Criminal Intent (MIRA) (22 page)

But the yahoo following him in the dung-colored Buick Century was starting to grate on his nerves. Either he’d been followed to and from the car rental agency, or the guy knew where he was staying, and had waited him out. Neither scenario impressed Louis very much. There was something eerily disquieting about being followed while he was on a job. It raised too many questions. Such as who he could and couldn’t trust. Not to mention the burning question of just how many players were involved in this little scenario. He’d assumed it was two, himself and Luke Brogan. Three if you counted the absent Robin Spinney. But the presence of the guy in the Buick raised that number to four, and once you passed three—client, investigator, and investigatee—things could get messy very quickly.

Which was why he’d spent several hours last night on the computer and the telephone, doing a little information gathering on the people he knew were attached to this case, either directly or peripherally. It was amazing, the things you could find out if you did enough digging and asked the right questions. Amazing, the way people opened up when you told them
you were a private investigator. Gossip was cheap, and it was plentiful, and if you hit the right source, information would gush like Jed Clampett’s oil well.

First there was his client, Luke Brogan, county sheriff, a man who, judging by what Louis had been told, wasn’t exactly loved by his constituents. Yet he kept being reelected. Possibly because the crime rate in Atchawalla County was at an all-time low, possibly because he came from a politically powerful family. Both his parents were dead. His brother had inherited all the money; Brogan had inherited the little shotgun house where he’d been raised and a life insurance policy that, after the expenses of burying his mother, might have paid for a weekend at one of the gambling casinos in Tunica. Brogan lived in the house alone now, with just his dog for company. He’d been married twice, had two grown daughters, at least one rancorous ex-wife (Wife Number One), and another who received hefty alimony payments (Wife Number Two).

It was the brother who was the more interesting of the two. Marcus Brogan, District Attorney, soon to become The Honorable Judge Brogan. Interesting family dynamics there. Marcus was the younger son, child of a second marriage, raised in the lap of power and wealth. He had the brains and the money and the drive to succeed. At a relatively young age, Marcus had already climbed higher on the success ladder than his older brother would ever reach. Louis wondered just how much control the younger Brogan had over his older half sibling. Could the Great and Powerful Marcus be the man behind the curtain, the man who pulled the strings that controlled the lives of a number of people, including Louis Farley? Or was Luke Brogan really what he pretended to be, the sole actor in this endeavor to locate Robin Spinney?

Then, there was Mac Spinney. By all accounts, a good cop, a decent guy, one who didn’t take bribes, drink too much, or cheat on his wife. A squeaky clean, Dudley Do-Right kind of guy. He’d
died two years ago in an auto accident on a lonely stretch of fog-drenched Mississippi highway. A single-car accident with no witnesses. Although his best friend since childhood, Deputy Boyd Northrup, had made a minor flap about it, there’d been no real investigation into Spinney’s death. A car wreck was a car wreck, and in that part of rural Mississippi, accidents happened with surprising frequency. Atchawalla lost one of its finest, and everyone agreed it was a damn shame. Half the town turned out for his funeral before they went home to their safe little lives and forgot Mac Spinney ever existed. His widow had received a hefty life insurance settlement, and life in the quiet little Southern town had returned to normal.

So it was fascinating to learn that, eighteen months later, Boyd Northrup, Spinney’s best friend and fellow deputy, had died in an apparent suicide. Coincidence? Louis didn’t really buy it, but he supposed it was possible that Northrup had been despondent over something, even if nothing in his home life with the wife and the kids and the new baby on the way pointed in that direction. Boyd Northrup had simply climbed out of bed one winter morning, showered as he did every day before work. Then he’d poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at his kitchen table, still dressed in a blue terrycloth bathrobe, and swallowed the muzzle of his police-issue handgun.

His death raised a red flag for Louis Farley, and left all kinds of unanswered questions. What could Northrup have been thinking, ending his life like that, in his own kitchen, where his wife or one of his kids was likely to come home and find pieces of him splattered all over the walls and ceiling? Why would he have bothered to shower first? Northrup was a cop. He knew what kind of damage a handgun would do to a man who put it in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The shower was at best a moot point. And why bother to pour himself
a final, untouched cup of coffee before he sent himself off to the eternal fires of Hell? If you believed in the Christian fundamentalist perspective, as Boyd Northrup most likely had, that’s where suicides went.

It didn’t add up. Or maybe it did, only two and two didn’t equal the four Louis had expected they would. Especially when he put this information together with the recollections of the high school guidance secretary, Emma Hickey, who’d been only too willing to spill everything she knew. Boyd Northrup had died the same day that Robin Spinney took an emergency leave of absence to care for an ailing great-aunt in Arkansas. The leave of absence was supposed to be temporary, but a month or so later, she’d phoned the school and resigned permanently, without apology or explanation. According to Hickey, nobody had seen or heard from Robin Spinney since, and her little two-story house, the one Mac Spinney had designed and built himself the summer before Sophie was born, was sitting there empty, the lawn unmowed and weeds growing up around the foundation.

