Magic Line (10 page)

‘Or one Mercedes,' Oscar said.

‘Oh, at least,' Ray said. ‘Maybe enough over for an ATV.' He turned to his team-mates, looking indignant. ‘Ain't that a hole in the boat, when you think about it? They make all this money and leave us all the work.'

‘Earth to Ray,' Ollie said. ‘They're all dead and we're alive.'

‘Well, yeah, there is some risk involved,' Ray said, and they all laughed. They stopped quickly because, at their level of fatigue, laughter was dangerously close to tears.

‘How do we handle it?' Sarah said, looking at Delaney.

‘You mean, have I got a special sack I carry around in case I find a great deal of money?' Even Delaney had had his sense of humor revived. ‘No. Just hand me a couple of the large evidence bags off that pile in the kitchen. And we better bag it in a hurry, because I hear the boarding-up crew arriving.'

‘Just in time, too,' Jason said. ‘I can't feel my feet any more.'

EIGHT

W
hen his bladder woke him Zeb tiptoed silently to the bathroom and closed the door with painstaking care, grateful the hinges didn't squeak. He rinsed his hands under minimum tap water, whispered a curse when he realized he'd forgotten his towel, and dried them on his pants.

But he noticed, when he came out, that Janet's bedroom door still stood open. He took a chance and peeked. She wasn't in bed. He turned on the light to be sure. What time was it? Her bedside alarm said 3:15 a.m. Caring less and less about quiet, he looked in the living room and kitchen. When he found both rooms empty he opened the door and checked out her parking space in the lot. Her car wasn't there.

Sudden, unreasoning anger shook him. Here he was, creeping around shoeless in the dark in an empty apartment, while his sister slept over with a friend – a lover? He couldn't imagine her humorless face and angular body in bed with a man. But she was in bed somewhere, doing as she pleased, while he— Damn, why did other people have all the fun? OK, she'd never invited him to stay here – still, would it kill her to leave a note?

But no, she never gave him a thought – as usual, she acted like he wasn't even there. His anger began making a case for helping himself.

As soon as he was fully awake his gut had begun growling with hunger. Nothing but breakfast yesterday and it had been a screaming bitch of a day, all that fear and running. Crackers and a few raisins last night – what a joke! He needed real food.

It felt good to walk into the kitchen, turn on all the lights and find a frying pan. She didn't have any bacon, wouldn't you know? But plenty of eggs, and there was butter. He found bread, too, and toasted four slices while he scrambled half a dozen eggs in a bowl. Poured them onto sizzling butter in the pan and put two slices of cheese on top. By the time he spooned the soft-scrambled eggs over the toast he was salivating. He ate the whole thing as fast as he could, whimpering with pleasure at first and then steadily stuffing the last of it down.

He had time, he reasoned: an hour at least before he had to clean up. Might as well check the TV. Anything else here for a treat while he watched? He found one beer at the back of the top shelf in the refrigerator. Opened it, sat in the only easy chair in the living room – Janet sure lived stingy, he thought – and used the remote to turn on the TV. Channel 57 had American Movie Classics and was playing something old with actors he'd never seen before. He flipped to CNN, got a round-up of world news, stared at it dully for a few minutes with the sound dampened. Finally he scrolled till he found local news. Controversy between city and county government, then somebody criticizing Rio Nuevo, demanding an audit. The governor announced a budget shortfall of millions for the next fiscal year. Then a police report of a home invasion on Spring Brook Drive – Zeb turned the sound up.

The four victims were all unidentified as yet, the reporter said. There was one known survivor, also unidentified, who had fled the rescue vehicle taking him to the hospital. A search for him was ongoing.

One survivor. Robin? No way to know.
They sure as hell aren't talking about
me, anyway
. He hadn't been in any rescue vehicle today.

It sounds like they don't even know I was there.
The cold knot of terror that had been coiled like a snake in his belly since late afternoon began to dissolve. He stretched his legs, took a long, cold drink of beer and then another.
They don't even know I
was there
. . . or was this a trap? On TV the cops held back some details and tricked the ‘perps' into making mistakes . . . he hadn't actually perpetrated anything but some glass-cutting, but when four people died . . .
I gotta stay out of sight for a while. Till I see how this is going
. . .
Jeez, it looks like I might be OK, though.
He stretched.
Couple more minutes and I'll clean up the kitchen.

