Smiley

by Ezell, Michael

  Among all the reports and pictures on the table, Danielle Ortega stared up at Garrett from a long-ago hotel room. He hadn’t told LaSalle all the personal details of the case. No reason to. But the big guy was right. You had no way of knowing what people were like before you were born. Or after you left home.

  He decided he wouldn’t share his feelings about Smiley yet. He really didn’t have anything beyond a snowmobile tread probably half the people in the state owned, and an antique pie tin. LaSalle wouldn’t care how thin it was, he’d insist on checking out Smiley’s place. If anyone saw them, Whit Abercrombie would be up their asses in a heartbeat and Smiley would find out for sure. If he was taking girls, he’d have plenty of warning someone knew. There might be evidence at his place and there might not. If there was, Smiley could take his time destroying it because Whit would never search the place on Garrett’s say-so.

  No, Garrett figured he would wait until he had something solid enough to bring in real cops. Like Clancy. Or someone else.

  “What do you think about Nadine going smoke on us? She doesn’t seem to fit into the picture,” LaSalle said.

  “That one bothers me,” Garrett said. “I think she’s accidental. I just don’t know how.”

  LaSalle drained his beer and dropped his empty bottle in the recycling container. “I’ve been thinking about setting up in the woods and watching the rest area. Might not be a bad thing to photograph all the cars that stop by. Maybe we start showing some pictures of our own to the girls?” LaSalle said.

  “Somebody might get suspicious if they see your car there all day.”

  “I’ll park at the truck stop and walk up. Do my big ass some good.” LaSalle started straightening all the papers to put them away. “You got something in mind?”

  It felt like the big man wanted some time to himself, which suited Garrett. “I want to find out more about the Nadine thing. Just for personal reasons.”

  “I feel you. It’s still your town, Chief Evans.” LaSalle smiled and Garrett couldn’t help but grin back.

  “Let’s not get carried away. I’ll dig around on the history of everyone who owns property along the highway there. Probably be better if someone local did it,” Garrett said.

  “Agreed. I got my share of old white people stink-eye this week. I don’t need anymore.”

  ***

  Standing outside the impound yard fence, his idea didn’t seem so good anymore. Garrett wasn’t just going against Whit Abercrombie here. Nadine’s car had seals on the door from the County Sheriff’s office. It was a full-fledged homicide investigation and he could get locked down for screwing with evidence.

  This impound yard was nothing like LAPD’s. LA had high fences topped by razor wire and a full time guard. Here, it was a six-foot chain link fence with two strands of barbed wire protecting a small lot with weeds growing up through the gravel.

  Garrett flipped his coat over the top of the barbed wire. Might as well get this over with, otherwise he’d have another sleepless night relentlessly stewing all the possibilities in the pressure cooker of his brain. He climbed the chain link and used his coat to maneuver over the barbs. He’d chosen a spot where an old Ford flatbed had been parked for about thirty years. He left footprints in the snow and caked dirt on the hood when he stepped down from the fence.

  He felt like some kind of action movie badass until he tried to flip his coat off the barbed wire. A six-inch rip down one sleeve made him go from badass to dumbass.

  His boots crunched in the gravel as he made his way to Nadine’s Lincoln. They parked it between a police car with a destroyed front end (courtesy of a cow in 1988) and one of those imports with a stupid add-on wing bolted to the trunk.

  Garrett went belly down on and peeked under Nadine’s car. The Lincoln had bled thick black oil onto the gravel. Looked like Nadine needed an oil change as well as a new set of gaskets. More than likely, she’d never have to worry about it again.

  He stood and tried to picture this dented behemoth parked in Smiley’s immaculate barn. Crazy. But... if he pulled it right up to the back of the barn, the spot would be about right.

  A quick glance around. The tow yard was on the outskirts of town, so very little traffic passed it. Garrett retrieved a short slim-jim from his coat and slid it between the window and the rubber seal on the driver’s door. He fished around until he felt/heard a satisfying clunk.

  Last chance to stop this. If he didn’t break the evidence seal on the door, he could still walk away.

