Rage Against the Dying

by Becky Masterman

  And then it happened. Over the mountain the cloud fell to earth in a sheet of rain that looked like a black magician’s scarf making the mountain disappear from view. That put the shooter effectively out of the picture; he would have to worry now about getting off that mountain alive. I could just worry about whoever might be coming up from the rear.

  The curtain of rain hadn’t reached my mesa yet but it was coming this way. I had to move and I had to move fast. “Come,” I said to the Pugs in a sharp command that I hoped brooked no resistance and took off running without looking back to see if they did.

  Taking the chance that if someone was there they’d assume I would take the trail down, I slipped off the trail to the right of the stairs and butt-slid down the steep side of the mesa, the Pugs bouncing along with me like a couple of basketballs. It was the kind of thing that, if I’d still been in the Bureau, and lived to tell the tale, would make the guys howl with laughter in a bar.

  By the time we started down the rain was close upon us, cold drops of water the size of blueberries splattering on us through the hot air. Then all the drops connected and it was just one big downpour, making my slide down a little slicker, a little faster. I bumped my tailbone against large rocks a few times, but we managed to avoid the more wicked cacti. I knew I was taking a chance at the bottom tucking my gun back into my pants, but there was no other option. I leaned over and scooped up both the Pugs so we could run faster.

  Even then I stayed off the trail, instead making my way through the scrub bush and around the prickly pear and cholla that with the wrong move could have immobilized me. I didn’t see another person, the one I feared might be coming up from behind. It made sense. First of all, the rain made it nearly impossible to see anything at more than ten feet. Plus, that other person wouldn’t want to come face-to-face with me any more than I wanted to run into him, partly because he would know I was a force to be reckoned with, and partly because he might not want to risk recognition. Maybe this was a person I knew.

  With some luck on my side, I finally made it back down to the wash where all the trailheads joined and managed to wade across before it became a torrent that would sweep me and the Pugs downstream.

  When I got back to the car, I threw the Pugs into the front seat, where they panted, slightly traumatized, a light steam rising off their backs. I shut my door and caught my breath, but left my Smith on my lap. I drove slowly around the parking lot peering through the windshield wipers at the other cars. There were two, with people inside waiting out the storm. The killer had twice as far to walk back to the parking lot as I did. He wasn’t in either of these cars. He had hiked from a different trailhead.

  I drove back to the house and reassured Carlo that we were all fine, just wet, got caught in the storm. He and I got busy with our own pursuits, my trying to get the more stubborn cholla spines unstuck from my shirt and finally throwing the thing away.

  What was most on my mind was who had tried to have me killed, twice. I had put plenty of scumbags away for life without parole. A few convicted of lesser charges might get out, and a few of those had threatened me in the past. But I always received notification when that was going to happen, and it hadn’t happened lately, Sigmund had said. I was still convinced this had something to do with Floyd Lynch, and my thoughts turned to his family. Two of them, with weapons and knowledge of the local terrain. A stretch, and why? To keep me from proving Floyd’s innocence? If you could believe the elder Lynch, he’d be just as happy to see Floyd dead.

  The most immediate concern: if someone wanted me dead bad enough to try twice it was likely they’d try again, or else go after people I loved. I thought again about the danger to my pack, this time imagining rattlesnakes in the mailbox and antifreeze cocktails tossed over the back fence for the Pugs. I thought about my dear Perfesser abducted. Tortured. Did I mention I have a sordid imagination?

  I called Gordo Ferguson, an ex–Secret Service guy I knew who had opened up an executive protection firm here in Tucson. Gordo was the kind of man who could intimidate an entire rugby team, and if the rumors were right, once had. He owed me several favors, so I asked him if he’d watch over Carlo and the Pugs without their knowing.