Janet found him there, asleep in front of the six a.m. news, with the sound off. Alarmed by the jumping light when she walked in, she stood in the open doorway with the key in her hand, hardly breathing. She ventured one cautious step into the room, her gaze held by the glowing images of fresh morning faces on the screen. Two steps later she saw her brother slumped in the facing chair, an empty beer can at his elbow.

She sniffed the air and charged into the kitchen. The top of the stove was spattered with grease; the dirty pan and plate were in the sink. She had exactly an hour and a half to shower, get dressed, have breakfast and get to work. Driving home from the one-night stand she already regretted, she had planned it all down to the last move.

One great cry of rage came out of her as she crossed the room and grabbed him by his tousled Justin Bieber 'do, which seemed custom-cut for a sister to get a good grip. Once she had him in hand she punished him in a silence punctuated only by gasps and grunts, dragging him across the foyer and flinging him out the door.

Zeb was still half asleep and too confused to fight back. The shock and pain fit right in with yesterday, so for a few seconds he assumed the police had found him after all and must have decided to give him what he sort of, in a way, had coming. By the time he came fully awake he was on the stoop in front of Janet's door, clutching the scalp she had just released, wondering how much hair she had managed to pull out. Were there clumps of hair on the floor? Was he partly bald now?

When he found his voice he pleaded with her to let him back in long enough to get his bedroll. Pointing one accusing finger liked a poison dart, she hissed, ‘Don't you move from that spot!' and flounced away. She was back in a few seconds dragging the shabby open bag with his extra underwear and shirt spilling out. She flung it at his feet and told him, in a voice shaky with rage, ‘If I ever find you here again I'll call the police.'

Zeb cried out, ‘Wait, my dark glasses!' just as the door slammed. He heard the deadbolt lock slide to and knew she was not going to open it again – the glasses were gone.

He was on his knees, rolling up the bag, when a rumpled man in a bathrobe came out of the next apartment demanding to be told what in hell was going on out here. Zeb told him to go shit in his hat, starting another loud argument that soon brought several more neighbors out of surrounding apartments. He left them all there yelling at each other in the sunshine of a perfect May morning and walked toward the bus stop with his bedroll on his back.

Halfway there he remembered he didn't have enough change left to get on board a bus. Unable to think of another destination – he knew no one on this street but his sister – he kept on walking toward the bench and sign.

There were several buses on this route that would take him downtown. That's where he would have to go, he decided, for whatever he decided to do next – beg, borrow or steal, what else was there?

When he got to the stop he counted the change he had left – fifty-five cents. There was nobody on the bench but a drably-dressed old woman with bad hair clutching a scuffed leather purse. She was arranging canvas bags around her on the seat, and talking to herself. Or to the bags? Either way he was having nothing to do with her. But with the optimism of the habitual sponger, he told himself that by the time his bus came he would surely find one person understanding enough to give him seventy cents.

NINE

W
ill stood by the bed, looking tentative, holding a cup of coffee. ‘Your note said to wake you at eleven,' he said.

‘Mmf.' She surfaced from deep REM sleep. Her brain trailed wisps of a menacing dream, hostile creatures stalking her through a featureless desert . . . Still fighting them off with part of her mind, she sat up slowly, pulling pillows behind her, and squinted at Will through sticky eyes. He set the coffee down and turned the handle toward her. Carefully, feeling unsteady, she picked it up and took a sip. Hot. Good, though, going down. Maybe tomorrow she could get up. ‘Thanks.'

He pushed her knees over and nested in the curve. ‘What time did you get to bed?'

‘Little after three.' She drank some more coffee, said, ‘Aaahh,' and squeezed his hips with her legs. ‘This is good. What about you, did you sleep at all?'

‘Couple of hours. Took Aggie to her appointment at ten.' The cruelest after-effect of Aggie's stroke was that her peripheral vision was damaged so she couldn't drive. Convinced her eyes would heal soon she had not surrendered her driver's license or sold her car. Sarah dreaded the day she had to give it up.

