She had been making impatient sounds. ‘There are some things about this crime scene that seem pretty odd. I think we’ve stumbled into something out of the ordinary here and we should talk about it.’
‘Oh? OK, soon as you’re done there, come in and talk to me. Listen … why I called? One of the autopsies scheduled for tomorrow got cancelled; the coroner can put your new victim in that slot if you or your backup can attend. What do you think?’
‘Well, not much doubt about the cause of death, so I’m not in a hurry for his verdict,’ Sarah said. ‘But come to think of it, didn’t Banjo say he’d like to take a look at that van tomorrow?’
‘What? Yes, he wants to dig out those bullets before they get dusty, he said. What’s that got to do with—’
‘Tomorrow? You sure he said tomorrow?’
‘Yes, he said tomorrow. Why do you care?’
‘Well, see, Banjo already agreed to let Bogey observe—’
‘What? Why would Bogey be watching Banjo? I don’t get it.’
‘Bogey says he had considerable experience with AR15s and their ammo in Iraq, and the holes in this van look familiar to him so he’d like to see the slugs that are in the driver’s side door and figure out why their entry points don’t look like the rest of the shots.’
‘Since when do we need his opinion? Seems to me we’ve been getting along all right with whatever Banjo tells us.’
‘Well, boss, maybe he just wants to show us he’s got some extra expertise with high-powered ammo, nothing wrong with that, is there?’ She felt her bile rising; why did everything have to be so freaking hard, always an argument? ‘And if he and Banjo could give us a read on the guns and ammo while I was doing the autopsy,’ she said, a little louder than necessary, ‘maybe for a change we could show some speed here, get a skitch closer to nailing these crazy shooters who for all I know are still roaming around this neighborhood, perhaps close to me as we speak.’
Two seconds of silence were followed by a small cough, and then Delaney said, ‘So is that a yes? You want to do the autopsy tomorrow?’
Back in Letitia’s office, Bogey was saying, ‘Your usual driver named DeShawn – one of the guys on the maintenance crew told me some of the staff call him “Romeo.” What’s that all about?’
‘Well, DeShawn is very handsome, so I suppose …’ She patted her hair thoughtfully. ‘One of the problems to watch out for in a small operation like this one is that jealousies crop up … any little sign of approval or somebody getting extra attention …’
Bogey looked amused. ‘They thought you liked DeShawn best?’
‘If they did they made it up – I never show favoritism. But some of the clients, I think – he does know how to please the ladies.’
‘Is he still in St. Mary’s Hospital?’ Sarah asked her.
‘Oh, yes. For some time, I’m afraid.’
‘Still in a coma?’
‘Yes.’
‘So in intensive care?
‘Yes. Poor guy got clobbered last night by an old Jeep going fifty miles an hour through a red light. It was hit-and-run, and the driver got away. We’re not having our best week here, automotive-wise.’
‘For sure. I’ll just keep checking till he wakes up. We’re most anxious to talk to him.’
‘I suppose. Although I don’t suppose he can help you much, since he wasn’t driving when these shooters attacked.’
‘Well, but the money was in his jacket. Aren’t you alarmed to find your driver carrying that much cash? Do you know why he was?’
‘No. I suppose he might have been gambling and got lucky.’
‘Do you really think that? Why would he bring his winnings to work with him?’ Sarah gave her the look the squad called the Full Dubious, which usually turned even seasoned liars into babbling jerks.
Letitia just gave a blithe shrug and said, ‘I don’t know. Why does anybody do anything?’
‘Doesn’t it seem more likely he was running a small cottage industry on the side? Maybe dealing a little pot to some of the guests?’
‘Good heavens, no. Please don’t go spreading that idea around – this company is very particular about image. What we sell here is care for a vulnerable segment of the population. They want peace and quiet! We take great care to guard our squeaky-clean reputation.’
‘I’m sure you do, but now you have this van full of bullets and a dead driver, and we have to account for those, don’t we?’
‘Well.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I suppose we do.’
