Blood of Angels (14 page)

“You aren't gonna like it, but I had to improvise.” I open the cooler, and Paul raises an eyebrow. He slips on a latex glove and removes the cans by their upper aluminum ridges. “So this was your bright idea, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

He looks at the cans dubiously. “You know how this stuff works, don't you? It's sweat. Preferably on a nice warm, dry surface.”

“I know. Just tell me it'll work.”

Paul places the cans on a tray and shines fluorescent light on them. There are a few print ridges visible, but not many. “In that heat, it's the cans that were sweating,” he says, “not the people. Lots of condensation.”

“So where are we?”

Paul raises an eyebrow. “How's your sense of irony these days?”

“Full-on.”

“It's about to go up a notch. There's only one material in the world that can reliably retrieve fingerprints from a wet metal surface. Care to guess what it's called?”

“No idea.”

“Sudan black.”

I stare. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“Nope. Fifteen grams of Sudan black powder, a thousand milliliters of ethanol, five hundred milliliters of distilled water. Immerse two minutes, then let dry. The prints show up blue. I'll photograph them with a digital camera, and then it's just a matter of letting the software find the match.”

“If there is one.”

He picks up the tray. “The process makes fumes, so I've got to wear a protective suit and hood for this. I need at least an hour. You want to wait here or head back to the office?”

“I'll wait.”

“OK. Hang loose.”

I walk back out into the reception area and wait. The minutes inch by until Paul comes back out in a white Tyvek suit. “I really ought to do this for a living,” he says. “You got your match. Deng and Luol were definitely in Tamra Hartlett's apartment. It'll take more time for the others.”

“How clean is it?”

“Sixteen ridge areas, four more than required. It's legal in court. I can let you know about the rest in a few hours.”

 

OK
,
JASON
.
YOUR
story checks out so far. But I still don't trust you as far as I can throw you.
It's almost five by the time I get back to 222 West, and the staff has nearly emptied out. Stillman, however, is waiting in my office. He's had nearly all day to hold up his end of the bargain, and from his expression, I'd say he has. He grins at me like he's just solved the Lindbergh kidnapping. “I've got 'em,” he says. “Bank records, credit checks, and work schedules. Bol, Deng, and Chol.”

I look at the papers. “Not bad. How'd you pull it off?”

He grins. “Ran the credit checks from my desk. Chol and Deng have checking accounts at AmSouth, and the downtown office is six blocks from here.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You actually went there?”

“Hey, I've been paying attention. Face-to-face, right? Worked wonders.”

“I take it she was good-looking?”

He grins wider. “She said she liked my tie.”

“OK, Stillman. Break it down for me.”

Stillman points to a set of bank statements on my desk. “Chol makes eleven-hundred forty-five dollars a month at Wal-Mart. He works forty hours a week. But he
was
making six hundred dollars more. I figure he was working about twenty hours a week overtime to pull it off.”

“So what changed?”

“I drove out to see his shift manager. The guy was harried, man. I had to follow him around while I talked to him. But he said Chol used to beg for overtime, and he remembered when it stopped. Second week of February.”

“The week after Hartlett's murder.”

“Correct.”

I nod.
OK, Jason. Maybe you're actually telling the truth.
“Did Chol have any debts he was paying off?”

“He owes seventeen hundred dollars to Tennessee State University for ESL classes, which he's paying off at eighty-five bucks a month. That's it.”

“What does he have in the bank?”

“As of this morning, one hundred and sixty-five dollars.”

I smile. “And Deng?”

“Same story, only bigger checks. Like Jason said, the guy was a cash cow.”

“OK. So how about Bol?”

Stillman frowns. “Nothing.”

“You mean he didn't make the same withdrawals?”

“I mean he doesn't even have a bank account.”

“You're kidding.”

“The manager at Wal-Mart says Bol cashed his checks at the store. And he didn't work overtime.”

“Shit.”

“Still, it confirms Jason's story, doesn't it?”

I exhale and look past him out my window.
Close. We're getting close.
“I'm really starting to hate this case, Stillman.”

