River of Glass

by Jaden Terrell

  “Who talked to him?”

  She blew out a frustrated breath. “I know where you’re going with this, but you’re wrong. He was on the road the night it happened, gave us the name and number of the coworker he was traveling with—a coworker who, you might want to know, vouched for him 100 percent. He even let the detectives take samples from his car. No blood, no hairs that might have matched the victim’s. It was as clean as my grandmother’s soap dish.”

  “Too clean?”

  “Nothing that tripped anybody’s radar. Your witness, either she didn’t see what she thought she saw, or she remembered it wrong.”

  “She could have missed the color of the car. Maybe misread a number. Probably got the bumper sticker right, though.”

  “Odds are. But that’s a dead end. There’s no way to track how many people might have that same sticker or who they might be.”

  “Did you Luminol the car?”

  “Jesus, McKean. We have a witness placing Decker someplace else. We have a passenger side floor mat with no trace of blood. And according to your own witness, even if he was the guy, the victim was alive when he left her. He didn’t even see the suspect. Why would we Luminol the car?”

  I laid my forehead against the steering wheel. “What about the flight manifests and the video footage at the airport?”

  “If she was on that flight—or any flight that week—he brought her in under a fake ID. The video is worthless. We can see a girl who might be your girl, but the man she was with is a cipher. He’s either the luckiest man on the planet, or he knew where the cameras would be.”

  “He’s a pro, then.”

  “Stating the obvious is sort of a hobby of yours, isn’t it?”

  “Just keeping things clear.”

  “Besides, she looked willing enough. Kind of gooey-eyed and smiling.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it is until they tie you up and sell you to the highest bidder.”

  “Is that all? Because we really have our hands full right now. There was another one this morning.”

  “Shit. Bomb or bullet?”

  “Bullet.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Another cop on the list and two more in the blue-and-white out front. You didn’t see it on the news?”

  “I haven’t turned the TV on today.”

  “Only the die-hard antiestablishment types are still calling this guy Mr. Clean.”

  “What’s everybody else calling him now?”

  “The Executioner.”

  He would have liked that. “Sexier than Mr. Clean,” I said.

  “Yeah, I bet he got a hard-on when he heard it.”

  I thanked her and signed off. Told Khanh what Malone had said and watched the hope drain out of her face. “Mr. Decker not man in car?”

  “Sounds like no.”

  “Say have alibi. Mean what?”

  “Somebody says he was somewhere else at the time.”

  “She say no blood. You say cut feet, plenty blood.”

  “I know, but . . . I’m still gonna talk to him.”

  JAMES DECKER answered the door with his tie loosened and the top button of his collar undone. He was in his mid-to-late thirties, with dark hair beginning to thin and a tan that looked like it had come out of a bottle. His handshake was firm, his build athletic. From the way he moved on the balls of his feet, I’d have guessed tennis, but a row of trophies on the wall behind him said his sport of choice was fencing.

  In one hand, he held a light beer. It seemed an unnecessary sacrifice, in light of his physique, but maybe it wasn’t a sacrifice. Maybe he liked a little beer with his water.

  “We’re following up on a statement you made to the police,” I said.

  “Ah. About the dead girl.” He took a swallow of his faux beer, as if for reinforcement, and said, “I can’t add anything to what I said. I wasn’t there. I didn’t pick anybody up, certainly not a bloody young woman in her underwear.”

  “Her underwear?”

  “A slip, I think the police said.”

  “Would you mind if we looked at the car?”

  He cocked his head, looking us over. “You’re not police.”

  We’d left our rain gear in the truck, but I guess my jeans and Khanh’s yoga pants didn’t look official. “I never said we were.” “So what’s your interest?”

  I gave him the short version. Missing girl, connected to the dead girl in the dumpster.

  A quick hunch of shoulders. With an affable smile, he said, “What the hell. It’s a waste of your time, but I guess you won’t feel good unless you check.”

  He was right, but I didn’t feel any better afterward, either. I didn’t spot anything the police hadn’t seen. As far as I could tell, the car was clean.

