MacKinnon 02 Dead Copy

by Kit Frazier

  I fed the cat, let the dog out, and waved at the cop sitting out in front of my house. This morning’s shift was an older cop, with a bushy gray mustache and jowls that flopped over his collar. The jowls were probably a prelude to his belly.

  He scowled at me when I waved, and I cranked my smile up a notch.

  I was also guessing he’d screwed up big-time to have to pull pussy patrol and that he was pretty unhappy about it.

  After Marlowe peed on the Bobs’ rosemary bush, I headed back down the sidewalk and stopped at my walkway. The flag on my mailbox was up. I frowned, wondering if Ethan might have mailed something on his way out. But that didn’t make sense. Ethan texted everything. I don’t think he’d ever even seen a stamp in his short, sheltered life.

  Marlowe was overjoyed at the change up in our morning routine, and danced around the mailbox like he’d hit the winning lottery numbers. As I reached for the box, I got that uneasy feeling that makes your skin crawl.

  I opened door, and inside the mailbox was a Polaroid of me in my bathrobe, reaching over Ethan for a file.

  *

  “How did he get by the cop?” I said, and Cantu frowned.

  My heart was still pounding, but my blood was beginning to slow down a little. A rookie crime geek was dusting my mailbox for prints, and two more were lurking around the yard, looking for dead birds, notes, knives, and chopped-off body parts.

  “That fat cop? Everett Anders is a burnout,” he said. “He’s been busted down to beat for excessive force. Thinks pulling watch is beneath him.”

  “And you? Who’s running the search show?”

  “Hollis called it off today.”

  My mouth fell open. “And there’s nothing you can do about it?”

  “Out of our jurisdiction,” he said. His voice didn’t change, but I could feel the shift. He was angry, and if there ever came a time when Hollis was in a dark alley with Cantu, I didn’t like the sheriff “s chances. ‘They aren’t going to find any fingerprints, are they?’

  “Pretty slim. Hasn’t left any yet,” he said, and I nodded.

  “So,” he said. “Who’s the new guy?”

  “Ethan?” I frowned, and he flipped out the Polaroid, which was tucked into an evidence bag. “Oh, give me a break. He’s my coworker. You’ve seen him at the search sight. He’s got it bad for Faith. We were comparing notes.”

  “Notes,” Cantu said skeptically. “And Logan?”

  “On assignment.” I thought about him, picturing him on a crowded, dirty street in Argentina, and had to close my eyes a minute.

  Cantu nodded. “And you? What are you up to today?”

  He was looking at my kick-ass shoes, and I smiled. “I’m going to weasel information out of somebody.”

  “Anybody I know?”

  I just grinned and said. “Wish me luck.”

  He shook his head. “Kiddo, with you, luck has nothing to do with it.”

  With police reports filed and cops out of my yard, I applied a fresh coat of lip-gloss and headed out for work, hoping the morning wasn’t an omen about the rest of the day.

  Marlowe leapt out of the house after me and jumped into the Jeep, and I was too tired to argue with him. Besides, I was on edge, and it has been my experience that Marlowe is good company when I have maniacs threatening my body parts.

  We arrived at the office, and as I badged Harold the heavyset guard, he leaned over and gave Marlowe one of his powdered sugar donuts. He didn’t offer me one.

  I threw my purse under my desk and booted up my computer. Marlowe finished his donut and trotted down the aisle of cubicles back toward the Graphics Department in search of better sustenance.

  It was eleven o’clock, and Tanner was sitting in his glass office, staring at me.

  “What?” I said.

  He crooked a finger. “I hear you got another message from the freaky photographer

  “You and your damn scanner.”

  He sat, gnawing on a licorice whip. “Want to take the rest of the day off?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure you’ve heard, but the search for Faith Puckett is off. Those idiots in Dawes County have completely botched the thing, but it’s not over.

  I’ve got a meeting with Soliz in a little while. I rescheduled once. I don’t want to do it again.”

  “The report on the trailer fire,” he said, handing the stack of faxes to me.

  He rocked back in his chair, staring at his desk. I waited. “You know why they called off the search?”