I HAVE A SMASHED NOSE
. Not bad smashed—not boxer caliber, for example—just slightly bent in a couple of places. My father, the airplane mechanic, imparted few direct lessons to me, preferring to lead by example—enjoy life, look but don't touch other women, treasure the company of men—but one thing he did drill in me was the necessity of learning how to defend oneself in a fight. I used this advice a few times in my life: twice in high school, once in college over a girl, and finally, in an idiotic bar fight during basic training that cost me the revised line in my profile. So that's what I learned from my old man: how to fight. The rest, like how to dress and act and attract a woman, I had to figure out myself.

In my second year of JAG, I met Rebecca Obregon, the woman I loved. She was standing in line in front of me at an outdoor restaurant on the River Walk in San Antonio. I asked her how her hair could smell so good on such a hot, muggy day. She looked at me a couple of seconds, making her mind up about me, and answered, “Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo. Now tell me how a man with a nose that looks like yours can have such beautiful eyes.”

Being a twenty-six-year-old first lieutenant in the army, I didn't know that a woman who can seduce you with an insult is a woman who should be avoided like Odysseus's sirens. I also had no idea that Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo is to hair care as a Mercedes-Benz S500 is to automobiles. Rebecca Obregon was part exquisite pleasure, part stinging pain, and all high-maintenance.

The honeymoon was heaven. There was the week in Florida, paid for by me, followed by two weeks in Europe, paid for by the Obregon fortune. The little condo on Longboat Key, just north of Sarasota, was private enough for romance but connected to the little Florida beach houses that had not yet given way to the multistory towers. Our clock was backward, so we were in and out of bed most of the day, rising for good only for a late dinner. Nights we walked the deserted beaches, the air still warm on our bare legs. Europe was a whirlwind, less private but more exotic. I had never been overseas, and I soaked up England and Spain. We wandered the Alcazar in Seville, and took carriage rides through the city's tree-lined parks.

We landed back in Nashville in a kind of romantic glow. Rebecca settled in at Vanderbilt, working in the fund-raising department. Her job consisted of throwing parties for rich people and getting money from them without looking awkward, a task for which she was supremely well qualified. She was born into money, was comfortable around it, and—although neither of us realized it at the time we were married—uncomfortable without it. Her father, a surgeon from San Antonio, had smiled politely when meeting me, but it had been obvious enough I wasn't his dream for his little girl.
No matter,
I thought.
I'm not marrying him; I'm marrying this gorgeous woman standing beside me. And anyway, he lives in San Antonio.
Which was only true in the most narrow, geographic sense; Dr. Raul Obregon lived in the hearts and minds of all three of his daughters, and his values permeated their thinking. I started in on the sixty-hour-week grinds at the DA's office, determined to make my mark professionally. Two years later, Jasmine came along, which pulled us together as a family, at least for a while. But the cracks were already in the foundation.

Maybe it was caring too much about work. Maybe it was coming home for a solid year with nothing but stories about the child support division—dragging creeps into court to force them to pay for the children they left behind—that drove her away. It had all been so unseemly for an Obregon, once the romance wore off and real life set in. I wouldn't let Rebecca's father pay for a country club membership, both on principle and because I didn't want to be known as a kept man among my peers, any one of which with a calculator would know it was beyond my means. When, in our fifth year of marriage, Rebecca showed up at home with a new BMW, courtesy of Daddy, and she had refused to take it back, the cracks had grown into chasms. Maybe—this is the theory I use to salve my wounded pride, anyway—maybe it was her lack of moral character that made her susceptible to what was about to happen. Whatever the reason, I ended up being the last to know.

His name was Michael Sarandokos, a Greek plastic surgeon seven years older and four hundred thousand a year richer than me. His workday ended at four—earlier, on surgery days, if everything went well—and he never came home with stories about welfare mothers and child support or, when I started getting promoted, capital murder cases. Dr. Sarandokos, it's safe to assume, comes home with stories about which of his clients' children are going to Auburn and who just gave her daughter the world's smallest cell phone.

