“You want us to say it? For everybody to hear?” Tick said in his most innocent voice.
Aloa rolled her eyes. No wonder she didn’t want children.
“Get that stuff and follow me,” she said. “And don’t leave anything behind.”
The Brain Farm gathered the papers, stuffing them into old leather satchels and worn daypacks, grabbing their glasses of wine.
Behind the bar, Erik shook his head as Aloa marched past with the Brain Farm in tow.
“I’ll make that a double,” he said.
Justus’s basement was a dimly lit cave with rough whitewashed walls and an old-fashioned skylight of iron and thick glass designed to let in sunlight from the alley above. Right now, Justus’s blinking neon sign was creating a Morse code of blue and yellow through the glass.
“Sit,” Aloa ordered.
P-Mac flipped on an overhead light and the men settled at an old Formica table surrounded by cases of booze and shelves of industrial-size canned goods. Baxter the cat had followed them downstairs and now jumped into Aloa’s lap. She gave him a rub behind his ears as he settled. She could hear a purr begin deep in the feline’s throat.
Guillermo arrived moments later, announced by scents of cilantro and peppers. He carried a tray laden with food and drink.
“Sashimi taco in the estilo Jalisco,” Guillermo said, setting a plate with three delicate corn tortillas brimming with raw tuna and topped with a green sauce in front of Aloa. Her taste buds awakened in response to the sight and smell of the dish. Tremblay’s all-in-one nutritional powder would never compete with real food, she thought, although it could be an anorexic’s dream.
“Muchas gracias, Guillermo,” she said, meaning every syllable.
“Por nada,” he said, and added a large martini to the table. “My esposo say you need a twice drink.”
“Double gracias,” Aloa said.
“And for these elderly, a bread to soak their wines,” he added, putting a basket of sliced baguette and a bowl of olive oil on the table.
Aloa wondered if the double entendre had been intentional.
Guillermo hurried back upstairs and, for a few minutes, there was no sound but eating. The sweet fish paired with the crunch of corn tortilla and a spicy sauce made Aloa’s mouth tingle with pleasure. It was almost enough to forget the rude real estate agent.
“All right. What did you guys find?” Aloa finally asked, the rhythmic purr of the cat and the martini taming her earlier frustration with them.
“Well,” said P-Mac as the men dug out the documents and scattered them on the table, “if you look in the reports, you will notice there was no analysis done of tracks around Hayley’s truck.”
Doc picked up the stack of police reports. “I checked twice. Nothing.”
“And see here?” P-Mac said, thumbing through the crime scene photos Michael had emailed and Tick had printed. He set a photo of the area near the back of Hayley’s truck in front of Aloa.
“It looks like a bunch of tire marks. You can’t tell one from another,” Aloa said.
“That’s right,” P-Mac said, “but see what it looks like after Tick got hold of it.”
He sorted through the photos again and pulled out a blown-up print of what looked to be a small section of tire track. “That’s a motorcycle tire near Hayley’s truck,” he said, and touched his finger down on the shot. “A motorcycle tire has a more U-shaped profile. Car tires are flatter.”
“And look here,” Tick said excitedly, scrabbling his fingers through the stack of shots.
P-Mac slapped his hand away. “Jeez, Tick. Hold your horses, man.”
P-Mac organized the photos, laying out a series of shots into a 360-degree view of Hayley’s vehicle. It was the first time Aloa had seen close-up shots of the scene. She’d pulled up satellite views of the area, but it was not the same thing.
She saw an image of Hayley’s dusty truck, its hatchback open. Then, a shot of a long stretch of a rough dirt road, a photo of the shell casing, and, finally, an image that made Aloa sit up straighter: Hayley’s running shoes and socks set neatly next to a jagged black rock.
For some reason, as she’d read the police reports, Aloa had gotten a picture of Hayley’s shoes flung into the wilderness in a kind of desperate statement, but the deliberateness of their placement rattled her. An image came to her of the mentally fragile Hayley walking away from her truck, unlacing her shoes, and carefully placing them next to the stone, then beginning to run. A ritual of strength but also of despair, if the cops were to be believed.