  He cracked it and peered inside the Lincoln’s cavernous passenger compartment. The interior stank of cigarettes and old lady perfume. Black powder coated every surface and there were clean square patches where tape had been used to lift prints.

  There were two round clean spots on the steering wheel where they took blood samples. A little birdie named Shirley told him the car had been open when they found it, half the front seat covered in snow. There were only spots of blood on the steering wheel and a bigger spot in the carpeting of the trunk. She also told him they found a towel folded on the passenger seat, with a round impression in it. Like Nadine had been protecting the upholstery from something.

  “So she wouldn’t spill her pie,” Garrett said aloud.

  His voice sounded hollow in the quiet Lincoln. The hairs on his forearms bristled when he thought of Nadine driving along in the dark, maybe listening to her favorite radio preacher, with a warm surprise for someone on the seat next to her.

  He hit the trunk release and checked it out. The entire carpet was missing. There were more of those clean spots from blood samples taken off the support arm of the trunk lid. Whoever put Nadine in the trunk of her car— Garrett was too much of a pessimist to believe she was still alive— accidentally got some blood way over there? The Lincoln’s trunk was big enough to fill with water and swim laps. All you had to do was lean in and drop her. Nadine weighed about a buck-ten with her snow boots on. He hoped the blood placement seemed odd to other people, because Whit Abercrombie would never listen to him.

  Missing girls but no bodies.

  Missing Nadine but no body.

  Standing over the empty trunk made his mind slip for a second— A body in a trunk. Young kid, maybe thirteen, just a witness who chose the wrong alley walking home from baseball practice. Bullet holes in his face.

  Garrett slammed the trunk shut and stalked around the car, scanning the bodywork, bumpers, the grill, searching for a spec of dried blood, a scratch from a struggle, anything. He started in on the tires next. Nadine took care of her car and replaced her tires as soon as they showed wear. The treads were deep, almost like new. Mostly filled mud from the road behind the Heideman place. Whoever drove it there spattered slushy snow and mud in the fender wells Nadine kept painfully clean. A woman from her day simply did not drive a filthy car about town.

  What was that? Something weird stuck inside the front left well. Covered with mud, but not shaped like a rock from the road. He flipped open his pocket knife and scraped it loose. Soft, mushy, and round. He split it with his knife and knew what it was immediately.

  A cherry.

  He found it highly unlikely Nadine ran over her own pie. Did she get out with it in her hands, holding it out like an offering, only to find death waiting? Someone put her in the trunk and drove her away, running over the pie in the process. Someone? He knew the answer well enough, didn’t he? Damn it.

  Garrett wiped the blade on his pant leg.

  “Drop the knife, asshole!”

  The young Sheriff’s deputy outside the fence pointed a shotgun at him. Given the shaky hands on the gun, Garrett decided he would indeed drop the knife. He didn’t recognize the kid, but he did recognize the forensics guy he had with him.

  He smiled when he saw Garrett. “Oh hey, Chief.”

  “Funny story about the Chief thing,” Garrett said.

  ***

  Raw fury made Whit Abercrombie’s lips turn white where they pressed together. He yelled at Garrett through the do
or of the holding cell. “Have you stopped taking whatever was supposed to keep you sane? You are not the Chief of Police anymore. Get over it. You got no fucking business sticking your nose into that case.”

  Whit had personally escorted Garrett to this cell when he arrived. It smelled like metal and the ghosts of piss and bleach.

  “Listen, I know I’ve been an ass to you, and it’s no secret you and I never liked each other much, but I’m going to ask you a favor here,” Garrett said.

  “You are crazy. I knew it.”

  “Please, okay? When’s the last time I said that to you?”

  Whit thought it over. For him thinking usually took a spell. They were alone in the holding area so the silence stretched out and out, which began to make Garrett’s skin twitch. He decided to lay it out there. He’d have to sooner or later. Might as well puke it up now and see Whit’s reaction. “I think... someone may have kept Nadine’s car in a barn before you found it. Take your guys and a few County boys and just do a check of all the barns in the area.”

