Aftershock (28 page)

“What the fuck?!” one of them shouted as they all jumped out.

All three turned in the direction where I was standing, now right on the borderline of the forest. They were frozen in place, scanning with their eyes, as still as paper targets. I was already braced. I shot the middle one in the head, just above the bridge of his nose. Then I vanished into the woods.

I didn’t expect the others to follow me, but making sure of that made me move slower than I wanted to. Even so, I was dressed like a normal person and driving the Cadillac back toward the house within fifteen minutes.

I wasn’t worried about being stopped. People who bought a car like this expected an adjustable ride, so the shock settings required plenty of room in the wheel wells. And left plenty of room to Velcro-attach my carryall to the undercarriage. I’d tested the setup over bumpy roads and it hadn’t budged.

I couldn’t know whether the Tiger Ko Khai maggots would panic and call the cops, or panic and throw the body into the trunk before they took off.

Maybe I couldn’t deliver a message to Ryan Teller, but I was sure they could. Both sides of the open-on-impact card had the same message:

TELL RYAN WE’RE COMING FOR HIM

T
here’s no daily news coverage here. There’s newspapers, but they only come out twice a week, and usually only print press releases and the owner’s “editorials.” Dolly keeps the BBC on TV all the time, running mute, but the local news was pretty much statewide, and it would automatically cut in if there was something important enough—college-football rankings weren’t international news.

Nothing cut into the BBC, so they must have hit panic button number two. That would have been the only sane move. Trying to tell the local cops that some masked ninja had stepped out of the woods and drilled their friend between the eyes would have gotten them questioned for hours, with more than one detective in the room.

So—what you’re telling us is that somebody in a black hood just walked out of the woods and popped your friend in the head? And nobody heard a shot, so he must have been using a silencer? And all this started with a giant paintball hitting your car? How come there’s a section of that paintball that looks like somebody pulled something loose? Well, just relax here a bit—we’ll have the CSI team go over the car, just in case this guy, this mystery killer, left any evidence behind
.

Oh, by the way, this guy, the guy with the hood, was there any symbol on it? You know, like a circle with a cross over it?

And while that was going on, anything that had
ever
been in
their car could turn into a serious problem. Never mind the fact that the dead guy and the two of them were all wearing the same jackets.

How about telling us about those jackets? It’ll help in our investigation. Maybe somebody has some kind of grudge against your club that you know about? Can you think of any reason why someone would want to kill your friend?

The longer that went on, if any of them had any kind of criminal record anywhere—not only convictions, even arrests—the cops would know about it. That should do it. Even the dumbest cops would know enough to start a roundup. Then they could cut the weakest one out of the herd, and make sure the others heard them do it.

No, you aren’t under arrest—that’s why we didn’t give you any Miranda warnings. But if you
want
to be under arrest, we can always charge you with obstruction of justice. Then you can call your lawyer, if you have one. Or we’ll get someone assigned. Is that what you want? No? That’s a smart move, doing the right thing. No reason why you have to go down with the rest of them
.

Not giving a damn who you hurt doesn’t make you a hard man. Or even a cold one. I knew it wouldn’t necessarily be the smartest one who gave the orders. It would be whoever said that an unreported disappearance was better than going anywhere near the cops. In a panic situation, everyone listens to the man who stays calm, even if it’s the calmness of a man too stupid to understand that he should be afraid.

D
olly certainly wasn’t all that calm when I came back to the house after stashing the Cadillac behind Swift’s “extra office space.”

The second she got me alone, she starting talking. Talking so fast that I had to ask her to slow down every few seconds.

“She’s coming! I called her and she’s coming! She’s coming here, Dell. And she’s going to do all the interviews. And not only that, she got the top forensic psychologist in the whole country to help out. They’ll be here tomorrow. Oh God! We have to pick them up at the airport, and …”

“Honey …”

“I know, I know. It’s just that, with experts with
their
credentials on our side, we have a real chance now, Dell.”

Good thing
, I thought.
This wasn’t the kind of case where you could give witnesses an incentive to change their minds
.

