Pattern of Wounds drm-2

by J. Mark Bertrand

  She’s right and wrong at the same time. I did hole up with Bodeen, grateful to see a familiar face in that sea of reptiles. He’d been happy to see me, too. Over the past few years he might have gained a lot of weight and lost a lot of hair, but he was the same wisecracking cynic who had put a bruise between my shoulder blades after the Fauk jury came back with its verdict, saying this could be the start of a beautiful friendship. Him and me, putting the bad guys behind bars. Only it didn’t turn out like that. Our first case together was also our last.

  “We weren’t reliving the past. In fact, we were actually talking about you.”

  Her eyebrows rise. “What about me?”

  “I forgot all about it until just now. According to him, your firm is in some kind of financial trouble. It’s common knowledge, he said. There are even people blogging about it.” As I speak, she takes a sudden interest in her coffee. “I told him that couldn’t be right or I’d have heard about it.”

  She winces. “You said that?”

  “Not really, no. I thought it, though. But I acted like I knew what he was talking about. It would have been embarrassing otherwise.”

  “Oh, Roland, I’m sorry,” she says, taking my hand. “The only reason I haven’t said anything is that I didn’t want you to worry.”

  “So things must be pretty bad.”

  “Bad enough. I’m glad I left when I did.”

  “But what about your contract work? Is that in danger now? I mean, I guess you don’t need the money, but still-”

  “Nothing’s in danger. And don’t talk like that about money. I love what I do. It’s not about the money.”

  “It’s always about the money,” I say.

  “You don’t believe in my idealism, is that it? Then why don’t we both chuck the jobs and sell the house. That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to do for forever. We could retire. We could live on what we have and we could travel. Enjoy ourselves.”

  “Our twilight years? No, thanks. I’m not ready for the scrap heap yet.”

  “Like you said, we don’t need the money.”

  That’s not what I said. I said she doesn’t. I never think of her money as mine and probably never will.

  “It’s not. .” My voice trails off.

  She jabs a finger into my arm, laughing triumphantly. “Exactly! It’s not about the money. That’s what you were going to say. You don’t work like you do for the money, and neither do I.”

  “It’s different, though.”

  “Why?”

  “What I do,” I say, “it doesn’t require an idealist. This job won’t let you be one.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, baby. You are one.” She hops off the stool and kisses my neck, slipping past me toward the stairs. “I’ve gotta get ready, too. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re breaking all our plans for the weekend.”

  “All our plans?”

  “It’s Sunday,” she calls from the landing. “You promised you’d go with me to church.”

  “Oh,” I say under my breath. “That.”

  The shower starts upstairs and I toss my camera and The Kingwood Killing into my briefcase. According to the microwave clock, it’s already ten after seven. I need to get back to Aguilar. I don’t want him bringing Jason Young in without me.

  I find Aguilar in Meyerland sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot across from Jason Young’s apartment, a bag from New York Bagels open in his lap. He’s positioned with a view down Dunlap, and as soon as I’m in the passenger seat he points out a red pickup parked on the road.

  “That’s him,” he says. “Rolled up maybe five minutes ago and went inside.”

  “You should have called me.”

  “Why, weren’t you coming? Anyway, I was going to once I finished breakfast. Here, I got you something.”

  He passes the bag across. Before I can decline, the smell of warm, fresh bagels gets the better of me and I reach inside.

  “We’ll get him in a second.”

  “I been thinking,” Aguilar says. “When he went inside, he kinda looked like he was in a hurry. I got the impression he’d be coming back out.”

  “And?”

  “And if he does, maybe we should follow him, see where he’s in such a hurry to get to.”

  “All right,” I say, taking a bite.

  We have to wait another fifteen minutes, but then Aguilar sits up straight, calling attention to a dark-haired, compact man heading for the pickup. He wears a cotton field jacket, jeans, and a pair of tan work boots, casual but neat. Even from down the street I can see something’s wrong with his face.

  “Does that look like bruising to you?” I ask.

