It occurred to Malin why she distrusted Rosie, why she was fuming with rage when she met her. Rosie was too sweet, more than anyone could guess. She had it all worked out. And Temeke could go to hell for all his fawning and his gawping because women aren’t stupid. They know the power they have, the power to trick even the sharpest mind and turn it inside out. What’s the betting Temeke sides with the one person who could have lit that match? The one person who was running around town like a plucked goose twisting the truth for all it was worth.
“How much did Tarian stand to inherit? In your will, that is?” she asked.
“The house, the business. I would estimate seventeen million.”
“You mentioned earlier Cliff and Tarian were addicts. Was she paying for those drugs?”
“He was hurting for money. Lost everything on the horses. It’s possible. Tarian was a fool.”
Malin was surprised to hear a father put down his own daughter. “Did you buy the house Tarian and Flynn lived in?”
“Yes,” Rich said, “I bought it outright. I tried to help them whenever I could. Flynn didn’t like it. Wanted to do it all the old fashioned way, wanted Tarian to live life in the modest lane. I respected him for that.”
So deceptively humble. Malin watched as Rich folded large hands across one thigh, eyes distant. With seventeen million on the horizon what’s the betting McCann married Tarian for the money? What’s the betting Cliff was banking on a handout too? “Do you mind me asking whose name is on the title?”
“Mine,” he said. “And yes, I’ll be the one stuck with the homeowner’s insurance.”
“Did either Flynn or Tarian know about the title?”
“I made sure they didn’t. Especially given the relationship my daughter was having with Cliff Jaynes.”
For a while Malin stared at the crackling fire in silence and she wondered if she had understood the whole thing wrong. Did Flynn suspect Tarian and Cliff were in it for the money? Did he even have a clue?
“It hurts me that she had to go through all of this. The fire...” Rich said, voice wavering between a sob and a whisper. “Miley won’t talk about it. She prefers to believe Tarian didn’t suffer, wouldn’t have felt a thing. But it’s not true, is it? She would have been in agony.”
Malin’s throat went dry and she couldn’t have answered even if she tried. He looked intently at the fireplace and at the glowing logs, and made no attempt to relight it. Probably saw a ghost amongst the ashes, a face he once knew.
Then he sucked at the air as if he couldn’t get enough oxygen into his lungs. “She’s dead. That’s what I have to keep telling myself. My only child is dead.”
A log shattered into a gray pile of ash in the hearth as the last spark blinked out.
FORTY
It was two-thirty in the afternoon when they turned onto the freeway. Flynn took a small swallow from a bottle of water and looked down at the photo in his lap. He just wished his life would get to the bit where it all made sense. Despite never finding the right words to describe Tarian he knew she would go to any lengths to get what she wanted. Cliff, on the other hand, was devious enough to rip off his own mother. Cheating with someone else’s wife meant nothing to him.
“Hungry?” Jesky asked, scrunching the remains of his breakfast into a tight ball and tossing it into the back of the truck.
“Don’t feel like eating.”
“You OK?”
“I’m fine,” Flynn said. “Her funeral’s on Saturday. Rosie said there had been a change of time.”
“That’s what I heard.” Jesky tilted his head back to empty the dregs of his coke. “Something to do with crowd control. Your mom’s taken it bad, son. Hell of a time for her. Can’t stand the sound of her crying. Honest to God I think I’m gonna break.”
There was silence for a while and then it was Flynn’s turn to say how sorry he was. He kept fumbling with his thoughts, turning scenarios over in his head and wondering why life was such interminable hell. Why he loved and hated all at once. Why he missed the one person who made it so.
“Can’t help wondering what dying’s like.”
“You’ll have some idea when you’re a few minutes from finding out yourself, son. When I think about it, which is quite often, it must be like leaving behind a cracked and drafty old house. Then you step into one of them mansions where all the lights work and it’s warm for once. They say you get a new skin and all, which is a good thing since I’ve never felt much at home in mine.”
