Cut to the Quick (26 page)

“I’m good. Thanks.”

Donahue filled a Styrofoam cup and left the brew black. He returned the empty pot to the burner, flipping the switch to shut off the heat. He balanced his cup on the box, declining Vining’s offer of assistance. They crossed the room to enter an area separated by tall partitions on three sides, the open side facing a wall of windows. Too many shabby rolling chairs were crowded around a conference table. A large map of Tucson was tacked to a fabric wall. On the table were two storage boxes with perforated holes for handles. Written on the short side of each in black marker was “Donahue.” Beneath it was a “V” in a circle followed by “Johnna Alwin.” There was a date and what Vining assumed was the case number. The “V” she knew stood for “victim.”

He set the evidence box on the table beside the other two and raised his hand toward them, signaling Vining to have at it.

She opened the case file box labeled “1 of 2.” On top were small manila envelopes that held audiotapes of interviews. File folders were beneath.

She found the folder that held the crime scene photos.

Donahue pulled over a rolling chair and sat at the opposite end of the table. He sipped coffee and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling window that gave a view of the cathedral down the street. His aloof attitude conveyed that he didn’t consider her business worth his attention.

Vining reviewed the photos. The first one was of Alwin’s bloody body, crumpled in a storeroom.

“Why do you think the murder attempt you’re investigating is related to this homicide?” Donahue asked the question without looking at her.

Vining ignored him. “Was Alwin stabbed in the storeroom or was her body moved there?”

Donahue talked over his shoulder to her. “She was stabbed there. I figure her informant, Jesse Cuba, told her he had something he wanted her to see inside the storeroom. Stolen medical equipment or a cache of drugs.”

Vining studied a close-up of Alwin. Beneath the open neck of her blouse, she spied a strand of pearls. The necklace was not in full view as depicted in Nitro’s drawing. But his rendition of how her body was positioned and the clothes she was wearing was correct, down to her slingback shoes. Nitro had either seen the crime scene or the photos or an eyewitness had recounted the details to him—an eyewitness who had lovingly recollected the minutiae. In Nitro’s drawing, the necklace had been emphasized. The necklace was important.

She made quick work of the rest of the photos, pausing at the corpse of Cuba lying on an unmade bed in a threadbare room, a length of rubber hose still tied around his heavily track-marked upper arm, the needle of a syringe dangling from his skin.

“Why did you conclude that Cuba’s death was accidental?” she asked. “He was a longtime heroin user. He knew what he was doing.”

“The dope we found on him was purer than the stuff that’s cut for sale around here.”

“Where did he get it?”

“Who knows? Who cares? He’s dead.”

Vining flipped through the remaining folders, replaced the lid on the box, and slid it aside. She started on the second box.

Donahue swiveled to face her, set his empty cup on the table, and casually leaned back, clasping his hands across his middle. “You didn’t answer my question.”

She didn’t look up from the report she was reading. “What question was that?”

She’d heard his question. She suspected he knew this.

He repeated, “Why do you think the murder attempt you’re investigating is related to this homicide?”

She set a couple of reports aside and closed the file. Pointedly meeting his eyes, she flipped her hair over her shoulder. She’d worn it down on purpose, even though it was twelve degrees hotter here than in L.A. She arched her neck and watched with satisfaction as his attitude evolved from cynical to commiserative when he took in the ugly scar.

“I was ambushed a year ago. The murder attempt I’m investigating is my own. The circumstances were similar to the Alwin homicide, but I saw the man who did it, and he was not Jesse Cuba.”

She had planned that moment. Had devised it to throw him off-base, shake his conceit that he knew all about her and what she was up to. It worked. It worked great.

She’d saved the box of physical evidence for last. She’d asked to see many more items than she cared about to disguise the fact that there was just one thing she coveted. Donning latex gloves, she methodically removed items of Alwin’s clothing from their protective envelopes and feigned interest in examining them. She took digital photos of the evidence.

Donahue had not left her alone with the materials, maintaining the proper chain of custody. Once she’d explained
who she was and where she was coming from, his rancor toward her had faded. He’d turned off the catlike attention with which he’d observed everything while feigning apathy.

