Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries)

by Matthew Storm

  “Drug thing, maybe,” Fulton said.

  “Or maybe she did have information about someone dropping bodies,” I said. “You guys have three unsolved cases that have been driving you nuts lately?”

  “There’s a murder in San Diego every day,” Fulton said. “Which three cases was she talking about?”

  There was not even close to a murder every day in San Diego, but I assumed Fulton hadn’t meant for me to take him literally. “You really don’t have three unsolved cases you’re looking at?”

  “A serial?” Harrison said. “No. The only unsolved serial case is…” he hesitated to say the name we were both thinking of. After a moment he looked away and I decided he wasn’t going to finish the sentence.

  “Someone else may have an idea,” Fulton said. “We don’t have three on the board, though. Not that are connected, anyway.”

  “I’ll give Sarah Winters a call later,” I said. “I imagine Dan’s keeping her pretty busy.” Sarah had been new to Homicide back when I’d worked there. She was smart, tough, and a better detective than these two chuckleheads combined.

  “Sarah’s on desk duty,” Fulton. “And I don’t mean to be rude, Nevada, but you really don’t need to be doing anything more than you already have. You’re a witness, not an investigator.”

  I was all set to show him what being rude actually meant when I realized the entirety of what he’d just said. “What the fuck do you mean, Sarah is on desk duty?” Had I just made my hands into fists? Yes. Yes, I had.

  Harrison raised his hands, palms out in surrender, and took a step back. Smart boy.

  Fulton sighed. “It’s the Captain’s orders, Nevada, not mine. Don’t take it out on me. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Why the fuck…” I started. “Is she being punished for something?”

  “No.” Fulton looked around to make sure nobody else was in earshot. “Look, she’s had some trouble since…you know what happened with Ellis,” he said quietly.

  I knew it pretty well. Brad Ellis had been Sarah’s partner not too long ago. He’d also been a budding serial killer, although not one very skilled at covering his tracks. Sarah had caught on to him early, but not early enough to keep him from nearly killing both of us.

  I was far from the world’s most social person. I hadn’t talked to Sarah in quite a while. I hadn’t even known she’d been having problems. Between her and Krystal I’d managed to completely fail two people recently. I felt like the queen of the assholes.

  Aware that I was seething and nearly about to explode, I decided to end the conversation before I said or did something I’d regret. “You guys need anything else from me?”

  “I don’t think so,” Fulton said. “We might have more questions later if something comes up, but I think we’re good here.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Dan knows how to reach me.” I turned abruptly and headed for my car.

  I managed to keep it together long enough to drive two blocks and pull over to the side of the road. Then I pounded on my steering wheel with my fists until I thought I’d break something.

  My ankle was throbbing now, as well. I’d been on it too much today. But I wasn’t going to get any rest anytime soon.

  When I’d calmed myself down enough to think straight I knew what my next move had to be. I took my cell phone and opened up a web browser to Craigslist. Then I started an advertisement in the “for sale” section. Rotary-dial phone. Circa 1984. $25. I added a phone number and submitted it. The phone number’s prefix didn’t actually exist, which meant no strangers would be getting a call about a rotary-dial phone they didn’t have to sell. The advertisement’s purpose was to raise a flag. It meant I needed help.

  It would take a while to get an answer back to the ad. I had to wait for the right person to see it. In the meantime, I decided to go looking for the homeless guy I’d seen earlier. He was the only witness I knew of that had seen Krystal’s killer. Maybe I’d be able to get something out of him.

  It took me ten minutes of driving up and down the neighborhood streets, but I eventually found the man I was looking for sitting on someone’s lawn maybe half a mile away from where Krystal had been killed. Unfortunately, a patrol car had found him first, and two uniforms were questioning him. He appeared to be asking his shopping cart if it had seen anything it wanted him to pass along. That probably wasn’t going to get anyone very far. I could have crashed the party, but I was in a mood and I couldn’t imagine what good it might have done. Besides, he’d just said it was a businesswoman. Do you know how many businesswomen are in San Diego at any given time? Neither do I, but you can bet it’s a lot.

  I had another call I wanted to make, but I decided to wait until the fake advertisement I’d placed had been responded to. It would be best if I calmed down first, anyway. I drove to the parking lot of a nearby CVS and waited. 45 minutes later my phone rang. The caller ID read Abercrombie. I answered it on the first ring.

  “What do you need, Nevada?” Abercrombie asked.

  Abercrombie wasn’t his real name. Nor was Fitch the name of his partner. I didn’t know their real names. They both worked for a somewhat retired hacker I knew named Scott Landers. That was his real name. Scott’s brother had been an early victim of the Laughing Man. Scott and his team did favors for me from time to time. In return, I was expected to catch and kill the Laughing Man, ideally while Scott watched. So far I hadn’t had any luck holding up my end of the bargain.

  “I have a phone I need you to look at,” I said.

  “I’m a little busy,” Abercrombie said. “My parents are in town.”

