“Did Valetta say anything, give you any idea where he might be headed?”
“Nope. Paid in cash, and left out the back.”
“You understand,” Mendez said. “I’m not local. I won’t be back to harass you, nobody will know you heard it from me. The child you saw has been kidnapped. Valetta has a bad reputation.”
Whitter frowned. “I got nothing to say to you, Sergeant, and you got no jurisdiction here. One thing I know’s the law. You want to talk at Charlene, you go on ahead. But she don’t know nothing either, and she’s tender of heart, so keep the scare stories down to a minimum. She’s got work to do too, so be quick.”
“If I find out you knew something, I’ll see you get picked up as an accessory.”
“Yeah, you cops scare hell out of me.”
Charlene turned out to be a heavy smoker—bleached blond hair, tired blue eyes, an intriguing sweetness in her hesitant smile.
“She say it’s okay for me to talk to you?”
Mendez nodded. “Let’s go across the street. I’ll buy you lunch.”
Her eyes lit up, then dulled. “Oh, I can’t.”
“Charlene.” He leaned close and spoke gently. “Did you talk much to the boy?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t say nothin’. Just stuck a finger in his mouth and stared at me. Poor little baby. Had these big dark circles under his eyes.”
Lena winced.
“Looked like he’d been crying. Or maybe had a cold.” Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks, streaking her makeup. “I knew something was wrong there, I just knew that man didn’t feel right. Didn’t feel like a parent.” She shook her head. “I got to tell you, too, I don’t think he’d been feeding the little boy.”
She told them about the suckers.
“Did you overhear Valetta say anything at all about where he might be headed?”
“Nooo.” She wrapped a strand of hair around her finger. “The phone was ringing like crazy, and I was tending to that. I did hear him yell once or twice. Whitter was ahurting him.”
“You understand the boy’s been kidnapped?”
“Oh, yes sir.” Her eyes were bright.
“There’s nothing else you can tell us?”
She bit down on her knuckles and shook her head.
Mendez handed her a card. “Call this number if you remember anything, or think of anything, that might help us out.”
She took the card and studied it. “Yes sir.”
18
They sat in the nonsmoking section of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. A huge stone fireplace separated the kitchen from the dining room. An old-fashioned enamel coffeepot sat on the mantel, next to a Coca-Cola sign and a poster advertising Dr. Wollum’s Elixir. A waitress in blue jeans and a checked shirt offered Lena coffee. Mendez sliced a biscuit in half and took a bite.
“Eat something,” he said.
Lena rattled her bag of pretzels. “I am eating something.”
“Why don’t you order the chicken and dumplings?”
“What are you, the nutrition police? I don’t want to eat, I want to crunch.”
“You missed lunch, didn’t get much breakfast—”
“Did Charlie miss lunch? Did Charlie get breakfast?”
Mendez positioned his knife on the edge of his plate. “You never know who to be mad at, do you, Lena? Me. Eloise. Whitney.” He leaned close. “All this time, I thought it was me. Because I’m a cop, and my hands are tied, and no matter what I do, men kill their wives and their girlfriends. And Lena, if I put every man or woman in jail who threatened to kill their husband or wife, the streets would be empty.”
“Mendez—”
“But now I’m not sure. I know you hold me responsible—or you used to. And I think you’re angry with your sister.”
“I don’t blame victims, Mendez.”
“Yes, you do. But mainly you blame yourself.”
“Crap, Mendez.”
“Crap, Lena. You need to put the blame where it belongs.”
“And where is that?”
“On Hayes.”
Lena wadded the pack of pretzels and jammed them into her purse. “I’m not riding home with you, Joel.”
A beeper went off. The woman at the next table reached into her jacket pocket. She frowned, shrugged, and looked at the man sitting across from her.
Mendez wiped his mouth with a white paper napkin. “Are you going to walk? Sixty-seven miles?”
“Sixty-seven miles, Mendez? Are you sure it’s not sixty-seven and four tenths? Is that to my house or yours? Where are you going?”
“My beeper went off. I have to call the office.”