  Next. If life had been normal Carlo and I would have played a game of Scrabble before lunch. He would have beaten me. Then we might have settled down with our books in the afternoon, him to read the life of Wittgenstein and me to finish the Clive Cussler action/adventure where the bad guys are bad and the good guys always win. In the evening we would have tossed a coin on watching an intelligent film or an action movie, and I would have won either way. I couldn’t help but wonder if that life would ever come again and figured I was kidding myself that I could hold on to it. Even now I could feel myself slipping away from the Perfesser, preparing myself again to face the loneliness I hadn’t before realized I felt. Pushing people away was one thing I could say I was good at.

  When there was no response to repeated calls to Coleman’s cell phone, I called her office a little before lunch, got the receptionist Maisie Dickens, a relentlessly cheerful person for someone who is the gatekeeper to so much murder and mayhem. You could be looking at photos of a mass grave when she asked you to sign a birthday card with baby ducks on it. It was a little creepy, actually.

  “Brigid!” she shrieked, when she heard my voice. Maisie called everyone’s name that way, as if she had heard they were dead and was pleasantly surprised to find them alive.

  “Sorry, Brigid,” she said when I asked for Coleman. “She’s not here. She didn’t come in this morning.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I sure do. The retirement center where her parents live called to say her mom was sick and asking for her.” Maisie made her compassionate burbling sound. She probably had a sympathy card already stamped.

  “Did she leave a message for me?”

  Checking, “No, Brigid. If she calls in do you want me to tell her anything?”

  “Just tell her I called.”

  “Okay, sweetie, I will.”

  I hung up. It took me a second to process, but I wondered: what would be a big enough emergency that Coleman wouldn’t do something, leave a message or call me on the way? Even if Coleman was going a little rogue on me, she was still rigidly efficient. I called back.

  “Maisie, do you know what retirement center her parents are in?”

  “No, sweetie, I have no idea.”

  Twenty-seven

  To show I wasn’t feeling particularly guilty, I arrived at the medical examiner’s office fifteen minutes late, mentioned who I was there for, and was shown back to the autopsy room where George Manriquez had already opened what appeared from a distance to be a pastel-blue sea lion but smelled a whole lot worse than old raw fish. I could hear George talking into a microphone suspended above the gurney as I paused to get used to the smell, “Caucasian male, five feet nine inches tall, weighing approximately one hundred forty-five pounds at time of death. Time of death difficult to determine given advanced state of decomposition.” He spoke in a less formal way to Max, “With the combined humidity and heat in the van, decomposition could have been much more rapid than usual.”

  “Give it a guess, Doc,” Max said.

  “Could be as little as forty-eight hours, as much as four days. Sorry I can’t be as precise as they are in the movies.”

  “But this couldn’t happen in less than two days, is that what you’re saying?”

  “That’s right. Give me a little more time to call a specialist who can do the math on temperature inside the van relative to the insect activity and I might be able to come closer.”

  George finally glanced at me with curiosity. I’d been there a little too often for someone who had been decommissioned four years before.

  Max wasn’t totally cruel. He gave me some mentholatum to smear under my nose to counteract the stench of decomposition so dense you could feel it like oil on your skin.

  But he did make me watch the whole t
hing while he watched me, from the external exam to the Y incision to the part where they peel the scalp inside out over the face and cut the top of the skull off with a Stryker saw, which sounds like they’re drilling teeth from the back. Along the way Manriquez absentmindedly smashed a couple left-over maggots with a latex-covered thumb while he simultaneously talked to us and recorded his comments into the microphone. Even the assistant who was carrying organs back and forth to be weighed and photographed looked a little green. Nobody enjoys a decomp. I met Max’s stoicism with my own.

  “Here’s the odd thing,” Manriquez was saying, gently poking his right index finger through a rotting fissure in the corpse’s left thigh. “It’s harder to tell with the advanced state of decomp but I’m almost certain this wasn’t done postmortem. Did you say there was a box cutter found on the floor of the van at the scene?”

  Max nodded. “The floor was actually the roof because it had turned upside down, but yeah, there was a box cutter.”

  “I should have come to the scene.”

  “We tried to get you.”

