Blood Of Angels (18 page)

'It would be a sad story,' I said, 'if that's what it meant. Married guys who trawl bars are not looking for a mental workout. He spotted an easier mark, that's all. Either way he's been dismembered now, so I guess you win.'

She blinked at me.

'What did this other woman look like?' Nina asked.

'She had long hair,' Lawton muttered, as if this explained everything dire about the world. 'She was slim and
pretty
and she had long hair and it was red as all hell. A real fireball, I'm sure.'

Reidel looked up from his pad. 'Excuse me?'

'She was drunk, though,' the woman added, not trying to keep the spite out of her voice. 'So maybe you're right. I suspect she would have been an easier job than me. Like falling off a log.'

'Ma'am,' Reidel interrupted firmly. 'You said red hair, is that correct?'

'I did say that, yes.'

'You don't know her name?'

'No. But I've seen her in there before. A few times. Sits way in the back and slugs it down all night long.'

'Age?'

Lawton shrugged. 'Don't know. Mid-twenties?'

'Did you see her leave on Wednesday night?'

'Well of course,' Lawton said, as if we were all being unbelievably dim-witted. 'She left with lover-boy. I thought that was your whole point?'

There was a moment of silence, and then Reidel walked right out of the house.

Nina wrapped quickly and hurried outside after him. I followed. Reidel was already on the phone down by his car.

'What's up?' I said.

Nina's face was pinched. 'Do me a favour,' she said. 'Go back to the bar. See if that waitress recalls someone of this description being there that night or any other. Call me as soon as you know.'

'Has Reidel got something?'

'No,' she said. 'Or I hope not. But if I don't contain it fast then word is going to spread and someone's life is screwed anyway.'

Reidel closed his phone. 'I called Monroe,' he said. 'He'll meet us there.'

Then they were in Reidel's car and gone.

I drove back to the bar and went inside. It was cold and dark and had been garnished with nets, presumably in the belief that the
Mayflower
had played a key early role in America's fishing industry. The interior was long and thin and I could see why you'd come here if you wanted to drink somewhere other than home without it being general knowledge.

Hazel was desultorily cleaning the bar, or at least redistributing its grime. 'Hello again,' she said. 'If you're looking for Lloyd he's on the phone in back. Matter of national security, I believe.'

'Actually it was you I wanted to ask something.'

'Ask away.'

'If I say "slim, decent-looking, red hair", does it ring any bells?'

She nodded. 'Sure. We got one of those.'

'Friendly type?'

'No. Very much one of the "I'm not here" crowd.'

'She in here last Wednesday?'

She thought a moment. 'Maybe. Yeah, could have been, actually. She'd have been down the end, though. I was stuck up here. I can't be a hundred per cent.'

'Don't suppose you've got a name for her?'

"Fraid not. Sometimes you overhear and sometimes people will do the bluff handshake and hi-I'm-Bill thing, like that changes the fact they're drinking alone, but if you want to be convivial you'll go to one of the bars in town.'

'Would shithead know?'

She smiled. 'He might. He has this
mine host
act, when he can be bothered. Especially if they're cute. She'd count. Go ask him.'

I went down the corridor and found a door ajar. Beyond was a small office. The manager was stuffed into a chair with his feet on the desk. He was talking close into the phone and grinning in an unappealing way. He frowned and cupped his hand over the mouthpiece when he saw me.

'What do you want now?'

'Customer of yours. Red hair, attractive. Name?'

He gave me a couple of possibilities, cast doubt on her sexual preferences in either event, and then pointed out he was busy and the bar wasn't open yet and it would be nice if I could leave.

'A pleasure,' I said. 'By the way, women don't have to be gay to say no to you. And if they are, they deserve your respect.'

He stared at me as if I'd started speaking Swahili with a bad accent. 'Whatever,' I said. 'Have a nice life.'

I walked out into the lot and got Nina on the phone.

'And?' she said.

'Regular customer who keeps her head way down. Hazel can't say for sure about Wednesday night.'

'Did you get a name?' Her voice sounded tight.

'Only the first, and the manager's not certain,' I said. 'He evidently tried it on with her once or twice and failed.'

