Dead Cold

by Claire Stibbe

  A large fan sent out a strong current of air pounding against the couch and circulating a gray haze. A burly figure butted toward them, pulled back his cap to uncover dark hair flecked with gray.

  “Mr. Jesky?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Mind if we come in?”

  Jesky led them to the living room and turned off the fan. He tugged a newspaper out from under a pillow on the couch and waved it around to disperse the smoke. “Sorry about the smell. Bernie’s at church.”

  Temeke saw what was left of a small chicken on a cutting board, splayed out like a pinup girl and veneered in black sediment. He also saw a small bag on the living room carpet, unzipped and full of clothes.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Jesky looked down at the bag. “Yeah, I’ve got some business in Gallup.”

  “On a Sunday?”

  “Thought I’d get an early start.”

  “Normally park your truck in the road?”

  “I was halfway down the drive when Bernie called. Said there was a fire in the kitchen.”

  “She call from the house?”

  “Yes, sir, right before she left.”

  Jesky had to have had a phone for Bernie to call him. Had to have been in his truck. Temeke showed him the consent to search form. “I want to make you aware that any evidence found may be used in a criminal prosecution. Your consent is voluntary, sir. If you’d like to sign here.”

  “Yeah, I’ll sign,” Jesky said, reading the part about giving his consent freely and without coercion. He scribbled an intelligible signature.

  “Had you forgotten about the cell phone registered under Rover’s Insurance?” Temeke said. “The manager there confirmed it.”

  “Did she also tell you I’d lost it three days ago?”

  Temeke caught Malin’s eye and jerked his head toward the corridor. Malin took the hint and went into the next room.

  “Mind if my partner looks around?” Temeke saw Jesky hesitate and added, “Be over in a jiffy. Won’t hurt a bit.”

  “Help yourself.” Jesky flopped down in an easy chair, hand plucking at the tassels on a cushion.

  “What car does your wife drive?”

  “A Cavalier.”

  “Color?”

  “Silver.”

  “Let’s talk about Flynn,” Temeke said, hoping to get Jesky’s mind off a thud here and there, coming from somewhere down the corridor. If Malin’s snooping got any louder he’d give her a bloody roasting.

  “Flynn’s never done anything like this before, detective. Not since I’ve known him.”

  “Run away, you mean?” Temeke took the seat opposite.

  “Yeah. He’s not called neither.”

  “So, how long have you known Flynn?” Temeke glanced at two pictures on the wall behind the couch. Reproductions by a well-known artist and an abstract that could have been a lily or an intimate study of feminine genitalia. He’d seen several like it recently.

  “Since he was five. We moved here when his mom came back from Arizona. She’d been abandoned. His dad weren’t one for marriage or looking after a kid for that matter. Drank his way around the bars. God knows how he held down a job. Bernie couldn’t stand it no more and it wasn’t good for the boy.”

  “Where did they live?”

  “Sedona,” Jesky said.

  “Do you have an address?”

  “I don’t have a number but Bernie said it was somewhere along Schnebly Hill Road.”

  Temeke felt a fluttery, empty feeling in his stomach. Suzi Cornwell had gotten the National Park Aviation Service to scan the parks. Good luck to her, he thought. “Do you have a picture of the house?”

  “It weren’t a house really. More like a rusted out old railroad car. So, no, I don’t.”

  Temeke glanced at the picture propped against the lamp Malin had told him about. “Is that Flynn?”

  Jesky leaned over and picked up the photo. He stared at it for a while. “Needs a frame. That’s why I had it out. Taken a year before I met him and his mom.”

  Temeke reached out and took it. A child standing in front of a road sign as Malin had said. A child with brown curls and happy eyes.

  “Bernie took it the day they left Arizona,” Jesky murmured. “She did it for the boy.”

  “Do you think that’s where Flynn is?”

  “I doubt it. Like I say, his dad’s a drinker. Probably ain’t living there no more.”