  Aguilar grunts. “Maybe she did fight back.”

  “The ME says no to that. Not that Green would commit before the autopsy, but I could tell what she was thinking. The stab wound to the heart was the fatal one, and probably the first to be delivered. He came up from behind, probably cupped a hand over her mouth, and stabbed her in the chest, holding the knife in an ice-pick grip.”

  “Makes sense,” he says. “But somebody laid into the man.”

  “We’ll have to ask him about that.”

  Young pulls the truck door shut and gets going. He drives up Dunlap and puts his right blinker on to turn at Queensloch. Once he reaches Hillcroft, tapping the brakes, Aguilar starts after him. We keep a few car lengths between us, but there’s not much traffic around at a quarter to nine on a Sunday morning. If he’s jumpy, there’s not much we can do to prevent him from spotting us, but that’s always the case with a one-car tail. To do it right, you need a team-or better yet, an eye in the sky. I tell myself not to worry, though, because nine times out of ten the possibility that he’s being followed never occurs to a suspect. That logic aside, I can feel my adrenaline pumping. Next to me, Aguilar grips the wheel tight.

  Young crosses Braeswood and Beechnut, finally taking a right on Bissonnet all the way to the Loop. Aguilar gives me a look, but I say nothing. We trail him to Buffalo Speedway, where he hits a red light. A Honda hatchback stops behind him, and we stack up on its bumper.

  “Is he taking us where I think he’s taking us?”

  Aguilar lets out a breath but doesn’t answer.

  The light changes and we crawl forward.

  “He’ll turn on Belmont,” I say.

  But he doesn’t.

  “He’ll turn on Wakeforest.”

  But again, he doesn’t. We’re skirting West U., expecting any minute for Young to take the right turn that will lead directly and inevitably to our crime scene. At Kirby, though, he puts the left blinker on, heading away from the house, crossing under Highway 59.

  “That’s a roundabout way of getting here,” I say. “Do you think he was heading to the scene and changed his mind? Maybe he spotted us?”

  Aguilar shrugs. “If my wife left me and that’s where she was staying, maybe I’d take detours, too.”

  “Maybe, but he didn’t actually turn. It’s like he was heading that way out of habit, then realized he can’t do that anymore. Not after what he did to her last night.”

  He takes Kirby to Westheimer, then cuts across to Shepherd and takes another left, leading us across Allen Parkway and Interstate 10 and farther north. In sight of the North Loop, he pulls into a strip center parking lot and stops. Aguilar keeps going, but I crane my neck to keep an eye on him. We circle round, edging into the far side of the lot.

  “He’s getting out,” I say.

  Young’s door pops open and he slides to the ground. He doubles over, one hand still hanging on to the door handle. After a couple of dry heaves, he vomits onto the pavement.

  “I’m not believing this.” Aguilar laughs. “This is our guy.”

  Wiping his mouth, Young gets back in the truck and keeps going. We follow him under 610. After a series of turns, he pulls into a full parking lot, weaving through a stream of coated pedestrians hunched over by the brisk wind. The building on the far side of the lot has a round central window divide
d into quarters by a masonry cross.

  “Looks like I’m going to church after all,” I say.

  Young parks his truck near the back of the lot and gets out, pausing at the tailgate to let a couple of arriving cars pass. We’re the last in line.

  “Stop the car,” I tell Aguilar. “I’m not letting him go in.”

  He jerks to a halt right in front of Young, throws the car in park, and has his badge out before I can even make it around to the driver’s side. He’s already into his spiel before I walk up, telling a startled Young that we’re the police and we need his cooperation on an important matter. He doesn’t mention the specifics, though, not wanting to give anything away.

  “I don’t understand,” Young says. His lip sports a fresh cut and there’s a purple crosshatched scrape along the jawline. He clutches a scuffed Bible in one hand. I notice cuts and bruising on his knuckles, too. “Did I run a light or something?”

