A Body To Die For (21 page)

Ryan and John had joined them in the rear of the building.

“This would be a great place to hide a car,” Ryan said.

Dirk nodded. “Just what we were thinking. If you wanted to keep the body and a vehicle under wraps for a while before dumping it somewhere, this would be the perfect place.”

They all turned toward the heavy metal door to the left of them.

“Processing houses have to have cooling rooms, right?” Savannah said. “You have to chill the meat before you ship it.”

“Some have flash freezers,” John said.

Dirk was already at the door. He jerked the thick handle and the door creaked as it opened.

“It’s not cool in here,” he said, stepping inside and flipping on a light. “But look at those shelves. It’s got to be where they chilled the meat.”

Savannah spotted a thermostat on the wall. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s a cooling unit, but it’s turned off.”

“Why waste electricity?” Ryan said. “Your man Pinky is probably a guy who watches his profit margin.”

Seeing yet another smaller door on the far wall of the cooling unit, Savannah walked over to it and opened it. Instantly, she was hit by a blast of frigid air. “Bingo,” she said. “Freezer, big-time. And it’s on.”

She found the light switch for that room, too, but she used a tissue to open it, so she wouldn’t disturb any prints. Something told her they had entered an area that the crime scene techs would need to process.

By the light of one dim overhead bulb, she could see shelves with at least twenty plastic bags of ice—the same sort she bought at the liquor store when she was having a party that was sure to tax her own meager ice cube trays.

“Well, now we know where they store the ice for the sodas and ice chests at these little soirees,” she said.

“Can I use your light for a minute?” Dirk asked her.

She handed it to him. Then she, John, and Ryan watched and shivered as Dirk ran the light over first one shelf and then the other.

“Hey, lady and gentlemen, look what we have here!” he said, excited.

They gathered close, and Ryan and John shone their own lights at the spot he was indicating.

“Okay,” Savannah said. “It looks like blood. But in a place like this, blood’s as plentiful as feathers.”

Dirk grinned. “Yeah, but I’ve never seen a chicken with short, straight blond hair, have you?”

“It’s got hair in it?”

“Right there in that one big, dark spot.”

He stepped back so that they could move closer. And when she leaned into the shelf and squinted, there they were—several short blond hairs, glued to the shelf by the dried blood.

“That looks a lot like Jardin’s hair,” she said. “The lab will be able to tell for sure, but I’d bet money on it.”

“I think they killed your lad somewhere on this property,” John said, “and then stowed his car in there and his body in here.”

“Until they were ready to let the world know he was dead,” Ryan added.

“So why the wait?” Savannah asked. “What did those days buy them?”

“I think I’ll go ask Pinky,” Dirk said. “And this time I’m going to ‘ask’ him really, really hard.”

W
hether it was the city jail, county lockup, or one of the state penitentiaries, every time Savannah set foot in an incarceration facility, she was struck by the sheer power of the law.

Even though she, personally, had been responsible for many arrests and subsequent convictions over the years, the fact that society could take a person’s freedom from them and lock them behind bars continued to awe her.

Keeping human beings in cages was a necessary evil, but an evil, nevertheless.

Surrounded by steel bars and cement, their faces strangely blank and eyes empty, the inmates wandered about listlessly—ghosts in orange jumpsuits.

Sometimes, when they saw her, their faces would light up momentarily, the sight of a pretty woman sparking something in their souls. And usually the way they looked at her was touchingly respectful. Not so much lascivious, as one might expect, but adoring and with a longing of the spirit, rather than the flesh.

She wondered if she reminded them of the women they loved on the outside: wives, girlfriends, sisters, and friends.

But when Baldovino Pinky Moretti walked into the small interrogation room with its four plastic chairs and its one scarred table, and its drab, unadorned walls, he scarcely gave her any look at all. He hadn’t been inside long enough to need a woman, physically or spiritually.

Pinky just wanted out.

“You again,” he said when he saw Dirk sitting at the table next to Savannah. “They said somebody was here to talk to me about my case. Like I told you before, it’s a bunch of bullshit, me supposedly attacking that cop.”

“It probably is,” Dirk replied. “But that’s not the case I’m here to talk about. Have a seat.”

Savannah looked him over as he plopped his considerable body onto the chair across from them. He was a large man, well over six feet and must have weighed close to three hundred pounds. Most of it wasn’t muscle.

The hair on his head had been shaved, but was beginning to grow out. So he had a blond stubble, reminiscent of a boot camp recruit.

But his most obvious feature, without a doubt, was the enormous pinkish-red birthmark that covered most of the right side of his face. The port wine stain stretched from his forehead, over his eye and down to his neck.

She thought of all the teasing and harassment the young Pinky would have endured with such an unusual appearance. Not to mention a name to underscore his uniqueness. It couldn’t have been an easy childhood.

Of course, that was no excuse for murder, she reminded herself.

“I didn’t kill that guy either,” Pinky said, chewing on his thumbnail, an activity that looked particularly ridiculous since he was handcuffed and had to lift both hands to his face to accomplish it. “That DA’s got nothing on me and he knows it.”

“Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t.” Dirk leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “But I’m not here to talk to you about him. I still want to find out what happened to Bill Jardin.”

Pinky snorted and spat out a nail fragment. “That gambling degenerate scumbag. I told you before, I don’t know anything about him…except that he owed me money.”

“Gee, for what?” Savannah asked. “Did you redecorate his house? Tailor his tuxedo?”

Pinky glared at her for a moment, then turned to Dirk. “Who’s this bitch?”

Dirk chuckled. “A good friend of mine. You’d better watch what you call her, ’cause she’s got a mean karate chop, and I’m pretty good with a left hook myself.”

The two men had a brief stare down, and Savannah noted with satisfaction that it was Pinky who broke eye contact first.

“Let’s get down to business here,” Dirk said. “We just went for a little drive out in the country.”

“Had a hankering for some clean
farm
living,” Savannah added.

“Yeah,” Dirk said to her, “my buddy Pinky here, he knows all about farming. He owns that one we just visited out there in the hills, just off Sulphur Creek Road. He’s a chicken man.”

“Not chickens,” Pink said, his pale gray eyes narrowing. “If you’ve been out to my place, you know what I’m about.
Cocks
.”

Savannah snickered and said to Dirk, “It’s kinda pitiful, really, what a big kick he gets out of saying that. Kinda like a twelve-year-old who just learned himself a new dirty word.”

Dirk laughed, then quickly sobered and leaned across the table, getting in Pinky’s face. “So, why did you kill Jardin?”

“Kill him? I told you, I didn’t have anything to do with that one. Nothing at all.”

“Yes, you did,” Dirk snapped back. “You hid his car in your building there, right next to the trash can full of rotten chickens—”

“Cocks!”

“Whatever. And you stashed his body in your freezer. The CSU techs are over there right now, lifting his tire marks off your floor and collecting samples of his blood and hair out of your freezer. Do you want to play this bullshit game with me and pretend they’re not all gonna match?”

Pinky looked like somebody had slugged him in his ample belly. He began to chew his thumbnail with all the vigor of a deeply worried, multicharged felon.

But he hadn’t yet uttered that one dirty word they always dreaded. The one used by more intelligent criminals. “Attorney.”

No, Baldovino Pinky Moretti looked like the type who considered himself much smarter than any stupid lawyer. So, why call one?

Savannah loved guys like Pinky. And so did Dirk. His sort made life so much easier for them.

“Why did you kill him?” Dirk said.

“I told you. I didn’t. I mean it! I didn’t do that one!”

That one, versus the other ones?
Savannah thought. No, Pinky wasn’t exactly coloring with a full box of crayons.

But, sadly, she almost believed him. There was a certain indignation to his protest that struck her as sincere.

Dirk, on the other hand, didn’t appear to believe him at all.

“You killed him,” Dirk said. “He owed you money. He came out to your fricken chicken joint, and you blew his brains out and shoved his body in your freezer. Then, later on, you took the body and the car and dumped them up the road a few miles in Sulphur Creek. We already know that much. Now we just need to find out why. Did he do something to piss you off?”

“No! I wasn’t pissed at him at all. The only beef I had with him was that he owed me money. He said he was going to pay me what he owed.”

“And you believed him?” Savannah asked.

“Yeah, I did, because he knew better than to lie to me.”

“When did he say he was going to pay you?” Dirk asked.

“Last Monday, the night he got killed.”

Dirk grinned. “And how do you know that he got killed on Monday night?”

Even a nonintellectual like Pinky knew when he’d been caught in his own trap. He sat there and opened and closed his mouth a few times, then shut it tightly.

“He came out there to pay you off, didn’t he?” Dirk said. “And something went wrong. And he wound up dead. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Pinky said nothing. Savannah was afraid he might utter that ugly word that had ended so many promising interrogations. So, she leaned across the table and gave him her most sisterly, caring, compassionate look.

“Listen, Pinky,” she said with loving kindness just oozing from her voice. “You don’t strike me as a cold-blooded killer. You seem like a decent guy who wouldn’t hurt anybody unless they were really, really asking for it. Tell us what happened. Tell us what he did that caused you to do it.”

No response from Pinky. He had even decided to give his thumbnail a rest.

“I know you want to tell us,” Savannah continued, “because nobody wants to be thought of as a mean bastard who’d just kill somebody for no reason. Tell us your side of the story. Set the record straight.”

“I didn’t do it!” he shouted. “I did
not
shoot him! He was already dead when—”

“When you got there?” Savannah said. Again, his words had a certain, frantic ring of truth. The look of total frustration on his face appeared genuine. “You went there to meet him, to get paid, and when you arrived, he was already dead?”

“Yeah. Dead. Shot through the head right there in his car. On my property! What the hell was I supposed to do, just leave him there?”

“What
did
you do?” Savannah asked.