The pay phone was just outside the bathrooms. Mendez rummaged in his pocket for a quarter, and dropped it in the slot. Lena wondered if he always had a quarter when he needed one, because she never did. One way to look at it was that Mendez had all her quarters.
She leaned against the wooden doorjamb and touched the gingham skirt of a cornhusk doll that hung on the wall. Mendez talked very little and listened a lot. She couldn’t tell much from his face. She wondered if he had a facial-expression disability.
He hung the phone up and stared at a point on the wall over her right shoulder.
“Mendez? What is it?”
His eyes came back into focus. “Knoxville PD called my office. Archie Valetta’s been hit.”
“Charlie?”
Mendez’s shoulders sagged. “No sign.”
“But—”
“I don’t know, Lena. I want to go back and take a look around before they close up shop. That our waitress?”
“I think so. Joel, Charlie has to be there somewhere. You’re not keeping anything back? They didn’t find his—”
Mendez put a hand on her arm. “Nothing.”
“Where the hell could he be? What if he got lost? Jesus, Joel, he’s four years old.”
“I know.”
The Tabor Road Inn was a tired-looking building—one-story cinder block that had been painted brown as recently as the sixties. An orange neon sign promising Air-Cooled Rooms, Tee-Vee-n-Vibrating Beds was barely readable in the sunlight, though Lena could see that it would flash cheerfully enough after dark. Each room had a porch light and a screen door enabling the guests to enjoy the muggy pleasure of summer nights in Tennessee.
There were three patrol cars and an ambulance in the oil-stained parking lot, and a small knot of onlookers. The guests were surprisingly uninterested in police business. Four uniformed cops were poking through the weeds on the side of the road. Mendez wedged the Mazda between a dark green trash Dumpster, and a white van with droopy red curtains in the windows and a PTL bumper sticker on the back. Somebody had spray painted Christ Is Lord on the Dumpster.
Lena recognized Valetta’s bike in the parking lot. The screen door of room 17 was propped open, and yellow crime-scene tape barricaded the sidewalk in front. Mendez paused behind the tape.
“Sir?” The patrolman had long sideburns and fleshy red cheeks.
Mendez showed his ID.
“This is my associate.” Mendez nodded toward Lena. “Detective Hackburton should have cleared us.”
The patrolman nodded. “He’p yo’self.”
Metal wheels clattered on linoleum. A gurney came partway through the door, then stuck. A fat man with thinning reddish blond hair waved to Mendez from inside the room.
“Wanna take a look?” He motioned for the ambulance attendants to wait. “Come on in. Techs have finished their business.”
Lena leaned against the front wall, taking in every detail—Mendez fishing rubber gloves out of his jacket pocket, the squeak of stretching rubber, the snap as the gloves snugged into place. Mendez peeled back the wet red sheet.
Valetta had been shot repeatedly at close range, several times in the face. The curly blond hair and beard were blood soaked.
Mendez looked at Hackburton. “Thirty-two?”
Hackburton shrugged. “Didn’t find no weapon, but that’d
be my guess. Shot at least eleven times. Maybe more. The fuc—” He glanced at Lena. “The shooter had to reload.”
“You’ll find thirteen bullet holes,” Mendez said.
“Think he reloaded twice?”
“Thirteen.”
Lena swallowed. Mendez peered into Valetta’s mouth. Lena closed her eyes, trying not to hear the rustling sheet.
“Nasty, i’n it?” Hackburton said.
Lena opened her eyes. Mendez was pulling the sheet back over Valetta, and he glanced at her.
“What?” she said.
Mendez hesitated. “Took the tongue, the … genitals. And the heart.”
Lena took a breath. “Do you think Charlie saw … saw them …” She took another breath.
Hackburton was shaking his head. “Ain’t no sign of any little boy, honey.”
“I want to see.” Her voice sounded steady enough, very controlled. Normal to someone who didn’t know her. She was relieved that it did not break in front of Hackburton, who had called her honey.
The attendants moved the gurney out to the ambulance, and Lena followed Mendez into the room.
The bed was unmade, rumpled, stained. Lena stared at the back wall.