'What is it, Ward?'

'He thought it was either Julie or Julia.' There was a silence. 'Nina? Bear in mind the guy's an idiot.'

'I'll call you later,' she said, and the line went dead.

===OO=OOO=OO===

There was radio silence for the next four hours. I parked up in the historic district and killed time with breakfast and a chain of coffees. The local paper had a non-piece about Lawrence Widmar, glossing the facts of his discovered condition and majoring on his triumphs as a local businessman. It was too early for anything on the body found the previous night. Too early and… maybe something else. Two of the people we'd spoken to that morning had no idea of the identity of a man who'd been found naked in the local woods a couple days ago. Okay, Diane Lawton wasn't exactly plugged into the town — but women who work in bars generally know what's going down. As Nina had pointed out in the small hours of the morning, this place now had two corpses lying in its morgue: but as I watched the people walk up and down, I didn't get a sense of a place that had been shaken to its core.

I tried calling Nina and got no response. I didn't have numbers for Monroe or Reidel and doubted they'd talk to me anyway. As I scrolled futilely up and down through my tiny list of stored numbers, I went past John Zandt's, and paused. Nina and I had both tried calling him over the last five months, never received a response. It rang, but no answer. You could leave a message, but he never called back. I still had an odd feeling about the idea of communicating with Mr Unger. Was it worth mentioning his name to Zandt to check it wasn't a name he'd come across? The last time I'd seen him it had been evident that — however crackpot a lot of it had sounded — Zandt had done heavy research into the Straw Men. If nothing else it would ensure someone else knew Unger's name if anything happened to me.

I sent John a quick SMS text message. Two minutes later the phone pinged to let me know it had been delivered, but there was no further response.

'Yeah, and fuck you too,' I muttered, startling a waitress. I went and bought my next coffee somewhere else.

I was sitting drinking it on a bench opposite a small park and considering heading back to the hotel when my phone rang. It wasn't Nina and it wasn't Zandt.

'Hello,' I said, sitting up straight.

'Is that Ward Hopkins?'

'Yeah, it is.'

'Carl Unger. Look, first, I'm real sorry to hear about Bobby. He was a good man. How did it happen?'

'He was murdered,' I said.

'Okay,' he said, evenly. 'Well, we'll get into that when we meet. Where are you?'

'You tell me,' I said.

'I don't have a trace on your cell, Ward. I'm asking because I want to talk to you and I don't want to do it over the phone.'

'Why?'

'That's a funny question from someone who used to monitor personal communications on a professional basis. Look, work with me here. I'm just trying to figure out a place to meet.'

'How about Greensboro?' I said. 'North Carolina.'

'Okay,' he said, immediately. 'Can you do tonight? I can be there probably around seven.'

'Call me when you land. By the way, what colour's your hair these days? You were going pretty grey last time, I think.'

'Mr Hopkins,' he said, patiently. 'We've never met. I joined the company a year after you left. Only reason I know your name is through Bobby, okay? If I can find one I'll wear a pink carnation. Otherwise I'll just stand up and wave.'

I cut the connection feeling foolish. If the guy was coming to kill me he was likely to succeed, on the basis of my cunning so far. I'd picked Greensboro partly because it's easy to get to by plane, mainly because it was in a different state to where we really were. I had been hoping to hear something in his voice suggesting he knew I wasn't near there, which would have shown he was running a cell-locate after all. I'd heard nothing of the kind. Greensboro was at least two hours' drive from Thornton, moreover, which would be a royal pain in the ass. I thought back over the conversation and realized he knew when I'd been with the company and what my job had been. Also that he could shoot me in Greensboro just as easily as anywhere else.

I hit the button to call his number back.

'Hey,' he said. 'What's up?'

'Change of plan,' I said. 'It would be a lot easier for me to get to a place called Owensville. Couple hours north-east of Greensboro, in Virginia. Can you do that?'

'No problem. Call it eight thirty or nine, though.'

I sat for a while, staring across the street and hoping I hadn't made a huge mistake.

The phone rang again. It was Nina. She sounded mad.

