Be Afraid (12 page)

“Right.”

As coffee brewed, he took a quick shower and within fifteen minutes he and Tracker were headed toward Nashville. This time of night, there was no traffic so the drive was quick. When they arrived at the alley, two squad cars blocked either end, their blue lights flashing against the building’s brick walls.

Spotting Bishop by the yellow crime-scene tape, he got out of his car, stifled a groan, and moved toward the body. The smell of death was heavy and putrid. Whoever they’d found had been here a while.

Bishop glanced up at him, nodded, and reached in his pocket for a set of black rubber gloves. Both officers donned gloves and, with the forensic tech’s approval, ducked under the tape and moved toward a dumpster. Behind the green, dented trash bin was the body, now covered with a yellow tarp.

Rick squatted, grateful his hip cooperated, and pulled back the cover. Lying facedown on the damp asphalt was a man who appeared to be in his late thirties. He had long, dark hair, a thick, muscled body, and wore tattered jeans and a black shirt. Tattoos of skulls and twisting vines snaked up each bloated arm under his shirt to his neck. Rick turned the man’s arm over and counted five needle marks. He lifted the dead man’s curled fingers. The skin had receded making the dirt-encrusted nails appear long. The skin on his face and neck were a dark blue. When the heart stopped pumping, gravity took over and drew the blood to the lowest points in the body. Called lividity, it suggesting he’d died facedown. “Where’s the photo?”

Bishop handed him a picture now sealed in a plastic bag. “Found in his right back jeans pocket.”

Rick studied the image of Diane Smith. It was a candid shot of Diane sitting in a café. The wind was blowing through her long hair and she glanced up with a wide grin that made her eyes sparkle. Scrawled in blood-red ink across the pale skin of her face was the word
FAITHLESS
.

He reached in the dead man’s back right pocket and pulled out a thin, worn leather wallet embossed with a skull. Inside the wallet was an expired driver’s license featuring the dead man’s frowning face. Pale and droopy-eyed, he looked half dead in the image. “His name was Jonas Tuttle, age thirty-four.”

“I’ll run the name in my computer.” Bishop raised the back of his hand to his nose. “Jesus, I can’t believe no one smelled him.”

Rick handed him the license. As Bishop returned to check the name, Rick searched more pockets. In the other back pocket he found a smashed pack of cigarettes, a handful of candy swiped from a restaurant, and a pay stub from a grocery store.

He plugged the name of the store into his phone and came up with an address that was not far from Diane’s home. A connection. Tuttle didn’t look like the kind of guy a woman like Diane would have given a second glance, but he would have noticed her. If the grocery was close to her house, she could have passed through his line, never really looking up at his face or past his clerk’s smock. He would have been invisible to her.

Bishop returned with pen in hand and his notebook open to a fresh page. “I’ve an address for Jonas Tuttle.” He rattled off the address of a motel that rented on a daily and weekly basis. When Rick had worn a uniform he’d worked a prostitution sting. While a female officer had lured johns into a room rented by the cops, he and two other officers had hid in the bathroom waiting to make an arrest.

“Let’s go have a look at his room.”

After a quick drive, they pulled up at the motel, got a key from the clerk, and opened Tuttle’s room. The heavy scent of cigarettes and mold assailed them the instant they opened the door.

“This place has always reeked.” Bishop pulled rubber gloves from his pocket and put them on.

“We’ve all run a sting at this motel at one point.” He donned gloves.

Bishop shook his head as he flipped on the light. “Good times.”

The thin, reedy overhead light cast a pale gray glow over a bed of rumpled stained sheets and a dark comforter. Empty pizza boxes and beer cans littered the floor next to a pile of soiled laundry.

Rick moved toward the bathroom and paused to open the folding doors of a closet. The instant he glanced inside he froze. The walls of the closet were papered with pictures of Diane. Diane at the grocery store. At work. Coming from the gym. Laughing with girlfriends in a café. “Have a look.”

Bishop turned from a dresser drawer and crossed to the closet. He shook his head. “Well, if that isn’t an open-and-shut case.”

Good fortune rarely was so generous. “I don’t usually get so lucky.”

Bishop rolled his head from side to side as if working out the tightness brought on by fatigue. “I suppose it happens once every so often.”

