Scars (Nevada James #2) (Nevada James Mysteries) (5 page)

“Taking
cases? Is that what I’m doing now?”

“Isn’t
it? First for Alan Davies, and now hopefully for me?”

“I don’t
have a license for this sort of thing, and after my stay in the psych ward I
couldn’t get one even if I wanted it. It doesn’t really matter, though. There
isn’t a law against going around asking people questions.”

“Would
you care if there were?”

“No.” I
sipped the tea, trying to pick up the citrus in it this time. If I
concentrated, it tasted like hot water that had been sitting near an orange for
a while. “Tell me this. Who do you think did it?”

“I was
convinced it was the Unabomber, or a Unabomber copycat, but the FBI said there
weren’t any known copycats. Now, I just don’t know.”

“Was
your husband’s research public? Was it something I could have read about on the
Internet.” I paused. “
Was
there Internet in 1993?”

“It was
different then. Most of the world was still on dial-up bulletin boards. But no,
my husband’s work was known mostly in the academic community. It wasn’t secret,
but it would hardly have been accessible to the general public.”

“Did you
or he have enemies? Tell me now, because I’ll just find out anyway and you’ll
never hear from me again.”

“My
husband was harmless, Nevada. He was a scientist. He…” her eyes took on a
faraway look I knew she wasn’t faking. “He was a simple man. Brilliant, but
simple. He thought he was going to build computers that would change the world.
He believed technology would end famine, poverty, war…” She smiled wistfully. “He
used to get so excited about it. I know he was probably naïve, but that’s who
he was. And he never made an enemy in his life.”

“What
about you? You’ve got a lot of money. Money usually comes with problems.”

“It’s my
family’s money, and if my great-grandfather screwed anyone over to get it, it
happened generations ago. We’ve been out of the business for decades. I hardly even
know what a car engine looks like.”

“Any
affairs?”

She
smirked. “I won’t take offense that you asked. No. Not on my part, anyway, and
I’d be shocked if Adam had.”

“So you
don’t have a single suspect?”

“No.”

I
scratched my head. “Okay, what about who gained financially? Artificial
intelligence has to be profitable.”

“And
someday it might have been, but I’ve had Adam’s work reviewed by people who are
much smarter on the subject than I am. Adam was a visionary, but nothing he was
building actually
worked
. Some of it might have, someday, but the field
was still in its infancy. There was nothing in what he had done to steal.
Nobody ran off and started a company with anything he did.”

“Well,
shit,” I said.

“I
know,” Anita said. “I’ve been at this for a while, Nevada.”

I’d have
had to admit I was intrigued. And I had very little else to do with my time. It
wouldn’t kill me to look at the old case files. At the most all I was going to
lose was a day or two I’d just have spent watching bad television in my motel
room.

I stood
up. “I’m going to go,” I said. “I’ll call you in a few hours. I want to think
about a few things before I make a decision. Will you be reachable after your brunch,
or whatever the hell you’re doing?”

“Call
whenever you like, Nevada. I’ll drop everything for you.” She stood up and
shook my hand. “Regardless of your decision, I’d like to thank you. It’s been a
while since I could be myself in front of other people.” She scrunched up her
face around the eyes and a set of wrinkles appeared, adding ten years to her
appearance. The grandmother was back. “I
do
hope you’ll be discreet,
dear,” she said, using the singsong voice again.

“You’ll have
to teach me how to do that someday,” I said. “My mask has never been as good as
yours.”

Chapter 6

I was
already pretty sure I was going to take the case, but I was hesitant to just
jump into it without talking to someone I trusted first. My list of trusted
people was fairly small. You could count them on one hand, and you only needed
two fingers. Three, if you counted Sarah Winters, and I wasn’t sure I did. I
liked her, and I had no reason to think she’d ever betray me, but I was also a paranoid
and possibly delusional alcoholic. Trust wasn’t something that came easily to
me.

The gate
leading back to the main street had a motion sensor that made it open
automatically for anyone who was leaving, but I stopped at the guard booth
anyway. The same guy I’d talked to before was still in there. “What do you
think of Anita?” I asked him.

“She’s
the sweetest lady,” he said. “We all just love her.”

“Oh,
yeah?”

