee, scowled, then dumped in a plastic container of creamer and three sugar packets. “We tracked down the driver’s last delivery before Lloyd’s dispatcher lost contact, to one-eleven Washington Avenue. He reported the delivery to Dispatch and the guard at the front desk confirmed he signed out of the building. After that, the transponder on his truck went dead and Jim Beam disappeared.”
“Point of contact with Riskin. Who took the delivery?”
“TCG Construction. They’re doing some big renovations on the building. We’ve got a call in.”
Magozzi’s thoughts stuttered. “We think Riskin was in construction. Freedman, get somebody on the line from that company now. I don’t care how you do it. Go break down doors and roll people out of bed if you have to. Find out if either Gus Riskin or Gustav Holst is on their payroll. If he is, take it from there. We need a vehicle, contact numbers, anything they have on him.”
“You got it.”
Gino looked at Magozzi. “One-eleven Washington Avenue. That rings bells.”
“It should. It’s where the feds live. We’ve been there a few times.” He looked up at the wall clock. Seven thirty-two. Grace and Harley were probably on their way now to meet Dahl and Shafer.
“No, it’s something else.” He pulled out his wallet and started digging through it while McLaren looked on curiously.
“You don’t have to pay for the donut, Rolseth.”
“Never crossed my mind.” He pulled out a business card and waved it at Magozzi with a flourish. “Zeller’s card. Guess where his office is?”
Magozzi felt a tickle in the furthest recesses of his brain as tumblers started clicking, but none slotted into place. “One-eleven Washington Avenue.”
Gino nodded and started gnawing the end of a pen. “Something’s coming together, but hell if I know what.”
“Pull up Clara Riskin’s murder book.”
CHAPTER
51
ROSALIE NORWOOD WAS in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling of her hotel room. For all the vast comforts the Chatham offered—posh mattresses, Pratesi sheets if you asked for them, goose-down pillows and aromatherapy kits ‒ she hadn’t slept more than an hour all night. And what little rest she’d managed had been a thrashing and disturbed one, haunted by home intruders and vague, terrifying images of violence. There was just no point in trying any longer.
The sun was barely up when she got out of the shower. As she combed her hair, she heard a soft rap on her door.
“Rosalie, dear?”
“I’m up, Mom.”
“I’ve ordered some coffee and pastries.”
“I’ll be right out.”
She pulled her wet hair into a ponytail, threw a robe on over her T-shirt and shorts, and entered the living room of the suite. The window shades were partially drawn, letting in the muted gold of the rising sun. Sitting in a chair by the window, the unflappable Betty Norwood was weeping softly. Dawn’s light turned her tears into prisms that played on the sharp planes of her face, and Rosalie suddenly realized that she’d only seen her mother cry once before, at Trey’s funeral.
She knelt down beside her and took her hand. The skin was soft, but as thin as parchment and knobby with bones. “It’s going to be okay, Mom. We’ll get through this together.”
Betty cupped her daughter’s face in her hands. “Promise me I won’t lose you, too.”
“I’m here. I’ll always be here.”
“I want to believe that, but I’m afraid more horrible things are going to happen, Rosalie. Trey first, then your father, and last night an intruder at your house. Who knows what their intent was? And what next?”
“Don’t think that way, Mom.”
She sighed and delicately blotted her tears. “I miss him. Your father was such a good man and I’ll always be so proud of him. Everything he did was always for us. For the family. Don’t ever forget that, no matter what.” She gazed out of the window at the street below, which was slowly filling with pedestrians and vehicles as the city came to life. “Do you think about Trey much?”
Rosalie sat back on her heels, more stunned by that question than she had been over her mother’s unfamiliar display of vulnerability. She never brought up the sacrosanct memory of Trey, and Rosalie didn’t know how to respond, except honestly. “I think about him all the time. I miss him every day.”
“So do I, Rosalie.”
“But you never talk about him.”
“That’s wrong of me, I realize that now. Selfish. He deserves to be remembered always, no matter what the cost in pain.”
“You weren’t being selfish, Mom. Grief visits everyone in different ways.”
“Yes, it does.”
“What do you think about when you think of Trey?” Rosalie ventured, hoping the question wouldn’t slam the door shut on a conversation that had barely begun.
“I think of what a tender, loving heart he had, especially when he was young. Do you remember?”
She nodded. “Last night I was thinking about the time he found the elk, how upset he was. For days.”
“That was dreadful. This world is no place for fragile hearts. I’m convinced that’s what ruined him.”
“Heroin ruined him, Mom.”
“In the end, it did. But you saw how he reacted to the elk. Just imagine what it was like for him when Clara Riskin was murdered. When your heart is broken, the love inside the shattered pieces never dies. It can lift you up or it can drag you down.”
�
�What are you talking about? Trey didn’t even know Clara Riskin existed.”
“He was in love with her, dear. He was only sixteen, but he wanted to marry her.”
Rosalie felt a dark emptiness fill her, an irrational sense of betrayal emanating from every direction of her family. “Trey and I were so close. Why did he tell you and not me?”
“You were already in college then and worlds apart. And there are some things you only confide to your parents.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me? Maybe I could have helped him.”
“I don’t think so. When he found out Clara was murdered, he told me he wished he’d never been born. That was what we were up against. We didn’t want to burden you.”
“Burden?” She felt a sob hitch in her chest. For her lost brother, her lost father, her lost mother, who was facing her failure with the same maddening reticence that had always defined her character. But she still couldn’t believe a teenage infatuation had shattered her brother in such a dramatic way. There had been something else, there must have been. “What did you and Father say when Trey came to you about Clara?”
“Childhood crushes are one thing, marriage is entirely another, and we certainly couldn’t support such ridiculous youthful folly. He would have come around to our way of thinking eventually, but then Clara was murdered and unfulfilled love is the only perfect love. It never becomes soiled and it never betrays.” Her face hardened. “We were so afraid she’d destroy him, Rosalie. But even dead, she destroyed him. Destroyed our family.”
Rosalie gaped at her. “Mom, she was killed.”
“I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to say. Pain does that. When you have children of your own someday, you’ll understand.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
And then, just like that, the public Betty Norwood suddenly re-inhabited her body. The familiar Betty poured coffee and carefully arranged croissants and cinnamon buns on plates with a pair of silver tongs as breezily as if they’d just been discussing the weather.
“Eat something, Rosalie,” she admonished gently. “You’re too thin.”