'She'll be here in less than an hour,' Nina said, as she led me into a corridor of the Thornton sheriff's small office, where she paused for a second outside a closed door. 'There are cops out scraping together a line-up, but finding enough people with the right colour hair is proving tough.'

'I think I passed a candidate on the way in,' I said. Through a reinforced glass panel I could see the down-turned face of a woman in her twenties. 'The woman in the lobby is a few decades older and runs two hundred fifty pounds,' I said. 'No one's going to confuse her for the person you've got in there. Or believe she was someone Larry Widmar might work his charm on.'

'I know.'

'Diane Lawton in particular isn't going to think that.'

'No shit. Which is why Julia Gulicks is going to be under arrest very soon.'

A little further down the corridor was an unmarked door. Nina opened it and we entered a twilit room with a big one-way mirror on the right-hand wall. Reidel was standing leaning against the back. He and Nina went into quiet conference.

I took a better look at the woman who was about to become the chief suspect in a double homicide case. She was sitting behind a characterless metal and plywood table. Her face was still lowered, and I wondered whether she was looking at the table's scarred surface and absorbing its message. It was the table of bad news. It was a table whose presence said you were somewhere you really didn't want to be. Even the meanest restaurant would cover it with a chequered cloth.

After a few moments she looked up. You had to notice her hair first. It was long and wavy and an unusual colour: a natural red, but with a dark warmth, less like fire than a flow of deoxygenated blood. Her face had the peachy paleness that goes with such colouring, and her bone structure was good. Her build was medium-slim. She was wearing a sharp, dark business suit. She looked contained and composed. You could just about make her for involvement in some minor but complex corporate fraud of a type you'd never quite understand. Not for what I'd seen out in the barrens the night before.

On the other hand, as I'd told Hazel, you never knew.

'No lawyer?' I asked.

Reidel shrugged. 'Says she doesn't need one.'

'She doesn't look much like someone who hangs out in bars.'

'No,' Nina said. 'And Mark Kroeger says he's barely seen her drink. Two small glasses max per evening, leaves half of the second one.'

'Old alcoholic trick,' Reidel said. 'Hold back in public and when you get home yank the bottles out the laundry hamper.'

'Who's Kroeger?'

'Guy she was with when they found the body in Raynor's Wood.'

'Is he here?'

Reidel shook his head.

'So you're pretty convinced the woman in there did it,' I said. And that she didn't have an accomplice? Someone to help her carry two heavy male bodies quite a distance?'

'These are crimes of a type committed by a single individual,' he said. 'But thanks for the input.'

'That woman's got the reddest hair I've ever seen,' I said. 'It's like she's got a major head wound. Don't you think she might have made some effort to mitigate a feature that distinctive?'

'Not if Widmar's murder was an impulsive act, no.'

'But it wasn't. The bloods came back with traces of a date-rape drug. That doesn't say spur-of-the-moment. And if the body in the forest with all the flesh hacked off it is supposed to be hers too, then I'd say you can throw crime-of-convenience out of the window. And that timelines before Widmar, right?'

'Remind me,' Reidel said, distantly. 'On whose authority are you here?'

'Mine,' Nina said.

'We'll see how Monroe feels about that.'

Nina turned away. Even in the low light she looked tired and unhappy. There was something wrong.

Monroe arrived twenty minutes later, flushed and ready to be televisual. Nina convinced him to wait until Diane Lawton had been given a look at the suspect, and to reinforce the press embargo in ad hoc operation.

They kept Lawton waiting forty minutes while they went through a debate over the women in the assembled line-up. Only one had genuinely red hair, the large lady I'd already seen. Two were variably auburn, the others plain brown — and none were packing locks in the same quantity as Julia Gulicks. Nina held her ground. A compromise was reached involving getting the women to tie their hair back.

'Agent Baynam's doing a bang-up job of defending her client,' Reidel said, by now genuinely angry. 'I thought we were in the business of establishing guilt. Or am I missing something here?'

Monroe went into the interview room and advised Gulicks to request an attorney. She declined once again. He explained that representation was her right, that such a request would not be taken as evidence of guilt, and that her position could become serious much more easily without adequate counsel. She shook her head. I heard her voice for the first time over the intercom.