Beneath the Cracks (30 page)

"You need to find out.  I understand
that they're able to determine a hell of a lot from bullet casings
these days.  The first obvious choice would be someone from
the Marcos family, which if the FBI had a clue, they'd be focusing
on in the first place.  I don't know who they're using these
days, but before I left Rikers for the lovely Hotel Attica, I heard
that Sully had a couple of new guys – Mitchell something or
something Mitchell, and Eddie Franchetta.  Franchetta I knew
from around.  He's what they'd call a signature killer these
days, or so I've heard from the bits of television they let me
watch."

"What would you say his signature was?"

Wendell chuckled.  "Nothing that could
ever be found at a crime scene, that's for sure.  Eddie
the
Confessor
Franchetta likes to listen to people's secrets before
he kills.  As such, he favors, or used to, very isolated
locations for his hits.  He also favored small caliber
weapons, to make ballistics difficult if not impossible."

"How would you know this unless someone
survived a hit to tell the tale?"

"Mr. Orion, how do you think these guys get
their names?  It's their number one flaw.  They like to
brag."

"So in this ideal situation you imagine,
what would it take to move the focus from Helen to someone
else?"

"Three things.  One, someone else who
has a motive to kill this man.  Sounds to me like Marcos had
it in spades if the FBI arrested one of his money launderers. 
Two, a murder weapon that could conceivably have been the one used
on my former son-in-law.  Three, an event that will require
brass balls to pull off."

"And what event might that be?"

"Inextricably linking this weapon to the
Marcos family in a way that cannot be ignored by the FBI."

"Such as?"

"Finding it in a location that belongs to
Marcos.  Sully's got a few places that fit the bill; at least
he used to back in the day.  If I were doing this, I'd target
his waste processing business.  Like I said.  Brass
ones.  It'll take nerves of steel, Mr. Orion.  And
without question, the police would have to find the weapon before
someone from the family stumbled across it and destroyed it. 
"

"But the ballistics –"

"The twenty-two caliber bullet generally
shatters.  Like I said, it's the weapon of choice to a hitter
who knows his business.  Even so, a vigorous scrub with a
steel brush and say…exposure to acid or extreme heat, say in an
explosion in a facility where gases like methane are the end
product of recycling waste, these are things that can call
ballistics results into question.  But the bullet casing,
that's the way to link the weapon to a murder."

Mike banged on the door with one fist before
he shoved it open.  "Time's up, Eriksson.  Kiss your
boyfriend goodbye."

Wendell rose and stared hard at Orion. 
"Tell her I love her," he said softly.  "And I'm not sorry she
walked away."

He thought long and hard about that visit
for hours after Orion left.  Datello couldn't know who had
fallen for Helen, or Wendell would've heard about it through his
carefully constructed grapevine.  And if Helen still was in
Darkwater Bay, she most certainly was on Datello's paranoid
radar.  Question was, did Helen know the true identity of the
man she killed?  Did she know if there was a witness, if all
of this could still come crashing down on her with devastating
consequences?  She couldn't know that Orion suspected the
truth.  If she did, she'd have left Darkwater Bay
immediately.

He the gears in Wendell's mind ground some
more.  Orion was one of the good guys.  It took all of
five seconds to figure that out.  Would he break the law to
protect the woman he loved?  He'd admitted as much, but
Wendell knew it without the statement.  It was written all
over the tortured man's face.  If his hunch played out, and
Orion took the bait, there was no doubt that Helen would learn the
truth.  She'd bolt for safe cover like a cockroach exposed to
light. 

Sending Orion to the waste plant would do
the trick, if Wendell's old friend's information was correct. 
The feds would uncover what Sully was
really
doing out
there, and this little gun would simply provide concrete proof that
they needed to drop their investigation into Helen.

Wendell yelled through the cell block. 
"Lucero!  Get your ass back here!  I need to make a phone
call."

Chapter 26

My trip to MSUH was two-fold.  First, I
needed to track down the duo in charge of the mobile clinic serving
the homeless shelters in the greater Darkwater area.  When
that task was completed, a quick visit to Maya was in order.