Flynn agreed. He hadn’t felt much at home in anything for the last week and a half. He could empathize.
“Sorry’s a useless word, isn’t it? I mean, you can say sorry to someone but it’s never enough. Who knows how it feels.”
“The pain?” Flynn said. “It’s indescribable.”
“Tell me what happened that night, son. I wanna know.”
How was Flynn supposed to tell him? That Tarian was likely in the hell where people burn. Jesky wouldn’t understand. No one would. Then he remembered Tarian knew what it was like to feel the red-hot bite of flames and that was good enough for him. “Details?” he asked.
“If you like.”
Flynn realized he owed Jesky the details. The fire, the smoke, the pulsing smoke alarm. Then the loud splitting of wood as half the ceiling came down. The telling took all of fifteen minutes, interrupted sometimes by the occasional question.
“Any idea how it started?”
Flynn rubbed his temples and took a breath. “It’s anyone’s guess.”
Both of them looked up at the black clouds boiling overhead and for a moment the sight of the approaching storm seemed to hold them in a trance.
“I should have run through the smoke. Woke her up. Got to her somehow.”
“Don’t second guess yourself, son. You couldn’t have done anything. Leave that for smarter minds. Not unless you’re frigging superman. Had a gasmask? Nah, nobody does. And we can’t see into the future in case you were wondering. We don’t know what’s gonna happen twenty minutes from now.”
Flynn hadn’t told him the whole story. Hell, he hadn’t even told him half. “It’s hard to believe she’s gone.”
“I bet you think about it all the time,” Jesky said.
You have no idea.
“I can’t pretend it’s not a terrible way to die, son.”
There was another pause and Flynn wondered if Jesky wished he could take back that comment. He said nothing and that was stranger still.
“Sometimes I don’t know what to do. Where to go.” Flynn wiped a tear away with the heel of his hand and stared at a trail of traffic cones ahead. His gut was all twisted inside and he was surprised at how empty he felt. “I’m sorry.”
“A few tears doesn’t make you a wuss, now does it?”
“No, I don’t suppose it does.”
“You need to get it all out, son.”
“Do I?”
“And you need to rest,” Jesky said, slowing down behind the last car and idling for a moment.
There were times when Flynn heard her voice droning in the late afternoons. He couldn’t remember how he responded, whether it was just a sigh, a nod, an OK.
Make sure there’s no red onions in the salad, Flynn, and none of that disgusting raspberry dressing. Don’t be late and by that I mean get there ten minutes early. Wear a tie. Real men wear ties. Drink red wine. Jeans? They’re so ‘homeless’. Can’t you dress up? Don’t you know anything?
She was like a schoolmarm, dismissive, hurtful, distant. Flynn didn’t function well around drama queens, especially those who vented resentment with a dashing of tears. It brought out the worst in him.
He knew what she and Cliff had was different. A watered down version of what she did to him. Cliff didn’t have to beg, go down on his knees, ask to be untied. He would not have wanted it to stop. He was a crackhead. Probably saw Ren and Stimpy every day of the week and for someone with a limited range of emotion it was hard to imagine him purring in the bedroom. L
et alone allowing himself to be tickled with a whip. He was a tennis player, had a degree in business studies.
Flynn stared down at the car beside them, a white Chevrolet with a girl in the back. She was probably about sixteen or seventeen rubbernecking at all the passing cars. Her gaze suddenly locked onto his, dreamy like as if she thought he was cute. He turned his head away and put the photograph back in the glove box.
He was lulled by the rumbling engine as it sparked back into life and the cars began to move again.
“I could sleep for a year,” he murmured.
“Go ahead. Traffic can be a wild card. We could be here for hours.”
When his eyes snapped open again Jesky was still driving and Flynn wondered if he had zoned in and out for a few short bursts. It wasn’t until they stopped outside the Beefalo Steakhouse in Laguna that he realized he had slept for nearly an hour and a half.
