Kenny had been my father’s manservant and butler as long as I had been alive. He was family to me, more than family, because where my family had all turned their backs on me, he never had. He had stayed the course and been a true, loyal friend. When my father had died, I had inherited his house and his fortune, and Kenny had come as part of the package[]. He was happy about the arrangement, and so was I.
I had asked him to prepare me a kit bag, and he knew what that meant. There were my two Sig Sauer p226 Tacops, a Heckler & Koch assault rifle, my take-down hickory bow with twelve aluminum broad-heads, the Smith & Wesson 500, a couple of cakes of C4, and enough ammunition for a short war, plus a couple of bugs and tracking devices. The man knew me better than I knew myself.
I selected a Sig, checked it was loaded, and removed the safety. Then, I slipped it under my jacket in my waistband and climbed back in the car.
Like the Blue Lagoon, the Full Moon was still open for business, but there was practically nobody there, save an old guy sitting in the corner over a beer, and the barman. I leaned on the bar and he came over.
“What’ll it be?”
“Give me a beer. Surprised you’re open. Everybody seems to be closing shop and running north.”
He shrugged. “We’ve had these scares before. These storms, they hit the coast and stay there. It’s gonna be rough on New Orleans, maybe Baton Rouge will get some damage. But not all the way up here.” He cracked a bottle and handed it to me. “You want a glass?”
I shook my head. “They’re saying it’s the worst storm in history.”
“Sure. Two hundred and thirty mile an hour winds. But by the time it hits land, it’s gonna be a tropical storm, lots a’rain, but only gale force winds.”
I nodded like he was wise. “Hope you’re right. Say, I’m looking for Ive, he around?”
“Who’s askin’?”
“Name’s Walker. I was in here last night. I had a drink with a cute chick, short, Afro hair…”
He shrugged and made a face that said I was boring him. “There are a lot of cute chicks in this bar. We’re famous for it.”
“She said Ive was the man to see for a bit of blow.”
“Come back tonight. I don’t know who the hell you talkin’ about, but all kinds of people show up here at night. You know what I’m sayin’?”
“Sure.”
He eyed me sidelong while he washed some glasses.
“You’re new in the district. I ain’t seen you around.”
I grinned. “I came down for the storm.”
He looked at me like he wanted to hit me. “You came down for the storm?”
“Climate change. It’s the big thing, man. My editor wanted me to cover it.”
“You’re a long way from the storm, friend. Storm’s in New Orleans.”
“Yeah, and you got every network and paper in the country covering it. What you’re going to find in the New York Times is how climate change is affecting the lives of people who live on the periphery. How is the storm affecting your life and business…”
I gestured at his empty bar.
He looked skeptical. “You’re with the New York Times?”
I nodded. “You know, you’re right. The storm will drop from hurricane to tropical storm when it makes landfall, but…” I counted out on my fingers. “One, it’s out of season by two months. Two, it’s diameter is one thousand miles, so even if it drops to tropical storm from hurricane, it isn’t the wind you need to be worrying about. It’s the rain. Now, I ask you, how is severe flooding in Louisiana in November going to affect…” I counted out on my fingers again. “Cotton, pecan, sugarcane…” I gave a humorless laugh. “And I don’t need to remind you that Exxon is right there, on the Mississippi in Baton Rouge. So the point my editor wants to make is that, wherever you are in Louisiana, this storm is going to affect you.” I nodded several times. “Let’s face it, wherever you are in the U.S.A., this storm is going to affect you.”
He watched me throughout the speech, a cloth in one hand and a glass in the other. When I’d finished, he went back to polishing.
“I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
I drained my beer and laid some money on the bar. “Thanks. I’ll see you tonight.”
“Yeah, man.”
My cell rang as I was reaching the door. It was Hirschfield.
“Yeah.”
“I got the sample.”
I frowned. “That’s too quick. It’s less than twenty-four hours.”
