Angels (Nevada James #3) (Nevada James Mysteries) (6 page)

“You
jumped
out
a window?”

“No. I
jumped
through
a window.”

“Oh,” he
said. He appeared to think about that for a moment. “I suppose I won’t ask who
you
were
chasing, then. At least you know what to do when you think you
see the Laughing Man. We’ve been waiting long enough.”

I
crossed my arms in front of me. “If you think he’s so easy to find, you’re
welcome to start looking yourself.”

“You
think we’re not looking?” He shook his head. “I have a strong skill set,
Nevada, but it’s not much good for chasing murderers around. That’s your
department.” He sighed. “Anyway, Fitch is with my parents.”

I
nodded. “Sounds great. So the three of them just sit there in awkward silence
until you get back?” In all the time I’d known them, I wasn’t sure Fitch had
ever spoken to me. Mostly he just stared off into the sunset, as if he were
imagining doing whatever models did. Cuddling a pile of puppies, maybe.

“Fitch
is charming their socks off, as usual. They love him.” He looked away and for a
moment I thought he was going to blush. “I think…”

“What?”

He
looked back at me. “I think he’s been waiting until they were in town to
propose.”

I
blinked. That softened my tiny black rage-filled heart just a bit. “Oh.
That’s…good, I guess. I think.” I gave him an uncertain look. “Do you
want
to get married?”

He bit
his lip and hesitated for a minute, and then he nodded. “I do,” he said. “I
didn’t think I ever would, but…I really do, Nevada.”

“I hope
it works out, then.”

“Me too.
I’ll let you know.” The goofy look he’d had for a moment faded away. “So I’ve
got to get back. I don’t want to miss it. Where’s this phone you’ve got?”

I took
Krystal’s burner out of my pocket and handed it to him. He looked at it like
I’d just given him a smallpox blanket. “Where
did
you get this pathetic
little thing?”

“It
belonged to a confidential informant of mine. She’s dead now.”

“Oh. I’m
sorry.”

“I want
everything it has. Every call made, every call received, voicemails, texts,
whatever. If there’s GPS on it and you can figure out locations where it’s
been, all the better.”

“That’s
not a real thing,” he said.

“Whatever.
You get the idea.”

He
pressed a button on the phone and studied the screen. “I can’t believe this
thing even has a password,” he said. “Well, it shouldn’t take much to break it.
Maybe if I shake it really hard…”

“You can
do it?”

“Of
course I can do it. I’ll get in touch when I have something.”

“How
long?”

“I don’t
know. A day?”

“A
day
?”

His lips
tightened. “This is a little tricky with my parents here, Nevada. I can’t tell
them we’re not going to dinner tonight because I have to crack a phone for a
detective. I’m not supposed to know how to do that. I’m not supposed to know
you
,
for that matter.”

That was
frustrating, but also just a little bit funny. “They have no idea what you do,
do they?”

“They
think I’m a day trader. Foreign currency markets. Just like Fitch. We know the
lingo and we can sell that story to professionals, if we want to. We even have
the trade history to back it up.” He looked at me. “I shorted the Euro five
minutes before the GDP numbers came out yesterday, you know. 187 pips to the
good. Now if Janet Yellen had said…” he stopped and looked at me. “I was about
to make a joke but it’s not going to be funny if you don’t know who Janet
Yellen is.”

“I
don’t.”

“Then
forget it. It was very funny, though.”

“I’m
sure it was. Anyway, catch up with me when you’ve got something, then? And say
hi to your parents for me.”

“Yes to
the first, no to the second. What are you going to be doing?”

“I don’t
know,” I said. “I think I’ll go solve a murder. Or four.”

Chapter 6

I called
Dan Evans from the car five minutes after leaving the parking lot. I started
talking as soon as he picked up. “Do you want to tell me why the hell Sarah
Winters is on a desk?”

“Not
even a hello today?” Dan asked. “Are you all right?”

“I’m
really far from all right,” I said. “Someone murdered my informant and…” I
really didn’t want to go down that road with him right now. “What’s wrong with
Sarah? If you’re punishing her from the Ellis thing I swear to god…”

“Hang
on,” he said. “I’m in my office. I need to close the door.” I waited until he
came back. “Okay,” he said. His voice had dropped an octave and was now in a
register similar to that of an angry volcano. “You need to fucking listen to me
right now. If you think I’d
punish
Sarah over what happened with Ellis
then you have never met me.”

I’d have
had to admit that was true, although I wasn’t really in the mood to admit
anything. “All right,” I said. “I shouldn’t have jumped to that conclusion.”

“And?”

“And
what?”

“Say
you’re fucking sorry, Nevada. It would be a nice change.”

I bit my
lip. “I’m sorry. All right?”

