On the pad he’d written a list of names that included Mike, Deacon, Dox, and “the Hippy,” whose name he never got. He wrote down The Lost 40 and Judgment Daze. He’d drawn the infinity symbol about a dozen times, in different sizes, all over the page. He wanted to talk to Deacon again, get him to drop the lost love story regarding his tattoo, but Izzy was nervous about Officer Woorten and the rest of the APD. And he couldn’t be sure Deacon wasn’t telling the truth. Half of Austin was covered in ink; the likelihood of different people with the same tats signifying entirely separate meanings was pretty damn high. He resolved to visit the yard where Cynthia was found next chance he got, if only to see it with his own eyes. He didn’t know where else to look, what else to do.
The single ended, whereupon he turned the acetate over to play the B-side, “It’s Too Bad.” This one was pressed on the purple Gordy label (“It’s What’s In the Grooves That Count”), number 7006. The collection was getting big enough that Izzy was considering a new organization system with a written log. It was getting to be an expensive and time-consuming habit, but as far as vices went he thought his was fairly safe and constructive. Mike Valvano belted out a tune that never charted but Izzy loved nonetheless, and he went back to his tea and scratchpad.
He drew another symbol, and traced it over several times, listening to the music and letting his tea grow cold.
“It’s a mathematical symbol, for one thing,” Sandy said, screwing up her mouth in thought. “They call it a lemniscate. I vaguely remember some of this stuff from university. Infinite sets, cardinal numbers, all that sort of thing.”
“Neither of these guys struck me as math geniuses,” Izzy said.
“I think it’s used in Tarot, too. I don’t know to what end, but I’m sure I’ve seen it on the cards. We used to mess with them when we were kids. Not heavy, but…”
“I’d imagine that ties back into what the guy on Riverside told me.”
“Life forever.”
“Something to that effect.”
“Simply, I guess,” Sandy said. “In math, there’s a difference between positive infinity and negative infinity. It’s like a straight line going in either direction from zero. The line goes beyond calculable understanding, so in that way it’s a bit like a destination you can’t ever reach.”
“But this isn’t a straight line,” Izzy said, tapping the pad he’d brought along. “It’s an ouroboros.”
“Snake eating its own tail.”
“Right. An obfuscation of beginning and end.”
“Pretty hazy,” she said. “And widely known, honestly. I bet if you ask around tattoo parlors they’ll tell you they do these all the time.”
“A destination I can’t ever reach,” he muttered.
“Maybe the kid at the squat was telling the truth, Izzy. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”
“Then maybe she really did OD and I’m just spinning my wheels.”
“It’s possible,” Sandy said. “But I’m still on your side with that one. I don’t think that was Cynthia’s style.”
“Which leaves us where?”
Sandy leaned forward, putting her elbows on the desk.
“One better than the police. They’ve closed it down.”
“There was no autopsy,” he told her.
She frowned.
“I figured as much. Way I understand it they’re trying to do them less and less these days. It’s costly and time-consuming.”
“Why bother if you’ve already got an answer you like well enough?”
“What do you think you would have found?”
“I don’t know. Probably nothing. Heroin overdoses usually result from respiratory failure, so maybe I or Forbes or the ME could have determined that one way or the other. But death from dope OD is rare—like one in ten rare—and rarer still is instantaneous death, which is what this is supposed to be. I just don’t buy it, Sandy. Not medically, not statistically, and not personally. I knew her. We both did.”
“She wasn’t on a good road, Izzy.”
“She didn’t have to die.”
“But she did.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “She did. No thanks to me. No thanks to anyone.”
“Izzy…”
A knock at the door interrupted her, and Sandy glanced up as a thickset woman in a flower print dress leaned in.
Sandy said, “Hi, Leticia.”
“Your four o’clock is here, hon.”
“Shit,” Sandy hissed. “Lost track of time. I’ve got an interview, Izzy.”
“No problem,” he said, rising. “Thanks for letting me bounce this off you.”
She came around the desk and made to hug him, but Izzy stepped back, offering his hand instead. Sandy smiled, shook his hand.
“We’ll talk more soon,” she promised.
In the waiting room, he passed Leticia, who was bringing a young man with shaggy hair in a form-fitting dark blue suit back up the hallway. Izzy watched them go into Sandy’s office, the man in particular, who looked back at him and smiled.
Damn, Izzy thought. He shook it off, recalling Trish’s clothes and makeup still strewn around his apartment. Sulking, he stuffed the scratchpad into his pocket and left the crisis center.
Sixteen
She returned the following morning, unannounced, to collect her things. He asked her how she’d been doing, and she said, “Fine.” She managed to fit everything into a mid-sized cardboard box from a chain moving place and hauled it out with a curt “Bye.”
He locked the deadbolt behind her and dropped onto the couch like a bag of billiard balls. He felt like a bag of dog shit.
When he woke up after dark, he was startled, not having realized he’d fallen asleep. There hadn’t been any nightmares that he could remember, so he was thankful for that, but Izzy was groggy and couldn’t recall whether he was expected at the ER that night. He decided coffee would cure most of his ills, so he got up and wandered blindly to the kitchen, where he flipped on the light.
