That’s the thing about this stuff. If you talk about it out loud, you sound like a screwball.
Martinez might find my theories semi-credible, because of the chaplain thing and the curandero bit. I still needed to get a copy of the video anyway. I put in a call to the DPD switchboard and left a message for him as I walked to my truck in the dimming light.
I decided to make one quick Drew-related detour on the way to my house.
Harry Hines Boulevard in Dallas is home to many perfectly reputable businesses. Warehouses, discount shopping centers, wholesale fabric outlets, automobile repair shops. Anything that doesn’t require easy accessibility or attractive walk-up appeal might be found on Harry Hines.
Unfortunately, Harry Hines is also home to a wide and fairly disgusting variety of “adult” businesses (as though real, emotionally mature adults would actually go to such places). Any deviant sexual activity one desires is within easy reach. On demand and on a budget.
I drove my truck past prostitutes dressed for August rather than January slouching on street corners in sequined halter tops and teeny skirts, all big hair and platform shoes. They looked cold and sad to me. I wanted to stop and take them to Denny’s for pancakes and find out how they’d gotten here. I couldn’t imagine any amount of money that would possibly be worth selling yourself off like that.
I drove past Caligula, thinking I should probably go in and check it out, maybe talk to the owner, see if anyone knew anything about Drew I hadn’t already learned on my own. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The thought of walking into a place that was crawling with men who were crawling with desire to see a woman crawling naked along a stage floor was too much for me. For once in my life, I backed away. I just wasn’t up to it.
Instead I drove around on Harry Hines until I spotted Critter Cars. I pulled into the lot at ten after six.
The lot was small, by car lot standards. Maybe a half acre or so sandwiched between a pawnshop and a discount denim outlet. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. The gate was shut and padlocked. I walked up and peered through the fence.
“Can’t give you much of a trade-in on that truck,” a voice said.
I turned around. An attractive woman of maybe fifty was standing with one foot in a red Lexus convertible parked in the driveway next door, the car door open, lights on, engine running. She was dressed for a cocktail party, her long fur coat swinging open to reveal a tiny black minidress.
“Oh, I’m not looking to trade it in.”
She shut the door and walked over to me, her hand extended. “Kay Basieri,” she said.
“Dylan Foster. Do you work here?”
“I own the place. Just locked up. I’d be glad to show you something if you know what you want. Browsing, I don’t do after closing. You’d have to come back tomorrow.”
“Thanks. I just wanted to take a look around.”
She studied me. “You don’t look like our typical customer.”
“Who’s your typical customer?”
“People with bad credit.”
“What’s the interest rate? Just out of curiosity.”
“Fifteen percent add-on.”
“What does that mean?”
“Prime plus fifteen percent.”
“That makes it about…”
“Twenty-three percent, give or take. Cash only.” She reached into her bag and lit a cigarette with a thin, gold lighter. “The property’s not for sale.”
“I’m not here to check out the property.”
She took a drag and looked at me, waiting for me to state my business.
“I’m looking into a murder. I understand a girl’s body was found around here?”
“Cops have already been here.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Reporter?”
“No, just a friend.”
I shivered. Once again, I’d left the house that morning without a coat.
She must have taken pity on me, because she said, “I’ve got a few minutes. No sense standing out here in the weather.”
She stubbed out her cigarette, locked her car, and opened the padlock on the gate. She swung the gate open, its wheels protesting with loud creaks. It was a big job for one person, much less a 100-pound woman in a cocktail dress and three-inch heels. Kay Basieri manhandled that thing without breaking a sweat, closing it behind us and locking us in. She didn’t even snag her stockings.
We stepped inside the office, a single-wide trailer complete with space heaters, window unit air, a water cooler, and a waiting area with tramped-down shag carpet. A tall counter with a window in the center dominated the room. She unlocked the inside door, motioned me to follow her behind the counter, and locked the door behind us. She offered me a seat at the desk, switching on the space heater behind her with her foot.
The credenza behind the desk held a picture of a longhaired guy in a tropical print shirt laughing at the camera. He held a beer in one hand and made a peace sign with the other. I could see a beach and blue water behind him.
“He looks like he’s having fun.” I pointed at the photo.
She grinned. “That’s Critter.”
“I take it Critter is a nickname.”
“Party Animal was too cliché. My late husband.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. The only happily married couple we knew and the son of a gun up and died on me.”
“Heart attack?”
“Cancer. Went just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Still haven’t forgiven him for it.” She took out a pack of Virginia Slims, lit a new cigarette, and crossed her legs. “I threw the coffee out or I’d offer you some.”
“No thanks. But I appreciate your staying. You look like you’re on your way somewhere.”
“New Year’s Eve party.”
“It’s almost February.”
“We like to wait until the crowds have cleared.”
I smiled. “I hate crowds.”
“You and me both, honey.”
I renewed my commitment to myself to get some friends. I hadn’t even gone to a New Year’s Eve party on New Year’s Eve. What a loser.
“Were you here when they found the body?” I asked.
She shook her head. “One a.m., give or take. The dog handler found it. He does random checks throughout the night.”