  “We need your assistance, sir.” Aguilar puts a friendly but firm hand on his shoulder. “We’re making inquiries and I think you can help us. You’re willing to do that, aren’t you, sir? To help the police?”

  Young nods slowly. “Of course.”

  “Are you all right, sir?” I ask. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”

  “You should see the other guy.” He gives me a queasy smile that only gets queasier when I don’t return it. “No, I’m okay. It’s nothing.”

  It doesn’t look like nothing. Young’s eyes are red-rimmed and watery, and there’s a feverish pallor to his skin. Symptoms of flu, perhaps, though my money’s on stress. The stress of getting caught so soon.

  “Is there anything you need from your vehicle?”

  He glances at the truck, then me, not comprehending.

  “We’re gonna need you to accompany us,” Aguilar says.

  “To go with you? I can’t leave my truck. Maybe I could follow you.”

  I jab my thumb at the church. “I’m sure nobody will bother it here. Now, is there anything you need to get?”

  He moves like he’s in a trance, pulling open the driver’s door, looking inside like he’s never seen the truck’s interior before. I glance over his shoulder. Simone Walker’s clothes were missing from the scene, and so were her laptop and cell phone. According to Dr. Hill, she often took them out with her when she smoked, sitting at the outside table to answer email and update her Facebook page. No sign of any of that in the truck cabin, though.

  Aguilar pops open the passenger door. “Anything I can help you with?”

  “No,” Young says. “No, thanks.”

  He takes nothing from the truck, only deposits the Bible on the dash. When he locks up, he has to use the key. Either there’s no automatic opener or it doesn’t work.

  “Okay,” he says.

  I open the back door for him. He starts to get in, then pauses, conscious of the churchgoers watching on the periphery. His pale cheeks redden and he hurries into the car, pulling the door shut himself. Aguilar and I exchange a look over the roof. We’re taking a chance not putting him under arrest or even patting him down. But it’s a calculated risk. He knows what he did, but he doesn’t know whether we know. He doesn’t know how much we know. As long as he believes there’s a shot at getting out of this, he’s still liable to talk. Technically he’s just a witness, a person of interest helping with our investigation. If we read him his rights and treat him like a suspect, he’s not going to give us a thing.

  We get inside and close the doors.

  “You all right back there?” I ask.

  “I’m fine,” he says, nodding for emphasis.

  I trade another look with Aguilar. Young hasn’t asked why we want to talk to him. Either he’s very trusting or he already knows.

  The man who drowned his own father in the bathtub last night is sitting in Interview Room 1 with Jerry Lorenz, one of the greenhorns on our shift. So I install Young in Interview 2 with promises of coffee and breakfast muffins on my return. Down the hallway I find Lt. Bascombe in front of the monitors. He sends Aguilar off to his cubicle for a much-needed nap and beckons me into the room.

  “And shut the door behind you.”

  He’s set on interfering, I can tell.

  On one screen, Young has his elbows on the table, hands folded, gazing blandly at the four corners of the room. On the other, Lorenz paces back and forth while his suspect, a fragile-looking man in a stained guayabera, cradles his face in his hands.

  “That looks like it’s going well,” I say.

  “This is what I like, March. Fresh homicides on a Sunday morning. Overtime for everybody, suspects for everybody, closures for everybody. We even have a name for the shooter on Antoine. When we pick him up, we’ll be three for three-assuming the glove fits for Mr. Jason Young.”

  “It fits,” I say. “We tailed him before picking him up, and he just about led us back to the scene. Then he veers off and starts heading north, where he pulls into a parking lot and dumps his breakfast onto the pavement.”

  “And you got him going into a church? That sounds like a guilty conscience to me.”

  I nod. “It’ll sound that way to the jury, too. He didn’t even ask why we brought him in. He just came.”

  “ ’Cause the boy knows he done wrong,” Bascombe says, breaking into a smile. “Now, are you ready to have a go at him?”

  “I think so. We got a look in his truck and didn’t see anything, but I’d like to get a warrant to search his apartment.”

