by Robert Crais
Starkey said, “How do you call the scene?”
“Too early for that.”
“I know it’s too early, but I haven’t seen the body. You have, so you probably have an idea.”
The investigator didn’t stop what he was doing to offer his opinion. Like any investigator, he wanted to finish his work and get the hell out.
“Judging from the way he came apart, I’d say he was right on top of it, there at his bench. His lower extremities are fine except for the wood frag they caught. Most of the damage was in his chest and abdomen. He was damn near eviscerated, which suggests he had the device against his stomach when it went off. If it was a suicide, well, I guess he figured tucking it into his stomach was the way to go. If it was accidental, he was probably setting the leg wires into the detonator and he caught a spark. That would be my guess.”
Starkey tried to picture Buck Daggett stupid enough to wire a charge with the batteries connected, but couldn’t. Of course, she also couldn’t picture Buck building bombs to murder someone.
Starkey walked back out onto the drive to consider the scene. She tried to get a sense of the pressure release. The garage door had been bowed, the side door blown out, and Buck Daggett seriously injured, but the structural damage was minor. She guessed the energy released was about as much as two hand grenades. Big enough, but not on the order of what killed Charlie Riggio or what Tennant was using to blow apart cars.
Kelso called out to her.
“Starkey, come over here.”
“Just a minute.”
The side door had been blown off its hinges and cracked by the pressure change, which meant the door had been closed. She could understand that Buck would want the garage door closed so that his neighbors couldn’t see what he was doing, but it didn’t make sense that he would close the side door. She knew that he was working either with Modex or RDX, and either one threw some pretty nasty fumes.
Starkey went back inside to the investigator.
“Your Bomb Squad recover any undetonated explosive?”
“Nope. What was here is what went up. They ran a dog through, too, before they let in the coroner’s people. You just missed him. Those dogs are something to see.”
“What about his hands?”
“You mean the injuries?”
“Yeah.”
“They were intact. We noted some lacerations and tissue loss, but they were still on. I know what you’re thinking, that the hands should’ve gone, but if he was hunched over it, it kinda depends what he was doing when the charge let go.”
Starkey couldn’t see it. If Buck had committed suicide, she thought that he would have been gripping the bomb, holding it tight against his body to make sure he died quickly. His hands would have been gone. If he was seating a detonator in the charge and the explosive had set off accidentally, his hands would still be gone.
“Starkey.”
Starkey had an uneasy feeling as she joined Kelso and the others in the yard. She kept thinking about the red paint, and that Mr. Red claimed to know who had imitated him. How could Mr. Red know that? From Tennant?
The two suits were Sheriff’s homicide detectives named Connelly and Gerald. Connelly was a large, serious man; Gerald had the empty eyes of a man who had been on the job too long. Starkey didn’t like being around him.
After the introductions, Kelso told Starkey that Connelly and Gerald wanted to interview her. They exchanged cards, Connelly saying that they would be in contact sometime within the next few days.
Gerald said, “Maybe there’s something you can help us with right now.”
“If I can.”
“Did you see Sergeant Daggett earlier today?”
“Not today. I saw him yesterday.”
“You see any bruises or contusions on his face or head?”
Starkey glanced at Kelso, who was staring at her.
“I didn’t see anything like that. I can’t say about today, but there was nothing like that yesterday.”
Gerald touched the left side of his forehead.
“Daggett has a lump here that shows edema and bruising. We’re wondering when he got it.”
“I don’t know.”
She wasn’t liking this. First Tennant blows up, now Daggett blows himself up. Mr. Red claims he knows the copycat, and how could he know except through Tennant?
Starkey looked back at the garage.
“It wasn’t a very big charge.”
Gerald made a grin like a nasty shark.
“You didn’t see the body. It blew that poor fucker to shit.”
Starkey forgot about Gerald and spoke to Kelso.
“I got a description from the bomb investigator in there, Barry. Daggett shows the injuries because of his proximity, but I don’t think it was much of a blast. I can’t know for sure how much RDX Tennant had, but it was more than this.”
Kelso squinted at her.
“Are you saying that some explosive is missing?”
“I don’t know.”
Starkey walked back to the street to smoke. Everything had come to an end that wasn’t really an ending. She kept thinking about the contusion on Buck’s head, and about his hands. His hands should be gone. She found herself wondering what Tennant had used to blow himself up, and how he had gotten it. It took enormous energy to blow a man’s arms off. She didn’t like the little questions that had no answers. They were like reconstructing a bomb, only to find that there are wires that lead nowhere. You couldn’t pretend they didn’t exist. Wires always led somewhere. When you were dealing with bombs, wires always led to someplace bad. She thought about Pell.
Marzik came up, shaking her head.
“Was it bad?”
“Not too bad. We’ve both seen worse.”
“It must have been pretty goddamned bad. You’re crying.”
Starkey turned away.
Marzik cleared her throat, embarrassed.
“I didn’t want to see all that mess. I’ve got enough mess to last me into my next life. Let me have a cigarette.”
Starkey looked at her, surprised.
“You don’t smoke.”
“I haven’t smoked in six years. Are you going to give me one of those things or do I have to buy it from you?”