D
ebbie Rollo walked over to me as she stepped through the exit slot at the airport. I don’t look like anything special, but wearing a suit and tie and holding up a big white card with her name printed on it was probably enough of a hint.

People who are highly educated sometimes make me feel resentful, although I don’t know exactly why—I’d probably have to hire one of them to find out. But she was a sweetheart. “Please call me Debbie. I hate all that formal nonsense.”

“Sure,” I said, holding out my hand, now that I was no longer a limo driver. “My name’s Dell.”

“Is that short for Delbert?”

“No.”

“Oh, my goodness! I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not. I know my name’s unusual. It’s short for ‘Adelbert.’ Who wants to get their mouth around that?”

When she chuckled, I could see why Dolly liked her so much. I don’t know when they met, but I know it was way before Dolly and I came here. To our home, I mean. So, whoever she was, she was a woman who could keep a friend’s secrets.

“Damn it!” she said as I was loading her suitcases into the
Cadillac. “I forgot to tell you. I got an e-mail from Dr. Joel last night. He’s still coming, but when I told him it wasn’t an emergency, he said he’d just drive up.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know where exactly. I only reached him on his cell, so he could be anywhere. I can’t believe he’d be crazy enough”—she blushed at having just called a psychologist potentially crazy—“to drive from where he lives.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Tucson,” she said. “That has to be over a thousand miles from here! But I know he’s some kind of car nut”—it was easier to catch the blush this time; I’d been ready for it—“and he just got some super-special new one.”

She didn’t say another word for a good twenty minutes, content to look out the window and watch the scenery. Maybe Dolly had told her I wasn’t a world-class conversationalist.

“What kind of car does this doctor have, do you know?”

“I can tell you exactly if you give me a minute. I have his e-mail on my phone.”

Before I could tell her it wasn’t all that important, she was tapping madly on the tiny typewriter keyboard attached to her phone.

“It’s a … Mercedes-AMG, as if I knew what
that
meant.”

“AMG is a special little operation that makes high-performance versions of different kinds of Mercedes,” I told her. “Mercedes itself has to approve—it puts its own warranty on anything AMG makes—so they work really close together. This could be anything from a—”

“It’s an SLS Roadster,” she interrupted. “Does that help?”

“Sure does. ‘Roadster’ is just fancy-word for ‘convertible’ today, but the SLS is no car for an amateur—it’s so fast it could be dangerous. Probably capable of hitting two hundred–plus on a flat stretch of road.”

“My goodness!”

“Yeah. But this doctor, he may
be
nuts. Who keeps a convertible in Tucson?”

She chuckled at that one, too. I hoped she’d tell Dolly I was pretty clever at small talk.

I
tried to coax Rascal down to the basement, where I was going to be sleeping. The house really wasn’t built for guests, and my den took away the only extra room, so Dolly told me she and Debbie would be sleeping in our bedroom. There’s only the one bed. I don’t know why it is, but girls are comfortable sleeping in the same bed, the way men never can be.

Anyway, Rascal lived up to his name. Once he had the rawhide treat firmly in his jaws, he ran up the stairs like he was after a bitch in heat. I was good enough for hanging out with, but Dolly, she was his job.

I called him a miserable deserter. In French, to make sure he didn’t understand—who knows what words a dog knows? But inside, I was really proud of him.

T
hey were all asleep when I took another look at the video of the little girl who wanted to be called “Danyelle.” On zoom, her eyes were the color of steel nailheads. And just as deep. One-way mirrors. A good thing we’d left that website up and rented a 213-area-code answering service. If anyone called, they would just read what we sent them: “Arquette Aland Film Productions.” And, depending on what was asked, “No, Mr. Laveque is not available at the moment,” or “No, I am not Mr. Laveque’s personal assistant. My name is
Trixie. All I do is answer phones in this madhouse.” And “Yes, of course, I’ll take a message.”

No matter what the answer, “Trixie” would be interrupted by a tape of phones ringing, all of which she’d simply answer, “Hold, please.” After all, Danielle was an important client. A priority.

