The Pain Scale (18 page)

“Think anybody’s still calling him ‘Foot’?” I asked.

“You should ask him,” she said.

When we pulled into the parking lot, I let the question go and asked Greg and his partner to wait for us while we talked to the manager.

The 777 had probably been a decent place a very long time ago, but now it was everything and less than I’d remembered from my one and only drunken visit. I did notice that Sam’s Seafood had become Don the Beachcomber, for whatever that was worth.

The office smelled like old sneakers and Thai food, and the manager was an aged East Asian man who nodded when we showed him Shevchuk’s photo.

“He makes too much noise. People complain.”

“We need you to let us into his room,” Jen said.

The man looked us over with traces of suspicion in his eyes. Just when I thought he was about to challenge us, his expression changed, as if his misgivings were blown away by a sudden breeze.

“Okay.” He took a plastic card out of his breast pocket, angled it in the light to get a better look, and put it back. “Upstairs. Second floor.”

He stepped around the counter and led us outside and locked the office door. I motioned for Greg and his partner to follow us. We all fell in behind the manager and passed a few ground-floor doors on the way to the elevator. The little man pushed the button and looked back at me. He looked surprised to see four of us. I guessed that he hadn’t noticed our uniform backup.

We all squeezed into the elevator. It was tight, but we made the best of it. Only had to go up one floor. I read the county inspector’s tag posted next to the door. “It says on this that we can fit ten people in here.”

No one else found that amusing.

The doors opened onto the second floor. The building was shaped like an L, and the elevator was in the inside corner. The manager led us down the long portion of the structure to the second room from the end. We divided up on both sides of the door. We all put our hands on our guns and unsnapped our holsters. No one stood in front of the window.

The manager watched us, and his hand shook as he pulled the card from his pocket.

“I’ll do it,” I said quietly as I reached out for the key card. He handed it to me, and I motioned for him to stand clear.

I drew my gun and took a position at the door. When Jen and Greg and his partner all gave me nods, I slipped the card into the slot and looked for the little green light. It didn’t come on, so I tried again. No luck. I looked at the manager, and he was making a doorknob-twisting motion in the air with his hand.

I turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The room was dark.

“Lights,” I said, and three flashlights clicked on over my shoulders and began scanning the room.

It looked clear, so I stepped inside and felt along the wall for a light switch. I found one, flipped it on, and a single floor lamp illuminated the dingy room.

I moved farther inside, my Glock extended in front of me, and scanned from left to right. Pointing the muzzle at the bathroom door, I closed the distance in half a dozen steps and looked through the door.

“Clear,” I said.

Holstering my pistol, I began to look around the room. Shevchuk was not a tidy man. A duffel bag was open on the unmade bed, and half its contents were spilled out on the stained and rumpled bedspread.

The room smelled of stale body odor and dust. A smooth path was worn in the carpet from the door to the bathroom, and the furniture was nicked and chipped and scarred. The TV on
the dresser was so old it had a knob on the front to change the channel.

I was still scanning the scene when Jen spoke. “Danny.” She pointed to the table under the front window. On it was a wall safe that had been removed from its mountings. It was dented and covered in tool marks. There was a hammer and small pry bar next to it. Shevchuk had been trying to open it.

We gathered around the table and looked down at the beige-painted steel box and wondered if it was the reason that five people were dead.

On the plains of Jordan

I cut my bow from the wood

Of this tree of evil

Of this tree of good

—Bruce Springsteen,
“Empty Sky”

I
T WAS CLOSE
to eleven and feeling even later when we made it back to the squad. The adrenaline was fading and an aching tightness was settling into the left side of my body.

Patrick was sitting at his desk, staring at his monitor. The overhead fluorescents were turned off and his face was lit with a pale-blue glow.

“Hey,” he said as we entered.

Jen dropped her bag on her desk. “How are you?” she said.

“I’m doing okay,” he said. I didn’t call him on it, but he didn’t seem well at all. Of course he was tired—days like that one don’t come along often, but I was betting that he was shaken up by what he’d seen. Shevchuk’s murder was a sight none of us would get out of our heads any time soon. But I was fairly certain that it was the first time Patrick had seen someone killed. Witnessing the things that homicide investigators see on an almost daily basis hardens our perspectives and gives us the ability to withstand a great deal of horror. But to witness a murder’s aftermath is a very different thing from witnessing the murder itself. Seeing the moment of death, especially when it comes violently, leaves a much more indelible impression.