From the physical evidence box, Vining picked up a small manila envelope. The contents shifted seductively in just the right way. Her heart began to race even before she read the description on the evidence control form: “Pearl Necklace.” The necklace that Johnna’s husband had left behind when he recovered her personal belongings.

She upended the envelope onto her yellow pad. The necklace spilled out. She arranged it, moving the pendant to the center. Some of the pearls were flecked with blood. It was identical to her necklace except that the pendant had a large reddish stone surrounded by small glittering stones that she guessed were cubic zirconia, like hers.

“Is that a ruby?” Vining asked about the gem, knowing the answer.

“Garnet.”

“Any significance?”

He shrugged.

“Was it her birthstone?”

“No.”

Alwin had been murdered in January. In January the year before her murder, she had fatally shot a mob associate in an incident that had earned her fifteen minutes of fame. Garnet was the gem for January. Alwin’s death stone. It was so obvious, Donahue hadn’t seen it. Vining couldn’t blame him. It had taken the pure instincts of her own daughter to connect the dots between the pearl pendant in her necklace and the date of Vining’s spilled blood. She had shot the rock star in June. T. B. Mann had ambushed her in June. Pearl was the gem for June.

She took photos of the necklace and replaced the materials inside the evidence box.

When Donahue saw she had finished, he ended his phone call with a buddy about an upcoming fishing trip to Mexico.

“You’re right,” she told him. “The Alwin case is closed.”

Waiting for her flight at the airport, Vining didn’t flip through her magazine or make phone calls. She stared at a spot on the floor without seeing it. She realized she was smiling.

Once, she had tried to purge her life of the necklace by throwing it away. All she was really doing was trying to rid herself of what she had become. Returning the necklace to her home, to her life, was acceptance. T. B. Mann had changed her. Made her. She was his creation in more ways than she wanted to admit. He had colored her decision to lie to her boss and her partner, to come to Tucson, to do what she had done here, and what she was about to do. If someone had told her a year ago, even six months ago, that this is where she would be, she would have told that person he was nuts. T. B. Mann had sent her to the edge of infinity and she had crawled back, trailing dust from the dark side of the moon.

The T. B. Mann saga had become like a nightmare from which she’d awakened sweat-drenched and trembling. Trying to describe it, exposing it to the light of day in an attempt for others to understand, would only drain all its vivid colors. It would evaporate, the closer she drew, as if she was chasing a rainbow.

Other people would only muck it up.
She
was the one who had survived T. B. Mann. He had sent Nitro to provoke her. To show that he was in charge. Was T. B. Mann as obsessed with her as she was with him? If she
belonged to him, he belonged to her in equal measure. Her and no other. He was hers.

She took out the slip of paper on which she’d written Richard Alwin’s contact information when he’d called her three months ago. She caught him on his cell phone on his way home from work.

“Mr. Alwin, I’ve just gone through Johnna’s case files with Lieutenant Donahue. I wanted to follow up on the similarities you spotted between your wife’s murder and my attempted murder. Good news. They got the right guy. Jesse Cuba murdered Johnna. The fact that Johnna and I were given similar necklaces is just a coincidence. There are a lot of cop groupies out there.”

She ended the call, confident she’d buried Richard Alwin’s nascent serial-killer theory. Sometimes an investigator had to tell a small lie to get to a larger truth. While she was sitting at that table across from Donahue, holding Johnna Alwin’s blouse, touching blood spilled by T. B. Mann, Vining knew she was prepared to do more than lie to get him. She knew she had it in her to pull off what she’d come to Tucson to do.

She put her hand in her pocket and drew out Alwin’s pearl-and-garnet necklace, still flecked with dried blood. It was identical to hers except for the gem. The death stone.

By the time she’d gotten around to opening the envelope labeled “Pearl Necklace,” Donahue was on his cell phone, mentally on his Mexican fishing trip. He’d been cowed by the story of the murder attempt on her. He’d played right into her hands.