‘So let’s start over. Was DeShawn hired and trained with the rest of the crew; will they have all his stats in Phoenix too?’
‘No to the first question, yes to the second. DeShawn’s a replacement; I hired him myself when the original van driver quit to follow a girlfriend to New Mexico.’ She held her hands up in an ‘I surrender’ gesture. ‘Even great company policies can’t always protect against private lives. But yes, I sent all DeShawn’s stats to Phoenix as soon as he passed his ten-day probation period.’
‘So you can get them back for me right away?’
‘Yes.’
‘How did you find DeShawn?’
‘Luck. I had just listed my request at the unemployment office – a little reluctantly, you know, because they don’t always get the sharpest knives in the drawer, but when needs must … and then DeShawn walked in off the street with a commercial driver’s license and a letter from his last employer that said he was capable and trustworthy. Usually I’d say this is too good to be true so it must be false. But he had nice manners and the first two people who rode with him expressed total satisfaction so I put him on.’
‘And you’re still happy with that decision?’
‘Yes. DeShawn has invalidated every cynical rule I ever heard about how careful you have to be with walk-ins. From day one he had a good attitude and did whatever I asked.’
‘Which was what, besides driving the van?’
‘He’s on the Maintenance crew – not a glam job. Unclogging sinks and toilets, readjusting all the TV sets and thermostats that the guests constantly screw up and then complain don’t work. Moving furniture, vacuuming. His hours in the van are probably the most fun he has at work.’
‘And was he a good driver? Did he satisfy the guests?’
‘Oh, indeed he did. Quiet and careful, helpful with boarding and getting off. Well-spoken young man who never gets lost and treats the rolling stock with respect – what more do you want? I already put him in for a merit raise as soon as he’s completed his first six months.’
‘Sounds like you’re good at shaping up staff.’
‘Well,’ she squared her shoulders, pleased, ‘I’m a good explainer, and I treat everybody with respect. I always say we’re just one big happy family here.’ Letitia gave a fierce little chuckle. ‘And if that isn’t true when they come to work, it by God is before many days have passed, or they don’t stay here with me.’
‘OK, you’re cleared to tag along with Banjo Bailey tomorrow,’ Sarah told Bogey as they drove away from Fairweather Farms. ‘Meet him at the impound yard at eight-thirty. Wear old clothes, that place is not fancy.’
‘Yeah, I know what salvage yards are like. My brother restores old Model T Fords, he’s always scavenging for parts, and I go along sometimes to help him hunt. I suppose I’ll find Banjo where I find the van, huh?’
‘And he’ll probably be the only one around with Prince Albert facial hair and a long white pigtail.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Let’s do one more stop before we quit for the day. I’d like to get a look at that usual driver who carries unusual amounts of cash.’
They got back on I-10 and were soon parking in the lot at St. Mary’s. ‘I like the way Tucson’s developing, don’t you?’ Bogey said. ‘The outskirts grow and grow, but the core is still small and easy to reach.’
‘My partner hates it,’ Sarah said. ‘He says they tore down all the old fun stuff and the replacements are square and uninteresting.’
&n
bsp; ‘He was fond of some of the barrios, was he?’ He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. ‘You got a room-mate with privileges too, huh?’
‘Yes.’ Little do you know. My boyfriend, my mother and my niece, all in one house. Let’s not go there just now.
‘I’m on my third try.’ Bogey looked mildly embarrassed. ‘But cops work such awful shifts, and now I’m finding out detectives are even worse, we never know when we’ll be done. My roomie and me, we text each other all day and still mess up our dates.’
‘And then stay home and have a real whopper of a fight, right? I had a husband for six years and that’s how we handled the stress.’ She was just chatting to establish comradery; actually, although he wasn’t ugly, she couldn’t imagine moving in with Bogey – didn’t find him attractive, maybe because his hazel eyes grew colorless in some lights and made his face look expressionless. There was nothing wrong with his demeanor, though – after a day together in a bizarre crime scene she was ready to tell Delaney that his new detective had passed several stress tests. ‘There’s a parking spot,’ she said, ‘by the red pickup.’ And then thought he even puts up with my backseat driving – a fault her own family had often complained about.