And yet, there were always two ways to look at things, and the placement of the shoes could also mean someone had forced Hayley to remove them and then run her into the desert.
She moved the photo closer to her. “Those shoes sealed her fate, didn’t they?” she said.
“It’s a wonder she lasted as long as she did,” P-Mac said.
“But look here.” P-Mac tapped a finger on one of the photos. “Remember what we said about the sapper tab?”
Aloa nodded and stroked a hand along Baxter’s bony back.
“Look at the dirt off to the right, in the corner of the shot,” P-Mac said. “That’s a track from the same motorcycle, and it’s heading into the desert in the direction where Hayley’s shoes and body were found.”
Doc rapped a knuckle on the table. “More evidence for a death march.”
“Were there motorcycle tracks near Hayley’s body?” she asked.
“None noted,” P-Mac said, “but there was wind and the soil was much finer in the wash. You saw how the sapper tab was partially covered with dirt.”
Aloa stopped petting Baxter, and he leaped from her lap. “Calvin had a motorcycle,” she said, remembering the shiny machine parked in the corner of his shop.
Tick nodded. “I found a DMV registration for a 2006 Kawasaki in his name.” He glanced at P-Mac. “I also found a charge for a gas station in Reno on Calvin’s credit card. It was for the day Hayley disappeared.”
Aloa felt a ripple of memory and waited for it to surface, shoving her half-finished meal away. “When I went to Calvin’s shop, he said something about ‘fixing it for Hayley,’ about tools. Wrenches or something. It seemed like a bunch of nothing, but what if her truck was having engine problems and she called him?” She let her mind run. “What if he went on his motorcycle to help?”
The room fell silent. The background music of every bar in America—glasses clinking, conversation humming, chairs thumping—drifted down the steps.
“What if that capitalist-pig lender triggered the starter interrupter and Calvin found it when he got there?” Tick said. “Then something happened and he killed her.”
Doc snapped his fingers. “And he took the interrupter with him afterward to cover up the fact he’d been there. The cops wouldn’t know the truck had quit and even if they found her phone and saw a call to him, he could say that she’d phoned to say goodbye.”
“But why would he give the Dauntless thing to me?” Aloa asked.
“Guilt,” Tick said.
For a moment, they were all silent.
“If he killed her, it’s the government’s fault,” P-Mac said finally. “The Pentagon trains killing into those guys and then sends them into a war where they can’t tell a friendly from the enemy. Then, when the guys come back with PTSD, the government says there’s no connection between its own violence and what happened; they say that kind of thinking hurts veterans, but the only thing it does is shove the problem underground where the government wants it.” P-Mac’s voice rose. “These guys need help, and all the VA gives them is crap.”
Doc put his hand on P-Mac’s shoulder. “Steady, man.”
P-Mac’s hands fisted on the table.
“What he’s saying is that Calvin was triggered,” Tick said. “That something happened in-country that set him off. It’s probably not a coincidence Hayley was killed in a place that looks a lot like Iraq.”
“I need to get a look at the tires on Ca
lvin’s bike, see if they match the tracks in the photo.” Aloa stood and felt the kick of the alcohol. She’d only had a few sips, but it was enough. “I’ll head over there tomorrow.”
“Not a good idea, Ink,” Tick said. “What if the same thing happens to you that happened to Samantha?” His watery blue eyes took on a new shine.
“We don’t know for sure that Samantha’s dead.” Aloa put her hand on the old man’s shoulder. “But I’ll be careful anyway.”
“I’d just hate anything to happen to you.”
“I can take care of myself, Tick.”
Tick scrubbed at his eyes. “Damned dust down here.”
CHAPTER 23
Aloa was just reaching for the doorknob at the warehouse where Calvin had his shop when the door swung open. It was ten o’clock, another morning that followed a restless night, including a dream in which a huge bird was trying to peck her face with its razor-sharp bill. She’d awakened in a cold sweat.