Emma Hickey had sniffed and, with all the hauteur she could muster, added that it was a disgrace, the way Robin was disrespecting her husband’s memory. If she wasn’t coming home, she could at least pay for a gardening service to keep the lawn mowed.

Louis had wondered before, and he wondered again now, why a cop like Brogan, who possessed all the resources of a county police department, would turn to a private investigator to locate someone. It would be easier, not to mention cheaper, to use the resources at his disposal and locate her himself. Unless he was trying to keep his hands clean. Unless he didn’t want anybody to know he was looking for her.

Unless his reason for finding her fell on the wrong side of the law.

Frowning, Louis pulled the Saturn over in front of an over-sized
ranch house a block from the Sarnacki residence. In his rearview mirror, he watched the Buick approach and then casually pass him. His impression of the driver was fleeting and frustratingly sketchy. Tall—at least six feet—with dark hair, or maybe he was wearing a dark cap. Most likely male, but even that he couldn’t be certain of. At the end of the block, the car pulled up to the stop sign, sat there idling for a moment, then made a right turn and slowly disappeared from sight.

Louis snorted. Two could play at this game. If the tail wasn’t even making an effort to stay hidden, then he wasn’t about to hide either. If Buick Man had anything to say to him, let the guy make the first move. In the meantime, Louis had a job to do. He pulled the Pistons cap lower over his eyes, tucked his earpiece in his ear, and turned on his surveillance equipment. Picking up the Nora Roberts novel he’d bought at Target to replace the one he’d left in the hospital waiting room in Miami, he leaned back his seat, adjusted his sunglasses, and went to work.

T
he
moon must be full. It was the only explanation Davy could come up with that even came close to accounting for his morning. The nut cases were coming out of the woodwork. Irene MacMaster was off her medication again, and he’d gotten a frantic call that she was standing in the middle of Androscoggin Street, wearing a purple cape and directing traffic. According to Dixie, Irene’s little episodes were a perpetual problem that kept cropping up at least once a month. Well, good. That meant he had the month of July down, and only had August left to deal with before Ty came back and rescued him from this fate that was worse than death. He should mark his calendar and plan a big welcome-home party.

Two of Serenity’s more prominent citizens had gotten into a minor fender-bender in the Food City parking lot that had led to an all-out fistfight. Pete had hauled both their asses into the station. Looking as sheepish as they should have, considering their exalted positions and the fact that they were both stone cold sober and over the age of eighteen—way, way over the age of eighteen—they both posted bail and phoned their wives to come get them. Then there’d been the call from Stella Daggett, hysterical because Omar Abdallah’s goats had gotten
loose and were sampling her prize-winning Roma tomatoes. She’d turned the garden hose on them, but the stupid animals had just blinked a couple of times and continued munching.

“I am not rounding up goats,” he told Dix when she passed the call on to him. “I am absolutely
not
rounding up goats.”

Forty-five minutes later he was back at his desk, a little muddy, a little wrinkled, and plastered with wet goat hair. “What is that godawful smell?” Dixie said as she set a stack of papers on the corner of his desk.

“That’s me. I decided to try a new aftershave. Think it’ll catch on?”

“Hunh.
Eau de
goat. I doubt it’ll make much of an impact in the U.S., but I bet you’d be a massive hit in the Swiss Alps.”

He raised an eyebrow. “The Swiss Alps?”

“You know.
Heidi?
” At his blank look, she added, “Shirley Temple? With Grandfather and Peter the Goat Boy? And that poor little crippled girl who—oh, forget it.” She rolled her eyes in utter contempt. “Your basic education is sorely lacking, Hunter.”

“Interim Chief Hunter to you, Dix. How many times do I have to remind you?”

“So fire me.”

“I don’t think I have the power to fire you. I’m just a rent-a-cop.”

“I don’t know. Is that a real gun you have in that shoulder holster?”

“Well, yeah. Of course.”

“I’d say that gives you the power to do pretty much anything you want.
Interim Chief
Hunter.”

“Cheeky,” he said. “You’re really cheeky.”

“And you should be glad of it,” Dixie said. “At least there’s somebody around here with a sense of humor.”

Picturing
his own grim visage, Pete’s big sour puss, and René, who was so earnest it was painful to watch, he decided she was right. Somebody needed to keep them all from drowning in their own cheerlessness. “Maybe instead of firing you, I should promote you,” he said.

“Yeah? To what?”

“I was thinking maybe court jester.”