Starkey gave her the pack.
They heard Natalie’s screams before they saw her, coming from the cordon at the end of the street. Natalie tried to push past the officers, struggling to get to her home. An older woman, probably a neighbor, wrapped Natalie in her arms as Dick Leyton ran to her from the front of the house. Later, Starkey knew, a San Gabriel detective would question her, asking about the explosives, asking if Buck had talked about suicide. Starkey was relieved that she would not have to ask those questions, and guilty for feeling that relief.
Marzik shook her head.
“Could this get any worse?”
Starkey knew that it could. She crushed out her cigarette.
“Beth, get a ride back with Kelso, okay? I’m taking the car.”
“Where are you going?”
Starkey walked faster.
All the small, odd things about Pell made sense now; the shitty motel, him needing her to run the NLETS search and the evidence transfer, the way he had lost it with Tennant. Driving to his motel, Starkey tried to put herself into the same mind-set that she used when she was de-arming bombs. It had always felt to her, then, as a kind of separation. As if she was in some other dimension, safe and secure, from where she used her body to handle the bomb like a flesh-and-bone robot, devoid of feelings. She tried to get to that place, but failed. It wasn’t so easy to separate herself from her feelings anymore.
Starkey parked outside the motel, used her cell phone to call him. The phone rang ten times before the hotel operator, a tired male voice, asked if she’d like to leave a message. Starkey hung up, then went inside, walking past the lobby as if she knew where she was going. She knew Pell’s room number from calling him there, found the room, then searched the halls unti
l she found a housekeeper. Starkey tried to make herself look pleasant, an expression she didn’t trust herself to pull off.
“Hi, I’m Mrs. Pell, in 112. My husband has both keys, and he’s not here right now. Could you let me in?”
“Wass you name?”
“Pell. P-e-l-l. It’s room 112.”
The housekeeper, a young Latina, looked up the room on her clipboard.
“Shoe. I let you in.”
The housekeeper keyed the lock, then stepped out of the way as Starkey entered. Mr. Red’s words echoed in her brain.
He is using you, Carol Starkey. He has been playing us against each other.
The computer was sitting on a spindly desk against the wall. Identical to her computer. The same. She turned it on. The same icons on the screen. She opened them. The same doorway to Claudius.
Starkey turned to the bed. It was rumpled, and smelled of sweat. A thought came: I would have slept in that bed. Words lost like a whisper on a breeze.
She searched the room. She did not know what she was looking for, nor what she might find, but she went through the bathroom, the chest and desk, and his suitcase without finding anything more. Again in the center of the room, she tried to decide if she should wait or go. She was walking to the door when she turned to the closet, and searched the pockets of his clothes there. A plastic Ziploc baggie was in the inner pocket of his leather jacket. A piece of frag. She unzipped the plastic, dropped the fragment into her palm, and saw the letters:
TARKEY
Her hands and forearms tingled as if the blood had been cut off. It didn’t matter that it was Buck Daggett who had etched her name to mislead them; Pell had thought that Mr. Red had built the bomb. Sitting in Barrigan’s, he had known. That night in her house, holding her, he had believed that she was the target. And he had hidden that from her. He had used her.
“What are you doing here?”
Pell stood in the door. His face was pale, cut with hollows. He looked like a hundred-year-old man waiting for his second stroke. Now that she understood that he was a victim just as she was a victim, some deep part of her felt the urge to soothe him. She called herself a fool.
“You bastard.”
She didn’t slap him. She used her fist. She hit him hard in the mouth, making him bleed.
Starkey held up the bit of black metal.
“Where did you get this? The medical examiner? The first goddamned day you were here?”
Pell didn’t move. He didn’t even seem to feel the blow.
“Carol, I’m sorry.”
“What was I, Jack? Bait? All along you thought he was after me, and you didn’t warn me?” She pointed at the computer. “You’ve been on that damned thing trying to make him come for me, and you didn’t warn me!”
“IT WASN’T MR. RED! Buck Daggett killed Riggio, and now Buck is dead!”
“It’s Mr. Red.”
She hit him again.
“STOP SAYING THAT.”
The housekeeper appeared in the hall, staring with wide eyes. Starkey forced herself to calm.
“Charlie was having an affair with Buck’s wife, so Buck killed him. An eyewitness in Bakersfield put Buck at Tennant’s shop. That’s where Buck got the materials to make the bomb. We were on our way to arrest Buck when he was killed in his own garage with those same materials. IT WASN’T MR. RED.”
Pell moved past her to sit on the edge of his bed.
“Is that why you came here? To tell me that?”
“No. I know that you’re not on active duty anymore, and I know why. I’m sorry about your eyes. I really am, Jack, but you’re already blind. You can’t even see that we’re killing people.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dallas Tennant. Buck Daggett. If they didn’t do it to themselves, then someone did it to them. What if we drew Mr. Red here, and they’re dead because of us?”
“If he’s here, then we can catch him.”
Starkey felt sad for him.
“Not you, Jack. That part of it is over. I’m going to tell Barry. He’s going to call the ATF field office. What you do about that is up to you. I wanted you to know it was coming.”