Rick studied the images so carefully cut into neat squares and so carefully glued to the wall. All the images were straight. “Guy’s a pig and he takes the time to create a neat collage of Diane?”

“This little space gave him a sense of control over Diane. He knew so much about her and she knew nothing about him. Control like that must’ve given him one hell of a thrill.”

“Judging by the images, he’s been taking pictures of her for months. Planning to kill her all along?”

Rick studied the images, which seemed to be arranged seasonally. On the far left, backgrounds featured snow and barren trees; then came trees with green buds, and then full leaves. “He started taking pictures in the winter and he’s followed her all the way through spring and half of summer. The winter pictures are distant. He didn’t have the nerve to get too close. It’s almost as if he was afraid to take the first pictures.”

Bishop nodded. “But he got progressively closer and closer. By spring he’s within feet of her.”

Rick moved to the dresser drawers and dug through them until he found several very small cameras. He held them up. “You don’t find these at the local store.”

Bishop took one of the small cameras in his hands. “They’re also expensive.”

“Say he crosses paths with Diane at the grocery store where he worked. She passed through his line. Or smiled or glanced his way while he was unloading a truck or ringing a register. He decided she’s really into him. He starts paying more and more attention to her when she comes into the store. Can’t stop thinking about her. He begins stalking. Realizes he doesn’t have the means to get a woman like her, and he gets angry over his lack of control.”

Bishop looked at the pictures, his gaze burning. “He gets closer and closer to her, gets bolder and bolder and then decides to take ultimate control when he kills her.”

“Finds a house that’s for sale, lures her there or takes her there and kills her. Sets the house on fire.”

“That’s a lot of planning.”

Rick glanced around the chaotic, stinking mess of his room. “Jonas Tuttle doesn’t strike me as a guy who could plan. Judging by his room it looks like he can barely take care of himself.”

“This might’ve been the only place in his life he was organized.” Bishop checked his watch. “It’s two
A.M.
The grocery opens at six.”

“Let’s have a chat with the motel clerk. He might have information about Jonas.”

They found the clerk, a very large man with a bulging belly and thick stubble over wagging jowls. He sat in a worn and tattered plaid recliner in front of a television tucked behind the counter and was watching a rerun of
Gunsmoke.

Rick let the front door close hard and when the man didn’t turn as they approached, he smacked his hand on the rusted silver bell on the counter.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

The clerk hunched closer to the television. “Leave your money on the table.”

“This isn’t about money,” Rick said.

Shoving out a breath, the clerk groaned. “Then I don’t care.”

“You can care right now or you can care when I’ve a half-dozen cop cars here in ten minutes searching your rooms.”

The clerk turned, his narrowed gaze reflecting mild interest. “Cops. Just what I need. Which room fucked up?”

Clearly this was not his first conversation with the cops. “What can you tell me about Jonas Tuttle? Room Seven.”

He glanced back at the television, cursing when he realized the show had gone to commercial break. He didn’t bother to look back at them. “Nothing.”

Rick drummed his fingers on the counter, fatigue and stiffness in his leg straining his patience to breaking. “Turn around. Now.” His sharp, crisp tone cracked like the snap of a whip.

The clerk, cursing more, turned and faced the detectives, his brow arched. “I don’t know shit about the guy in that room or any other damn room. All I care about him is that I get paid on time.”

“Dig deep. Think real hard. Jonas Tuttle,” Rick said. “What do you know about him?”

The guy swiveled his easy chair until he faced them. He leaned back in his chair and scratched his belly through a stained T-shirt. “Room Number Seven? Always late on the rent and when he paid it was short. Money’s due tomorrow as a matter of fact. Never had money to pay me but plenty of money for beer, pizza, and whores.”

Rick shifted his stance, glancing at the cubbies behind the clerk. Number Seven was filled with envelopes.

“How long has he been here?”

“Two months. Maybe nine weeks.”

Many of the photos Jonas had taken of Diane had been taken months and months ago, suggesting he’d brought at least half the images with him. “Where’d he come from?”

He plucked at a loose thread on the arm of the recliner that had been patched once with duct tape. “How the hell would I know? I put up a sign saying I got a room and within a day he was here with the first week’s rent in cash.”

