Dead Last

by James W. Hall

  “Go back to six fourteen,” Thorn said.

  “What?”

  “Run it back to six minutes, fourteen seconds.”

  Frank did it, and at six fourteen the subject’s eyes flicked upward as if checking for the camera.

  “It’s a woman,” Hilda said.

  “Or a guy with thick makeup and long eyelashes.” Frank looked at Thorn. “How’d you see that? Six fourteen?”

  “Hunting spooky fish in cloudy water.”

  Hilda took a deep breath and blew it out.

  Frank stared at the screen, stepping forward for a closer look.

  “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. Do long eyelashes automatically make it a woman?”

  “I should be quiet,” Hilda said. “But in my opinion, yes, this is a woman. Definitely a female.”

  Frank cocked his head and stepped back, then took another step.

  “Or somebody who wants us to think he’s a woman,” Thorn said.

  “Now, I have a tech lady who can handle this. Strip out all the crap, get a better focus.”

  Hilda tugged on the zipper of her track suit jacket.

  “Will you at least let me know if you catch this person?”

  “Thanks for your help,” Frank said. “And we’ll take that DVD.”

  While Frank wrapped things up with Hilda, Thorn wandered back onto the main floor. He worked his way toward the wall of baseball bats and balls and gloves and uniforms.

  Ten minutes later, Frank tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Am I going to have to put a GPS chip on you?”

  “I need to borrow some money, Frank. I’m low on cash.”

  “What do you need?”

  Thorn turned to the young woman who’d been waiting on him. A girl in her twenties with matching gold studs in her ears and nose, and a purple stripe down the middle of her platinum hair.

  “What was the amount, Julia?”

  “Six hundred and seventy-eight dollars and thirty-nine cents.”

  “Jesus, Thorn. What the hell?”

  Thorn held up a leather baseball glove.

  “Wilson A2000, genuine American steerhide with a dual welting finger design.”

  “And Dri-Lex in the wrist lining,” Julia said, “so your hand stays cool.”

  “A baseball glove?”

  Frank was shaking his head.

  “No,” Thorn said. “Three baseball gloves. And two balls. An extra, in case one rolls into the river.”

  “You’re nuts, Thorn.”

  “I’ll pay you back. Interest if you want it.”

  Frank shook his head some more, then said something to himself, pulled out his wallet, and handed the clerk a credit card.

  “You care to tell me what this is about?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’ve gone totally and completely nuts.”

  “Yeah, it must be that.”

  Outside they scouted the perimeter of the store, Frank leading the way. As they walked, he explained that he’d had Hilda pull the exit door video for last night, and just before closing time the person in the trench coat walked out into the center of the parking lot, about where the two of them were standing right now, then he or she had taken a hard right turn and walked toward the main thoroughfare.

  “So?”

  “Didn’t park in the parking lot. Knew we’d be checking the video. Probably parked a block or two away, someplace without security cameras. I’ll put a guy on it tomorrow, have him canvas the neighborhood stores and see what they can pull up. But I’m betting it’ll be nothing. This wasn’t the guy’s first trip to Sports Craze. He or she did their homework, knew the area, knew the camera layouts.”

  They walked back to the Taurus and Thorn settled the outfielders’ gloves into the backseat and got in.

  “Six fourteen,” Thorn said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why does this person go to all the trouble to stay out of view of the video cams in the parking lots but at six fourteen he looks up at the camera that he knows is there?”

  “To give us a wink?”

  “Maybe not a wink,” Thorn said. “Maybe a head fake.”

  TWENTY

  “STORY MUST BE LOSING STEAM,” Frank said. “Down to three trucks. Just the cable guys still hanging around.”

  He passed the satellite vans and gave a wave to one of the pretty women sitting under an umbrella talking on her cell phone. As he pulled into April’s driveway, he aimed a remote at the gate and it rolled open.

  “She give you a key to the front door too?”