Shannon Poole was a young resident in
emergency medicine with his eye on the prize.  He'd authored
more papers in his chosen specialty than many attending physicians
in the highly regarded teaching hospital.  What I liked about
him the most was that he genuinely seemed to care about the welfare
of the homeless. 

His partner, Carmen Brevard was only
slightly less idealistic, no doubt jaded by a few more years of
practice than Dr. Poole.  Also, Carmen's field was social
work, so he was accustomed to hearing as many lies as cops do.

They eagerly agreed to look at the
photographs I provided.  While Shannon called up specifics
about their medical conditions from memory, Carmen browsed
computerized records for names that went along with the faces.

"Oh, definitely, I remember him," Shannon
said.  "His name was Willard, I think.  He had been on
Antabuse for awhile, but couldn't stay away from the booze by the
time Friday rolled around.  We saw him at the Milford Shelter
in Darkwater proper just about every Saturday night for
months.  When he fell off the radar, I sort of assumed he'd
either moved on to another city or…"

"You can say it, Shan.  She knows he's
dead.  Remember?  That's why she's here.  Dr.
Eriksson, his name is Willard Holcomb, aged forty-five."

"My gosh, he looks at least sixty-five."

"I'm sure your medical examiner explained
that the effects of street life and substance abuse often make
people appear older than their chronological age," Poole
said. 

Was that accusation I saw when he seemed to
stare at the fine lines leeching from the corners of my eyes and
the dehydration that wrinkled my lips?  Last night wasn't wine
or even scotch.  It was sleep deprivation and fretfulness
about more than this case.

I pushed forward with the other four
photographs until I had names and little tidbits of personal
information that Poole and Brevard supplied.  I thanked them
for the help, and explained that because someone finally was
willing to identify these men that we'd be able to notify families
of their fates.

"I sincerely hope you find out what's
happening to these guys," Dr. Poole said.  "Good old Santa
already left nothing but coal in their stockings."

I took the elevator upstairs to the surgical
care unit.  Forsythe was gone, and Maya was picking at her
breakfast tray.

"You don't look happy."

"We're back to tea and Jell-O," she
sighed.  "I got sick on the pudding Thursday night, threw up
so hard I popped a couple of stitches.  I tried to tell them
that it's these stupid antibiotics that are making me queasy. 
Do you think they can listen?"

"Hmm, and this is why I hear that doctors
make the worst patients."  I opened my purse, glanced at the
door and procured a Hershey bar.  "If you narc me out and I
get frisked before I'm allowed to visit, I shall never forgive
you."

Maya whimpered and ripped the chocolate bar
out of my hand.  "I love you so much, I'd marry you if we
weren't so damned addicted to boys."

Yeah, about that…

She moaned with the first bite.  "So
good.  Chocolate should definitely be a clear liquid."

"I'll be riddled with guilt if you get sick
from that.  And if you throw up chocolate, it'll probably look
like old blood and they'll stick that garden hose scope down your
throat to have a peek."

"Bite your tongue," she mumbled.  "What
brings you here at the butt crack of dawn?"

"What, I can't come visit my friend before
the fog lifts?"

"Spill it.  Visiting hours don't start
until ten-thirty.  I know you flashed that shiny badge on your
belt to get in here.  What's going on with the case?  Not
that I feel the need to listen to more cop talk – my God, Ken has
been driving me nuts with all his crime scene evidence collection
trivia."

"Tired of him already, eh?"

"I'm not quite as fickle as I hear someone
else is."

"Good grief.  What is it with this
place?  Don't people have anything better to do than
gossip?  And the men are the worst."

"Cops are the worst," she chuckled. 
"Ken heard Orion abruptly left town Wednesday night after the love
of his life rejected him.  It's almost as tragic as Romeo and
Juliet.  Are you really done with him?"

"So I was downstairs talking to the guys who
run the mobile clinic for MSUH," I cleared my throat.  "I have
identities on all five John Doe victims, Maya."