  “Because they’re idiots who didn’t run it right in the first place?” “Because they made an arrest this morning.”

  My breath caught. “Who?”

  “Josh Lambert.”

  My mouth dropped open, and my brain stuttered to a complete stop.

  He tossed another stack of faxes on the corner of his desk. “They picked him up last night, drunk, at that club Faith worked at. He failed a lie detector test, and this morning, he confessed.”

  “To what?”

  “Sheriff Hollis says he’s got a statement that he nabbed Faith.” I frowned. “So then where is she?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  I had to let out a long, slow breath or my head was going to explode. “Lie detectors don’t count, and besides you said yourself Josh was drunk.”

  “He confessed.”

  “Tanner, he’s been inebriated since before Faith went missing. His blood alcohol content was 100-proof.”

  Tanner shrugged. “You know she had a restraining order out on him?”

  I cringed. Apparently I’d missed the restraining order in my research. Some reporter I’m going to be.

  “What about Tres and his mercenaries?” I said. “They called off the search once Josh confessed.”

  “And what about Tiffany, the girl in the trailer fire?”

  “They figure he did her, thinking she was Faith.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Tanner, Josh Lambert was the one on the scene who said the girl wasn’t Faith.”

  Tanner shrugged. “You can aim for the bleachers, but you don’t always get the grand slam.”

  One of his stupid sports analogies. I had to refrain from breaking something.

  “This isn’t over,” I said, grabbing both of the files on my way out the door.

  “It is for you,” he said, and I turned and was about to say something pithy and scathing, but I stopped. Dark circles ringed his eyes like purple bruises, and he looked thinner. I hadn’t noticed that before.

  “Tanner,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  A little color tinged his cheeks, but then he turned back to his desk and the stack of reports that were waiting for him.

  “I saw the dog,” he said.

  “He’s back in Graphics, searching for Skittles.”

  He nodded. “You can send him in here if you want.”

  “He’d like that,” I said. And then I shut the door quietly behind me.

  Marlowe spent the rest of the morning with Tanner, who had started hiding dog biscuits in the bottom of his file cabinet back in July. The two of them had some mystical bond that transcended the biscuits, but the biscuits didn’t hurt.

  I checked on Ethan, who made it in to work on time, then I made some phone calls to families to finish the three obituaries in my inbox. That done, I grabbed my purse.

  Tanner leaned out his door. His face was relaxed, and he looked better than I’d seen him in a while. Marlowe has that effect on people.

  “You going to see Soliz?”

  “Yep.”

  “You taking the dog?”

  I nodded. “I’m going home after.”

  Tanner nodded and stepped aside. Marlowe trotted out of the office, tail high, with a big doggie grin on his face.

  “You’re spoiling him,” I said, and Tanner looked pleased.

  “I’ll send you an email about what I find out,” I said, and the dog and I trotted down the front hall, past Harold the heavyset guard and out to the parking lot, where my Jeep
awaited me.

  I’d arrived late that morning, so I had to park at the side of the strip center, outside the meat market, which always put Marlowe on high alert. As I was dragging him by the window display of Elgin sausage, I nearly ran right into the black BMW that was parked between the curb and my car.

  The back door opened and a large man with skin the color of a double latte unfolded himself, straightening his tie as he stood up.

  Here’s the thing: the only people who wear suits in Austin are FBI agents and funeral directors. And mobsters.

  “We hear you been lookin’ for Diego DeLeon,” he said. Marlowe growled low in his throat.

  “We’re here to escort you to his office.”

  My heart thumped hard.

  I ducked my head to look into the car, but the windows were so tinted that the only thing I could see was my own reflection.

  “Come on, we’ll drop off the dog.”

  I shook my head. “The dog comes or I don’t go.”

  He got a pained look on his face and looked up at the sky. There was a tap on the window, and the guy scowled.

  “All right,” he said, ushering me into the back seat. “Mr. DeLeon wants to see you. We’ll let him sort this out.”