  Frank said, “What’s eating you, Thorn? You sound jealous.”

  Thorn was quiet as Frank parked beside April’s Mini Cooper in the shade of an oak. Garvey came hobbling out of the house as if she’d been on watch for their return. She was using crutches now, the kind that attach to the arms. Making good time across the gravel drive, she was at Thorn’s door when he stepped out.

  “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  Garvey held up a pair of pinking shears.

  Frank said, “I’m going to run this DVD to the lab, see what they can do. You keep your phone charged, okay? Don’t wander off anywhere. I should be back in an hour, say by one o’clock. Two at the latest.”

  “I have something else for your lab guys.”

  Frank switched off the ignition, waiting while Thorn dug Buddha’s phone from his pocket and worked his way through the screens until he located the video from the Atlanta traffic stop.

  He got it running, and leaned into the car and handed it to Frank.

  “A woman in a Zentai suit,” Thorn said. “Three weeks ago in Atlanta. Buddha believed there was a connection to this case. The Atlanta cop e-mailed her the video.”

  “Man, you play by your own rules.”

  “I wasn’t sure it was relevant. Now it looks like it might be.”

  “Anything else you been holding out on me?” Frank kept watching the video, then ran it back and watched it again.

  “That look like the same woman in the sporting goods store?”

  “Possible,” Frank said. “Grainy as shit. Hand in front of her face, it’s hard to see much.”

  “Like she was blinded by the light, or trying to hide from the camera.”

  Frank ran it through again.

  “Yeah?”

  “How she’s blocking the glare,” Thorn said, “it looks weird.”

  “Well, you’re our specialist in that department.”

  “The Atlanta cop should’ve made her lower her hand.”

  “Looks like he’d already decided this wasn’t worth his time.”

  “Your techies can handle it.”

  “Any other instructions, Agent Thorn?”

  “Check unsolved murders for Atlanta, night of July tenth.”

  Frank sighed.

  “And I thought it was me running this investigation.”

  Frank took a few seconds to forward the e-mail to his own account, then handed the phone back. Thorn hauled the white Sports Craze bag out of the rear seat and carried it over to Garvey.

  “Pinking shears. April said you were looking for another pair.”

  “I am, yes.”

  She extended them but Thorn raised his hand and halted her.

  “There’s probably enough fingerprints on those without adding mine.”

  He watched Frank pull out of the drive, the gate rolling closed behind him. Boxley came trotting over, nosed Thorn’s crotch, got an update on Thorn’s day so far, then trotted off toward the seawall that ran along the riverfront.

  Thorn set the bag on the asphalt and dug out the sales receipt.

  “My daughter’s upstairs crying. Ever since you left she’s been bawling like a lost puppy. Now don’t ask me why. I don’t see the point in crying over spilled sperm. But I’m just an old lady doped up on pain meds and waiting for the grim reaper. So what do I know?”

  Thorn held out the sales receipt.

  “Do me a favor, Garvey. Cut the edge o
f this.”

  “Oh, goody,” Garvey said. “I heard you were some kind of private eye. Is that what you do, have people cut pieces of paper and figure out if they’re guilty of murder?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I do.”

  “Can you believe it? My daughter is the guiding star for a serial killer.”

  “Maybe at the moment she is. But we’re going to put an end to that.”

  Thorn held the receipt steady as Garvey sliced the edge of the flimsy paper. Then he held the sawtooth pattern up to the sunlight. About two inches into the cut, he saw one tiny imperfection on the edge of a jag.

  “Garvey, could you open the blades of the scissors so I can take a look.”

  “You’re such a damned kook. You know that? Some kind of crackpot gumshoe. Like that Pink Panther fellow.”

  “Maybe I am. But a shade or two less pink.”

  “Ha,” she said. “I like my gumshoes droll. The men in my life need a well-honed sense of humor if they’re going to deal with a free spirit like me.”