  He didn’t want to name Smiley specifically, because he’d have to bring the missing girls into it and he knew Whit would blow it off.

  “Take samples from the floors. Nadine’s car had a bad oil leak. I think—”

  “You think us good old boys don’t know how to run a police department, right?” Whit leaned on the bars and gave Garrett a lazy smile. “Since everybody knows Nadine around these parts, the folks in the County lab hustled those blood samples for us. The stuff on the steering wheel was Bradley Wentz’s. So was some of the blood in the trunk.”

  That struck Garrett quiet.

  “What now, Sherlock? I guess they didn’t teach you about coroner’s reports and such in LA. We got ours back, and it says Bradley Wentz got stabbed in the heart. Once. Perfect spot. What’s that tell you?”

  “More importantly, what do you think it tells you?” Garrett said.

  “Professional hit, all the way. Bradley got stupid, brought down some drug cartel on his own head. We figure they hit Bradley and when they were leaving, they run across old Nadine Pearson. Poor busybody finally stuck her nose in the wrong person’s business. Makes sense they had Bradley’s blood on ‘em when they took Nadine and her car.”

  “Makes the best kind of sense, doesn’t it?” Garrett said. “Except for the part about what they did with Nadine’s body.”

  Whit thumped his can of dip and tucked a pinch behind his lip. If he had feathers, he would’ve preened. “We’ll find her soon enough, and when we do you can read about it in the papers like everybody else.”

  Garrett skirted right up to the edge of telling him the truth.

  “I still think... Nadine’s disappearance may have something to do with the missing girls.”

  “Listen at you. You think everything is tied to these missing whores. You’re as bad as your daddy on that thing,” Whit said.

  “What do you know about that?” Garrett said.

  “Son, you can’t dig around in other people’s reports and such without people hearin’ about it. Personally, I always thought maybe your old man had a bit of thing for those girls.”

  The red tide rose behind his eyes and Garrett wasn’t really in the mood to stem it. “Of course, you never said it to his face, because he would have loosened your teeth for you.”

  “Tough guy, aren’t you? Just like your daddy. Strutting around here talking about how his boy was a hotshot pistolero out there in LA, getting in all those shootouts, stocking up on medals left and right. I wonder what he’d think if he knew it broke you, sent you home takin’ pills to sleep at night.”

  Garrett stood up and Whit actually backed away from the dead eyes burning at him.

  “I’m working real hard, here,” Garrett said. “You have to cut me some slack, Whit. I need you to know something. When Mrs. Shotwell let me in Nadine’s house, there was a pie in a tin.”

  “The missing pie thing again? I told you, we got our suspect. It’s all tied to Bradley Wentz and some other drug-dealing Mexican cartel trash we’ll eventually find.”

  “Mrs. Shotwell swears up and down all the signs point to Nadine making two pies. I think she took one to somebody the night she disappeared. And I saw a pie tin like hers yesterday.”

  “Where?” Whit said.

  “In Smiley’s barn,” Garrett said. It took all he had not to break eye contact.

  Whit went very still. He and Smiley went as far back as Smiley and Garrett’s dad.

  “You listen good, you son of a bitch. You don’t go around slandering people’s names in this town. Smiley Carmichael has done more for folks in Artemis than you will ever know, and he is the most gentle soul I ever met. Drug dealers killed Bradley Wentz and most likely Nadine Pearson. And now you can sit your ass in jail for tampering with evidence. Maybe we can get the County to prescribe some new medication while you’re in,” Whit said.

  He strode away with such a smug look it pushed Garrett’s inner tide too high to stop it. He should have at least tried. But he couldn’t. He put his face up to the bars and called after Whit. “You can change the furniture and hang all the pictures you want, but you’ll always be too small to fill his office, you soft-in-the-middle son of a bitch.”

  Whit slammed the door so hard the ceiling panels rattled.

  ***

  “It’s not every day I get to bail a white boy out of jail,” LaSalle said. He led the way across the parking lot toward the Volvo, long leather jacket buttoned against the cold.

  Garrett’s teeth chattered. “Wait up, man, it’s hard to walk in these.”