They pulled into a busy parking lot and Jesky was talking about the burgers being the best in the United States, a wedge of meat almost an inch thick and dripping with green chile.
“Got something special in that chile, a big kick that’s got half the town addicted.”
Flynn liked the sound of it because he knew Tarian would hate it. Beer and burgers. “I can’t go in,” he reminded.
“It’s OK, son. I’ve got it covered.”
There was something in the way Jesky said it, something that said, You’ll be OK. And Flynn liked that.
FORTY-ONE
“Hard at work, I see,” Temeke said, throwing his jacket over the back of the chair and dropping his phone on the desk.
Malin lifted one of her elegantly formed brows and allowed the room to infuse with her mood. She was wearing khakis and a beige polo shirt and for some reason he connected the look with a deputy Sheriff.
“I saw Richard Walley-Bennett. Nice man. Nice house. You should know the burned out property on Vista Bella belonged to him,” she said. “Paid in full. He made sure neither Tarian nor Flynn knew their names weren’t on the title.”
Temeke sat down. He was always amazed at how Malin gained access into places he could only dream of. Took turns playing different characters: nice detective, dirty detective, to see what got the best results. She had nerves of steel. “What about the homeowner’s insurance?”
“Since the homeowner was not financially strapped and he had no liens or other mortgages, the insurer might pay the claim. But only if the homeowner can prove he didn’t do it himself, or hire someone else to set fire to the house.” Malin blew into a frothy cup of coffee. “Matt Black called.”
“And?”
“He found a small camera inside that Barbie doll. They’re processing the pictures now.”
Temeke gave her one of those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding looks and tried to remain steely calm. He half heard her voice and half rejected what she’d said. Just when he was hoping for another boring evening of paperwork forensics she had to drop that hint of good news.
“Sir, McCann used to work for Spytech Security. I checked his old job description. He was a covert surveillance specialist, fitted those battery powered, motion activated cameras to alarm clocks, smoke detectors, anything. In this case a child’s doll. Matt says these cameras record 1280 x 720 HD video and in low lighting. We’re bound to find something. Makes you wonder why we don’t go off and do a little investigating of our own.”
“Not possible. Not with dispatch firing up their tracking screen to find our vehicle location. GPS can be a bitch. That’s why we have Hammond.”
“He called finally,” she said. “Said his phone’s old. Doesn’t keep a charge.”
Temeke knew there was nothing wrong with Hammond’s phone and he wasn’t buying him a new one. “I bet he was spotted hurtling across the road and shivering to a halt outside the restaurant. McCann’s probably on to him.”
“A red Cutlass does stick out like a sore thumb, sir.”
It was Temeke’s turn to laugh as he twirled a hand through the air to move her along.
“He said McCann was picked up a little before two thirty yesterday afternoon by a man in a dark gray F-250,” she said. “Registered to Mr. Drew Jesky. They were headed east on I-40.”
“East? Back here?”
“Must have had a change of heart,” she said. “Might be coming back for the funeral.”
“What was McCann doing in Gallup?” Temeke took out a pack of cigarettes and laid it on his desk. He forced down restlessness, the sudden feeling that he needed to be outside. Looking. Hunting.
“Apparently, he went to Octavia Fellin Library on East Hill Avenue, sir. Wrote me a lovely email telling me where the bike was, looked up an article from the Duke City Journal on the computer. Then left.”
“Which article?”
“The one that named him as a person of interest.”
“How did he appear?” Temeke asked.
“Jumpy.”
“Then he’s keeping an eye on things. He’s alert.”
“Are you going to tell Hackett you put a tail on McCann, sir? Because all this unrestricted surveillance amounts to stalking.”
“No, of course I’m sodding not.” Temeke vented his annoyance by flipping open the packet and stuffing a cigarette between his lips. For a disoriented second he nearly lit up.
“It also amounts to a lack of confidence in Suzi. If she finds out—”
“She won’t find out,” he said. “She doesn’t even know what Hammond looks like. Talking of stalkers, we’ll be watching Rosie Ellis tonight. Might want to get a takeout from BadA$$ Café on the way. They do free meals for law enforcement on Fridays. Mind if I smoke?”