  My heart pounded as we right-turned onto Ranch Road 2222. There were two guys in the front seat staring straight ahead. They were both broad shouldered, wore well-tailored suits, and were probably related to Diego DeLeon. Neither seemed to enjoy Marlowe poking his head over the console to growl at them.

  I had my hand on his neck, but just barely. If things went south, I didn’t want the dog to think these people were friends.

  They had frisked me before we left and took my cell phone and my purse. I wasn’t sure why they took the purse, unless they were afraid I might blind one of them with an eyebrow pencil. There was, of course, the recorder, which, in my profession, is way more dangerous than almost any other kind of weapon.

  My blood pounded in my ears as we turned onto Loop One and headed downtown.

  “Um, where are we going?” I said.

  Thug One answered, “To see the Chairman.”

  I nodded. “Right. And the Chairman is Diego, right?” They didn’t answer.

  Come again from a different angle. “And where would the Chairman be?”

  I was picturing some white, high-walled hacienda complete with fountains and parrots and tequila with worms, when we pulled into the parking garage of a high rise next to the Frost Bank building downtown.

  My heart went into overdrive. Marlowe’s growl intensified. “Relax,” Thug One said.

  Right. I was sitting on the bottom floor of a parking garage with two soldiers from one of the most dangerous organized crime outfits in the southwestern United States. Nobody knew where I was; I didn’t have a phone, a gun, or a clue as to what was going on.

  Thug Two slid in near the elevator while Thug One opened my door. Well, if they were going to kill me, at least they were being chivalrous about it.

  I’d been looking for Diego DeLeon on and off for days. I was finally here and wishing I wasn’t. I wondered where Logan was. I wondered if Mia had done my horoscope today. I wondered if Marlowe was too full of Skittles to kick some serious mafia butt.

  Drawing in a deep breath, I went with Thug One up the parking elevator and walked across the lobby to the glass elevator that serviced the rest of the building. The lobby was grand, as all the downtown lobbies are, with fountains and trees and flowers and piano music surrounding a bar and a restaurant.

  People looked at Marlowe as they often did, but no one said a word. His orange collar meant he was an SAR dog, but most people mistook him for a service canine.

  The thought of Marlowe serving anybody made me laugh a little, and it slipped out as we went up the elevator. Apparently, laughter, no matter how slight, is the wrong response to being summoned to the Chairman’s office, because Thug One gaped the way some men do when they’re asked to hold a wet baby.

  We disembarked on the top floor, where wide windows showed the city of Austin gleaming beneath us. As we walked across the plush burgundy carpet and into the grandeur of Diego DeLeon’s office, Marlowe was getting edgier.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  The office took up almost all of the top floor, and the view was like nothing I’d ever seen. The capitol looked like it was a stone’s throw away, and I felt like I could reach out and touch the Goddess of Liberty as she stood, stalwart, atop the shining dome.

  The office smelled of good cigars, expensive Scotch, and fresh carpet cleaner. It was huge, and it was a wall-to-wall study in black. Black desk, black tinting on the wide windows, black and chrome furniture, and a big black and glass desk, situated so that it looked like Diego was doing a newscast in front of the capitol dome.

  In a brief bit of fancy, I pictured myself at his desk, killer red shoes kicked up on the glass-topped desk, my trusty Remington Scout with clean, white paper rolled into the barrel, fresh and ready for an article that would literally stop the presses.

  “Cauley,” Diego said, rising to meet me, breaking me out of my truly excellent little fantasy. “We meet again. I see you brought a guest.

  I narrowed my eyes. I’d known Diego in high school. He was still darkly handsome with unnaturally white teeth, but time had softened him around the edges. He wore a black suit with a monochromatic shirt and tie that probably cost more than four years of my car insurance without a deductible. Back then he had an unhealthy fixation with the Godfather trilogy, but he talked like a vato, not a Soprano. Time changes everyone, and not always for the good.

  Diego waved to his second, and Thug One bowed out. I couldn’t be sure, but he looked happy to be absent of my presence.

  “Actually, Marlowe and I were about to see Dan Soliz about you when we got your invitation.” Marlowe leaned into my leg, nearly toppling me off my killer heels.