In between all the craziness, in between the phone calls and the constant stream of paperwork and the goat round-up, he spent a fair amount of time on the phone with Gram’s doctor, Jeremy Colfer, and her attorney, Lou Cunningham. The news wasn’t good. Doc Colfer had thought even before the fall that it was time Gram left her house and moved someplace where she’d have round-the-clock supervision. Lou explained the red tape of elderly care as best he could, although the terms he threw around—Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, nursing homes, boarding homes, assisted living facilities, home health aides—had Davy’s head spinning by the time he was done. He understood very little of what Lou told him, except the bottom line: the cost would be about equivalent to that of a five-star hotel, and she wouldn’t get a penny of assistance from the government until she was destitute. At the prices they charged, it wouldn’t take long.

And then there was Dee.

She swooped into his office like a hawk swooping down on fleeing prey, one kid at her hip and a second clinging to her leg. Her blue stretch pants had a hole in the knee, and there was something that looked suspiciously like grape jelly fingerprints on her shirt. The kid who’d been clinging to her leg launched himself at Davy. He caught his nephew and swung him in the air before plopping the kid down on his knee. “Hey, buddy,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Grrrrrrreat!” Timmy said in his best Tony the Tiger imitation.

“Glad
to hear it.” Over Timmy’s head, Davy hazarded a look at his sister. Her expression was thunderous. “Dee,” he said mildly.

“I really appreciate you notifying me.”

“You smell funny,” Timmy said as he squirmed and twisted, digging his bony backside into Davy’s thigh. “Uncle Davy, is that a real gun?”

“Get away from there,” Dee said, “before you shoot someone!”

Davy let the kid slide down his leg to the floor. Timmy rushed to his mother’s side. She caught him by a forearm and yanked him hard against her hip. “Stay,” she said through gritted teeth, as though he were a dog. To Davy, she said bitterly, “Maybe you thought you’d just wait and let me read it in the paper when she dies.”

“For Christ’s sake, Dee, stop being a drama queen. She isn’t dying. And frankly, I didn’t think you’d give a damn if she did.”

“Oh, that’s precious. Yeah, I know you’re embarrassed to admit you’re related to the likes of me. But in case you forgot, I’m part of this family, too.”

“I’m not the one who forgot, Dee.”

“She’s my grandmother, Davy. You could’ve told me she was in the hospital. I had to hear it from somebody else. Do you have any idea how much of an idiot I felt like? Looked like, too, I’m sure. What kind of moron doesn’t even know when her own grandmother’s been in the hospital for two days?”

“A day and a half,” he corrected automatically. He should have known that she wasn’t concerned about Gram’s welfare. She was concerned about looking bad in front of the neighbors.

“Hunh?”

“I said it was a day and a half. Not two days.” Wearily, he added, “Who’d you hear it from?”

“Etta
Crowley. Jack’s sister. She heard it from Jo, who heard it from Sally Springer. She’s a nurse at the hospital.”

Of course the news had come through Jo. The town gossip. She’d probably also told half the town that she’d seen him sneaking away from Annie Kendall’s place around seven on Sunday morning. “I appreciate your concern,” he said stiffly. “I’ll pass it on to Gram when I see her.”

“Fuck you, Davy. You know I care about what happens to Gram. I’m not so hardhearted that I don’t give a shit.”

“Good,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “because we have some pretty serious decisions to make, and I’m not making them alone. I’m calling a family meeting, and the three of us are going to do this together. That way, later on down the road, nobody can point the finger of guilt at anybody else, because whatever decisions we make will be mutual.”

“The three of us? You, me and Gram?”

“You, me and Brian. I already called him. He’s flying home.”

Astonishment flashed across her face, and he realized for the first time in his life just how unattractive his sister was. “Oh, that’s just peachy,” she said. “We really need him around. Tell me he’s not bringing his boyfriend with him.”

“Stop it,” he said, his voice gone suddenly hard and cold. “He’s your goddamn brother, Dee, and if I hear you say one bad word about him—a single negative comment—I swear to God I’ll wrap my fingers around your neck and squeeze it until you turn blue.”

“You’re crazy,” she said. “You’re absolutely fucking ape-shit crazy.”

“Yeah? Well, take a look in the mirror, sis, because I’m pretty sure it’s a genetic condition.”

“Asshole.” She stormed back out the same way she’d come in, like a battleship going full speed ahead, laying waste to whatever fell in her path. He heard the front door of the building
open, heard his nephew’s whiny complaint abruptly cut off when the door slammed shut again behind her.

In the hallway outside his door, soft footsteps approached. Dixie peeked around the door frame as if she wasn’t quite sure she dared to step inside. “Is it safe to come in,” she said, “or do you still have your boxing gloves on?”

He glared at her and snapped, “What do you want?”

“A lobster dinner and a pair of Chippendales dancers for starters. After that, we can negotiate. Right now, I have the prints from the break-in at the Twilight. They just came back from the state police.”