“Figure he was standing ’bout there,” Hackburton said, pointing to a spot next to the bed, about six feet from the wall. “The first slug knocked him backward.” He fished a bent pack of low-tar Merits out of his jacket pocket and lit a match. For the first time in her life, Lena was grateful for the smell of tobacco. “See about three bullet holes, there in the wall. The killer was pumping it, firing one-two-three. Scared, I betcha, Valetta was a big son of a bi—… son of a gun. Took the rest crumbled up there on the floor. May not be thirteen holes in him, Mendez. Guy might have missed a couple times.”
Lena turned away from the blood-splashed wall, the soaked carpet.
She was not exactly sure what she was looking for, but she wandered from corner to corner of the small room while Mendez talked to Hackburton. Hackburton and two other men in uniforms surreptitiously watched her looking.
She didn’t find any little boys hiding in the shower stall, or a crayon in the corner. No diapers, or wet pants, or Batman Tshirts. No half-eaten crackers with tiny tooth marks on the edge. No scared little four-year-old boys. No Charlie.
“Are you through?” Mendez asked her.
She shrugged and looked at Hackburton. “You didn’t find any hairs, or anything? On the pillowcase or in the bathroom? He was blond, and—”
“Some gray hairs, and a few black ones. And a long brown one I don’t think was his.” Hackburton was patient and polite. “These rooms don’t get cleaned real good, between customers. We been finding a lot of stuff, but nothing that points to a little boy. Going to be a while, though, before we know. Got to run some tests.”
“FBI lab?” Mendez asked.
“State. FBI’s dragging their ass, thinking custody fight.”
Lena took a final look around. The back of her head felt tight.
“What about that photo,” Hackburton said. “Still don’t want to run it?”
“No,” Mendez said. “Better not.”
Hackburton lit another Merit and nodded slowly. “I ’spect you’re right.”
Lena turned and faced them. “Why not? Why not run his picture? Maybe he ran away and he’s lost and somebody found him. If he’s dead—”
“If he’s dead, honey, won’t matter anyway. And if somebody found him, they’ll turn him in. People don’t just run across little boys and keep them. Otherwise, you plaster his face all over the teevee and everwhere—”
“And they’ll kill him,” Lena said. “Good point.” She rubbed a hand across her eyes. “Wait for you outside,” she said to Mendez. The men stared as she left the room.
Her gait was slow and unsteady, and she headed for the car but did not get in. The sun had faded and it was getting dark. She leaned her forehead against the Dumpster, feeling the scratchiness of flaking paint and sun-warmed metal. The rancid smell of old garbage finished her off. She stepped behind the Dumpster and vomited neatly into the weeds. Out front, the neon sign flickered to life, sending orange pulses across the asphalt.
19
Darkness. Headlights. The vibration of the engine. Lena laid her head back and closed her eyes. Her mind brought forth the image of Archie Valetta on a gurney, and the vision of a blood-splashed wall.
“What’s going on, Mendez?” Her voice sounded flat.
“I don’t know.” His face was lit by the glow from the dashboard. He stroked his mustache. “According to Hackburton, the place is owned and run by a couple named Cooper. Early yesterday morning, Mrs. Cooper saw a man in a blue raincoat knock on Valetta’s door and go in. She thought it was odd, because the man was dressed well, a businessman. She wondered about him going in to see somebody like Valetta. The guy wasn’t there long, just stayed a few minutes. Went in with a briefcase, came out without it.”
“Did she see a child?”
“No. No one saw a child. Mrs. Cooper says the man left the parking lot on foot, and that made her curious. Then late last night—or early this morning—her husband was up doing the night audit. He’d fallen asleep, and something woke him up. He looked out in the lot, but didn’t notice anything. Went back to his books. Then he heard tires squealing. He went to the window and saw a car tearing out of the parking lot.”
“What kind of car?”
“Too dark to tell for sure, but he thinks the hubcap spun off as soon as the driver turned onto the main road. Hackburton’s people are looking for it.”
“Jesus, Mendez, this doesn’t make any sense.”