  I thanked him for his time, and he walked us to the edge of the driveway and watched while we pulled away. Wordlessly, Khanh picked up the list from the seat beside her, read off the next name.

  We went quickly through the rest of the page. No one had a bumper sticker like the one Lupita had described. Maybe our man had removed it. Maybe he was from out of state and wasn’t on the printout.

  Maybe Lupita had just been wrong.

  We rode home in disappointed silence. When we got there, Paul was asleep, and the project sat on the living room table, leaves and wildflowers sealed in acrylic, labels written in Paul’s crooked scrawl and affixed beneath each plant. The cards Jay had written for him to copy were stacked neatly to one side. I imagined them working at the kitchen table, plastic cloth and aluminum pie tins to minimize the mess, Paul dropping globs of acrylic onto each plant, and Jay painstakingly removing the excess and leaving each leaf encased in a thin acrylic glaze.

  A sliver of light came from under Jay’s door. Tweaking his newest game, I guessed, a battle for Santa Land between elves and ice zombies. The elves wielded glitter guns, cookie dough cannons, and hot marshmallow catapults. Each hit turned a zombie into a sugary ally. Paul was a beta tester, and if his enthusiasm was any indicator, the game was destined for success.

  Khanh came to stand behind me. “I know you want time with son, wish Tuyet never come here. I wish, too. But now . . . we big trouble, need you.”

  “I promised him,” I said.

  She looked through me at something I couldn’t see. “When Tuyet little girl, I promise keep her safe. Some promise, nobody keep.”

  26

  With the search for the Good Samaritan at a dead end, Savitch was the only connection we had to the dead girl, and the dead girl was the only connection we had to Tuyet. On Monday morning, after Maria had picked up Paul and his Wolf Cub project, I got on the computer and pulled up a database I used for background checks. A few minutes after typing in Karlo Savitch, I had his address and phone number, along with his marital status (single), occupation (security consultant), and finances (few expenses, but an income exponentially greater than mine). Maybe I should triple my fees and call myself an investigative consultant.

  Savitch lived on the second floor of a four-story brick tower apartment building near Hillsboro Village, within walking distance of the historic Belcourt theater, a mom and pop bookstore, and an eclectic assortment of shops and restaurants. With Khanh riding shotgun, I passed the dragon mural on the wall across from the theater, and a few turns later parked a block from Savitch’s apartment building. It was called Four Towers, even though it was shaped like a cracker box and didn’t even have a turret, let alone a tower. Four stories, forty units, ten on each floor. A pair of Bradford pear trees flanked the front door, someone’s pitiful attempt at landscaping.

  “Come on,” I said to Khanh. “Let’s see what the neighbors think of our boy Karlo.”

  “You not afraid he find out you ask about him?”

  “I want him to know. Might rattle his cage a little.”

  It was still too early for most of the restaurants, but we showed Eric’s drawing at all the area shops. Savitch was a memorable man but not a personable one, and people were eager to talk about
him. No one knew him well. No one had ever seen him with an Asian man or woman. No one knew who his friends or lovers, if he had any, might be.

  The owner of the Bookman Bookwoman bookstore, a kind-looking woman wearing wire-rimmed glasses, looked at the drawing and said, “He comes in once a week, mostly interested in history books. Strictly nonfiction. He always comes alone.”

  We crossed the street to Fido, a trendy little restaurant that had been a pet store in a previous life. The bone-shaped sign above the door was a relic of its past. Inside, a waitress with pink highlights in her hair said, “Who could forget him? He gets the roasted apple and onion sandwich with blue cheese. He doesn’t tip, which is fine by me. I’m just happy when he leaves.”

  “That’s an unusual perspective,” I said, “from someone who makes her living from tips.”

  “I’m telling you, he’s creepy. Something about the way he looks at me. Like he thinks I crawled out of a sewer.”

  “He probably does,” I said. “He’s that kind of guy.”

  It was almost noon when we went back to the Silverado. I pulled my laptop out from behind my seat.