Pinky sighed and his shoulders sagged. “I had my boys stick him in my freezer there, just for a few days, until we could figure out what happened to him. And we put his car into the main building there.”

“Did it occur to you to call us?” Dirk asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Pink replied dryly. “I’m under investigation for a gambling-related murder, and I’m gonna call you and say what? ‘I found this guy who owed me money shot to death at my cockfighting arena?’ That would have gone over well.”

“So, if we believe you,” Dirk said, “you went to your property to meet with Jardin and when you got there, he was already dead in his car. The Jaguar was parked where?”

“Right there by the main building, near the front door, the one with the big, new lock on it.” Pinky thought that over for a moment. “Hey, how did you guys get in there?”

“She picked it,” Dirk replied.

Pinky looked at Savannah with new respect and nodded. “Okay.”

“Why did you really leave him in that freezer so long?” Dirk asked him. “You don’t strike me as a guy who’d take days to make up his mind what to do about something. Why were you stalling?”

As Pinky sat there, saying nothing, avoiding Dirk’s eyes, as well as his question, Savannah mulled it over.

“When you found Jardin,” she said, “did he have your money on him?”

Pinky shook his head. “No.”

“Was it in his car?”

Again, a head shake.

“So,” Savannah said, “the reason you kept him on ice was because you were trying to track down your money. You wanted first crack at finding the killer and your dough, before the cops got on it.”

Dirk smiled and nodded. “I think you’ve got it,” he told Savannah. “That’s exactly why. You figured if we nabbed the murderer before you did, you’d never get your money back.”

“But I still didn’t kill him,” Pinky said.

“And let’s just pretend for a minute here that we believe you,” Dirk replied. “Who do you think did it? You’ve been on the investigation for about five days longer than we have. You’ve gotta have some sort of opinions on the subject.”

Pinky’s face changed, from dull and witless to dark and furious. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I know. I think it’s his wife, that Clarissa exercise bitch.”

“Really?” Savannah asked. “Why?”

“Because she called me and changed the meet time.”

“What?”

“Yeah. He’d called me that morning and asked if I could meet him there at the plant at seven o’clock. I said okay. Then, later that evening, his wife calls me. She says something’s come up, and he can’t make it till two hours later. Said he asked her to call me cause he was tied up doing something or the other.”

“Did she say what he was doing?”

Pinky shrugged. “I don’t remember. Something about the car, problems with the new car or whatever. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it. I was just pissed that he postponed on me like that. I’d already been waiting a couple of weeks to get paid.”

“You don’t happen to remember what number she called you from, do you?” Savannah asked. “Like if it showed her name in the caller ID or whatever?”

“No, it just said ‘Wireless Caller.’ And showed a number. I remember it ended with ‘666.’ I noticed it because of all the scary movies I’ve seen about that number.”

“Yeah, that’s a distinctive one,” Dirk said, giving Savannah a sideways glance.

Savannah said, “Pinky, did you ever get in touch with Clarissa Jardin?”

Pinky gave a raspy little laugh. “Yeah. We talked several times.”

“On the phone, or in person?” Dirk asked.

“Both. She claimed she didn’t know anything about the money, or him coming out to pay me, or any of it. She even said she didn’t call me, that it must have been somebody else pretending to be her. I made her get out her cell phone and call me with me standing there. She did. But a different number showed up on my caller ID. It wasn’t the ‘666’ one.”

Dirk sat still, staring at Pinky, thinking it all over. Finally, he said, “We’ve interviewed Mrs. Jardin a number of times. She never mentioned that she’d met you face-to-face. Why do you suppose that is?”

The already menacing look on Pinky’s face turned even darker. “I asked her not to,” he said with chilling coldness. “As a personal favor to me.”

“I’ll bet you did,” Dirk replied.

Pinky lifted his thumb to his mouth and began to chew again. “She comes across all tough on TV,” he said, around his mutilated cuticle. “But she ain’t all that tough…believe me.”

Savannah looked into those flat, predatory eyes.
Oh, I believe
, she thought.
I do, really do, believe
.

“But you think she killed her own husband?” Dirk asked him. “You think she was the one who made that call to you, telling you to come two hours later? You think she met him there earlier and killed him before you got there?”

“Yeah, that’s what I think.”

“So, why didn’t you do worse than just threaten her?” Dirk said.

“Because, in spite of what people might think, or what a certain DA thinks about me, I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t just go around killing people because of what I
think
they did. I have to know for sure before I take a drastic action like that.”

Savannah gave him her best, Southern belle, dimpled smile. “Now that’s what I like,” she said, “a man of high moral standards.”

When Savannah and Dirk had left the jail and were headed back to her house to grab a bite to eat, regroup, and decide on their next move, Savannah got a call on her cell phone.

It was Ruby Jardin on the other end, sounding irritated and impatient when she said, “Well? I’ve been waiting. What’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, Ruby,” Savannah told her. “I was just going to call you. I—”

“I’ve been watching my TV, the news channels, to see if they’ve arrested Clarissa yet, and not a blamed thing.”