Leaning against the sink was a bulky, broad man dressed in black, a balaclava covering his face. Another one sat at his bistro table, toying with one of Izzy’s steak knives. This one was also masked, but much thinner.
Izzy jumped back, balanced himself with a hand on the wall.
He said, “What the fuck is this?”
The man by the sink lurched forward, quick for his size, and delivered a rapid punch to Izzy’s solar plexus. Izzy groaned until his lungs were empty and dropped to his knees. The second man stood up from the table, erratically, and kicked Izzy in the ribs. Izzy rolled onto his side. Pain tore through his torso, radiated up into his brain. He rolled over, scuttled back against the shelves of records on the opposite wall. The first man followed, seizing him by the shirt and lifting him up to his feet. His eyes were dark and emotionless. He slammed Izzy against the shelves. Several records dropped to the floor, where the second man came along and stepped on them, breaking many of them underfoot.
“What do you want?” Izzy wheezed. His chest ached with every word.
While the one held him in place, the other brought up the steak knife and touched the point to the hollow of Izzy’s throat. It stung slightly. Izzy breathed as shallowly as he could.
“Go back to putting Band-Aids on skinned knees and emptying piss bags, Nightingale,” the man with the knife said. He wheezed. “Or you won’t end up in your hospital, unless they got a morgue.”
Of course there’s a morgue, Izzy thought, but the point was moot. There was a knife to his throat.
“Why?” was all he could manage.
“You ask too many fucking questions,” the knife-man said.
Izzy said, “Okay.”
“You understand?”
“I understand.”
“Smart boy.”
The man tossed the knife onto the bistro table, where it glanced off and ended up somewhere on the floor. He smacked Izzy’s face with a gloved hand. Then he looked to his partner, who released Izzy, and the two
went quietly to the door. The big man helped the skinny one along, as though the process of threatening Izzy had worn him out.
“Up to this minute,” the one who’d had the knife said, opening the door, “anything that’s happened is because of you. Keep your head down, Nightingale.”
Izzy swallowed and nodded. The men left, and shut the door.
He sprinted for it and turned the deadbolt. His eyes widened, and he remembered doing the same when Trish walked out earlier. There was no way they could have gotten in.
Izzy switched on the lamp beside the couch, then raced around the apartment, checking everything out and turning on more lights. When he reached the bedroom, he found the window open, the blinds a tangled mess. The lock was twisted out of shape and the frame splintered.
How the hell did I sleep through that? he thought.
For some time he stared at the window, considering how little sleep he’d been getting and what manner of hell he’d brought upon himself. After a while, he guzzled some water from the kitchen sink and got his phone to dial the police. Only after it started ringing did it occur to him the list of potential suspects included them.
Two officers responded, neither of them familiar to Izzy. One’s tag read Garza, the other’s Demain. The latter took Izzy’s statement while the former examined the window and took photos with a tiny digital camera. Upon hearing he’d been threatened, Garza called for crime scene techs to come in and look the place over. Soon, Izzy was entertaining half a dozen unexpected guests, who all wanted coffee once it was determined to be fingerprint-free.
Over his black and Garza’s with milk and Splenda, Izzy explained the bare details of the last few days. He confessed that Woorten had strongly censured him but told the officer he remained unconvinced of the findings as they stood.
“Asking people questions isn’t illegal in the state of Texas,” Garza said after telling Izzy he didn’t personally know Woorten. “But I might guess it was an impolite way of telling you to watch your ass, given what’s happened.”
Garza drank his coffee and came away with a wet mustache. Izzy didn’t say anything about it.
“Given what’s happened,” Izzy said, “isn’t it starting to look like I’m right about all this?”
“Did the intruders specifically mention this Ramos woman to you?”
“No. I told you everything the guy said, verbatim. The other one didn’t talk.”
“Then it’s not exactly clear that that’s what this was about.”
“There’s nothing else it could be about, officer.”
“Lieutenant,” Garza corrected him, indicating the stripes on his shoulder. “And in your line of work, you come across a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life in some pretty bad situations. Some of them get unhappy about the way things turn out, especially where their culpability or criminality might be concerned. And you’re working with the ME and FNDI, too? You ask a lot of people uncomfortable questions, Mr. Bishop. I’m sorry, but that’s ambiguous as all hell.”
“Could be an angry spouse or parent,” Demain said. He’d taken his coffee with sugar. “You treat a lot of victims of interpersonal violence. Abusers don’t like to be caught out, believe me.”
“These guys had gloves and ski masks,” Izzy protested. “They were waiting for me to wake up. In my kitchen.”
“Doesn’t make them tough guys,” Garza said. “That just means they watch Scorcese movies and Criminal Minds. They wanted to scare you. I’d say they accomplished that goal. The one threatened you with your own knife?”
“The one the techs picked up, yes.”
“See? No guns, no weapons of their own? This was a performance.”
“Most of these bullshit tough guys never follow through on their big threats,” Demain said.
“Most,” Izzy said. “Good to know I’m not likely to be murdered soon.”
Garza said, “Do you have somewhere to stay tonight?”
“I’m going to get a room somewhere.”