“You’d
better be.”

“Well,
that’s what I just said, isn’t it? Shit, Dan. I’m having a bad day. I shouldn’t
have taken it out on you, though.”

He was
silent for a moment and I knew that hadn’t taken the fight out of him, but he
had to be considering the scene I’d just come from. “Fine,” he said. “Forget
it.”

“Why is
Sarah on a desk?”

“We’re
right back to…” he started. “You want to know why? Because I don’t need another
fucking
you
. That’s why.”

The
fight hadn’t been taken out of me, either. I was ready to go again. “What the
fuck does that mean?”

“Think
about it, brain surgeon.”

I wished
I could have seen his face just then. He had to have realized how awful that
line was while he was still saying it, but it must have been too late to stop.
I snickered. “Do you want to try that one again?” I asked.

“Oh,
fuck it,” he said. “No.”

“I can’t
fight with someone who talks like that,” I said. “Let’s stop, okay?”

“I
wasn’t fighting.”

“You
were trying. But that train went right off the tracks, didn’t it? I guess I’m
not the only one that happens to.”

He
sighed. “Let’s move on.”

“Tell me
about Sarah. What do you mean, you don’t want another
me
?”

Somehow
I doubted he’d meant to say that, but it was too late. He was going to have to
qualify it or he knew I’d never shut up. “Sarah is…” he said. “No. I’m not
getting into specifics with you. Sarah is having some trouble with what
happened and I haven’t been satisfied with the course of her therapy. Not
enough to put her back on the street, anyway. I had one detective fall apart on
me. I’m not repeating that.”

I didn’t
have a good comeback for that. My own meltdown had been pretty epic. Some
people gave notice when they quit their jobs. I’d screamed and thrown things.
It was hard to imagine Sarah doing any of that, but… “I thought she was doing
all right?”

“I
thought she was, too,” Dan said. “Then she decked a patrol cop who threw a
sheet over a body before she got to the crime scene. She’s been on a desk ever
since. She has a long way to go before I put a gun in her hand and send her
after murderers.”

“Jesus,”
I said. “Sarah
hit
someone?” That was difficult for me to imagine.

“She
did. I know how surprised you must be. You always thought she was some
Strawberry Shortcake cop prancing around smelling the flowers. She’s not.”

“Yeah,”
I said. “Right now I don’t know if I’m more concerned about her or if I should
make fun of you for using all those words in one sentence. Strawberry Shortcake
prancing around? This really isn’t your day.”

“It’s
not funny, Nevada.”

“No,
it’s not,” I said. I shook my head. “I didn’t know any of that was going on.”

“Well,
you never actually called her to find out, did you?”

“No,” I
said. “I’m a shit friend, I know.” I realized I’d never actually decided where
I was going when I started driving. I had no idea where I was headed. “I
will
call her,” I said. “I guess she might need someone to talk to…but you said
she’s in therapy?”

“Yes.”

“Who’s
she seeing?”

“Someone
I trust.”

“She’s
seeing Molly Malone, then.”

“I
didn’t say that!”

“No, but
you don’t know any other therapists,” I said. “So you kind of gave that away.”
My ankle chose that moment to remind me that I’d spent too much time on my feet
today. I probably wouldn’t be able to stand up in a few hours. Pain seemed to
be spreading up my leg. “Molly’s good,” I said. “I didn’t know she was still
practicing, actually. She spends most of her time in the dojo.”

“She
only takes special clients. I called in a favor.”

“Well,
that was a good…”
What
had he just said? “How does Molly Malone owe you
a favor?”

“None of
your business. The important point was that she has some experience with this
kind of thing.”

“Yeah.”
Molly and I had been friends for years. Against her better judgement, she’d
attempted to be
my
therapist after I’d gotten out of the hospital after
the Laughing Man case. She knew I wouldn’t see anyone else. It hadn’t gone
well. I’d said some very unkind things and walked out on our relationship. We’d
only reconnected a year ago.

Molly
wouldn’t tell me anything about Sarah, of course. She’d be insulted if I even
asked her to. But I had a way of getting information out of people. The
question was whether I should try or not.

“Anyway,
you talked to Krystal before she was killed?” Dan asked. “What did she say?”

“I
talked to her last night, briefly. We were supposed to meet today and she could
tell me this big thing she was holding on to.”

“Any
idea what it was?”

“Not
much.” I debated how much I should tell Dan. I certainly wasn’t going to tell
him what I’d done with Krystal’s phone, but I didn’t have a great deal to go on
right now. It was worth the risk. “She said she had information about three
murders, and she wanted to sell it to me so she could get out of town.”

“Three
murders,” Dan repeated. “That’s…not nothing, I guess. Do you think she was on
the level?”