  They gave him back his coat with the torn sleeve, which kept some of the cold at bay, but his feet were already going numb in the jailhouse slippers. Whit took a bit of offense to his comment and decided to keep Garrett’s boots as evidence of the break-in at the impound lot.

  “I really appreciate this. Stop by the bank and I’ll pay you back,” Garrett said.

  “I’m in no hurry. You wanna fill me in while I drive you to get some damn shoes?”

  LaSalle hit the remote and unlocked the Volvo, but a black and white cruised up next to them before they could get in. Lyle Hampton rolled down his window. “Hey, Garrett. Sorry about the shoes.”

  “Ah, I had to give Whit a chance to earn some man-pride back,” Garrett said.

  “Between you and me and a knot in a tree, I bet he wishes you were still here. He can’t really wrap his head around an investigation like this,” Lyle said.

  “Seems to have it solved. He gave me the whole cartel assassin theory,” Garrett said.

  Lyle glanced around and then checked to make sure his radio mike wasn’t hot. He wore a conspirator’s grin. “That wasn’t even his. Smiley figured out the whole thing for him.”

  Hot bile rose in Garrett’s throat. “Come again?”

  “Yeah, Smiley came rolling up to the scene and asked Whit if he needed any tracking help, you know, on account of what a good hunter Smiley is.”

  “Sure,” Garrett said. He looked at LaSalle over the Volvo. “You’ve met Smiley.”

  “Yeah, sure.” LaSalle looked a little confused, but picked up on Garrett’s body language. He waited.

  Garrett’s lips felt numb. “Did Whit let Smiley help?”

  “Didn’t do any good,” Lyle said. “No tracks anywhere. Smiley said there were enough signs to know another car had been there, but nothing he thought would hold up in court. Too much snow for it to leave tracks in the dirt.”

  Lyle chuckled. “The rest of us knew what he meant right away, but he had to explain it to Whit. A second car picked up the killer, that’s why no signs of him leaving on foot. Smiley said Bradley’s autopsy proved his point. The clean kill meant a pro drug enforcer came out to hit Bradley and probably ran across Nadine by accident as he was leaving.”

  “Sounds plausible,” LaSalle said.

  Garrett arched an eyebrow in his direction. Really?

  Lyle went on. “Smiley figures they didn’t have time to cl
ean up since the Heideman barn was already on fire. They probably took Nadine’s body somewhere else, so they could make sure they didn’t leave any evidence on it.”

  “And Whit ate the idea up with a spoon,” Garrett said.

  “It was actually kinda embarrassing. He didn’t run the crime scene like you taught us at all. He even let Smiley touch the blood in the trunk to see if he could tell how fresh it was.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Garrett said.

  “I wish I was. I better scat before somebody accuses me of criminal conspiracy. Sorry about all the trouble, anyway.” Lyle waved and drove off.

  “What was that all about?” LaSalle said.

  They both climbed into the car and LaSalle drove out of the lot. Garrett had to hand it to him, he had patience. He let Garrett stew for a good two miles.

  “It’s something I didn’t want to say, because I didn’t want to believe it. I still don’t. But I’ve seen some things, and heard some things recently. I think maybe it’s Smiley,” Garrett said.

  “Maybe what is?”

  “I think Smiley’s been killing girls. And maybe he’s been doing it a lot longer than we’re thinking,” Garrett said.

  19

  Smiley stood outside the church in his shiny cowboy boots and string tie, shaking hands and smiling to beat the doggone band. All the old birds in town came to these Wednesday evening services, and he hadn’t felt this much dry papery skin cross his palm since he first started trying to mount his trophies.

  The thought of his girls sent his spirits soaring even higher. The Hunter god was among them tonight. He presided over the idiots with shiny power symbols pinned to their chests and led them down his carefully crafted trail by the nose. “Chief” Abercrombie practically groveled with thanks when Smiley put together all the loose puzzle pieces Whit held in his stupid palm.

  And then Garrett Evans came to his place and took pictures of his barn. The Hunter could not be seen by mortal eyes, though. His power glowed around him while Garrett puttered around, looking but seeing nothing.