“We can have someone hang out at the place if you want.”
Izzy nodded, making another list in his head. It was much the same as the list he’d written down before. Mike, Deacon, Dox, the Hippy Guy…Woorten?
He resolved to call Forbes as soon as he got settled in a hotel. He was more certain than ever that she was wrong about Cynthia, but she was one of the few he respected and even fewer he trusted. Sandy Chen made that list as well, but Alana Forbes was close to this. They needed to talk.
Seventeen
At a pizza joint on Guadalupe and 29th, Forbes tucked into a slice of Hawaiian bigger than her head while Izzy stirred his ice water with the straw. Her face was unreadable, her focus entirely on the slice. Izzy kept quiet while she ate, intermittently nibbling on his pepperoni and sausage and studying the old Frank Frazetta prints adorning the walls of the place. Wizards and topless maidens and giant serpents abounded. It was an odd theme for a pizzeria, but it was old Austin.
When at last she reached the crust, Forbes set it on the plate and dabbed her mouth with a paper napkin. She washed it down with iced tea, tossed her hair, and sat back in the booth with a small, mysterious grin.
“All right, Bishop,” she said. “Give it to me.”
“First of all,” he began, “I think the social history was largely ignored in this case.”
“You brought some of that in,” Forbes said. “Her mother was a treat. And you mentioned the cutting marks.”
“That’s a big part of it. I’ve spoken with Cynthia’s advocate…”
“Chen?”
“Yes,” Izzy said. Forbes nodded and motioned for him to continue. “We both agree that Cynthia’s patterns of self-harm were a grounding strategy that enhanced feeling for her, which is antithetical to the purpose of opiate use…”
“Which is to numb feelings, sure. So who’s consistent? Do you feel the same every day? Do you always need the same things?”
“They were fresh cuts, Forbes. I saw her the day before. She hadn’t changed drastically, and she was stone cold sober if I’m breathing.”
“Go on.”
Izzy heaved a sigh.
“She texted me that night, asking me to go to a party with her. I think it was some sort of rave. She specifically said she’d feel safer with me there and I declined. Safety was a huge issue for her. Obviously she was not safe in that environment, because something there contributed to her death. Or someone.”
Forbes made a peak with her index fingers and rested her chin on the apex.
“Evidence,” she said. “Where is it? All I’m hearing is personal feelings.”
“It’s possible the amount of opiates on the tox screen could have killed her,” Izzy said, “but only barely, and only because she was so underweight. Even so, statistically it’s improbable, and we only have that from a preliminary postmortem and no autopsy.”
“Examiner said no.”
“And we might not have found anything else that way anyway, but it’s wrong, damnit. It’s just all wrong.”
“According to you,” she said.
“Yeah, and two masked men who broke into my apartment last night while I was asleep.”
“What?” The peak collapsed, her hands slapping flat on the table top.
Izzy explained, from the moment he woke up to when he arrived at the North Austin Holiday Inn that would be his home and hearth for the foreseeable future.
“When were you going to tell me this?” Forbes said.
“Right now.”
“Dramatic effect?”
Izzy shrugged.
“Jesus, Bishop. And you think that’s about all this? The Ramos thing?”
“The police won’t hear it, but I’m certain of it, yes.”
“Jesus, Bishop.”
“I’ve talked to some…questionable people last couple of days.”
“Who want you to stop doing that.”
“Apparently.”
“Maybe you ought to.”
�
��Maybe I’m onto something.”
“I don’t want to watch Marty cut you open on the slab,” Forbes said.
“I don’t want Cynthia Ramos to never get any peace because of this.”
Forbes scrunched up her eyebrows.
“I thought you were an atheist.”
“I meant it metaphorically.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Be on my side.”
“Bishop, I’m always on your side. Even when I think you’re wrong, I’m on your side.”
“Then help me,” he said. “Give me a fresh set of eyes, a fresh brain. Occam’s razor doesn’t always work.”
“The simple solution would be best for all involved,” Forbes said, poking at her crust. She ruminated on this for a moment, then said, “Unless, of course, it’s wrong.”
“I think it is,” Izzy said. “Did you get anywhere with the trace from her hand?”
“Not really. It’s a ragged laceration, not deep. Doubtful a bladed weapon. The plant material was consistent with weeds and wildflowers all over that area. Milkweed, dogbane. Seeds. Likeliest explanation is she was crawling around back there, blasted on dope, and cut her palm.”
“Or crawling away from someone.”
Forbes canted her head to one side.
“Maybe,” she said.
“But not necessarily at that site.”
“You have something better?”
“Forbes, I don’t have shit. I’m looking at all the same evidence and reports you’re looking at. The only tangible difference is I knew her, and I don’t buy—”
He trailed off, canting his head to one side.
“You don’t buy what, Bishop?”
“Did you get a look at the ABG?”
“It came back normal,” she said. “I didn’t have to.”
“No, it wasn’t completely normal. There was elevated helium in her arteries.”
“Helium?”
“Shannon said it could be normal for things like scuba diving and sucking on party balloons, but I don’t see Cynthia doing anything like that.”
The Irish Goodbye (Izzy Bishop Book 1) Page 8