  “I thought he didn’t get home until this morning, and Aguilar saw him go inside. There’s nothing in there.”

  “He could have come and gone anytime yesterday. I still don’t have a firm time of death.”

  “Go look on your desk,” he says. “The autopsy’s this afternoon, but Dr. Green gave me some preliminary info over the phone.”

  “She did?”

  “When you need something special from the ME, you just call your brother-in-law. When I need something special, I use my charm.”

  “Charm. I’ll have to try that.”

  “There’s something else on your desk, too,” Bascombe says. “You left a message with your victim’s mother? Well, she called back. I spared you the hassle of doing the notification, but she’s coming down here to give a statement. She brought your suspect’s name up and said she’s positive he’s the one.”

  “Really? So maybe I need to hold off on talking to him and see what she can give me first. The more information I have, the better.”

  “It’s your call.” He glances back at the monitor and his smile fades. “Listen, March. That penguin suit last night, what was that all about?”

  “Charlotte’s firm hosted a Christmas thing and she promised conjugal relations in exchange for my attendance. So thanks for ruining that.”

  “Don’t blame me,” he says, pointing at the monitor. “Take it out on him. But the question I wanted to ask is, did you see the captain at this party?”

  “Hedges? No, why?”

  He shakes his head. “No reason.”

  “Come on, Lieutenant. You asked for a reason.”

  “Let it drop.”

  “He never showed last night at the scene,” I say. “That was a little odd.”

  “We had our hands full last night. Don’t make a big thing out of it. I was just wondering if you two ran in the same circles is all.”

  But that’s not all. I can tell. He dismisses me and I go straight to the captain’s office, which is dark and locked tight. Of course it is. If he’s not going to show on a Saturday night, don’t expect him bright and bushy come Sunday morning. I go to my desk and read over the notes from the medical examiner’s office, but the whole time the lieutenant’s question eats away at me. Why would he think Hedges was at the party? Why would he shut down so quick when I asked him about it? One minute I think we have a good relationship finally, and the next he’s bawling me out in front of outsiders.

  I’m still thinking it over when my phone lights up.
>
  “Detective March? There’s a visitor in reception for you-Candace Walker?”

  The victim’s mother. “I’ll be right down.”

  “I want to see her, please,” she says.

  “Your daughter’s not here, Mrs. Walker. We can arrange for you to see her, though. That won’t be a problem. You can see her when she’s ready.”

  When she’s ready. The woman swallows the euphemism down and I can see her mind chewing on it, working out what it must mean for Simone not to be ready now. She sucks in her hollow cheeks, her eyes fluttering.

  If Joy Hill had a sister, a shrunken, shriveled sibling who’d gotten none of the breaks, who lived badly and suffered and made all the wrong choices, she would be a dead ringer for Simone’s mother. The resemblance between the two women is striking enough to make me wonder about Simone, what her motives were for living under Dr. Hill’s roof. Where Hill comes off as rather attractively dissipated, aged by the good life, lanky and at ease in her skin, Candace Walker is hard and grating, her mouth twisted into an involuntary frown.

  Of course, she just learned in the past ninety minutes or so that her only daughter was brutally murdered, probably after having been sexually assaulted. Under the circumstances, maybe she looks just right.

  “It’s all right, ma’am,” I say, my hand on her elbow to guide her. “We’ll take this elevator right here.”

  She’s quiet on the way up to the sixth floor. I let her through the Homicide Division door, leading her away from the interview rooms toward the lieutenant’s office, since he’s volunteered to sit in. She trails behind me, not paying much attention to her surroundings, still preoccupied with her grief. If she knew about Young’s presence, her demeanor might change.

  Bascombe stands at the door, leaning forward to take her hand. She withers before him and draws her hand back, not paying attention to what he’s saying. I see the hardness in her mouth and know why. It’s because he’s black. He sees it, too, but doesn’t take any notice, ushering her inside and onto the soft couch near the door.