“I know. I called the DA and asked him what the hell is going on. He blamed the storm. Said there’s not much work coming in to the lab. I told him bullshit and he said that, as well as that, Carmichael has influential friends—him among them—and they want to expedite things. He heard about your crackpot theory and wants you to prove to yourself that it’s horseshit.”
“You believe any of that?”
“I believe they have a reason for us to get the sample fast. They don’t want delays. They want the conviction in the bag.”
I thought about it for a moment. “Who’d he hear it from?”
“My guess is Jackson.”
“Yeah. Where are you?”
“At the hotel.”
“I’m coming over.”
“Suit yourself.”
I drove fast. The roads were empty and I made it in a few minutes. As I stepped through the door of the Soniat into the internal patio, Luis called to me, “Mr. Walker, Mr. Hirschfield, he is waiting for you in the bar.”
I found him at his usual table, behind the fern.
“Have a drink, talk to me.”
“No. Where’s the sample?”
He scowled, pulled a padded manila envelope from his hip pocket and handed it to me. “What are you going to do with it?”
I didn’t look at him. I opened the envelope and looked inside. There was a glass vial with blood-stained cloth in it. “I’m flying to Washington. I’ll be back tomorrow or the day after.”
“Flying? In this weather?”
“I’ll fly from Jackson, Mississippi.”
He sighed heavily through his nose. “This is getting complicated, Lacklan. We need to talk.”
I shook my head. “You need to talk. I don’t.”
“I just told you this is getting complicated. You know what that means?”
“Yeah, Hirschfield, I know what it means. It means people are getting involved that you didn’t expect to get involved. People you play golf with.”
“Don’t be a smartass.”
“You tell me what it means, then.”
“It means this is more than just a guy killing a woman out of sexual jealousy.”
“I know that. I’m glad you realize it now.” I hesitated. “Stay onside, Hirschfield. You don’t want me as an enemy.”
He looked mad. “Take a hike, Walker, and don’t be so damn fast to insult and threaten people. I’m scared of you!”
I nodded once, then left.
I stepped out into the wind and the dying light again, climbed in my car and hit the ignition. There was a short, staccato blast of a siren, and the inside of my car was flooded with red and blue light. I looked in my mirror and saw a patrol car behind me. I killed the engine and opened the window.
Jackson climbed out the passenger side of the car, and hugging his flapping jacket to his chest, leaning into the wind, he walked around to talk to me.
“Get out!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m telling you to! Come inside! We need to talk!”
I sighed and followed him into the shelter of the hotel entrance.
“What do you want, Jackson?”
“I want to know where you’re going.”
“What goddamn business is that of yours?”
“I can make it my business, Walker. If I look through your vehicle and find…”
“It’ll be the last thing you ever do as cop. You want to know where I’m going? I’m going to D.C., to talk to friends and have this
sample analyzed.” I held up the manila envelope for him to see. “It’s the blood from the crime scene. You got any more questions for me, talk to my attorney. He’s in the bar. Now get out of my way, Jackson.”
I went to move and he put his hand on my chest.
“Wait a minute.” He jerked his head at the envelope and narrowed his eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re going to find?”
I held his eye for a count of three. Then, I shook my head.
“It’s too late for that, Jackson. You had your chance to be a cop and you blew it. Now you’re no more than paid muscle with a badge. I told you before, when I bring your masters down, I’m bringing you down with them. Next time you put a hand on me, I’m going to break your arm in three places. Now get out of my way.”
Jackson, Mississippi is north of Burgundy. I took Main Street to Route 61 and headed south toward Baton Rouge like I had all the hounds of hell snapping at my ass. It took me fifteen minutes to reach the outskirts of the city. The wind was crazy and getting crazier the further south I went. That meant the roads were deserted. At Southern University, I turned onto the I-110 and hit 120 MPH through the city. Nobody tried to pull me over. There was nobody there to try. It took me three minutes to reach the Horace Wilkinson Bridge, and less than thirty seconds to cross it.