I
thought about it. “I think so,” I said. “She was legitimately frightened. It
would be a weird story to have just made up. And she said…”

“What?”

“She
said one of the murders was
wrong
. Not like a person says
all
murders are wrong. There was something wrong about that one specifically.”

“Wrong?
What does that mean?”

“I have
no idea.” And if that had rung a bell with Dan, he’d done a masterful job
keeping it out of his voice. I happened to know he was terrible at that, so I
doubted it. “Does it mean anything to you? Do you have three unsolved murders
that have just been driving you guys nuts?”

“I don’t
have a triple,” Dan said. “Not even a double. You’d have seen that in the news.
Three connected murders? No. The only unsolved serial case is…well, yours.”

That was
more or less what I’d thought. “Fulton and Harrison were going to talk to a
possible witness,” I said. “A homeless guy. I saw him with a couple patrol
cops. Did they get anything?”

“Nevada,”
Dan said. He paused. “You understand this isn’t your investigation, right?”

“She was
my informant. I have an interest.”

“You’re
a civilian. She was someone you knew in a previous life. Fulton and Harrison
have the case. Let them do their jobs.”

There
was a fine line I was walking on now. The fight we’d been having earlier had
ended. If I started it up again it was going to make doing the things I needed
to do a great deal harder. But I wanted to fight. I needed the release right
now. It wouldn’t be smart, but…

“Tell me
something, Dan. Krystal was a homeless meth addict. She had connections to
nobody. How big a priority is solving this going to be for you?”

I heard
him exhale. “That isn’t fair, Nevada. You know I take this seriously.”

“Of
course you do. But a week will go by and Fulton and Harrison will catch another
case. And another one. Tell me seriously how big a priority this is.”

“Do you
want to come in here and get your gun and your badge?”

“No.”

“I
didn’t think so. So until you do, how about you don’t fucking tell me how to do
my job?” He hung up on me.

I’d seen
the line and I’d walked right over it. Still, it could have gone a great deal
more badly than it had. He’d forgive me in a day or two. Poor Dan. He’d had to
forgive me quite a lot over the years.

I was at
a loss for what to do next. Until Abercrombie finished breaking into Krystal’s
phone I was short on leads to follow. I couldn’t go back to her house and do a
more thorough search. The cops would still be there, and while any cop in San
Diego would give my bad behavior a certain leeway, it didn’t extend to tearing
apart crime scenes. And that went double now that Dan knew I wasn’t willing to
just sit back on this one. I’d taken it too personally. I knew I shouldn’t
have. But knowing I shouldn’t do something had never stopped me from doing it
before.

And then
there was the guilt I had to deal with. I wasn’t going to be sleeping much unless
I did something.

Krystal
couldn’t have had much of a social life with the condition she’d been in, and even
if she had, I didn’t know who to talk to. Her drug dealers? I doubted they
advertised. Addicts often had other addicts they used with, but I wasn’t sure
where I was supposed to go looking for them, either.

I did
know one place she’d been recently, though. The food bank where she’d been
getting her canned chili and vegetables.

I pulled
up the photos I’d taken on my phone and found the one of the food bank’s box. I
called the number and a recorded message told me that they were open from 10:00
am to 2:00 pm. Was that normal? A food bank was like a grocery store, wasn’t
it? But one where you didn’t pay for anything? Come to think of it, that didn’t
make a great deal of sense. I’d never actually been inside one, and there was a
good chance I was wrong. Even if I wasn’t, they had to run on donations, so
they probably couldn’t pay staff to work longer shifts. I’d go there in the
morning and ask if anyone had seen Krystal. And maybe someone could tell me if
her murder had been a hot topic of conversation in the checkout lines.

Dusk was
coming on quickly now and I’d hit a wall. I thought about calling Molly and
asking if she had time to spar as an excuse to make conversation, but my ankle
quickly reminded me that I wouldn’t be practicing karate for a while. If I didn’t
get some rest, I might have to give up walking entirely. Feeling frustrated, I
made the drive home and hobbled inside, my ankle burning like fire now. Once
the security system was good to go I made a slow beeline for the kitchen and
took another three Advil.

I cast
one glance at the cupboard where my vodka was stashed away. That would take
care of the pain in a hurry. It was tempting. But it also would have been the
beginning of the end for me. I wasn’t ready to take that step yet. Maybe
someday, but not yet. I had a murder to solve. And beyond that, my dance with
the Laughing Man wasn’t over yet. I still wanted to see that through before my
old friend Death paid me his last visit.

I put
the thought of vodka out of my head and ordered a pizza, instead. It didn’t do
anything for the pain, but it did manage to make me sleepy. When I was done eating
I lay down on my air mattress and shut my eyes. Taking my weight off my ankle
was a blessing. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to get up again.