“Well, hey there, young lady,” said the property manager, giving her a grin. Apparently he believed forty bucks had made them friends. “Did you find that Foster gal?”
“Not yet.”
His eyes ran up and down Aloa’s frame. “Say, I’m headed to the Patch for an Irish coffee. Care to join me? I can tell you more about Foster if you want.” He gave her a wink.
Not even if I were in a coma, Aloa thought. “Actually, I’m here to talk to Mr. Rabren about Hayley Poole.”
“The one who killed herself?”
Aloa gave a noncommittal nod.
“I tell you what, ol’ Calvin was cuckoo for her. Mooning after her, following her around.”
“Like stalking her?” Aloa could smell cigarettes and stale sweat coming off the guy.
“More like a puppy dog, you know. Kinda pathetic, you ask me. Tell you what, let me make the introduction for ya. Calvin don’t like strangers too much.”
“I’ve already met him,” Aloa started to say, but the property manager had turned and gone back inside. She had no choice but to follow and hope she could accomplish what she’d come to do, which was to get a photo of the tires on Calvin’s motorcycle and ask some questions about him being nearby on the day Hayley died.
The property manager gave a loud pound on the door. “Cal, it’s me, Horace,” he hollered.
They waited.
“He don’t always answer,” the property manager said. “Gets caught up in what he’s doing, but don’t worry, I’ll get you in.” He pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket and began to insert one in the lock.
“I don’t think that’s legal,” Aloa said. “As a property manager you have to give notice.”
“How’s this for notice?” He grinned. “I’m coming in, Cal,” he yelled, pushing the key into the lock and shoving open the door.
His scream was high and piercing.
Calvin’s body was slumped over the hood of a large pickup that had pinned him to the concrete wall next to the shop’s bay door. His face was swollen grotesquely, his eyes bulged from their sockets, and a trail of blood ran from a mouth that appeared open in a scream. Aloa could smell the faint scent of feces, hear the buzz of flies. She looked away, but not before she’d seen the way Calvin’s arms were flung across the truck, as if he were embracing the very thing that had killed him.
Aloa finished giving her statement to a detective on the scene and began to move toward the exit. She’d overheard one of the police officers saying something about positional asphyxia and never leaving a vehicle in neutral when you were working on it, but she didn’t say anything. She would let the evidence and other witnesses lead the cops to what she thought she already knew. Calvin’s death was no accident.
After they’d discovered the body, she’d ordered the shaken property manager to go upstairs and call the police. While he was gone, she’d snapped photos of Calvin’s shop, trying not to look at the mechanic’s crushed body. She’d captured his living space, the tools (three of them on the floor), then a close-up of the tires on his motorcycle, and, finally, a set of wheel chocks a few feet away from the truck.
She hadn’t had the opportunity to take photos the first time she’d visited Calvin, but she remembered with clarity the neatness of his tools, the way he’d emptied the shelves and placed each item in the same pattern he’d removed it, the orange chocks placed carefully in front of the wheels of the Volvo he was working on. She was pretty sure the mechanic was the kind of person who would never begin a job without first securing the vehicle. The methodical way he kept his shop along with the mention of his OCD in the lawsuit reinforced the idea that, even with a disordered mind, discipline ruled his work.
Behavior and habitat, as her father would say.
The near certainty that Calvin was murdered shook her. One person missing and three now dead? It also seemed clear that even if Calvin had been at Hayley’s truck at some point, he wasn’t the person to chase her into the desert. The treads on his motorcycle’s tires plainly didn’t match.
A lump formed in her throat at the thought of the gentle but damaged mechanic, his body splayed across the truck hood. He was collateral damage in a war he never stopped fighting and probably didn’t understand. He certainly didn’t deserve what had happened.
