Last Ditch (31 page)

"Leo,"
she called.

I
raced back
around the building toward the car. I slowed to a walk when I saw her.
Rebecca
squatted in the grass by the comer of the nearest container. She'd
liberated
the flashlight from the glove box and was shining it down on the ground
between
her feet. She raised her eyes at the sound of my feet on the gravel.
The soft
ticking of the engine was the only sound. Across the river, the
dry-docked
ferry floated dark and lifeless like a flood-ravaged hotel. "Look,"
she said.

I
closed the
distance and peered down over her shoulder. The top third of an
aluminium cane.
White handle. Sheared off to a jagged end, just above the height
adjustment
holes.

She
brought the
light down close to the jagged end. A smear of what in this light
looked like
black grease adorned the broken end. We both knew better.

"Blood,"
I whispered.

She
shook her
head. "Too thick," she said. She bent nearly to the ground and sniffed
the broken end of the cane.

She
straightened up and looked me in the eye. "Well?" I prodded.
"Brain matter."

I
groaned and
walked in a small circle. "You sure?"

She
nodded.
"I'm sure," she said. "The smell is unmistakable."

My
stomach
rolled once and then settled tenuously back in place. Instinctively, I
reached
for the cane, but she grabbed my wrist.

"Don't
touch," she said. "Or Mr. Watts will have to get us both out of the
cooler."

She
was right.
Despite my inclination to work around the cops, there was no taking a
powder on
this one. The old anonymous phone call wasn't going to cut it. They'd
talk to
the guard and make us in the proverbial New York minute. No. We were
going to
have to call the cops and wait around until they showed up. Oh, joy
unbounded.

We
both stood
up. She reached in the pocket of her coat and pulled out her cellular
phone.
She flipped it open and waved it in front of my face. "Do you want to
do
the honors or should I?" she asked.

I
showed her a
palm. "Let's get our stories straight first."

I
could tell
from the expression on her face that she was going to do her Goody
Two-shoes
number on me. She didn't disappoint.

"What
stories? I'm not going to tell them any stories."

"Don't
start that Little Miss Perfect in the front-row crap with me, okay? If
I tell
'em I came down here because I had information that suggested Bermuda
might be
down here, I'm going to the can for the second time in one day, and I'm
telling
you, I'm not going quietly, and you're not going to get me back out for
a measly
five hundred bucks."

I
could tell
she believed me. She didn't like it, but she asked, "What do you have
in
mind?"

"Let's
keep it simple. Let's just tell 'em that we were dissatisfied with
their
progress at investigating the assault on me, so we decided to come down
here
and see if maybe we couldn't turn up something on our own."

"Like
public-spirited, self-actualized citizens."

"Exactly."

"You
really think they're going to buy that offal?"

"It
makes
more sense than the truth."

She
thought it
over. "Okay," she said finally. "You're right. It does make more
sense than the truth."

"You
make
the call. It'll look good for you in case anybody gives you any crap
about
being in here with me under false pretenses."

She
pushed the
POWER button and began to dial. I wandered over to the muddy incline
between
the office and the warehouse, staying off to the side, keeping my feet
out of
the muck. I could hear Rebecca speaking into the phone. Below me the
river
belched up a sudden low ripple and then went silent again.

In
the murky
artificial light, I could make out the narrow tracks of the Fiat
ranning from
where I'd parked it, down the muddy incline toward the river. Despite
the
temperature, the memory of the dark water sent a bead of sweat running
down my
spine. I shuddered so hard my cheeks flapped. Suddenly freezing, I
pulled my
jacket tighter about me. What caught my eye, though, was another set of
tire
tracks, much wider and flatter than those of the Fiat, running
parallel, the
right wheel inside the Fiat's tracks, the left veering out to the left,
as if a
much larger vehicle had been parked in the same spot since I'd left the
Fiat
there on Tuesday. I shivered violently again.

Worst
of all,
as nearly as I could tell in the low half-light, the other set of
tracks also
led off into oblivion. My stomach rolled again at the thought of
Bermuda and the cold, rank water below.

Rebecca
spoke
behind me. "They're on the way."

"Move
the
car, will you?"

She
snapped the
phone closed and stowed it in her pocket

"Move
it
where? We want to make sure we don't contaminate the scene."

"Just
turn
it so the headlights point down here." She walked my way. "What's
down there?" I pointed. "See the other set of tire tracks?"
"Oh . . . yeah."

I
tried to keep
the anxiety out of my voice.

"Would
you
please move the car?"

She
fixed me
with a baleful stare and then began to move. As she turned toward the
car, I
clearly recalled why it is I work alone.

The
power
steering belt screamed as she" first cut the wheel to the right,
looping
out toward the front of the warehouse, and then all the way back to the
left,
to get the lights pointing directly at the river.

I
shielded my
eyes with one hand and waved at her with the other. She stuck her head
out the
side window.

"What?"

"Turn
your
high beams off," I yelled above the engine.

When
she
snapped down onto low beams, I could see it clearly for the first time.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the part of me that always tries to
stay
optimistic had been hoping that maybe there'd been a delivery. That
maybe some
light trunk had pulled in here to leave a load. Bad news. If it had,
this was
its last delivery of the day. The muddy tracks led all the way to the
edge.
Anything that was still rolling at that point in the incline had ended
up in
the river.