  “You have many thing there,” Khanh said, pointing to the storage space behind the cab.

  “Be prepared, that’s my motto,” I said. “I was a Boy Scout too.” I pulled my sleeping bag over the rest of the equipment in the storage space—ammunition, camera, surveillance equipment, dog carrier—then opened the laptop and pulled up my skip-tracing database. Thank God for mobile broadband.

  A few clicks got me the name of an elderly woman named Wentworth, who lived on the second floor across from Savitch.

  “Watch and learn, Grasshopper,” I said.

  Khanh lifted her eyebrows but didn’t ask, and I didn’t even try to explain.

  We went back to his apartment tower. The door had a no-solicitation sign, but it opened easily, no key lock, no need to be buzzed in. Trusting folk.

  Or maybe not. A bored-looking security guard sat at the front desk, reading a Batman graphic novel and sipping from a coffee mug shaped like a chimpanzee. The badge on his shirt said his name was Geoffrey.

  He looked up from his book and grunted. “Help you?”

  “I’m here to visit Georgina Wentworth. Second floor.”

  “Sign in and go on up.”

  Not much in the security department, but his presence alone was a deterrent to violent crime. Criminals like soft targets. The smash and grab guys would pass by Four Towers in favor of easier marks, and the charm and weasel guys, the ones who scammed elderly widows out of their savings, didn’t worry about things like security guards.

  I scrawled my name on his list and handed the pen to Khanh, who signed in small, neat letters. Then we took the elevator to the second floor, where Mrs. Wentworth lived across the hall from Savitch. At my knock, a quavering voice from inside said, “Who is it?”

  “I’m a private investigator, Mrs. Wentworth. I wonder if you could answer some questions about your neighbor, Mr. Savitch.”

  “An investigator? But not with the police?”

  “No ma’am, but I’m working a case with them. I’m licensed.”

  “Slide it under the door.”

  I wondered if she’d seen that in a movie. I pulled my license out of its case and slipped it through the crack between the door and the dingy carpet.

  Footsteps shuffled on the other side, followed a few moments later by the click of the dead bolt and the rattle of the security chain. Then the door opened, and a woman with a dowager’s hump and a helmet of steel-gray hair opened the door. She handed back my ID and smiled up at me, wrinkles webbing her face. The top of her head came to the bottom of my breastbone.

  “Mr. Savitch is a very private man,” she said. “He keeps to himself. Why are you interested in him?”

  There are times when a lie is the only way. This wasn’t one of them. I told her the truth. Then I showed her Tuyet’s picture and said, “Savitch is involved. We just can’t prove it yet. What can you tell us about him? Likes and dislikes, who he hangs out with?”

  She ran a finger gently over Tuyet’s picture. “He likes music. Classical. Swan Lake. The Snow Maiden. Francesca da Rimini. I hear it through the walls.”

  “I know Swan Lake. The other two, not so much.”

  “They’re not as common, but I studied classical music when I was young. I wanted to be a concert pianist.” She held up a gnarled hand. “Time is a cruel master.”

  “It is that.”

  “That’s all I really know about Mr. Savitch. He’s a very . . . self-contained man.”

  “Have you ever seen him with a woman? Or with an Amerasian man?”

  “Never. He’s always alone.”

  “Ever hear him talk about a friend or coworker?”

  “We pass in the halls sometimes. Occasionally we speak. Civil enough, but nothing of substance. Sometimes he looks at me, and I think . . .” She made a dismissive gesture. “It may be my imagination.”

  “I’d like to hear it anyway.”

  “It’s the way he looks at me sometimes . . . like he’s thinking I’ve outlived my usefulness. Old battle axe, why doesn’t she just go ahead and die? Maybe I’m projecting.”

  “Or maybe not. He’s not a nice man.”

  She made a little clicking sound with her tongue. “I think he has a sister not far from here. If he has any friends, I’ve never seen or heard of them.”