  “It’s odd that an innocent man would do a runner after a fire,” Temeke said. “Your stepson’s not missing because in eight out of ten cases missing people usually turn up after a day or so.”

  “He probably thought you was all against him.”

  “Probably watched too much CSI. We’re nothing like CSI. Does he possess any firearms?”

  “I think he has a gun,” Jesky said. “Never seen it myself.”

  “In the house?”

  “I think so.”

  Then it was likely evidence now, only Temeke wasn’t going to speculate. “What kind of marriage did Flynn and Tarian have? I have to ask because there was a restraining order. Said something about assault.”

  “Assault? I never saw nothing bad.”

  “Have you ever considered Tarian might have been having an affair?”

  “I never saw nobody.”

  “Affairs are usually secret, Mr. Jesky. Not something we see. How often did Flynn see Rosie Ellis?”

  “He stayed with her for a few days until he went back to Tarian.”

  Temeke opened his mouth to pursue the point and then changed his mind. “Did you notice any changes of behavior before the fire? Any mood swings?”

  “He was a bit down now you mention it. He said Tarian’s OCD was getting to him.”

  “OCD?”

  “Likes to be kept in the loop, likes everything to be perfect, the house, the meals. Likes him to be home at exactly six o’clock.” Jesky seemed to shiver as if an ice cold draft drifted in through the open front door. It was fifty-eight degrees. “He’s really gone, hasn’t he?”

  “Under these circumstances we can only formulate a theory and I don’t have to tell you how bad it looks, Mr. Jesky. Have you tried calling him?”

  “I did, as a matter of fact, but I think his mobile’s switched off.”

  “Maybe he’s got a new number.” Temeke saw the grief he expected in Jesky’s eyes and the watchfulness he had not.

  The important questions a father usually asked had somehow escaped him and there was the matter of a second phone. Bernie called and said there was a fire. Lucky I was only down the street. Temeke shot Malin a look as she walked back into the living room, gripping what appeared to be a photograph album under her arm. She gave him a nod as if reading his mind, excused herself to make a call and closed the front door behind her.

  “Does Flynn have any identifying marks or scars on his body... offhand?”

  “There’s a mole on his top left thigh and a cut on the middle finger of his left hand. Left a deep scar.”

  “A gut feeling, Mr. Jesky,” Temeke continued. “Would you say Flynn running off was spontaneous or planned?”

  “I don’t know, detective. I’ve called all his friends and no one’s heard nothing.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  It was Monday morning when Flynn stood in the shower, hands trembling and fingers rattling the taps. Needles of water tapped against his head and shoulders, and the steam was making him nauseous. Even after drying himself, his chest seemed to be coated in a sheen of sweat and all he could do was lie on the bed and shiver. He closed his eyes.

  Three days before the fire and he was in the kitchen stirring a pan of teriyaki chicken and looking at the clock. Almost six fifteen. Almost time for dinner.

  Plates... which plates? White? Or green?

  He chose green. He liked green. Spooned the chicken on a bed of rice and poured two glasses of red wine. Lit two candles and waited.

  The front door slammed. The brief case thudded against the hall
chair and there she was, one hand raking her blonde curls and the other curled into a fist.

  “Are you stupid, or what?”

  He had no idea what she meant.

  “You don’t serve red wine with chicken. And the plates? White, for crying out loud. Always white with rice!”

  Was there such a rule?

  She took both plates and threw them against the countertop, raging and screaming and then erupting into tears. Hands over her face, she came up close and he thought she wanted comfort. Instead, she lifted her knee.

  A flash of lightning across his eyes and he hunched with the pain, grasping himself. The words were a blur now, but he knew they frightened him. Not as much as the knife in her hand. It was curved at the end with teeth at the base. He couldn’t recall how she slipped it from the block, whether she stepped backward when his eyes were closed.

  She waved it and then stabbed the air. It took no imagination to realize what she’d do if he tried to sidestep it. She was steaming now.