“As a matter of fact, sir, I do. There are two of us in this office and the windows don’t open.”
Temeke felt the skin on his scalp prickle and there was a ringing in his ears.
“Another thing,” she said. “You do realize the tar level of cigarettes is the deadly culprit behind lung cancer?”
“Where’s all this bluster coming from? You don’t strike me as a nagger.”
“So you might want to consider giving up. Because it’s not only your lungs at risk. It’s mine too.”
“That’s all I need. A bloody smoke monitor in the office.” He wanted to shut his ears to all her moaning but he knew she was right. Maybe a nicotine patch would help.
“Maybe that’s why your wife left you,” she said.
“You know why she left me,” he said, cigarette dangling between his fingers. “And it’s got sod all to do with smoking.”
It had snowed the day Serena left, large shovel loads of it on the driveway which turned his fingers blue. He turned back the mental clock, saw her coming out to join him on the patio while he dragged about half a pack’s worth into his lungs. Sheathed in a fur coat and fingers wrapped around a cup of herbal tea, her lips flapped faster than usual. Red lips that opened wider and wider and spewed out a cloud of warm breath against his cheek. What she said he couldn’t recall but he remembered the part about her leaving, the part where she couldn’t take it anymore. What was it? His preoccupation with the job? Always mentally on duty with nights away from home and call-outs outside of his regular shift. She had never been able to shelve the resentment.
As for PTSD, it came and went. He hated the rapid breathing and the muffled ringing in his ears and he would hold on to something, anything to stop that spinning in his head. Then he’d squeeze his eyes shut so he couldn’t see that face, the one victim he never forgot.
Little Kizzy Williams.
The phone rumbled on his desk, did a nice half-turn before he grabbed it. Harry Hammond.
“Talk of the devil, where the heck are you?” Temeke growled, twisting the cigarette in his hand so he could see his watch.
“Did she tell you about my phone call?”
“Malin, you mean? Yeah, she told me. Anything else?”
“A friend over at Gallup PD told me they had a call from a man on I-40 whose daughter gave a positive ID,” Hammond said
. “Saw him hunkering down in the passenger seat, recognized his face from the paper. Described the truck right down to the business logo for Rovers Insurance.”
“And now?”
“I’m outside a Steakhouse in Laguna. They’re talking and eating in the truck. Seems McCann’s lost his appetite. Only taken two bites of that burger he’s eating.”
“And the truck driver?”
“Mr. Jesky? Clearly he’s a bright spark. Remember the pump malfunction at the Coors Gas Station on Quail road last year, the one where some dumbass dropped a lighted cigarette in a puddle of gas? Same guy.”
FORTY-TWO
Flynn stared out onto a barren landscape where a line of telephone poles snaked through sand and sage. A pale yellow sun glanced off the windshield exposing dead insects and water spots, and the smears under the wiper blades were hard to see through.
Lightwalk Ministries were wrapping up a sermon on the afternoon radio. It was Jesky’s favorite show and he wanted to sit in the parking lot, sucking on that burger until it was over. Pastor Razz had one of those voices that reached inside your head and trickled down to your chest like a warm whisky. How in being sinful we fail, in sickness we hurt and as mortals we ultimately die. How easily we are threatened and offended by people, how disease and death haunts us. The pastor finished with a dose of Psalm 46: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."
Flynn was in big trouble and he didn’t want to think about any of it. If only it was just a jumble of regular thoughts, like a joke or a mind game.
Someone pinch me.
There was no sign of the man he’d seen outside the elevator and in the library, but Flynn had a gut feeling he was law enforcement. Later in the gallery parking lot, circling like a shark fin briefly spotted, then lost beneath the surface.
“Glad to see you’re eating.” Jesky said, turning off the radio. “I know you’re kinda worried. But you’ll be OK.”
Dead Cold Page 22