  “It’s important.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. “I suppose it must be,” he finally said. “You’re skipping our usual delightful banter. Don’t you have a sarcastic comment to make? Nothing about my parents visiting? I don’t know…maybe you could ask if they look like they came out of a catalog, too?”

  “I really don’t want to play right now,” I said.

  “You sound upset.”

  “I am upset. Can you meet me or not?”

  He sighed. “Give me an hour. Parking lot of that Chinese place you like. Try not to kill anyone before you get there.”

  “Don’t try me,” I said. I hung up the phone and put the car in gear.

  I knew exactly the place he meant. It was a Chinese restaurant in a strip mall in Point Loma, not far from where I lived in Ocean Beach. They only had four tables inside, but the food was good enough that there was usually a line out the door. I went there for fried rice, mostly. Good fried rice was hard to find. On another day I might have taken this as a good excuse to stop there to eat, but right now food was the farthest thing from my mind.

  I arrived early, but Abercrombie was already in the parking lot when I arrived, leaning up against his car. He and Fitch both looked like young male models, and if either of them had been interested in women…I honestly don’t know what I would have done. They only had eyes for each other, though. Given that I didn’t know either of their real names I couldn’t have said I knew them well, but they seemed happy together.

  Normally I never saw them apart, but Fitch wasn’t there today. “Where’s the handsome one?” I asked Abercrombie.

  “There’s the banter I love so much,” Abercrombie said. He tossed his head to one side and his long hair rolled like an ocean’s wave. He looked at my face. “My god, Nevada. What happened to you?”

  It took me a minute to remember I still had stitches. “It’s not important,” I said. “Completely unrelated to why I’m here.” He gave me a skeptical look. “I jumped through a window thinking I might be chasing the Laughing Man, okay? I wasn’t. Mistaken identity, I guess.”

  “You jumped out a window?”

  “No. I jumped through a window.”

  “Oh,” he said. He appeared to think about that for a moment. “I suppose I won’t ask who you were chasing, then. At least you know what to do when you think you see the Laughing Man. We’ve bee
n waiting long enough.”

  I crossed my arms in front of me. “If you think he’s so easy to find, you’re welcome to start looking yourself.”

  “You think we’re not looking?” He shook his head. “I have a strong skill set, Nevada, but it’s not much good for chasing murderers around. That’s your department.” He sighed. “Anyway, Fitch is with my parents.”

  I nodded. “Sounds great. So the three of them just sit there in awkward silence until you get back?” In all the time I’d known them, I wasn’t sure Fitch had ever spoken to me. Mostly he just stared off into the sunset, as if he were imagining doing whatever models did. Cuddling a pile of puppies, maybe.

  “Fitch is charming their socks off, as usual. They love him.” He looked away and for a moment I thought he was going to blush. “I think…”

  “What?”

  He looked back at me. “I think he’s been waiting until they were in town to propose.”

  I blinked. That softened my tiny black rage-filled heart just a bit. “Oh. That’s…good, I guess. I think.” I gave him an uncertain look. “Do you want to get married?”

  He bit his lip and hesitated for a minute, and then he nodded. “I do,” he said. “I didn’t think I ever would, but…I really do, Nevada.”

  “I hope it works out, then.”

  “Me too. I’ll let you know.” The goofy look he’d had for a moment faded away. “So I’ve got to get back. I don’t want to miss it. Where’s this phone you’ve got?”

  I took Krystal’s burner out of my pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it like I’d just given him a smallpox blanket. “Where did you get this pathetic little thing?”

  “It belonged to a confidential informant of mine. She’s dead now.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “I want everything it has. Every call made, every call received, voicemails, texts, whatever. If there’s GPS on it and you can figure out locations where it’s been, all the better.”

  “That’s not a real thing,” he said.

  “Whatever. You get the idea.”

  He pressed a button on the phone and studied the screen. “I can’t believe this thing even has a password,” he said. “Well, it shouldn’t take much to break it. Maybe if I shake it really hard…”

  “You can do it?”

  “Of course I can do it. I’ll get in touch when I have something.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know. A day?”

  “A day?”

  His lips tightened. “This is a little tricky with my parents here, Nevada. I can’t tell them we’re not going to dinner tonight because I have to crack a phone for a detective. I’m not supposed to know how to do that. I’m not supposed to know you, for that matter.”

  That was frustrating, but also just a little bit funny. “They have no idea what you do, do they?”

  “They think I’m a day trader. Foreign currency markets. Just like Fitch. We know the lingo and we can sell that story to professionals, if we want to. We even have the trade history to back it up.” He looked at me. “I shorted the Euro five minutes before the GDP numbers came out yesterday, you know. 187 pips to the good. Now if Janet Yellen had said…” he stopped and looked at me. “I was about to make a joke but it’s not going to be funny if you don’t know who Janet Yellen is.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then forget it. It was very funny, though.”

  “I’m sure it was. Anyway, catch up with me when you’ve got something, then? And say hi to your parents for me.”

  “Yes to the first, no to the second. What are you going to be doing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’ll go solve a murder. Or four.”

  Chapter 6

  I called Dan Evans from the car five minutes after leaving the parking lot. I started talking as soon as he picked up. “Do you want to tell me why the hell Sarah Winters is on a desk?”