I
was busy
enacting and then rejecting scenarios wherein there was some other
explanation
for the tracks. Anything other than the possibility that some no-eared
maniac
had sent Bermuda and his Buick careening down
into the waterway. Duvall was suddenly at my elbow.

"Couldn't
those be the tracks from the tow truck that rescued your car?"

I
shook my
head. "No way." I pointed to the warehouse on our right. "It
floated way over past the building there. They pulled me and the car
out about
fifty yards downstream."

She
took my
arm. "We'd better wait in the car. They won't like it if we've been
stomping all over a potential crime scene."

As
we turned
back toward the lights and the surging of the engine, I caught a
glimpse of
something out of place over by the corner of the office porch. I knew
right
away. Nothing in a place like this was that gende shade of brown.
Dry-rot
brown, creosote brown, rust brown, but never beige, baby, never beige.
My heart
sank toward my shoes.

I
pulled
Rebecca along with me. "You still have the flashlight?"

She
rummaged
around in one pocket, then the other, and handed over a small black
rubberized
flashlight. I flicked the button and pointed the weak yellow fight A
brown wool
beret rested on its edge, held perpendicular to the ground by the side
of the
porch.

"It's
his," I said.

"You're
sure?"

I
told her
about watching Bermuda leave his house last
night

"We'll
have to let them identify the hat on their own," I said.

She
was a quick
lass. Ornery, but quick. "Or they'll know you've been withholding
information." "Exactly."

Over
the top of
the Explorer I could plainly see the pulsing red and blue rights as
they
reflected off the sea of containers and, in the distance, I could hear
the rushing
of tires on gravel.

TRUJILLO
AND
WESSELS must have had the night off. Trujillo
arrived an hour or so after the first cruiser, wearing a brown ski
jacket and a
pair of stonewashed jeans. Wessels never put in a guest appearance at
all. I
figured a boozer like Wessels was well into the shank of his drinking
night by
now and couldn't risk showing up half in the bag. Couldn't say I missed
him.

By
the time Trujillo showed up, the
forensics team had collected the piece of cane we'd found, along with
several
other shards we'd missed, and discovered the beret on their own. The
two police
divers had been down to the bottom of the river twice, the first time
to
confirm that, yes, there was indeed a car down there, the second to
attach the
cable lines for the pair of heavy-duty tow trucks which had showed up a
half an
hour ago.

About
that same
time, Gordon Chen had brought a gleaming blue Lexus SC400 skidding to a
halt
among the drab pack of official vehicles.

He
hit the
gravel running, trotting up to Trujillo.

He
jerked a
thumb in my direction.

"I
want
this man arrested," he shouted.

Trujillo
stayed calm. "Take it
easy, Mr.
Chen," he said. "We have the situation in hand."

Gordon
Chen
came at me hard. "You son of a bitch."

As
I wasn't in
the mood to be attacked by amateurs, I bumped myself off the fender of
the
Explorer, timed his imminent arrival and stiff-armed him hard in the
solar
plexus. He staggered backward two steps and began gasping for breath.

I
wagged a
finger in his face.

"Not
tonight, Gordo. I've had a hard day."

Trujillo
took him by the shoulder
and turned him
back toward the Lexus, but Gordon Chen wasn't through. Still gasping,
he flung Trujillo aside and came
stiff-legging it back my way.

"You
stay
away from my mother," he wheezed.

Trujillo
had recovered his balance
and grabbed
Chen by the elbow.

"Take
it
easy," he was saying. "Take it easy."

"My
mother
is very frail," he whined to Trujillo.
"This man is lolling her. She's not strong."

Trujillo
did a good job. Slowly, in
stages, he
managed to stuff the young Chen back into his sixty-thousand-dollar
chariot and
get him on his way. He even had presence of mind enough to get far off
to one
side so he wasn't pelted by the rooster tail of dirt and gravel that
Gordon
Chen left in his wake. Trujillo
fanned the air in front of his face.

He
looked over
at me and shook his head.

"Don't
know how anybody that out of control can run a company," he commented.

"He
certainly is an excitable boy," I agreed.

From
the whoops
and shouts emanating from the far side of the warehouse, I guessed that
the car
had breached the water and was in the process of being dragged up the
bank. I
couldn't tell for sure, because I'd been relegated to sitting in the
Explorer,
while Duvall had immediately been made part of the forensics
investigation
team.

Trujillo
sauntered over and began
asking me the
same questions he'd been asking me for the past hour and a half.

"So
let's
go back over this supposed guy with no ears . . ." Trujillo asked. "I
mean, what is he?
Norman Bates or something? What ... he just kills anybody who shows up
down
here? Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

"I
don't
know," I said truthfully. "All I know is that he took one look at me
and decided he wanted to punch my ticket. Why? I don't have the
foggiest"

Trujillo
stroked his chin.

"And
then
of course it follows that whatever problem this mythical no-eared man
had with
you, he also must have had with Edward Schwartz."

I
shrugged
again. "I don't see how that could be. Before this week, I hadn't seen
Ed
Schwartz in nearly twenty years."

He
touched his
temple with his index finger. "Maybe it's just a coincidence."

"Maybe
if
you guys had put more effort into finding the guy in the first place,
we
wouldn't be here doing tins tonight"

I
watched as
the color ran up his neck and darkened his face. Before he could open
his mouth
to respond, however, one of the police divers, his black wet suit
gleaming in
the lights, came around the corner of the building and called out,
"Detective."