‘Thanks for doing that. Everything go OK?'

‘Doc said she's doing fine, just needs to watch the blood pressure. On the way home she said, “I already gave up butter and salt and eggs, I'm running out of things to give up.” I wanted to mention bacon, but she's a little grumpy today.'

‘She knows she shouldn't eat bacon. But all those years on the ranch . . . my Dad liked bacon and eggs for breakfast, so that's what she cooked. “Forty years of teaching my body to need bacon,” she calls it.' She touched his arm, felt a surge of lust.
Damn, there's never enough time.
‘You'll get some more rest this afternoon, right?'

‘You bet. And you'll get home on time tonight, we all hope. Aggie said, “Tell her I'm making meat loaf and baked potatoes – that'll get her home.”'

‘Ah, she knows me well.'

‘Good. And tomorrow morning early, when I get home from work?' His scanty gray eyebrows did the best imitation they could manage of Tom Selleck in his
Magnum P.I.
days. ‘I'm gonna collect on those. Thanks for the snack.'

She giggled, said, ‘Deal,' finished her coffee, threw off the covers and sniffed. ‘Right now, though, don't get downwind of me till I've had a shower. Hoo! What a night!'

Will called after her as she headed for the bathroom, ‘Two poached eggs? How soon?'

‘Twenty minutes. Whole wheat toast if we've got it. Thanks.' Turning and soaping under the pounding water, feeling the fatigue and anxiety of the long night's work sluice away, she asked herself,
How did I ever
get along without that man?

Toweling off, she thought about work. Delaney had sent them all home from the crime scene, staying on himself to see to the late deposit of the money. There'd be a lot more talk about that today. There was an ongoing Attempt to Locate notice being passed from shift to shift, so every patrolman in town was searching for the ex-dead-guy. His existence had been kept from the media. Will hadn't mentioned him just now, so she knew there'd been no arrest by the time he left work at six. Maybe the radio . . . Oh, well, she'd know soon enough. Better get dressed fast now.

Soon as you can make it after lunch, Delaney had said about today's work schedule. Maybe he should have said, ‘
If
you can make it,' she thought, watching four detectives straggle into their work stations a few minutes after one. They were all showing the aftermath of exhaustion, an ache like no other. Sarah felt as if her depth perception was a little off, and sounds were strangely muted. They were all moving carefully, as if afraid of falling, and Delaney's voice had a dry rasp.

They knew there was only one cure for what ailed them – tired or not, get to work, find some answers to the many questions left hanging when they boarded up the house. But there was a lot of inertia. They all sat in their cubicles doing busy work, answering emails and returning phone messages, till Delaney got his desk clear and called them all into his office, saying, ‘Come on, we've got to prioritize.'

‘That part of my brain is still asleep,' Jason said. ‘I could probably do some prioritizing for you by tomorrow afternoon.'

Delaney shook his head. ‘Everybody, call your snitches,' he said. ‘See what's out there about the Klutzbach brothers. Who was with them when they tried to invade that house?'

‘OK,' Ollie said, ‘but first I have to check all the weapons and ammo into evidence. I secured it last night in one big box and told the evidence tech not to touch it till I get back in here today.'

‘Fine,' Delaney said, ‘do that right away. Oh, and while you're at it, make me that list of guns you talked about, with all the spent ammo you found and what's left in each weapon.'

‘I said that? Damn, what a memory,' Ollie said. His jokey daytime persona was coming back. When Delaney frowned, he said, ‘OK, you got it.'

‘I'd like to find some of those neighbors at work,' Ray Menendez said. ‘I got a few phone numbers last night and maybe with a city directory . . . if I could catch them in the daytime when their kids aren't around . . .'

‘Try it,' Delaney said. ‘We sure didn't get much so far. But go after your snitches too – you always seem to have some good ones.'

‘Yeah,' Ray said, smiling fondly, ‘I know the baddest guys.'

‘And Jason? I want you to get in touch with the Tucson narc squad, the guys who picked up the weed. I'll give you the names and numbers. See if they can tell us any more about this shipment now that they've had a look at it. Or if they've got any leads on the two men in the house.'