  “Not even a hello today?” Dan asked. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m really far from all right,” I said. “Someone murdered my informant and…” I really didn’t want to go down that road with him right now. “What’s wrong with Sarah? If you’re punishing her from the Ellis thing I swear to god…”

  “Hang on,” he said. “I’m in my office. I need to close the door.” I waited until he came back. “Okay,” he said. His voice had dropped an octave and was now in a register similar to that of an angry volcano. “You need to fucking listen to me right now. If you think I’d punish Sarah over what happened with Ellis then you have never met me.”

  I’d have had to admit that was true, although I wasn’t really in the mood to admit anything. “All right,” I said. “I shouldn’t have jumped to that conclusion.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Say you’re fucking sorry, Nevada. It would be a nice change.”

  I bit my lip. “I’m sorry. All right?”

  “You’d better be.”

  “Well, that’s what I just said, isn’t it? Shit, Dan. I’m having a bad day. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, though.”

  He was silent for a moment and I knew that hadn’t taken the fight out of him, but he had to be considering the scene I’d just come from. “Fine,” he said. “Forget it.”

  “Why is Sarah on a desk?”

  “We’re right back to…” he started. “You want to know why? Because I don’t need another fucking you. That’s why.”

  The fight hadn’t been taken out of me, either. I was ready to go again. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Think about it, brain surgeon.”

  I wished I could have seen his face just then. He had to have realized how awful that line was while he was still saying it, but it must have been too late to stop. I snickered. “Do you want to try that one again?” I asked.

  “Oh, fuck it,” he said. “No.”

  “I can’t fight with someone who talks like that,” I said. “Let’s stop, okay?”

  “I wasn’t fighting.”

  “You were trying. But that train went right off the tracks, didn’t it? I guess I’m not the only one that happens to.”

  He sighed. “Let’s move on.”

  “Tell me about Sarah. What do you mean, you don’t want another me?”

  Somehow I doubted he’d meant to say that, but it was too late. He was going to have to qualify it or he knew I’d never shut up. “Sarah is…” he said. “No. I’m not getting into specifics with you. Sarah is having some trouble with what happened and I haven’t been satisfied with the course of her therapy. Not enough to put her back on the street, anyway. I had one detective fall apart on me. I’m not repeating that.”

  I didn’t have a good comeback for that. My own meltdown had been pretty epic. Some people gave notice when they quit their jobs. I’d screamed and thrown things. It was hard to imagine Sarah doing any of that, but… “I thought she was doing all right?”

  “I thought she was, too,” Dan said. “Then she decked a patrol cop who threw a sheet over a body before she got to the crime scene. She’s been on a desk ever since. She has a long way to go before I put a gun in her hand and send her after murderers.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Sarah hit someone?” That was difficult for me to imagine.

  “She did. I know how surprised you must be. You always thought she was some Strawberry Shortcake cop prancing around smelling the flowers. She’s not.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Right now I don’t know if I’m more concerned about her or if I should make fun of you for using all those words in one sentence. Strawberry Shortcake prancing around? This really isn’t your day.”

  “It’s not funny, Nevada.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. I shook my head. “I didn’t know any of that was going on.”

  “Well, you never actually called her to find out, did you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m a shit friend, I know.” I realized I’d never actually decided where I was going wh
en I started driving. I had no idea where I was headed. “I will call her,” I said. “I guess she might need someone to talk to…but you said she’s in therapy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s she seeing?”

  “Someone I trust.”

  “She’s seeing Molly Malone, then.”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “No, but you don’t know any other therapists,” I said. “So you kind of gave that away.” My ankle chose that moment to remind me that I’d spent too much time on my feet today. I probably wouldn’t be able to stand up in a few hours. Pain seemed to be spreading up my leg. “Molly’s good,” I said. “I didn’t know she was still practicing, actually. She spends most of her time in the dojo.”

  “She only takes special clients. I called in a favor.”

  “Well, that was a good…” What had he just said? “How does Molly Malone owe you a favor?”

  “None of your business. The important point was that she has some experience with this kind of thing.”

  “Yeah.” Molly and I had been friends for years. Against her better judgement, she’d attempted to be my therapist after I’d gotten out of the hospital after the Laughing Man case. She knew I wouldn’t see anyone else. It hadn’t gone well. I’d said some very unkind things and walked out on our relationship. We’d only reconnected a year ago.

  Molly wouldn’t tell me anything about Sarah, of course. She’d be insulted if I even asked her to. But I had a way of getting information out of people. The question was whether I should try or not.

  “Anyway, you talked to Krystal before she was killed?” Dan asked. “What did she say?”

  “I talked to her last night, briefly. We were supposed to meet today and she could tell me this big thing she was holding on to.”

  “Any idea what it was?”

  “Not much.” I debated how much I should tell Dan. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him what I’d done with Krystal’s phone, but I didn’t have a great deal to go on right now. It was worth the risk. “She said she had information about three murders, and she wanted to sell it to me so she could get out of town.”