In the lobby Sarah asked for DeShawn Williams and was told he could not have visitors. She showed her badge and explained how little their mission resembled a visit. Presently they were standing beside a bed on which a comatose man lay almost completely swathed in bandages, one leg suspended from a wheeled device that hung from an overhead track. They were accompanied by the head nurse on the floor, a monumentally calm woman in scrubs and a hairnet whose name, Judy, seemed entirely wrong for her. She said DeShawn had been in and out of surgery twice since last night, had been critical for his first ten hours but was now upgraded to serious.
‘He’s improved a lot in the last couple of hours,’ she said.
‘But isn’t this a long time for him to stay in a coma?’
‘Well, that’s induced. His surgeon won’t let him wake up till sometime tomorrow, when the worst of the pain will have eased. He sustained several fractures and a massive concussion; he’s got a lot of healing to do.’
‘His collision was hit-and-run?’
‘Yes. But luckily there were witnesses nearby, and the ambulance got him in here quickly. You want the name of the traffic officer?’ She pulled it up at her station in the hall and handed the printout to Bogey because Sarah was already talking to traffic division, arranging to have a copy of the accident report faxed to her PC at headquarters.
When the nurse was called away they stood together looking down at the patient. He had been lucky in one respect; except for a scrape on his right eyebrow and cheekbone, his face was undamaged.
You might get a black eye, but nothing’s broken above your shoulders. And you look as if that would matter a lot to you, Sarah thought. A light-skinned African-American, he wore his hair trimmed short and his beard clipped in an elaborate pattern that emphasized the handsome line of his jaw. His mustache was narrow and did the same favor for his full-lipped mouth.
Watching his peaceful drug-induced slumber, Sarah grew thoughtful. The much-maligned opioids that filled so many column-inches of daily newsprint with tales of calamity, at this moment were blessing DeShawn Williams with hours of peace in which to heal.
They talked about him, on their way back to headquarters.
‘I can see why his fellow staffers called him Romeo,’ she said. ‘How much time, do you figure, does he spend every day in front of a mirror, grooming all that glamour?’
‘Quite a bit. He really is pretty, isn’t he? I bet he was teacher’s pet all through school. It isn’t getting him very far, though, is it? Driving a van in an old folks’ home?’
‘Well, it took him far enough this week to get upwards of eight thousand dollars in his pocket.’
‘Kind of a lot for a rent boy, don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ Sarah said, thinking about the hard line of his jaw. ‘Anyway, I’d be more inclined to connect this guy to today’s shooters, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes. And I’m pretty sure they’re selling drugs, not sex. DeShawn’s fancy whiskers wouldn’t impress those bandits. Where do you suppose they got to, by the way? We don’t seem to be any closer to catching them than we were this morning.’
‘I mentioned that to our boss,’ Sarah said, ‘a time or two.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He doesn’t like to be reminded. We’re supposed to know all the hidey holes in this small accessible city that you like so much.’
‘We never really know them all, do we? You going to the autopsy tomorrow?’
‘Yes. But I don’t expect many surprises there – the man had his brains blown out.’
‘But maybe I can learn a thing or two if I get a good look at that van.’ Turning into the skewed parking lot at South Stone, he asked, ‘This your car?’
‘Yes. Call my cell when you finish in the yard, will you?’
‘The doc won’t object to a phone call in the lab?’
‘I’ll turn it off in the lab – leave a message if I don’t answer. We’ll probably finish with the autopsy early, though, and if we do I’ll go back to the senior living center and talk to the elusive Amanda. I need to see if I can get her to tell me anything about the little pot-smoking club I’m pretty sure DeShawn has been running there in his spare time.’
The house on Bentley Street smelled like beef and onions, but there was no cook in sight. It was Monday, which used to be one of Aggie’s nights to cook, but these days you never knew. Sarah could hear the Rival Sons rocking Denny’s upstairs bedroom – she thought it was ‘Do Your Worst,’ but the sound was turned so high the lyrics turned to screaming mush.