  “The box cutter could have done this, or some other blade. I don’t think it was an accident.”

  “You sure it’s not suicide?” Max asked.

  “Pretty tortuous way to go. If he wanted to bleed to death it would have been more efficient to cut his jugular vein. It’s a lot closer to the surface and you pass out faster.”

  “He might not have known.”

  I wisely kept silent, waiting to hear why I’d been asked to attend.

  Max kept his dialogue going with Manriquez. “Homicide?”

  “I really do think so. Possibly accidental homicide, close-quarter fight in the van. Definitely keep it open.”

  “Okay, Doc. Keep him on ice. I’ll check on NOK in case there’s somebody somewhere who would claim the body. Can I use your office a few minutes?” Max asked.

  Manriquez nodded and continued directing the assistant, who was sewing up the incision with heavy black thread while keeping her head turned from the corpse as far as possible and trying not to breathe.

  Max gestured to me to follow him and we went down a short hallway into an office that, besides the simple furniture—a desk with an office chair behind it and two other chairs before it, thin upholstery with wooden arms—had only a donkey piñata hanging from the ceiling in the corner that looked like it had been there since the last guy. A short bookshelf contained pathology texts and atlases that didn’t look just for show. On the desk sat an old computer, and the usual clutter you’d expect in a medical examiner’s office: pads, a couple of pens, a box of microscope slides, and other biological paraphernalia. Otherwise, there were no personal effects, no medical school diplomas or pictures of family on the walls or on the desk. If there was a Mrs. Manriquez, little Manriquezes, a life, it looked like the ME didn’t want it to touch his life at the office. I’m not the only one who feels that way.

  Max pulled out one of the chairs in front of the desk and motioned me to the chair next to it so we were angled toward each other.

  I was getting all the various scenarios so tangled I wasn’t sure what I could ask Max without incriminating myself, but had to take a chance. “How well do you know Agent Laura Coleman?” I began.

  “Not well.” He was obviously thinking of other things.

  “When did you talk to her last?”

  “The day we were here.” He didn’t ask why so I could make up a plausible story about my concerns, but changed the subject. “Close-quarter fight in the van,” Max said, echoing Manriquez’s conjecture.

  “He said maybe it was that.”

  Max leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers. “You knew the vehicle was a van before I said so. You knew it was there and you lied about it. I’m offering you the courtesy of not immediately calling this murder and taking you to headquarters for an official interview. You’re going to tell me what the fuck happened and no lies.”

  I wasn’t caught off guard. On my ride back from the airport I had got a better grip on the Max issue and figured that I had jumped to a much greater conclusion than he would. Sure, he knew I knew the vehicle was a van, which meant I had lied about seeing it in the wash. But it would be a quantum leap from there to a former FBI agent murdering an innocent victim and then hiding the fact. Max had no reason at all to make that leap. That’s why he said interview and not interrogation.

  So feeling a little more confident, “I’m here to make my full confession, Max,” I said.

  He pushed his nose to one side with his knuckles and blew out, probably clearing some remaining stench from the autopsy room, and wiped a little mentholatum from the back of his finger onto his pants. But he adjusted quickly; the backseats of cop cars smell just as bad no matter how often they’re hosed out. “Stop bullshitting and get on with it,” he said.

  I had heard enough lies in my career and gotten enough practice of my own. Now if I could weave enough of a story to win his trust without tying a noose …

  I set it up carefully, connecting the truth with the lies in a story that I hoped was believable. I confided my relationship with Carlo and explained how he didn’t know anything about my past. That was why I didn’t want to talk in front of Carlo. “But yes, I had seen the van. I saw it the day before it was found and even looked inside. I saw the body. You were right, I knew the body was there.

  “I pulled out my phone to call you, Max, but just went into a temporary slump, immobilized by seeing this kind of thing when I thought I never would again. Plus, I hated to have Carlo find out that I’d been even this close to violence.”