A squad car and a fire truck had arrived quickly after the property manager’s call, and within thirty minutes the place was full of crime scene processors and a detective who wanted a statement from both her and the property manager. When she was done, she watched the evidence tech take photos of Calvin’s toolbox, knowing the shots would reveal more evidence of a homicide.
Because, while the property manager was making his call, she’d pulled her long-sleeved T-shirt over her hand and slid open the toolbox drawer. Calvin’s big knife was missing.
CHAPTER 24
Ask any reporter who’s worked long enough and they can tell you about the slide show in their head: The dead man whose arms had been chainsawed from his body, the skeletal remains of an eight-year-old girl who’d been chained in a closet and starved to death by her mentally ill mother. The body of a teenager in an alley with a needle in her arm.
The image of Calvin slumped over the truck was now a permanent part of Aloa’s montage and, though it wasn’t as horrible as some images she carried, she knew it would always haunt her.
The day was hot, and Aloa could feel sweat trickling down her back as she walked toward home. She considered stopping for a cold beer, but the thought of sitting in a room full of people who needed a drink at noon in order to get through the day made her rethink the option.
She turned down a side street, finding a rough patch of dry grass between a parking lot and the bay. The water was calm, a dusky emerald green, and she lowered herself onto the ground, leaning back against a chain-link fence.
A ragged line of pelicans glided by, three of the birds turning suddenly and dive-bombing into the water, the force of their impact stunning the fish before they were scooped up into the birds’ oversize bills. A container ship steamed slowly by.
She watched for a while, her mind searching for calm. She heard the first notes in her mind, raised her left hand to shoulder height, cocked her fingers, and took up an imaginary bow. She played Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” silently, although the music filled her head.
A seagull landed nearby and cocked its head as if waiting for notes to materialize. A breeze freshened her face.
Finally, she dropped her arms and considered her next move. She dialed Michael’s cell.
“How’s it going?” he asked. From the background noise, she guessed he was in his car.
“It’s going,” she said.
“You sound like something’s wrong.”
Aloa watched a sailboat tack upwind.
“I just came from Hayley’s old building. Apparently, her ex-roommate is missing, and now her friend, this sweet but totally scrambled combat vet she took under her wing, is dead. Murdered, I think.”
“Jesus, Aloa,” Michael said.
“He was smashed into a wall. By a pickup.” Aloa told him about the scene.
“Are you all right?” he asked when she finished.
“As good as you can be after seeing a dead man.” She breathed in the salt air.
“You’re sure it was murder?” Aloa could hear him asking Vincent to pull over.
“Pretty sure.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I.”
“I mean I’m worried about you. It sounds like things are getting dangerous. Maybe we should tell the cops what you know.”
“I don’t have enough yet. They’ll laugh me out of their office.”
“OK, then I’ll call Dean, the editor, and ask him to assign somebody to help you with the story.”
“You mean a guy?”
“I was thinking Cameron Brady. He did that story on Chinese drug cartels. He’s as tough as they come.”
“You do realize that’s an extremely sexist thing to say.”
“All I meant—” he began but Aloa interrupted him.
“Listen, Michael. I can do this. I want to do this.”
“What would your dad say if I let you get hurt?”
“My dad would say, ‘I raised her to take care of herself.’ He trusted me.”
There was a long pause. “If this is about money, I’ll still pay you for your time.”
Aloa pushed herself to her feet. “This isn’t about the money, Michael. This is about three people being dead and me needing to find out who did it. This is about me proving that I’m still a journalist.”
She could hear a car door open on his end of the line.
“What if, as your publisher, I ordered you to drop this?”
Aloa looked toward the bay. “Sorry, you’re breaking up. I can’t hear you,” she said as she clicked off the phone.
CHAPTER 25
Aloa steered the rental car up the narrow mountain road. She was glad she wasn’t in Doc’s van. His wheezing vehicle would never have made it up the steep, curving drive. She would either have had to abandon the van to the raccoons and coyotes or try to back it down the treacherous track. She was not good at reverse. In driving or in life.
See Her Run Page 13