“We’ve got Valetta’s killing, the business with the man and the briefcase, and the negative sleeve. If that’s what it is.”
“The what?”
“Hackburton found it wadded in the trash. One of those glassine sleeves photographers store negatives in.”
“Any negatives?”
“It’s never that easy, Lena. But—”
“Blackmail.”
“One of Archie’s old sidelines.”
“But why did he take Charlie, and where is he? If I hadn’t been there. If I hadn’t—”
“Then Archie might have killed him. Or taken him anyway. Grabbing the little boy was an impulse thing. Valetta probably figured he’d use him to pry the money out of Eloise. We’ll have to see what Hackburton comes up with on the physical evidence, but I don’t think the boy was ever in the motel. Somebody would have seen him.”
“Nobody heard Valetta get shot.”
“Hackburton thinks the killer used a silencer.”
“Okay. We know Valetta had Charlie at the clinic. So somewhere between the motel and the clinic he lost him.”
Mendez was quiet.
“You think he killed him, don’t you?”
“I’m not ready to quit looking.”
20
It was raining when Mendez dropped Lena in front of the house. She didn’t go in. It would be too tempting, once inside, to put off going to the hospital, to put off seeing Eloise, to put off telling her about Charlie.
The Cutlass—gas tank full—started on the third try. Mendez flashed his lights at Lena and drove away. Lena laid her head on the steering wheel.
It was the kind of weather she hated—wet, drizzling rain, thick humidity; too hot for a sweater, too cool for mere sleeves. The hospital parking lot was empty after dark on a weeknight. Lena parked near the entrance, avoided walking through a clump of sodden leaves, and passed through the automatic doors into the lobby.
The gift shop was empty. Lena stood in front of the elevators and breathed the thick miasma of cigarette smoke that drifted out of the snack bar.
Eloise Valetta was out of ICU and in a semiprivate room. The bed next to her was empty, no sheets. Lena stuck her hands in her pockets. She took a breath.
“Eloise?”
Eloise’s legs moved under the sheets. Lena pulled a chair close, but did not sit down. Her pu
rse slipped off her shoulder, and she caught it before it dropped.
“Eloise?”
“Lena?” Eloise turned sideways, moving stiffly. A thick white bandage covered her left eye socket, and her right eye was swollen and black. Her nose was swathed in gauze. She put a hand out and touched Lena.
Lena sat down. She cleared her throat.
“You find him, Lena? Did you find him?”
“I … no. Not yet.”
Eloise’s hand went to her mouth. Her lips trembled and tears streaked her right cheek.
“Eloise, we … the police traced Archie to Tennessee. Knoxville.” Lena put a hand on Eloise’s arm. “Archie is dead.”
“Charlie?”
“No. Charlie wasn’t with him.”
“But—”
“Archie was killed in his motel room. Somebody shot him. As far as we can tell, Charlie wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the room; he wasn’t there when it happened. Nobody at the motel ever saw him.”
“Then where is he? You think he got away?”
Lena bit her lip. “I don’t know. Archie stopped in at a clinic the day before. He had Charlie with him then. One of the people there gave him a whole handful of suckers.”
Eloise sobbed. “He’d of liked that.” She hiccuped. “How many times did I say no to all them sweets, poor little thing? I wished I said yes. I wished I said yes.”
Eloise’s shoulders quaked. Her breasts sagged under the print hospital gown, and her hair was a knot of tangles. She hid her face in the pillow. “What are the police doing?” Her voice was muffled, barely audible.
“They’re looking. They’re working on it.”
“I just bet.”
“No, now. Remember I told you about Detective Mendez? He’s the best there is, Eloise, he’s helped me before.”
“He’s really … he’s really good?”
“Honest. And he cares about finding Charlie.”
Eloise sank deeper into the mattress. She pulled the sheet up over her head.
“Eloise, I don’t blame you, for being mad at me. But I need to … what?”
“Not mad at you.”
“Pull the sheet down so I can hear what you say.”
“No, no, I don’t like you to see me like this. I’m so … embarrassed. I don’t like you to see me like this, I swore I’d never let any man ever—”
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