I looked around. “Where’s the dog?”
“She comes in at seven.”
“A.M?”
“P.M. A handler brings her and then picks her up twelve hours later.”
“So it’s not your dog?”
She shook her head and tapped her ashes into a waiting seashell.
“A rental.”
“I’ve never heard of renting a dog before.”
“A guard dog,” she corrected me. “She’s an employee, not a pet. She works the night shift.” She opened her top drawer and handed me a business card. Junk Yard Dogs—guard dogs for sale or rent. Results guaranteed. Expert handling.”
“Does she have a name?”
“The dog? Elaine.”
“You’re kidding me.”
She exhaled a blue stream of smoke. “Nope.”
“So the handler has a key to the lot?”
She nodded. “I lock up at six. The dog handler comes at seven, opens our padlock and puts Elaine inside the fence, gets her set up with water and everything. She has a heated bowl for cold weather. Then he locks the gate behind him and adds his own chain and padlock.”
“Do you have the key to that lock?”
“Nobody but the dog guy has that key.”
“Any way a person could have gotten past Elaine to put Drew’s body in the trunk of one of your cars?”
“Only if they broke the lock and then shot Elaine first. That dog would tear my arm off if I tried to get in. And I own the place.” She blew another stream of smoke. “She found the body.”
“Elaine did?”
“She scratched up the trunk of the car
trying to get to it. Dug a hole right into the pavement by the trunk, she was so agitated.” She checked her watch. “The dog handler comes in half an hour if you want to talk to him. Or meet Elaine.”
“What kind of dog is she?”
“Rottweiler, I think. She’s real sweet until the gate closes. Then she knows she’s at work and she does her job.”
“Which is?”
“Keep everyone out of the lot. No exceptions.”
“Even employees?”
“Even me.”
“So there’s a window of time between six and seven when no one’s on the lot and Elaine isn’t here yet.”
She nodded. “Depending on what time we make it out of here.”
“I think the police said Drew was last seen at six thirty p.m.,” I said.
“Gate’s locked at six. How’d he get the body in?”
“Over the fence?”
“Razor wire around the entire perimeter. Sometimes people throw a mattress over the wire and crawl over.”
“Seems like it’d be hard to do dragging a body.”
“And where’s the mattress? I don’t think they found anything.”
“Would blankets work?”
“If you had enough of them. There’s a lot of fibers on that wire. Cops took samples.”
“Can I take a look?”
She put her coat back on and handed me a man’s jacket that had been hanging on a peg behind the desk. It smelled like smoke. I put it on and followed her out the back door of the trailer.
The back gate wasn’t ten feet from the trailer. It was chained and padlocked. A dumpster sat beside the gate.
“Here’s where people get in,” she said. “They climb onto the dumpster, throw something over the razor wire, and climb in.”
“Why haven’t you had the city move the dumpster?”
She looked at me sideways. “You haven’t lived in Dallas long, have you?”
“A few years.”
“Might as well ask the city to give me a pedicure and wax my legs for me while they’re at it. The cars are all locked and insured. Sometimes someone will bust a window and take a stereo or something.”
“Where do you keep the car keys?”
“In a safe inside the office. Building’s all locked up and alarmed. That glass in the customer window is bulletproof. We never keep cash on hand after hours. And then there’s Elaine. We really only have that one hour of vulnerability. We’ve been here fifteen years. Very few problems, knock on wood.”
She walked around the building and stopped in the back corner of the lot. I bent down to see where she was pointing.
“Elaine tore up the pavement here. Dug right into the asphalt. Car’s trunk was scratched to pieces. Her paws were bleeding.”
“How’d the body get in the trunk if the keys are locked in a safe?”
“It was a Honda,” she said.
“Come again?”
“You don’t need a key to get into the trunk of most foreign cars. Hondas have a latch. Pops it right open.”
I pointed at the back gate.
“Any chance that gate was left open that night?”
She shook her head. “Only time we ever unlock it is to take the trash out. I didn’t close that night. My receptionist and our mechanic did. He took the trash out, then went back into the office for a few minutes. The gate was open maybe ten minutes at the most. Yolanda locked it before she left. She clocked out at 6:57. A little later than usual. She does that sometimes. Four kids. She needs the money.”
“But it’s possible. If someone saw her leave it open, they could rush in, stick the body in the trunk, and get out before she got back.”
We both stared at the layout for a minute, thinking. Finally, I held out my hand. “Thanks very much. You’ve been extremely helpful.”
“I hope they catch the guy.”
“They have someone locked up.”
“Who is it?”
“His name is Gordon Pryne.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” She threw her cigarette on the ground and screwed it delicately into the asphalt with the toe of her dress shoe. “Doesn’t matter who it is as long as they got him. I don’t like the idea of a killer wandering around in my alley.”
We said our goodnights and she let me out, locking the gate behind us both and driving off into the night. The wind was starting to whip. Could be another storm coming.
I walked around the lot and stepped into the alley.