  I leaned toward him, mimicking his body language to show I was in sync with him, my hands resting lightly on the arms of the chair in an open, confiding posture. “I figured someone would discover it even if I didn’t phone it in. And Cliff did, within forty-eight hours, before I had a chance to call.”

  Which part was lies and which truth? Even I can’t tell anymore. But it all sounded like it could have happened, and he appeared to believe me. Or he was mentally putting me on the list of suspects. Either way, he gave a slow nod.

  “I was wrong, I know,” I said. “Really bad call, but you can’t say I obstructed an investigation as much as postponed it for a day. I’ll think about anything else I might have seen in that area and write up a report for you if you want.”

  Max seemed to relax a little, which made me relax. He said, “With all this rain the wash is a river. Our crime scene techs don’t have much experience with aquatic environments. They say they figure the physical evidence has been flushed somewhere downstream, so even if they found something they couldn’t guarantee it was connected to the primary scene. If the place where the van was found is actually the primary scene.”

  “You’re right, just because the ME said it was the primary scene, all he could know is that the killing occurred inside the van. The van could have been moved from some distance away, the wash a secondary scene.” Now that I appeared to be off the hook I wanted to be so helpful. “Jesus, where’s Gary Sinise when you need him? If you’re right about the guy being a derelict how hard are you going to press?”

  “Oh I’ll press, all right. Accident or murder, I’m thinking he’s either a transient or there’s more, maybe some connection with that meth lab that blew up in your neighborhood last week. Maybe this is drug or gang related.”

  “Yeah, this guy may have been one of those homicides who had it coming for years.” I nodded just vigorously enough to imply I hadn’t thought that myself, but that it was Max’s idea. I wasn’t necessarily in the clear; Max could be withholding all kinds of knowledge, testing me to see what else I knew. He was smart, and I respected him. But besides getting the focus off me, and showing a professional interest, maybe I could steer him onto the right track, Peasil as perp rather than victim.

  “I’ve got the address his vehicle is registered to, and we’ll send people up there to see if we can find anything else,” Max said. “And
I’ll stop by the houses up the hill from the wash, see if they saw anything out of the ordinary that day.”

  He stopped and looked at me. I looked back. I’ve dealt with much scarier people in more dangerous circumstances.

  “Are you done with me now?” I asked, going for the patient but slightly bored tone of voice.

  He smiled. I noted it because I couldn’t remember seeing Max smile before. “You’ll be around in case we need you, right? Not going anywhere?”

  Now that chilled me a little. I’d used those words too often myself on “persons of interest.” His appearing to relax was a ruse. I nodded, saving my gulp for when my chin was down so he wouldn’t notice.

  “You see, I may need to talk to you again once the techs have finished going over the van. They’re having a field day in there.”

  “How’s that?”

  “They’ve found lots of trace, sand with copper, a substantial number of unique prints, some hair. You’d think all the blood was his but you never know. Could be his assailant. Kind of a mess with the decomposition.”

  “So are you done with me at this point?” I asked again.

  “Nearly. One more thing.” He reached toward the desk and took one of the little cardboard boxes that held a DNA swab. He pulled out the swab, which looked like a long Q-tip with cotton at only one end. “We’ve got your fingerprints on file through the Bureau but not your DNA. Want to open up for me?”

  “Oh Max.” That’s what this whole conversation had been leading to, and why he brought me into this office. He probably had made sure in advance that there was a swab on the desk. “You got a warrant for this?”

  “I was intending to keep it between us for now, but if you want me to go to the judge, give him your name, probable cause, and get paper, sure, I can do that.”

  What else could I do? I leaned forward and opened my mouth, hoping that none of the hair or blood they found was mine, or if it was, that all the mixed evidence would be corrupted into one great soup of undistinguishable DNA. Max swabbed the inside of my cheek, then carefully placed the swab into its little cardboard box and closed it. With a pen he marked a number on the box, rather than my name. I didn’t mention I noticed, but I was grateful for that small favor.