He let out a hard breath, rubbed his temple with the palm of his hand. “Thanks.”

“Can I say one thing?”

“Could I stop you even if I wanted to? Make it short.”

“I just wanted to say bravo.” She handed him the paperwork and gave him a round of silent applause. “About time somebody put her in her place. I went to school with Brian. He was one of my best friends. I don’t give a damn if he sleeps with women or men or three-headed aliens. She’s got no right to talk about him the way she does.”

Suddenly exhausted, he said wearily, “She doesn’t know any better.”

“Maybe she didn’t before. She sure as hell does now.”

After Dixie left, he skimmed the information from the state police. They’d been able to match nearly all the fingerprints Pete had sent them, and had come up with a list of names. All the names but one were familiar. A couple of them had records; most didn’t. Ziggy Llewellyn had a six-year-old OUI bust and one simple assault charge a couple of years later. Merle Atwood had been arrested for possession of marijuana eighteen years ago in Salem, Oregon. The rest were probably regular customers and solid citizens. Every damn one of them would have to be checked out.

He
paused when he reached the lone unfamiliar name. Robin Spinney. It didn’t ring any bells, wasn’t even vaguely familiar. Who the hell was she?

Because he figured she had the entire Twilight Video customer database stored in that spiky little head of hers, he picked up the phone and called Estelle. “Does the name Robin Spinney ring any bells with you?”

“No. Should it?”

“I’m asking the questions here. She isn’t one of your regular customers?”

“Nope. Not even a one-shot deal.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’ve been working there for four years, Davy. This town has fewer than five thousand residents. A small fraction of those people rent videos at the Twilight. I’ve never heard of anybody by that name.”

“Okay. I guess you answered my question.”

“I guess that means you’re not going to answer mine.”

“Police business,” he said, and hung up the phone.

He sat back in his chair, frowning at the memo-laden bulletin board. There was too much going on in his life, in his head. He’d reached the point of information overload. He needed to clear his head, do some thinking. Preferably behind the steering wheel, with the window rolled down as he cruised the back roads of Serenity. He always did his best thinking while he drove. Maybe, while he was out there, he could kill two birds with one stone and try to track down Ziggy Llewellyn and Merle Atwood. He doubted either one had anything to do with the break-in at the Twilight, but they were the only two people on the list who had police records, so it was the logical place to start.

He tucked the list of names into the case file and walked out to the reception area. “I’m going out for a while,” he told Dixie. “Think you can hold down the fort?”

“I
handled it for years before you got here,” she said smugly, swiveling in her secretarial chair. “It’ll be hard, but I’ll try to manage without you.”

“Do you talk to Ty this way, too, or is it just me?”

“Hey, you just elevated me to the position of court jester. I’m simply trying to fulfill the requirements of the job.”

“I’m surprised he hasn’t fired you for insubordination.”

Dixie grinned. “He’s threatened to once or twice. But he knows I’m indispensable. He says I can read his mind. He even calls me Radar. As in O’Reilly. Get it?”

“That one I get. I’m not really as dumb as a box of rocks, I just look that way. So you read Ty’s mind, and he likes it?”

“Apparently so. I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“Absolutely amazing. Don’t be reading my mind, Dix. You wouldn’t like what you found there.”

“Hey,” she said to his retreating back, “if I need you—”

“Radio, cell phone, beeper,” he tossed back over his shoulder without bothering to turn around. “Try not to need me for an hour or two.”

Theodore Constantine was a sociopath.

It was a label he wore with great pride. He liked the word, liked its sibilant sound as it slithered off his tongue. He liked the fact that he shared a first name with that other, most infamous of sociopaths, Ted Bundy. Like Bundy, Teddy Constantine liked to kill. It excited him. Not in a sexual way. No, with Teddy it was all about power. There was nothing so thrilling as the possession of absolute control, nothing so gratifying as the look on the face of his victim at the precise instant when they realized there was no hope of escape. For Teddy Constantine, killing was the ultimate power trip.

And he was good at it. That was why Marcus Brogan had hired him. Teddy was an accomplished killer whose services could be bought—for the right price—and Brogan had been willing
and able to pay his price. Half up front, the other half when the job was done. That was his standard fee structure. They were really quite a lot alike, he and Marcus. Both of them cold, calculating, and acquisitive. They both got off on power. Except that Brogan craved the kind of power that controlled people’s lives, while Teddy craved the kind of power that ended them. But that was a minor difference, a surface discrepancy. On the inside, they could have been twins.

Tailing Louis Farley was about as challenging as playing dodgeball at recess. Farley wasn’t exactly a master of deception, although he did a creditable job of changing his appearance to suit his needs. Farley could blend in anyplace, anytime. It was a useful skill for someone in his line of work. At least his frequent costume changes kept Teddy mildly entertained while he waited for something more exciting to happen.