She let my evasion slide.  "Good
girl!  Does it help us figure out who killed them, how they
died or if all of this is related to the murder of Detective
Cox?"

"You're as bad as Finkelstein.  Now
there's an interesting woman," I said.  "I was in her office
Thursday and noticed her name placard on the desk.  Her name
isn't Shelly."

"Oh yeah?"  Chocolate melted into one
corner of Maya's mouth.  "What is it?"

"Shalimar Finkelstein.  She's
Jewish."

"That I knew."

"Born and raised Muslim."

"Wow.  Isn't that kind of like oil and
water?"

"Or atheist and Catholic," I said with
another wave of Johnny-thoughts crashing through me.  "She
told me that she converted when she married her husband."

"I didn't know Shelly was married."

"Divorced."

"And she's still Jewish?"

I shrugged. "It took."

"Speaking of gossip, we're about as bad as
everybody else around here," Maya said.  "What's on the agenda
for the rest of today?  Don't expect me to believe that I'm
the only plan you have this morning."

"Sadly, you're not.  We picked up Tom
Denton last night, and he flipped out.  I had to have EMS come
sedate him with haloperidol just to get him to stop
screaming.  He struck me as perhaps hypomanic when we met him
the other day at Dupree Farm, but last night really pushed him over
the edge.  I hope he'll be calm enough to have a conversation
this morning.

"As for Briscoe and Conall, they headed out
of town to see what happened when Denton didn't show up with a
fresh batch of homeless workers for whatever is going on out
there.  I should check in with them, make sure they're not
curled up sleeping like cats instead of keeping watch over Fort
Farm."

"Fort Farm?"

"Artillery, remember?"

Maya touched two fingers to her
forehead.  "You did mention that.  Of course, at the
time, Johnny had me sufficiently freaked out over your foray into
the biker bar.  Helen, Ken says that's a really bad
place.  They've had quite a few fatal stabbings at Uncle
Nooky's – not during my tenure in Bay County, but still."

"Believe me, that place was a stroll through
the museum of white trash compared to some of the bike clubs I've
been in.  I'm fine.  Everything worked out, and I got a
good lead in the case.  Better to find out now that Johnny is
controlling and smothering and a hundred other things I couldn't
endure than to get sucked in any deeper."

Maya crumpled the evidence of her dietary
crime and passed it to me for discreet disposal.  She
hesitated. 

"What?"

"We haven't exactly gone there before, and
even back east when our personal and professional lines blurred a
little bit, you never talked about what it was like with him."

Rick.  Oh boy.  "We sort of lived
separate lives after a couple of years.  At first, we poured
all of our energy into fixing up our home, an old brownstone in
Georgetown.  After that, it seemed like I got busier and
busier with the case load at the bureau…and I guess I know now what
he was busy doing."

"Are you telling me he wasn't interested in
your life, in your work at all?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"Then what are you saying, Helen?"

I shrugged.  "I suppose it's hard to
explain, or maybe for an outsider to understand.  We were like
very comfortable, familiar…roommates."

"And then comes a man like Johnny Orion who
doesn't do anything half-assed," Maya said.  "No wonder you
felt smothered."

Swallowing didn't budge the growing
lump.  I cleared my throat.  "He is very intense. 
Like I said, this is probably for the best.  I doubt I'll ever
be the kind of person who opens up and shares everything about
myself with anyone."

"You're a Scorpio, aren't you?"

I grinned.  "You know I don't believe
in that stuff, Maya.  It's not scientific at all."

"But you are.  Admit it."

"Gemini," I said.  "So twist that into
what you will."

"Oh even better!" she laughed.  "The
twins, two sides of one person.  Poor Johnny."

"I have a feeling he'll survive."

Maya sobered.  "Don't be so sure he's
going to let you walk away, Helen.  Granted I haven't known
him as long as Ken has, but he said he's never seen Johnny so…"

"Infatuated?"

"Blinded by love."

I rolled my eyes.  "Please.  These
guys have got to be closet Oprah fans on top of all the other
flaws.  I bet they get together twelve times a year for a book
of the month discussion."