It's now 7:30 p.m., and I stand in front of the door of their house. No one inside those doors knows what has happened to me the last couple of days, which is a good thing. My relationship with Jazz is already complicated enough, and I never mention work with her or her mother. She knows that I put away bad guys, and that's enough for now.

I push the doorbell, and in a few seconds I hear noise from inside. The door opens, and the maid, Maria, a fiftyish plump woman from El Salvador, sees me and smiles. She likes me, which helps. “
Señor Dennehy, bienvenidos.
Come inside. I go get Mrs. Sarandokos.”

I step in and take off my coat. The entryway to the home is open to a height of fifteen feet, with marble floors and what looks like enough crown molding to build a separate structure. After a minute or so Sarandokos comes strolling around the corner. He's handsome, in a rich-guy kind of way, by which I mean his nose is not smashed, because he has never, ever been in a fistfight. He's simply great-looking, like he just walked off the island of Patmos, which, in fact, he did, in 1986. He rolls up, relaxed, like he just happened to be walking by his front door. I'm on his turf, and he instinctively feels the need to put in an appearance. I don't blame him for this, just like I don't blame him for wanting Rebecca. Any man in his right mind would want her, and since he can afford her, maybe they're actually happy. But I hate the idea of him being with Jazz, simply because she has the potential to be so much more.

“How are you, Dennehy?” he asks. He's wearing loose-fitting pants and a silk shirt. “Bec is somewhere, not sure where. Probably finding Jasmine.”

I nod; Sarandokos's home is so large that it's possible to lose track of the people inside. We don't shake hands, thank God. “So you're off to Orlando,” I say.

“Thanks for flexing on your days with Jasmine. She really wants to go to Universal Studios.”

“Sure.” That about wraps up the small talk, so he stands there a few seconds, until he's saved from having to produce an exit line by Rebecca's entrance. She is wearing low-rider jeans and a tan, sleeveless shirt. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, which makes her neck look long and elegant. She's in fairly tall shoes, which make her about five foot eight, and she hasn't gained a pound since the day I met her, snapping back like a rubber band after Jazz was born. She smiles—her teeth preposterously white—and I know I don't love her anymore. I feel something powerful, but it's mostly nostalgia. I want to go back in time to when we had nothing—not even Jazz, God help me—and we dreamed about our future together on a nearly deserted beach in Florida. I want her to be just like she is, only different, which is the short history of our love affair.

Sarandokos vanishes back into his study, leaving me alone with Rebecca. I never go into the house itself. I know that because we're adults I'm supposed to be able to sit and drink tea and act like the arrangement is fine. But it seems to me that it's because we're adults that we understand how fractured and painful it all is, not the other way around. It's children who trade in their best friends for new ones every few months. So I stay in the entryway. “We leave first thing in the morning,” she says. She sees the package I hold. “Is that for Jazz? I'll hold it for you. I know you like presents opened on the day.”

“Yeah,” I say, but I keep the package. “I'm gonna give it to her myself, if that's OK.”

“No. Sure. I mean, that's fine.”

I hear Jazz running, a sound I love. She knows I'm in the house, and the steps are ridiculously fast, her ten-year-old legs churning along. She must be wearing clogs for all the racket she's making on Sarandokos's Brazilian hardwood floors. She comes around the corner like a puppy, skidding and sliding past the mark, recovering, and running straight up to me in an earthquake of energy. She grabs me, her arms around my stomach, her face in my chest. She looks up at me and says, “I'm going to Universal Studios.”

“That's right,” I say. “They've got Jimmy Neutron there.”

“I know,” she says. “And Shrek.” She looks at my package. “Mine?” she asks.

“You bet,” I say. “Happy birthday.”

“Don't open it till the day,” Rebecca says, and I shake my head no.

“Not this time,” I say. “Come here, Jazzy. Let's open it now.” I give Rebecca a nod, and she drifts back into the house, leaving us alone. She has tact, and I've learned to be grateful for small things like that. Jazz takes my hand and opens the front door. Somehow, in her ten-year-old head, she has already figured out a hell of a lot, like how Daddy doesn't like to be in the mansion.