Then I floored the pedal, heading west along the I-10. It was two hundred and fifty miles of straight road to Houston, and I aimed to do it in two hours.
FIFTEEN
On the way, I called a private lab I’d heard about in Houston. I knew that getting DNA results from forensic labs was not like the movies. Through official channels, it would take four weeks minimum. I didn’t have four weeks. I didn’t even have four days. I needed to cut corners, whether it meant pulling strings or bribing people, I didn’t give a damn. I could feel the hyenas closing in and I needed to act fast.
I talked to three labs without success and finally, after half an hour, I found a place on South Voss Road, the CCD Lab, in the west of the city. They claimed they could produce results in one to two days. I told the girl I was willing to pay well over the odds for a fast result and she put me through to Dr. Glendinning, the head of the lab. I explained to her that my case was urgent, and that whatever the lab’s normal fee was, I was willing to pay double if they could get me results in twenty-four hours.
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “What is your name, sir?”
I hesitated less than a second, then told her, “Captain Lacklan Walker.”
She liked the rank and I heard the smile in her voice. “Just give them your name at reception and I’ll come and meet you myself.”
I hung up and took a deep breath. I was flying by the seat of my pants, but so far I hadn’t crashed.
I followed the I-10 onto the Katy Freeway, past the Memorial Park, and took exit 760 onto Voss Road. It was five PM and raining. I drove south for three miles and finally came to the building—an eight-story glass and concrete monolith set in its own parking lot.
The CCD Labs took up the whole of the eighth floor. I rode the elevator to the seventh floor and stepped out into a lobby that would have looked more at home in a Hollywood representation of a palace in Atlantis. The floor was dark green marble under a vaulted ceiling. The walls were white marble and there were Greco-Roman frames around all the doors. My boots were loud as I crossed the large, echoing space and leaned on the green and white marble reception desk. I smiled and told the pretty Texan girl behind the desk that I was Captain Lacklan Walker, there to see Dr. Glendinning.
She picked up the phone and smiled at me with very white teeth. While she waited for Dr. Glendinning to answer, she told me she hoped I was having a nice day. I told her not really and she creased her eyes, like I’d said I was.
“Dr. Glendinning? Captain Walker is here for you.”
She appeared after a few minutes through tall walnut doors. She was about five ten, with red hair and a nice body. She was wearing a white lab coat and an expensive blue suit underneath it. When she saw my jeans and my sweatshirt, the twitch of her eyebrows told me that in her world, captains don’t dress like tramps.
I raised an eyebrow to her twitch and we shook hands.
“Dr., can we talk somewhere in private? This is a very urgent matter.”
Again the frown, but she nodded and said, “Sure, let’s go to my office.”
I followed her among echoing footfalls, through the same walnut doors into a less glamorous world of beige carpets and functional furniture. She showed me into the cubicle she called her office and sat behind her desk. I sat opposite her and pulled out two samples: the one Hirschfield had given me, and the one I had taken myself from the bed where Sarah’s body had been found.
“Dr. Glendinning, I don’t care how much this costs. I need this done by tomorrow afternoon. I can’t tell you what it’s about, but I can tell you that a man’s life depends on getting the results immediately. If you need official confirmation, I can give you a number at the Pentagon that you can call.” I took Ben’s card from my wallet and put it in front of her. It was a bluff, but she had no way of knowing that. When she’d taken it in, I smiled and said, “But then the price will be capped.”
She smiled back for a moment without speaking, then she said, “The simplest way I can think of to do this, Captain Walker, is if I take you personally as a private client. I will still have access to the full range of forensic tools that we use here. Does that sound acceptable?”
“It sounds perfect.” I pushed the two samples across the desk to her. “I need to know if these samples match, and I need the DNA profile on each one of them.” I pointed at the one Hirschfield had gotten from the DA and said, “I’d like you to label that one ‘DA’, and this one,” I pointed at my own, “Walker. When will you have the results?”
“Tomorrow afternoon. About three. If you give me a number, I’ll call you.”