I have seen four people die by gunfire. For me, it is practically routine. Still, it’s never easy. I didn’t envy Pat his next few nights.

“Did you hear what we found at the motel?” I asked.

“The safe, right?” he said.

“Yeah.” I hung my jacket over the back of my chair and sat down. “The techs say they’ll have it open for us first thing in the morning.”

“What do you suppose is inside?” He seemed to be weighing his words particularly carefully, as if he had a great personal stake in the answer to his question.

“I don’t know.” I looked at Jen, who had her elbow propped on the desk and was leaning her head on her hand. “Any ideas?”

“No,” she said. “But I’ll bet whatever’s in there won’t come close to explaining everything that happened today.”

Neither Pat nor I were willing to take that wager.

When I got home that night, I sat down in my living room with a tall glass of Grey Goose and Tropicana No Pulp. I was physically exhausted, but the raw power of the day’s events had me wired with a restless mental energy that I knew would keep me up for hours. I flipped through all the channels on the cable box twice and settled on a two-year-old
California’s Gold
repeat on KCET. Huell Howser was in the desert somewhere talking to an old lady. He was very happy.

When I took another swallow, I saw the banjo case propped up at the end of sofa. Why would Harlan have given it to me? I began to wonder about it. I didn’t know anything about musical instruments, least of all banjos. The feeling that there was more to his gift than simple convenience weighed on me. How much did it mean to him? How long had he played? I tried to think of a way of broaching the topic with him, but couldn’t. Maybe, I thought, I could talk to his daughter. She’d know. I feared that the instrument was of more personal value to him than I could have realized when he gave it to me and that his medical condition had something to do with his actions. Was he letting go of his possessions because he was letting go of something else?

I knew the thoughts would keep bouncing around inside my head. The TV wasn’t holding my interest.

Maybe a book? No. Not that night.

I slipped my arms back into my shoulder holster, put on my coat, locked the door behind me, and walked out into the midnight quiet of Belmont Heights.

I’d been in bed for about three hours, but I hadn’t really slept. NPR’s
Morning Edition
was playing on the clock radio, and at four a.m., Garrison Keillor’s
The Writer’s Almanac
came on. It was Toni Morrison’s birthday. And Wallace Stegner’s. The poem for the day was Robert Bly’s “What Did We See Today?” It included the line “It’s all right if we write the same poem over and over.”

When the morning light began to glow against the window blind, the pain in my neck was sharp, so I ran the shower as hard and as hot as I could stand it. When I got out and wiped the condensation from the bathroom mirror, I could see the redness of my skin.

I got dressed and sat at the dining room table with my notes from the day before and hoped to lose myself again in the case.

We didn’t get the call from the technician until after eleven that morning. While I was waiting for the word on the safe’s contents, I called Julian Campos again. Even though our interview with Bradley hadn’t worked, I thought he might have asked him the question about the safe. Surprisingly, he was available, and his assistant put me right through.

“How’s it going, Julian?”

“Fine, Detective Beckett. And yourself?”

“I’m doing great. I was wondering if you might have had the opportunity to ask Mr. Benton about the safe?”

“I did, Detective. I did.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘What safe?’”

“He didn’t know there was a safe in the bedroom closet?”

“No, in fact, he did not. My guess would be that if there was, as you claim, a safe in the bedroom closet, that it must have been in Sara’s closet rather than in Mr. Benton’s.”

“He’s claiming he had no knowledge of a safe.”

“Yes, Detective. That is indeed what he is claiming.”

“Interesting.”

Campos was silent.

“We still need to talk to him.”

“I’ll let him know.”

“Thanks, Jules. Have a good one.”

“I wi—”

I hung up before he could finish.

Jen had been listening at her desk.

“Did you get that?” I asked her.

“He didn’t know about it?” she said.

“That’s the story.”

“What kind of angle is that?”

“I don’t know. Think it could be the truth?”

“Maybe. We’ve got nothing on him. He might as well be a ghost. How can we even guess if he’s telling the truth?”