  Holding herself steady with one hand, she opened the scissors with the other and extended them. Just as Buddha had predicted, there was a small ding about halfway up the blade, where someone had crunched down on a pin.

  “Where did you find those?”

  “Those what?”

  “The pinking shears. Where did you find them?”

  “In the parlor with Colonel Mustard, right next to the candlestick and the snow shovel.”

  Thorn smiled politely.

  “Even a kook like you had to play Clue, right? When you were little. Or were you ever little?” Giving the question some Mae West hot sauce.

  “I was little,” Thorn said. “And I played Clue. But I don’t remember any snow shovel.”

  “I was being creative. Don’t you like that in a girl, creativity?”

  “You’re an amusing woman.”

  “Stop, stop. Turn down the charm before I swoon into your arms.”

  “Where were the pinking shears, Garvey?”

  “Garage apartment,” she said. “Where you’re staying. In a dresser up there. April found them. I told her there was a second pair I kept in the sewing room in the same drawer where you found the first pair. So she wouldn’t stop looking till we’d turned the house upside down. Doing your detective work for you, Mr. Panther.”

  “What do you think the scissors were doing in the garage apartment?”

  “Beats me.”

  “You didn’t put them there?”

  “Never go up there. Stairs are too steep.”

  Garvey was watching cars crawl slowly by on North River Drive. People rubber-necking the coral house.

  “Channel 7 put us on the news,” she said. “Our address and names. Just right there on the television for the world to see. Live on this street, you don’t need to go to the circus, the circus comes to you.”

  “Who has access to the apartment? Who’s stayed there recently?”

  “All these questions,” Garvey said. “It’s making me hungry. I’m getting out of this hot sun and going to have a sandwich. You want one? I make a mean peanut butter and jelly. You look like an extra-crunchy fellow to me.”

  “Thank you for noticing.”

  He picked up the sack full of beautifully stitched steerhide and followed Garvey back inside.

  In the kitchen he asked her to put the pinking shears into a Ziploc bag. She flashed him a conspiratorial smile and made a small production of pinching the scissors with two fingers and slipping them into a plastic bag, then set the bag on the counter.

  Thorn poured them both a glass of skim milk and sat at the kitchen table where he and April had eaten breakfast.

  “Yesterday, at the Floridian, did you hear April mention the name of the bar downtown where she was going to meet the sheriff and me?”

  “Poblanos,” she said. “One of my favorites. Attracts all that rough trade. Now those boys know how to treat a lady.”

  “You mention to anyone that April and I were meeting there?”

  “I might have.”

  She finished the two sandwiches and started cutting away the crust.

  “You might have. But did you?”

  “I don’t keep track of everything I say. What fun would that be?”

  Thorn got up and carried the two sandwiches to the table, then helped Garvey out of her crutches. She heaved a labored sigh as she settled into the kitchen chair.

  “It would help me if you could remember, Garvey. Poblanos. Did you tell anyone after we left?”

  “Just everyone who’d listen. My daughter was running off to meet a sandy-haired dreamboat at a bar.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “You want names?”

  “Names would be helpful.”

  “I don’t know their names. They’re nurses, two nice nurses, though they barely speak a word of English between them. They thought you were cute, so I told them that you and my daughter were getting reacquainted at a bar downtown, and after you got a few drinks in you, cuidado, mamacitas, lock up your chicas.”

  She ate a few bites of her sandwich and set it down.

  Thorn tasted his and waited for Garvey’s exuberant mood to settle. She was an excitable woman, brimming with energy, an impish light in her eyes. He wasn’t sure he could take anything she said with complete confidence. So far he’d not yet heard her slip into anything that resembled a tranquil tone.

  Maybe it was Garvey’s theatrical instincts that leapt a generation and fueled a love for drama in her grandsons. It sure hadn’t come from Thorn. And April seemed as understated and shy of the spotlight as anyone he knew.