“Can you email me the preliminary results when you have them?”
She nodded. “I can do that.” Then, she smiled a little ruefully. “But I was kind of hoping you’d come and pick them up yourself.”
Obviously, she’d decided she liked the way captains dressed in my world. “I’ll remember that next time I’m in Houston.”
I walked through the drizzle down to Westheimer Road and found a small Italian restaurant. I found a table by the window and had a beer and a pizza. As I sat and ate, I tried to organize my thoughts. A voice in my head kept telling me that there were things that made no sense. But then I reminded myself, they made perfect sense to somebody, somewhere—they made perfect sense to Sarah’s killer. What didn’t make sense was the way I was looking at it. I had to look at it in a different way. I had to try and see it from the killer’s point of view.
I’d been focusing too hard on the question of whether Bat had killed Sarah. But that wasn’t the real question. Why? Because I already knew that he hadn’t. I was going over the same ground in different ways, trying to find new ways to prove what I already knew.
So what was the real question? Who killed Sarah?
I took a pull on my beer and stared out at the wet road and the steady flow of traffic. Somehow, that didn’t feel like the right question either. I asked myself why not? I leaned back and stretched out my legs. Because.
Because…
I circled around it for a while and finally settled on it. Because in my gut I could feel that she was not the intended victim. I had felt it almost from the start.
Then something clicked.
Simone. Simone had said that Carmichael and Sarah were sleeping in separate rooms. But the body was in the master bedroom. Carmichael was in denial about the break up of his marriage. He wanted everybody to believe they were fine. So he had made no mention of the fact that she was not in her own room, to do so would have been to admit they had problems. Maybe the poor sap wanted to believe she had finally returned to their conjugal room that night for a reconciliation. Who knows? Maybe she had. But the fact remaine
d, she should not have been in that bed. He should.
Had the killer known that? According to Simone, all of Burgundy knew it. My head was reeling. It meant something, but I couldn’t see what. I tried to consider it from all angles.
I had called him a poor sap, but Simone had insisted that Sarah loved her husband, even if she’d stopped being in love with him. Had she then, after all, after her crisis with Simone, after the shock of discovering that her stepsister—the woman and friend on whom she relied emotionally—was in love with her, had she decided to attempt a reconciliation with Carmichael? Had she gone willingly to his bed, to wait for him to return? Was that the reason she had gone home early and not gone to the jazz club?
If that was right, then those four shots were almost certainly not intended for Sarah, but for Carmichael.
So far that made perfect sense, and if it was right, the question became not who wanted Sarah dead, but who wanted Carmichael dead? For a moment, my mind strayed to the Full Moon, and Ivory. Did Carmichael have associates there who had reason to want him eliminated? Had he upset people there? Had Ivory heard about Bat’s past from Harry and decided, if he could not employ him, to frame him for the murder he intended to commit? Had he then entered Carmichael’s house and, thinking he was shooting him, shot his own lover instead?
It was possible, but it left unexplained what had happened at Solitude, at the studio. Who had been shot at the studio? Who had changed the mattress, the bedding and the mat, but left the glasses and the ashtray? And how did they come to use the same gun that had killed Sarah?
It was not synchronicity, Jungian or otherwise. This had to be the same killer’s hand at work. Whoever had killed Sarah, wittingly or not, was responsible for cleaning up a similar crime scene at Solitude.
Two crime scenes, only one body that I knew of. One crime scene incompetently cleaned up, the other incompetently attempting to frame Bat, with excessive amounts of blood, and displaying shots both highly accurate and incompetently wild.
I looked down at the pepperoni pizza growing cold on the plate in front of me, picked up a piece, and took a bite. What was the real question? What was the question—what were the questions—I should be asking? Not did Bat kill Sarah. Not who killed Sarah. But, was Sarah the intended victim? Was Charles Carmichael the intended victim? And, what happened at Solitude?
OMEGA SERIES BOX SET: Books 1-4 Page 42