“Did he have any visitors?” Bishop asked.

“No idea.”

Rick flexed his fingers as he turned to look out the office’s front window. The view was a straight shot to Room Seven. There was no way he couldn’t have seen some odd behavior in the last two months. As he stared out the window, Rick said, “Detective Bishop, call dispatch. We need uniforms down here to search all the rooms.”

Bishop reached for his phone and punched in a few numbers. “How many cars you want?”

“Seven or eight.”

“Consider it done.”

“You really going to pull that shit?” the clerk growled.

“I am,” Rick said, facing him. Catching a hint of distress on the man’s face gave him a measure of satisfaction. “And we’re going to drag every one of your residents into the street. And then we’re coming back tomorrow night and the next. No one will want to stay here after I’m finished.”

The clerk tightened his jaw, accentuating sagging jowls. “Why you being such a dick?”

“Been a long day and I’m looking for a pound of flesh, I guess,” Rick said. “I’ll have ripped you a new one by the time we’re done here, if you don’t start offering me more information.”

Large, fatty cheeks paled. He sniffed. “Can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

“Better dig deep, pal. I don’t like getting jerked around even on a good day.” Bishop’s accent had grown thicker with fatigue. He sounded as if he’d just arrived from Boston.

The clerk sniffed and his face wrinkled as if he inhaled a foul odor. “Like I said, Tuttle moved in about two months ago. A couple of weeks ago, he brought in a hooker. I know because she has this loud laugh. She was cackling like a hen when they went into his room. But she didn’t stay long. Less than five minutes later and she slammed out of his room. She told him to fuck off. Looked pissed.”

“She got a name?” Rick asked.

The clerk moistened his lips. “I’m supposed to know a whore’s name?”

Rick cocked a brow. “You know every girl that works this block. Half have given you kickbacks or blow jobs.”

The clerk cursed. “Terry. Her first name is Terry. Don’t know her last name. Works down the street on the corner.”

“Why was she mad?”

“Hell if I know. Ask her yourself. You can find her pretty easy. She’s here several times a night. Wait an hour and you’ll see her. Tall, dark hair, and likes to wear lime green.”

“Call her.”

“What?”

“Call her. Tell her she’s got a client.”

“I don’t have her number.”

Rick smacked his hand on the counter. “Don’t fuck with me.”

The clerk looked as if he’d argue, but then imagining a dozen cops swarming in and out of the rooms, he reached for a flip phone. He dialed the number easily and told Terry that she had work waiting for her in Room Two.

The officers waited less than ten minutes before a woman pushed through the front door of the motel’s office. She wore a red wig, a lime-green tank top and skirt, and white cowboy boots. Thick blue makeup lined dull brown eyes and a wide swath of rouge added garish color to pale sunken cheeks.

When she spotted Rick and Bishop, she clearly smelled cops right off and turned to leave. “Shit.”

“We aren’t here to arrest you.” Rick reached the door before her. “Have a question about a john.”

Close up he smelled the blend of cheap perfume and booze. “Fuck me. I’m going to get the shit beat out of me if my pimp sees I’m talking to the cops.”

Rick didn’t move. “Answer quick and your pimp will never know. What can you tell me about Jonas Tuttle?”

“Who?”

“Room Seven,” the clerk said. “Smells like pizza.”

She thought for a second and then held up her hands, palms out. “That fucker’s crazy.”

“We hear you didn’t stay long,” Bishop said. “Why?”

She chewed gum, snapping it a few times. “Look, I don’t want him coming back and finding me. I don’t need that kind of trouble. Like I said, that fucker’s crazy.”

Rick rested his hands on his hips. “The guy overdosed in an alley a few days ago. He’s not going to bother you. Why was he a freak?”

“He’s dead?”

“That’s right. Dead.”

“Oh, well, when you put it that way.” She sniffed. “He paid me and I was on the bed ready to get down to business. Then he started calling me by another woman’s name, which ain’t that unusual. Shit, some guys call me Mommy.”

“Stick to it,” Rick said.

She hooked her finger in a beaded necklace and pulled it back and forth. “Well, he pulls out a set of handcuffs. Not the worst that’s ever happened. I tell him it costs extra and he says fine.”