Sounds like an uprising, she told herself. Better get out of my work clothes and investigate. She almost said aloud, Lucky I’m a detective. This summer her family had formed this nauseating habit of trying to put a humorous slant on everything as they tip-toed around the tar-pit of Aggie’s depression. Playing some game called ‘Just keep chuckling till it goes away,’ she thought as she climbed the stairs. Makes me want to gag.
She knocked and got no answer, decided she can’t hear me, and turned the knob. Denny was at her desk, bent over a math book and work sheets. Making noises like a wrecking crew but she’s just doing her homework. Be patient. Sarah smiled before pointing to her ears, and Denny killed the music.
‘Smells like dinner but there’s nobody around,’ Sarah said, ‘so I thought I’d ask?’
‘No prob,’ Denny said. ‘Gram had all the stuff out for meat loaf and was just starting to chop the onion when I got home. But she looked so fagged I told her I’d finish it and I think she’s taking a nap.’
‘Good girl. What’s left to do?’
‘I put in two baking potatoes, big enough to split. Will you nuke a frozen veg and set the table? I’d like to finish this math before dinner so I can watch “The Big Bang Theory” after.’
‘Sure. Thanks for doing all that.’
Denny was taking Aggie’s lingering illness in stride the way she took most things, Sarah thought gratefully as she hurried down to her bedroom. From Denny’s twelve-year-old perspective Aggie was very old, so her debility was not surprising. Sarah remembered the capable ranch wife her mother had been, not so long ago. Watching her descent into wan indifference was painful.
It had come on in stages. Helping her mother through post-stroke recovery three years ago, Sarah’s resources were already stretched thin when her haplessly drug-addicted sister disappeared, leaving Denny, her nine-year-old daughter, in peril on dark city streets. Sarah found her and brought her home, but suddenly adding two needy family members to her responsibilities, Sarah felt obliged to cut her new lover loose.
‘You don’t want to get mixed up in this mess,’ she told him. But she had reckoned without the passionate attachment of Will Dietz, who said, ‘What I really don’t want is to live without you, so let’s figure
this out.’ She had admired him since he was her first boss in homicide, and loved him since she befriended him after his near-death injury on the job. As they helped each other surmount the problems of their made-up family, their love and trust had grown deep as the bone.
The three adults pooled their financial resources to buy an old house on Bentley Street, its marks and scars compensated for by a little casita across the patio for Aggie and an attic room of her own for Denny. Aggie’s fears of being a burden quickly faded when she saw she could help rescue her shamefully neglected granddaughter. And Denny, who had been getting through middle school by figuring out her own schedules and stealing lunch money from her mother’s deadhead boyfriends, nimbly converted her survival skills into helping with the housework and making no waves.
It wasn’t always pretty, but Sarah’s determination and Will’s fix-it skills had kept annoyances from ever reaching crisis level. Dietz continually tinkered over sagging steps, broken molding, and missing door handles, Sarah painted walls in desert colors, and together they had almost saved enough to remodel the kitchen, which they all thought of as their most serious problem, until this summer.
In June, a serious case of flu rendered Aggie bedridden for two weeks and convalescent for two more. The other three rallied to help, feeling quite proud of their teamwork, and in July, Aggie was pronounced recovered by her doctors. But she never quite got her bounce back. Still listless in August, she continued to lose weight, resigned from her bridge club and quit going to weekly lunches with friends. Creeping around the house in her oldest clothes, she took frequent naps in her casita and came to meals looking woebegone.
Sarah was ‘cranking up her courage,’ she told Will, to arrange for a joint visit to Aggie’s primary caregiver.
‘I know she won’t like it, and Ma can be an alligator when she gets mad. But somebody’s got to help me figure out if this is depression or the onset of dementia. And what to do about it – if there is anything to do.’ And even Will, the pragmatic fixer who hated to talk about feelings, said at once, ‘You’re right. I’ve been wanting to say, we need to do something.’
Sarah's List Page 5