“She
brings cookies and lemonade out here on the hot days,” he nodded. “Always asks
about the kids. Not like some of them in there, who drive by like they don’t
even see us. She’s good people.”

“Thanks,”
I said, putting the car into gear. He may have made a good security guard, but
he’d never have been a good detective.

I stopped
at a fast food drive-through on the way back to San Diego and ate in the car. I
really wanted to talk to someone, but I wasn’t sure who to call. Dan Evans was
probably still in Santa Fe, and the first thing he was going to say to me was
“come back to work.” As if that were really an option. Even if I was willing to
go back to a life of rules and regulations, being a police officer required a
certain amount of psychological stability I didn’t have. The other option was…I
took my phone out of my pocket and dialed.

Molly
Malone answered on the third ring. “Hey.”

“Hey.
You busy?”

“I’ve
got a class at 2:00, but I’m free after that. You okay?”

“Yeah,”
I said. “I just want to run something by you. It’s not urgent.”

“Why
don’t you come by after?”

“That
works.”

“See you
then.”

Molly
Malone had been a well-known therapist with several successful books to her
credit. She’d taken some of her book money and opened a karate dojo in Pacific
Beach several years ago.  I’d trained there when I’d been a cop; not having the
advantage of physical size or muscle in a job where I could easily find myself
up against violent killers, I’d wanted to make sure my fighting skills were top
notch. I’d earned a black belt before I made detective.

After
the Laughing Man, and after I’d been in the psych ward, Molly had tried taking
a turn as my therapist, if only because she knew I wasn’t going to talk to
anyone else. That hadn’t gone well. A long time ago, while I’d been in a
drunken rage, I’d told her I never wanted to see her again. We’d only been back
in touch for a few months, but I was glad to have her in my life. This time it
was as friends only; she’d said she couldn’t fill both roles for me. She’d
recommended half a dozen other therapists for me to see since we’d started
talking again, but I had yet to actually visit one of them.

Pacific
Beach was a small community on the western side of San Diego that catered to
surfers, hipsters, and people who liked both nightclubs and overpriced alcohol.
I was none of those things. Even when I’d been drinking, I only did it alone.
My version of nightlife when I’d been a cop consisted of picking through crime
scenes, then going home to down enough vodka to knock me out. After a while it
had been the only way I could go to sleep.

I got
into Pacific Beach a little before 3:00. It was early enough that traffic was
still light; Pacific Beach really only had one major thoroughfare that went in
and out of the neighborhood, and it would be clogged well before rush hour hit.
Coffee shops, trendy restaurants, and bars lined both sides of the street, as
did surfer dudes and homeless people. When it got dark the surfers would leave
and the hipsters would arrive. The homeless and the crazies never left. I saw a
raggedy man arguing with a mailbox, and nearer Molly’s dojo a guy who could
have passed for an otherwise normal professional in his thirties was having an
animated discussion with a cat. I wondered what
his
problem was. Drugs
or alcohol, probably. Had I ever argued with a cat when I’d been drinking?
Probably. That or worse.

Molly’s
dojo was at the end of a strip mall near the beach. I parked out front and went
inside. Molly was easy to spot. She was exactly five feet tall and probably
weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, but sometimes big surprises came in small
packages. Even when I’d been in my best shape, Molly had been able to wipe the
floor with me on the mat. One of these days, when I was back in top form, we
were going to have to try that again. In the meantime, though, I tried to get
in here once or twice a week to work out and build my body back up from the
physical wreck it had become during my drinking days.

Molly
was still in her
gi
. She trotted over and hugged me as soon as she saw
me. Molly was also a hugger. I needed to introduce her to Sarah. Maybe they
could start a hugging club. “You want to spar?” she asked me.

“Nah,” I
said. “Not today. You got time to go get coffee?”

“Sure.
Let’s go across the street. The new place finally opened.”

The new
place turned out to be a Starbucks, which made at least three different Starbucks
within walking distance of the dojo. I wondered how many people needed to want
coffee at the same time in order for that to be profitable, but overexpansion
didn’t seem to be hurting their stock price. “So what’s going on?” Molly asked
once we’d sat down.