We walk outside and sit on the steps in the warm air. In spite of the heat, she wraps my coat around herself like a poncho, her head sticking up out of the body. She is her mother and me, which is complicated and beautiful and a problem. Carl, who was only ever married to his work, once asked me how much more difficult divorce was when there are kids involved. I answered, “One million, million times.”

“Let me see,” she says, and I give her the package. She smiles, rips it open, and pulls out the photo album of soccer pictures I put together last weekend. She looks up at me, curious, and I say, “Look inside. That's the real present.” She starts to flip through the pictures, obviously pleased. She goes through the whole book, page by page, until she finishes. She looks up and says, “I love it, Daddy.”

“Good. Now go get ready for dinner. And have fun in Orlando.”

She shimmies out of the coat and hugs me again. I lift her up and kiss her, but I let her go easily. I don't want drama attached to my visits. I open the door, and she runs in, holding her picture book. Rebecca appears again and sees it; she looks at the first few pages and glances up at me, smiling, and I know she understands. She steps outside with me, and for a moment we're alone in the warm air, standing close together in the twilight. “Thanks for letting her go, Thomas,” she says.

“You said that already.”

She gives me a look, and I catch my breath a second. Her expression is something like desire, but more distant. Then I recognize it; it's nostalgia, just like my own.
We understand each other perfectly,
I think. I kiss her cheek, chastely, and walk out of my memories back into the warm air of Nashville.

 

I DRIVE ALMOST TWO MILES
before I see the note on my windshield. It's small, and on the passenger's side this time, so I don't notice it until it starts to work its way loose enough to flap in the wind. I stare at it, wondering if I have driven all the way out to Bec's house that way—God knows, I was preoccupied enough to miss it—or if someone has followed me to the Sarandokos place and stuck it on the car while I was inside. Reflexively, I check my mirrors, but it's night now and one set of headlights looks like another.
Shit. This guy is really determined to fuck with me.
A couple of miles down I-65 I pull off—three exits before my usual one—and a car about a hundred yards behind takes the exit as well. We roll down the exit ramp to a stop sign, and the car sits behind me. There's a man in the car, although with his headlights glaring from behind, I can't make out any details. I sit for a few seconds, wondering if I should just open the door and march up to the door. I'm pondering this when he hits his horn, which jerks me back into the present. I turn right, and he turns the opposite way.

I pull over at a gas station a few blocks up, park, and retrieve the pamphlet. It's from the same group as the first, Citizens for a Just America. It's full of the same anti-capital punishment rhetoric as the other leaflet, but this time featuring the saga of Abdul Rahan, a name I knew well already. Rahan had a rap sheet as long as my arm, including three felony convictions. After doing seven years for an armed robbery charge, he wasn't on the street a month before he was accused of blowing away a couple of hitchhiking German girls naive enough to think it was still possible to travel America with backpacks, a few bus tickets, and goodwill. After sitting on death row for three years, he was exonerated when a new form of DNA testing proved he was innocent. The pamphlet has the same amateurish, homemade quality as the other, like it was cobbled together by somebody with a scanner and a cheap computer program. At the bottom is another blurry photograph, this time of a man in an electric chair, skull cap screwed on, restraints secure, his head slumped forward. The man's skin is blistered, split open at the arms, which are bare under a short-sleeve shirt. It looks like something out of the thirties or forties, judging by the equipment. The same words are at the bottom:
NO MISTAKES WILL BE TOLERATED.

I stare at the grotesque picture a second, then punch in Sarandokos's number. He answers. “Yeah, Michael, it's Thomas. Can I speak to Bec?” The good doctor's tone is mildly annoyed, but I hear him call out to Rebecca. He puts his hand over the phone to tell her it's me—like it's a secret, for some reason—but he doesn't do a very good job of it because his muffled voice is still audible.

“Thomas?” It's Bec.

“Yeah. Listen, you guys have an alarm system, right?”

“Of course.” A pause. “What are you—”