Pell started toward her, but Starkey shook her head.
“Don’t.”
“I wasn’t going to ask you not to.”
“It doesn’t matter what you were going to do. What matters is what you did. I have tried for so long to feel nothing, but I opened myself to you, and you used me. Three years, I finally take a step, and it was a lie.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Don’t say that. It doesn’t matter if you felt something for me. Don’t tell me if you did, because that will just make this harder.”
To his credit, he nodded.
“I know.”
It was harder than Starkey thought it would be, to tell him these things. More difficult because she had expected that he would argue with her, or be defensive, but he wasn’t. He seemed hurt and confused.
“I believe that everyone has a secret heart, a heart deep down inside where we keep our secret selves. I think our secret hearts see things that our eyes can’t. Maybe mine saw that you had been hurt the way I had been hurt. Like we were kindred spirits. Maybe that’s why I let myself feel again. I only wish mine could have seen that you were lying to me.”
When she looked at him again, tears had filled his eyes. She had to turn away from him. All of this was so much harder than it should have been.
“That’s what I came here to say. Good-bye, Jack.”
Starkey put the fragment bearing her name on the desk, then walked out.
Starkey signed on to Claudius as soon as she reached home. The chat room occupancy counter showed four people, none of whom were Mr. Red. She didn’t bother to read what they were writing. She typed three words.
HOTLOAD: Talk to me.
The others responded, but no message from him appeared.
HOTLOAD: I know you’re there. TALK TO ME!
The window appeared. He was waiting for her.
WILL YOU ACCEPT A MESSAGE FROM MR. RED?
Starkey slapped the mouse to open the message window. The conversation would be between only them. Private.
MR. RED: Hello, Carol Starkey. I have been waiting for you.
Starkey closed her eyes to calm herself. She waited until she was ready.
HOTLOAD: Did you kill him?
MR. RED: I have smoked much ass in my time. Be specific.
HOTLOAD: You know who I mean, you fuck. Daggett.
MR. RED: Oooo. I like it when you talk dirty.
HOTLOAD: DID YOU KILL HIM?
MR. RED: Now she’s shouting. If I shout back, you won’t like it, babe. My voice is EXPLOSIVE.
Starkey went into the kitchen, mixed a tall drink. She downed two Tagamet, telling herself that she had to stay calm and control the conversation.
She returned to the computer.
HOTLOAD: Did you kill him?
MR. RED: Do you want the truth, Carol Starkey? Or do you want me to tell you what you want to hear?
HOTLOAD: The truth.
MR. RED: The truth is real. Real things are a commodity. If I answer this question for you, you must answer a question for me. Do you agree?
HOTLOAD: Yes.
MR. RED: The truth hurts.
She knew that he had given his answer. He had written that on Buck Daggett’s wall. The Truth Hurts.
Calmly, she typed.
HOTLOAD: Fuck you.
MR. RED: In my dreams, you do.
HOTLOAD: Why did you do this?
MR. RED: He took my name in vain, CS. You’re smart enough to know that he murdered Riggio, aren’t you?
HOTLOAD: I know what he did.
MR. RED: Do you know this? He was building a second bomb when I found him. He was going to do to you exactly what he had done to Riggio.
HOTLOAD: You can’t know that.
MR. RED: He gave his confession. Moments before I knocked him out, laid h
im across the device he had built, and set it off.
The screen blurred through Starkey’s tears. She had more of the drink, then wiped her eyes.
HOTLOAD: Is this my fault?
MR. RED: Do I detect the faint aroma of … guilt?
HOTLOAD: Was it because of me and Pell? Did we draw you here?
MR. RED: You’ve had your question. Now it’s time for mine.
Starkey composed herself.
HOTLOAD: All right.
MR. RED: By now, you must know that Pell is not who he claims. You know that he is one of my first victims. You know that he is outside the law.
HOTLOAD: I know.
MR. RED: You know he was using you.
It took Starkey a moment to compose herself.
HOTLOAD: Get to your question.
He let her wait. Starkey knew that he wanted her to ask again, but she didn’t. She decided that she would sit there the rest of her life and not ask him. She was tired of being manipulated.
Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore.
MR. RED: How does it feel to be used by a man you love?
Starkey read the question and felt nothing. She knew that he wanted a reaction, but she would not give him the satisfaction.
HOTLOAD: I am going to arrest you.
MR. RED: I am laughing. Ha ha.
HOTLOAD: Laugh now, cry later.
MR. RED: My work here is done, Carol Starkey. I have enjoyed you. Good-bye.
Starkey knew that there would be no more messages that night. She turned off the computer, then sat in her silent house, smoking. She went to her answering machine and played the messages that Pell had left. She played them over and over, listening to his voice. It hurt.
19
• • •
Starkey drank for most of the night, smoking an endless chain of cigarettes that left her home cloudy and gray. She fell asleep twice, both times dreaming of Sugar again and the day in the trailer park. The sleep was anguished, lasting only for a few minutes at a time. Once, she woke seeing the trailer with red words painted on its side: THE TRUTH HURTS. That was the end of the sleep.