  Diego looked at me as though he was appraising a stolen gemstone, critical but appreciative. I stifled the urge to tug my skirt a little further down my thigh.

  “So what is it that you want to see me about?” he said, cutting to the chase.

  I blinked. I had my whole weaseling speech made out for Soliz, not for DeLeon. I hadn’t gotten that far on my to-do list yet.

  Because he’d jumped into the deep end, I decided I would, too. “There are a lot of people who think you had something to do with Wylie Ray Puckett’s death and with Faith Puckett’s disappearance. There are people who think you’re going to start a territory war with Selena Obregon and what’s left of El Patron.”

  Diego’s dark gold eyes flashed and an unpleasant silence stretched across the room. Marlowe growled low in his throat. I put my hand on his neck.

  Diego nodded, steepling his hands. “Why would people think that?” I shrugged. “In a way, it makes sense. El Patron was horning in on your territory. Granted, they were doing rackets the Syndicate hasn’t cashed in on.”

  “Yet,” Diego said, and he motioned me to come sit in the sleek black leather chair in front of his desk. He swiveled around and opened a short black console that housed a stash of very expensive liquors.

  He poured himself a Glenfiddich and asked if I’d like one as well. I declined.

  A slow smile spread on his full lips, and he said, “What do you think?”

  I took a deep breath. “I think you didn’t.”

  “Because they arrested a suspect?”

  “No,” I said. “Doesn’t seem grand enough to suit your style.”

  He nodded and sipped his Scotch. “Would you believe me if I told you we had nothing to do with either?”

  I shrugged. “I would, but I’d want to know why.”

  He nodded and smiled, clearly amused at his little game. “Because I already have El Patron. Selena Obregon is in the wind, and the Syndicate is absorbing the body. The rest is falling into place. Sheep will always need a leader.”

  Yikes.

  “And as for your friend Mr. Puckett,” he said.


  And then he looked me in the eyes with a gaze that should have turned me straight to stone. “We have better ways of taking care of nasty business. We don’t like attention. We don’t shoot people on the courthouse steps. When we exert discipline, no one even knows about it. Just poof problem solved.”

  Diego sat back in his chair and took a long tug on his drink.

  In the deafening silence, I heard the conversation Logan and I had with Puck weeks ago pounding in my ears.

  “We’re not staging a shootout. Hits don’t go down like that,” Logan said.

  “How do you know? You got statistics to back it up?” Puck had said. “Logan’s right,” I said. “Hits never go down like that. Nobody knows there’s even been a hit until the cops find a dead body in a deserted ditch in the boondocks.”

  My head went light, like I didn’t have enough oxygen.

  I nodded, trying to get my voice back as Puck’s words echoed from beyond the grave.

  “So why are you telling me this?” I said. “Why not just let me keep looking for you and wait me out?

  Diego smiled. “I like you, Cauley. You are persistent, but it was only a matter of time before you started annoying me with all the questions. You got cajones—like how we ended things this summer. Speaking of that, have you seen Mr. Fiennes?

  “No. Have you seen Selena?”

  He poured himself another drink.

  “I like you because you amuse me, but make no mistake, it’s not wise to annoy me.”

  I swallowed hard, calling up courage, resolve, and a good old-fashioned dose of complete disregard for common sense. “Have I annoyed you enough to send me a thug with a dead bird, threatening notes, and creepy photos?”

  He cocked a dark brow and was quiet.

  Marlowe shifted beside me, his ears half back, his almond eyes trained on DeLeon.

  DeLeon sat back in his chair and steepled his hands. “Cauley, if I send you a message, you will know it was me.”

  He smiled and a chill settled along my skin.

  “Now I’ve frightened you.” He waved an elegant, manicured hand. “Despite what you might think, we are doing good things here. We have cleaned up the East Side. There are no more drive-by shootings. Children play in the streets. There is no more unsightly gang tagging and graffiti, no more ‘You disrespect me, I’m gonna kill you and your family’ bullshit. We are benevolent with our citizens. We donate to charitable causes. Who else will look after our people? The government?”