  He took a risk, twisted to one side and the slash when it came ripped through his upper arm, cutting him open from shoulder to elbow. He saw wide eyes and heard the moan before she rushed forward to cover the wound with bloody hands.

  The cell phone rattled on the bedside table and he opened his eyes. It was dark outside now. Seven fifty-three by the digital clock and he was lying naked on the quilt, TV blaring.

  Grabbing the remote, he muted the volume, mind already on autopilot. “Yeah,” he snapped.

  “Only me, son. You didn’t call. I was worried.”

  Flynn wasn’t sure he felt comfortable with Jesky saving the new number to his contacts. “You always worry.”

  “That’s what stepdads are for.”

  “How’s mom?”

  “She’s OK. She was happy about the wallpaper. Happy you called.”

  “Tell her there’s nothing much there. Rust and ruins. But I could feel him, you know.”

  “You staying there?” Jesky asked.

  “Nah, moved on.”

  “Listen, the cops have been here. They was asking questions. I can’t keep lying to them, son. You have to come home. Are you eating OK?”

  “Yeah, I’m eating.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  You can take away all these memories, Flynn thought, legs dangling over the side of the bed. His head dropped subconsciously and he studied his testicles. No longer swollen from the kicks and the beatings, but small and insignificant like she told him they were. A jumble of emotions welled up from a place he thought he’d kept padlocked and then the tears came. Jesky could likely hear them through the phone and like the patient, merciful man he was he hung on, listening, trying to understand. Must have been a whole sixty seconds before Flynn stopped sobbing and his eyes felt like they were filled with sand. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Better get it out of your system. Especially the part where you don’t have a watertight alibi. There’s this big billboard on I-25 near the hospital. You know, the one what used to be Psychic Anya. Well, it’s got your face on it now.”

  It was a direct hit to the brain. “Which picture did you give them this time?”

  “The one of you in them yellow swimming shorts. Plus the joint you had in your pocket, which you didn’t get from me.”

  Flynn remembered the joint. A scrawny roll-up if ever he saw one and secreted in one of Jesky’s drawers labeled, bolts, nuts and washers. He fired it up one sunny afternoon and the thing tasted of old socks. Probably been there since the fifties. Unfortunately, his mom rounded the corner with her usual efficiency and he thrust it in his pocket. It nearly burnt his rocks off.

  “Calm down. It was one of you when you was a kid. Now, are you coming or going?” Jesky asked.

  “There’s a small chance the police will arrest me. Why would I want to come home? It’s my life on the line. Heard the one about the husband who skipped town after his wife died?”

  “The wife he aced?” Jesky said. “Sure I have. Everybody has.”

  “I didn’t ace her. Someone must have done it while I was unconscious. See how it looks.”

  “Stranger things have happened. It could have been anyone.”

  “That narrows it down.”

  “Tell me again what happened?”

  Truth was, there wasn’t much to tell. But Flynn went through the routine one more time. This time the figure he’d seen through the smoke was holding something and it was that something he was afraid of.

  “I hate to ask this, son, but before it happened... were you and her intimate?”

  Flynn hesitated for a moment. He suddenly felt like a homeless person, miserably drunk and pushing a shopping cart of burdens through the city. “No.”

  He closed his eyes, hearing a scream echoing faintly in his mind and a nasty incident so loud it must have spilled out into the street.

  “She’d been working late again,” Flynn said. “It was Friday I think. I kept wondering if she’d had a car accident, an affair. When she turned up at two in the morning I plucked up courage and asked her. Made her flip. She threatened to cut me with a pair of shears if I ever pried into her private life again. Private life? I never had a private life. Every day felt like she was peering into my brain with a Maglite. Did you and mom ever keep secrets?”

  “What’s the point? You’re either married or you ain’t.”

  “Tarian kept secrets. Spread a few lies about me. Told her dad I was impotent. She told her dad a lot of things. She was a world-class snitch.”

  “Impotent?” Jesky asked. “Were you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s when your pump ain’t pumping and you’re shit out of gas.”