I decided to map out the distance from Tucson to where we were. I couldn’t get it exact, not knowing where in Tucson this psychologist would be coming from, but it was no less than thirteen hundred miles. I wondered for a second if he knew where he was coming to, but then I let it go—Dolly and Debbie would have worked that one out between them.

T
he next couple of days turned the kitchen into a phone bank. I didn’t know how these girls could all talk into different phones at the same time and not get in each other’s way, but they handled it like it had been choreographed.

Dolly didn’t even ask me where I was going.

Franklin was home. Sitting on the front step of the house his football skills had bought his parents, glaring at passing cars like he was expecting a drive-by … and was wearing a bulletproof vest, with a grenade launcher close to hand.

But he had a smile for me.

“Hey, Franklin. What’s going on?”

“I thought you might have some … news for me.”

“I’ve got something better, maybe. You got anything inside that’s a little more like what I’m wearing?”

“A suit, you mean? Gee, no. I mean, why would I—Wait!” he interrupted himself. “My prom suit. I had to buy it—the rental place didn’t have anything in my size. But you can’t tell MaryLou. She’d kill me if she thought I’d spent all that money.”

“How much are we talking about?”

“The whole prom—I got her an orchid and all—it cost almost a thousand dollars,” he said, proudly.

“That’s a lot of money …” I started to say, before it hit me that Franklin’s pride wasn’t in how much he’d spent, but in how he’d managed to
earn
that much, so I closed that door quick with “… to save up.”

“I worked after school. Helping Mr. Spyros. He’s an expert horta-something. With trees and all. He knows everything about them. And you know what he paid me? Fifteen dollars an hour! He said that was about twice the minimum wage, and I worked like two men, so he paid me like two men. Isn’t that something?”

“Sure as hell is. Especially now.”

“Yeah! And I saved every dollar, too. I was supposed to work for him this summer, but now I don’t know. I mean, I know I should call him—people who work for Mr. Spyros would do it for nothing, just for what they could learn—but I don’t know what to tell him.”

“I can help you with that, okay? In the meantime, can you get changed? Not into your prom outfit, just something with a collar on the shirt, and switch those jeans for … well, for whatever guys your age wear when they’re not wearing jeans.”

While Franklin was inside, I sat on his front porch and made a few calls. I figured his father was still inside somewhere, sleeping off his no-show job. I didn’t know if his mother worked, but my money was against it.

“Y
ou look great,” I reassured him for at least the fourth time since we’d driven off.

He never asked where we were going.

I pulled into the parking lot shared by all the various lawyers
who rented space in the building. Some of the slots said “Client Parking Only.” Only the ones marked “Handicapped” were getting any play. I decided I was “Staff,” and wheeled the big gray car into one of those slots.

“Well, good morning, Mr. Jackson. You’re here to see Mr. Swift, I’m sure. And who is this good-looking young man?”

“His name is Franklin. With all the threats Mr. Swift has been getting over such a controversial case, I thought it best he have some personal security available.”

“Oh, I
understand
,” the pig assured me. They’re all alike: knock their boots off your neck and those same boots turn into track shoes.

Inside, all I said was “Mr. Swift, this is Franklin Wayne, the young man I told you about.”

“My pleasure,” Swift said, standing up and holding out his hand. I could see Franklin had a lot of practice shaking hands without breaking them.

“As I explained, Franklin is a very good friend of MaryLou’s, so I hope you can use your influence to give him an opportunity to visit with her.”

“Consider it done,” Swift said. Which meant he’d already taken care of it. His name was packing more weight every day.

“Really?” Franklin asked.

“Sure. Besides, Mr. Jackson says you may play a …” He stifled the “critical” he was about to say, replacing it with “highly significant role at the trial.”

“Me?”

“All Mr. Swift is saying is that you’d be willing to testify about what you heard her sister, Danielle, say.”

“She’s no real sister,” Franklin half-spit the words out. I started to wonder if he was retarded at
all
, never mind to a lesser extent than I’d been led to believe.