The
triple espresso I’d ordered was still too hot to chug, which was how I liked to
drink it. I swirled the liquid around in the cup once. “You know I saw a dude
arguing with a cat on the way in here? What do you think that was about?”

“I think
you’re in Pacific Beach, Nevada. It’s a slow day if that’s the only weird thing
you saw. Now stop avoiding the question and tell me what’s going on.” She gave
me a skeptical look. “If you’re drinking again you’re putting on a hell of a
sober act right now.”

“No. I’m
clean and sober.”

“How’s
that working out for you?”

“I hate
it worse than cancer.”

Molly
shook her head. “Well, that seems kind of excessive. I know it’s not easy, but
you look a lot better than you did three months ago. I thought you were on death’s
door. You still going to A.A.?”

“Now and
again, but booze isn’t why I wanted to talk to you. There’s this job…”

She
frowned. “The Laughing Man copycat thing? I saw it on the news.”

“No, not
that. I mean, they actually did call me in to look at the crime scene, and one
of the detectives wanted to ask me some questions about it, but I’m not
involved other than that.”

“Good.
What’s the job, then?”

I broke
down the Anita Collins situation for her. It only took a few minutes. She
listened without interrupting, sipping her vanilla chai intermittently until I
was done. Then she thought it over and I wondered what her vanilla chai tasted
like. I’d never had one, but from where I was sitting it smelled like
Christmas.

Finally
she broke her silence. “That woman sounds damaged beyond repair.”

“I
wasn’t trying to refer her to you,” I said. “I get it, though. She’s been
sitting on this for twenty years. If I lived to be her age, I’d probably wind
up the same way.”

“You
think you won’t live that long, Nevada?”

“I know
I won’t live that long.” Molly frowned at me. “That’s not depression speaking.
With the damage I’ve done to my body, there’s just no chance. And that’s
assuming the Laughing Man doesn’t kill me before I can kill him.” I studied the
expression on her face. “If you were frowning any harder I might turn to
stone.”

She
looked away. “Damn it, Nevada,” she said.

“Leave
it. What’s done is done.”

“Well,
at some point I’m going to drag you in to see an internist, but that’s not what
you came here for. You want to know if you should look for the killer.”

“Yeah.”

Molly
sighed. “You know, why is it every time we have a conversation it’s never
about…I don’t know. Politics, or the last book we read, or even
men
, for
god’s sake?”

“Did you
start dating men without telling me?”

“No, but
that wasn’t the point and you know it. You come by and we spar, which is good.
You need to get out of the house and be active again. But your life is so
colossally fucked up, Nevada…”

“You
mean everyone doesn’t have a serial killer obsessed with them? I just assumed…”

She
jabbed a finger at me. “See? That right there! Any rational person would be
going out of their damn mind about that, but you just make jokes. You act like
he’s your annoying ex-boyfriend holding up a boom box outside your window,
trying to get back together with you. You need to get your mind right.”

“Remember
how when we talk now it’s as friends, and not as therapist and patient?”

“That
was
me talking as your friend. If I was your therapist I’d call the police.”

My
espresso was finally cool enough to drink. I downed it in one swallow,
grimacing like I’d done a shot of whiskey. “Just tell me what you think.”

“I think
I’m about to tear my damn hair out talking to you.”

“We’ll
stop at the salon after.”

She made
a noise that sounded suspiciously like
harrumph
, if that was a noise
people actually made. “Take the job. Go look for the bomber. You won’t find
him, but who cares?”

“Really?”
I asked.

“Well,
what else are you going to do? Sit around your motel room and wait for the Laughing
Man to send you flowers again? That sounds miserable.”

“I don’t
know,” I said. “It’s given me a lot of time to catch up on daytime television.
I saw an episode of Maury Povich the other day. You know Maury?” She stared
daggers at me. “See, there was this woman who had a baby, and this guy was
like, ‘That’s not
my
baby,’ but then Maury whipped out this
lie
detector
…”

“Nevada…”

“Don’t
tell me you’ve seen that one? I don’t want to ruin it for you, but it actually
was
his baby…”

She
stood up. “That’s it. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“If
you’ve got time to sit here and make jokes, then you’ve got time to work out.
Come on. I’m going to kick your ass.”