  “Dee Dee, Sawyer, Gus, and Flynn. There’s your list of suspects.”

  “Suspects?”

  “All four of them wanted to know all about who you were. They saw how April was acting around you, then after you and the tattoo woman went off, they came over one by one and wanted to hear what I knew. So I told each of them the same thing; You two were old friends and you and the lady sheriff were investigating something dark and mysterious, and you were meeting April at Poblanos later on in the afternoon.

  “And all four of them have been up in that garage apartment any number of times. Sawyer and Dee Dee go up there to tango. Flynn stays over some nights when he wants some home cooking. Gus, he just wanders around wherever he pleases. How’m I doing? Am I being helpful?”

  “Very helpful, yes.”

  “Can you deputize me now?”

  “I don’t have the power to deputize.”

  “Posh,” Garvey said. “Don’t sell yourself short, big boy. I bet you could deputize just about any woman you wanted.”

  April cleared her throat. Standing in the kitchen doorway with a serious look.

  “When you’ve finished lunch, Thorn, I’d like to speak with you.”

  He excused himself and followed April into the front room opposite the study. The parlor was full of golden light filtering through gauzy curtains that stirred in a midday breeze. Nothing in the room matched, a comfortable hodgepodge. Mission-style wooden dinner chairs. Two plush velvet chairs, a throw rug woven in a variety of earth tones. A china cabinet full of photos and carved knickknacks. On one wall hung a portrait of a beautiful woman of twenty or so in a black dress, smiling mysteriously off to the right as if someone in the portrait room had caught her fancy. It was Garvey as a young lady, the mischief already taking root in her features.

  In a corner of the room was a flat-screen TV standing on an ornately carved table. The usual electronic accessories arrayed on the table beside it.

  Thorn chose a wingback chair next to the coffee table.

  April stood uncertainly in the doorway assembling her thoughts.

  “I’ll move out,” Thorn said. “Find somewhere else to stay.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  She eased into an ancient leather chair beside a front window. The angle of sunlight split her face in half, putting one side in shadow, the
other lit so harshly he could see the blue web of veins at her temple and a dusting of dark sideburn hair.

  Thorn settled back in the chair. He could walk away from this. Get in Buddha’s car and find a motel room. Work with Sheffield till they’d reeled in the Zentai Killer. Stay as long as that required and have nothing more to do with the Moss family.

  “I asked the boys to come over and meet you. Flynn should be here in a half hour or so. Sawyer’s out with Gus and Dee Dee on their yacht, cruising around the bay. He said he’d be over later, after supper.”

  “You told them about me.”

  “I told them a few things. Their father had appeared. A little about your background, how you live.”

  “And what do you want me to do, April?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to hide.”

  “So go. There’s time. It’s your call. If this feels wrong, just leave.”

  He sat and stared at the blank TV set.

  “But if you do decide you want to wait and meet them, I think you should take a look at something first.”

  Thorn glanced at the parlor doorway. Ten steps. Five more to the front door. A quick sprint to the car.

  “Look at what?”

  “Are you staying?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m here, I’m staying.”

  “I don’t want to prejudice you in any way. They’re wonderful young men, both of them, and Jeff too. But given the situation, why you’re here, the violence last night, I didn’t want to hide this from you. I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I thought you should know, then decide if Agent Sheffield should see it too.”

  She picked up the remote and switched on the TV, then clicked past the cable news channel the set was tuned to and brought up a blank screen.

  “It was the summer before their freshman year in high school. They were fourteen. There’d been problems in the house. Behavioral things. Acting out. Lots of screaming fights, moodiness, sulking, whole days when neither of them made more than a grunt. Refused to get out of bed and go to school. Sometimes it was Sawyer, sometimes it was Flynn. At first I thought it was just the adolescent hormone thing. And some of it was that, of course. But this was worse. This was scary. Depression, anger, screaming at me and Mother, calling us terrible names. Both of them taking turns.