  We took a rain check for her offer of coffee and homemade cinnamon rolls and thanked her for her time. Then Khanh and I went door to door, showing my license and asking the same questions. Fifty years ago, they would have been able to tell me everything from his favorite foods to the names of his childhood pets, but that was a different time. What would once have been taken as concern would now be considered an invasion of privacy. We came away with nothing more than Mrs. Wentworth had given us.

  I nodded to the guard as we passed. We walked to Provence bakery and were halfway through our blackened chicken salads when my cell phone buzzed. I looked at the caller ID.

  Malone.

  I punched Connect and said, “I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

  “Savitch’s blood type doesn’t match the DNA under the victim’s nails.”

  It wasn’t exactly a surprise. We’d known there was a chance Savitch had partners and that the girl had scratched one of them before she escaped. Still, it felt like a punch to the gut.

  I said, “That explains the cockiness.”

  “So you need to cough up your witness, or we’re going to have to let this guy go.”

  I cleared my throat. “I can’t cough her up. She’s gone back to Mexico.”

  “I went out on a limb on your say-so, McKean. I called in a favor and got a half-assed search warrant because you were sure this guy was the one.”

  “He is the one.”

  “But we can’t prove it. Look, I know you’ve been cowboying around the last couple of years, but you remember how it works. It doesn’t matter what we know. We need real proof. Courtroom proof.”

  “It matters what we know,” I said. “Because that’s how we get the proof.”

  For a moment, there was silence on the other end. Then she gave a dry laugh and said, “Maybe so, McKean. So call me when you get some.”

  That night, when the horses had been fed and brushed, I went upstairs. Too wired to sleep, I cleaned my rifles and my shotgun, then laid out all three Glocks on the table beside my bed. I cleaned and oiled them, then closed my eyes and practiced disassembling and reassembling them by touch.

  A little after midnight, Khanh padded by on her way to the guest room. She stopped in the doorway and watched for a moment, then said quietly, “I think maybe you dangerous man.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “Because the guys we’re going up against are bad news.”

  27

  I called my friend Mean Billy and said, “Hey. You got a couple guys who can help me pull surveillance on an apartment building over near Hillsboro
Village?”

  Billy ran Kaizen, a homeless shelter and rehab/job training center for veterans. He’d been Special Forces in Vietnam, and while he was a good sixty pounds heavier, he still moved like a panther. He was an affable man. Gentle, even. But beneath the grizzled beard and the paunch was a heart as solid as an iron bar.

  “You paying?” he said.

  I hesitated. “The usual.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “I don’t think so. They pull out if it looks like the guy wants to engage.”

  “Maybe I’ll come myself. It’s been awhile since I had any excitement.”

  “It’s a stakeout, Billy. It’s the opposite of excitement.”

  “Well, maybe somebody’ll come out and shoot at us. That’d be exciting. Anyhow, I’ll see what I can do.”

  He pulled up two hours later in a black sedan. Beside him in the passenger seat was Tommy Harmon, a pale redhead with a freckled face and a pair of high-tech artificial legs in place of the ones he’d lost to an Iraqi bomber.

  Billy rolled down the window of the sedan, and stuck his shaggy head out. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself. Hey, Tommy.”

  Tommy grinned and raised a hand in greeting.

  Billy’s smile faltered when he saw Khanh. Then his gaze skimmed her scars and the stump of her right arm. His eyebrows lifted.

  “This is Khanh,” I said.

  “Any friend of yours is a friend of mine.”

  “Actually, she might be my sister.”

  His mouth dropped open, and I added, “Half-sister.”

  I said it like it didn’t matter. Then I filled him in on the dead girl and Tuyet’s disappearance. Showed them Eric’s drawing of Savitch. “Khanh and I are going to take the front. You guys got cell phones?”

  Billy held his up and waggled it. “Locked and loaded.”

  “You got a zoom on it?”

  “Such as it is.”

  “Get a shot of everyone who comes or goes; if our Amerasian shows up, we’ll have a picture. If Savitch leaves out the back, you call, then follow him. If he goes out the front, we’ll do the same. Whichever way it goes, we’ll keep in touch with the cell phones and tag team him so he doesn’t make the tail.”