A six-foot wooden fence ran most of the length of the alley, with open gateways every twenty yards or so. That takes care of your entry problem and your exit problem, as Randy the rodent man would say. Anyone would have free access to the alley. The one chain-link was the fence around Critter Cars, making it the only property fully visible from the alley.
I wondered why Pryne hadn’t just put the body in the dumpster. On such a cold evening, no one would be poking through trash bins in the middle of the night. It would have made a decent hiding place and it was much more accessible.
Gordon Pryne was impulsive. Sloppy really. Not a plan-ahead type of guy. He’d left a wide, messy trail of damning evidence behind him in each of his other crimes. He was just the type to dump her body in a trashcan. Or even leave it out in the open. Either option was convenient and conveyed an impersonal, contemptuous attitude toward the victim.
Why the sudden finesse with Drew’s murder?
And Drew Sturdivant had been killed within the first couple of blows. For a violent act, it was as humane as possible. Pryne liked to make his victims suffer. That seemed to be the point, actually. Drew’s killer had used multiple blows, the paper had said, but most of them had been inflicted in a frenzy after she’d died. Which sounded to me like she knew her killer in some loaded, personal way.
Did Pryne have that sort of relationship with Drew? I doubted he had that sort of relationship with anyone.
And why did he leave the ax on my porch? I still had no answer to that nagging little question—the one that had gotten me into this whole mess in the first place.
I was creeping myself out standing at the scene of the crime in the dark. And I definitely didn’t want to stick around and meet Elaine. I got in my truck and drove to my house, surprised at the pleasant sense of anticipation I felt knowing that sweet, fluffy Melissa would be there to greet me.
26
The moon had gone by then, ducking behind the gathering night-clouds and leaving the street to swallow up the slim reflection of my headlights on the ice as I drove home. My house was dark when I got there, all shut-down and shuttered. I felt depressed and alone just looking at it.
I’d apparently forgotten to turn my porch light on when I left this morning. It’s a tough call, that porch light situation. Leave it on all day and announce to local ax murderers that you’re not home? Or leave it off and come home to a pitch black house? It’s one of life’s stubborn dilemmas.
I pushed the button on my garage door opener, expecting the familiar, reluctant groan and the gape of yellow light as the door yawned open. But the door stayed firmly clamped shut. I let out a string of cuss words, followed by an all-purpose prayer for forgiveness, and parked my truck in the driveway. I’d forgotten to give Kay Basieri her smelly coat back before I left the car lot, so I peeled it off now and left it on the front porch to air out overnight.
I unlocked the front door and threw my stuff down. The air was stony cold and smelled flat and dank, like the underside of a rock. I locked the door behind me, flipped the switch in the foyer, and found myself standing in dead darkness. No electricity meant no space heaters, no lights, no working refrigerator. Just a water heater (thank you, Jesus), a gas oven, and the dinky gas wall heater in the bathroom. If it was something other than a breaker switch, it was going to be a long night. I felt my way to the bedroom and reached under the bed for a flashlight I keep there. It’s about the size and weight of a baseball bat, which renders it a multi-purpose instrument. Should the need arise.
I pushed the button on the flashlight and walked behind the beam to Melissa’s hutch. The cedar shavings were all piled up in one corner, the rest of the hutch floor almost bare. Her bowls had both been knocked over. The big plastic milk bottle I’d cut open at one end and turned on its side (for a handy hide-out, in case Peter Terry came calling) was empty.
“Melissa,” I cooed. “It’s your Aunt Dylan.”
It didn’t seem right to refer to myself as her mom. Drew was her mom, of course. I was just the crazy woman Melissa got stuck with after she was orphaned. Besides, I needed to get used to thinking of myself as an aunt—since I’d already been crowned World’s Greatest Aunt by my father and his idiot wife Kellee.
I expected the rust-colored mound of shavings to shift and for Melissa (who always seemed to emerge from hiding when I entered a room) to poke her nose out of the pile and hop on over to me, happy to see me after her first day by herself in her new home. But nothing happened.
“Melissa, sweetie, I’m home.”
I dug carefully into the shavings, pulling them away from the center until I got to the bottom of the pile. The hutch was empty.
I heard a piercing squeal come from the kitchen. Like the sharp screech of metal against metal. Did rabbits scream? I had no idea.
I rushed to the kitchen and flipped on the light, forgetting momentarily that I had no electricity. I pointed the beam in the general direction of the screech. Melissa was there, on the kitchen floor, running around in quick, tight circles, pawing at the cabinet door under the kitchen sink. She’d peed on the floor, leaving a tiny pool of urine in the middle of the kitchen. I walked over and pointed my light at the mess. Dirty paw prints recorded a frenetic, circular dance on my linoleum.
“Melissa!”
She ignored me and kept scratching the door.
I heard the screech again and flinched, my whole body cringing, a rush of naked fear surging right up from the floor to my hair.
The screech came from her general direction, but I could tell now that it did not come from Melissa. It came from behind that cabinet door.
“Melissa,” I said again, more gently this time. “Hey, Melissa. Settle down, honey.”
The Soul Hunter Page 19