  Flynn cracked a smile. “I tried to bring some passion back into the marriage, anything to make her happy. Man, I even worked overtime to buy her a decent house.”

  “How was that working for you?”

  “Pretty well, actually. Until she started messing with Cliff Jaynes.”

  “So, it were true, what they said?”

  “Yeah. Gave her a taste for... different things.” There was a long stunned silence before Flynn choked out, “Let’s say she needed more than I could give her. And she was rough when she didn’t get it.”

  “Rough?”

  “Violent.”

  “Oh, son, I had no idea.”

  “And now... now the detectives, the papers, they’ll ring me out to dry.”

  “Did she have any enemies?” Jesky asked.

  “I would think a big-time bitch would have a few.”

  “Do you have any proof? Photos, police reports?”

  Flynn knew he’d have to face it sooner or later. There was no use giving the excuse his brain wasn’t turning over like it used to, no point avoiding it any more.

  There were videos. Even the time when Tarian ripped open his arm like a zipper in the shed, the vision had followed him everywhere. Protective little Rosie would account for the scars, tell the police exactly how he had got them. But without the videos there was no proof Tarian did it.

  “No.” Flynn felt his mind wandering and the room seemed to shift around him. “All lost in the fire.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Flynn grabbed a dangle of clean clothes from the heater and stuffed them in his backpack. His attention was wrenched to the crunch of car tires on the gravel outside and he twitched at the blinds for a better look. A black Range Rover made a rapid U-turn before coming to stop in the middle of the parking lot. The windows were heavily tinted and he couldn’t see the driver.

  A door slammed. Then another. Three suits walked toward the office, Oakley’s gleaming in the sun. It was law enforcement alright, as to which branch he couldn’t tell. FBI could find a cockroach in a sewer and there was no point hiking out the back. He caught a glimpse of the manager standing in the doorway, head nodding and hands pointing to an upper terrace and then to the main road.

  Flynn crouched, eyes darting from left to right
and one leg back like an athlete locking into his blocks before a race. One man walked calmly back to the Range Rover, eyes running along the parapets of the motel and scoping every door, while the others took the steps to the terrace.

  Could they see the bike backed up at the side of the building? Did they know he had bike?

  The worst question he could possibly ask himself was whether Jesky’s work phone had a trace. He wasn’t the tidiest of squirrels and wouldn’t have noticed if anything had been moved in his truck. Flynn felt the vomit rising in his throat and he gulped a lungful of air to push down the nausea. He needed to get as far away as he could from this fugitive hell. If only he could find Abe.

  He stuffed his belongings into his backpack, opened the door a crack and squinted out at the parking lot. The third man was no longer standing by the car but standing by the front office with his back to Flynn. He seemed to be studying his cell phone.

  Flynn carefully closed the door and backed up a few steps toward the corner of the building. All the while racking his brains as to why the police still hadn’t found Tarian’s killer. What was taking them so long? Why waste time following him?

  Because, dumbass, you’re the next of kin.

  Back against the wall, he took a deep breath and listened to the crunch of gravel trying to determine the direction. It was getting distant, the man was walking toward the front office.

  Flynn wheeled the bike away from the side of the building and down between the trees to a thin carpet of sage that sloped to the road. The same stretch of wasteland he’d seen on the way in. He part-staggered, part-pushed the bike to the sidewalk hearing a boom of traffic as it accelerated up the hill. Patting on his helmet, he swung a leg over the saddle, heart threatening to burst through his chest. Just as a Harley Davidson growled its way around the corner, Flynn reared out into the street and gunned it to Route 89 and Foothills drive.

  The parking lot of Arizona Oncology wasn’t as packed as he expected and he parked in a narrow lane reserved for a bike. A young man leaned against the driver’s door of a white sedan tapping out a message on his cell phone. He gave the bike an assessing frown, body language calm and confident and not the type to have a badge in his belt, or an illegal firearm with a quality silencer.