With the evidence box shielding her, she’d gathered Alwin’s necklace and shoved it into her jacket pocket, taking out a strand of cheap pearls she’d bought at Target before she’d left. She put that necklace inside the evidence envelope.

Donahue had done a cursory check of the contents before putting the lid on the box. She had bet that he wouldn’t reopen the evidence envelopes and he hadn’t.

She’d gone to Tucson intending to break the law to get Alwin’s necklace. A photo was not enough. She had to possess it. It was more than just proof. She couldn’t take the chance of it disappearing. T. B. Mann wouldn’t. To get him, she had to think like him. She’d crossed a line, and there was no going back.

She crushed the necklace in her palm.

TWENTY-FOUR

I
t took
Scoville nearly two hours to reach the dusty town past San Bernardino. He was born and raised in Southern California but rarely ventured to what locals called the Inland Empire. For him, it was the place where smog went to die, trapped against the mountains. He pulled into the parking lot of Wrangler’s Outpost, a sprawling rustic steakhouse that looked as if it had been putting out the feedbag and rye for buckaroos for decades, holding its own as urban sprawl encroached from all sides. A flashing neon sign portrayed a cowboy astride a bucking horse, twirling a lasso.

The interior was dim, lit by ersatz oil lamps on the walls and chandeliers made of wagon wheels hanging from the ceiling. A large sign announced the restaurant’s no-necktie policy, and the walls and ceiling were covered with ties severed by scissor-wielding waitresses
from men who had dared to enter sporting one. Waitresses wore off-the-shoulder gingham dresses with frilly petticoats beneath short skirts, and waiters wore gingham shirts and blue jeans. The place was loud and crass and the kind of theme restaurant Scoville had never considered fun, just phony. As a former restaurateur, he haughtily deplored the mountains of mediocre food they dispensed with the goal of making their non-discerning patrons feel they were receiving good value.

Scoville pushed through the bar, which seemed crowded with every guy in town who made his living with tools and the women who loved them. Televisions tuned to different sporting events were suspended from each end of the bar and every corner. He had money on some of the games, but he had bigger issues.

The floor crunched beneath his feet, and he realized it was covered with peanut shells that were making a mess of his Bruno Magli shoes. People were scooping roasted salted peanuts by the double handfuls from a large barrel. He found an empty stool and brushed peanut husks, damp from cocktail glasses, from the bar. A bratwurst-eating contest was being broadcast on one of the ESPN stations.

A bartender mopped the bar with a towel. He had a silver handlebar mustache and a full head of wavy silver hair of which he appeared proud, given the care paid to styling. He looked like the kind of guy who called women “doll.”

“They call that a sport?” Scoville pointed at the TV.

The bartender barely looked at it. “Who knows anymore? What can I get ya, pardner?”

“Sierra Nevada if you have it.”

Scoville wanted something stronger, but he had to keep his wits about him. He’d nearly blown it with those Pasadena detectives. The way they’d descended on him
had been nothing less than an ambush. And that bitch Vining … the needling. The way she twisted words, trying to trap him, trying to mess him up. Dena had pulled that crap on him too. Vining and Dena must have learned their techniques from a canned course on interrogation. The tactics were so clunky, he could almost see the gears turning. The only reason Vining had nearly trapped him was because he’d been overwrought. He wouldn’t let that happen again. He had to keep his head clear.

He’d reported the details as best as he could recall them to Leland Declues, his attorney, who was livid he hadn’t immediately thrown the detectives out.

“Don’t talk to the police about anything. They can’t force you to talk to them, even if they wave warrants at you or arrest you. Especially if they arrest you.”

Scoville knew that. He hated cops. He’d always hated cops. They had that smug attitude of every bully he’d ever come across, and he’d seen his share. He’d been a target of bullies since he was a kid. He could buy and sell each one of them twenty times over, but that didn’t matter. Bullies had an innate sense for weakness, for that putty in his soul. He’d fired a couple of Marquis employees who had that smirking, condescending attitude. Fired them just because he could. They had been hired by his father, who liked that cockiness in people. Anyone who had worked for the old man had to be bold. Old Ludlow’s abrasiveness could sear the skin off more-fragile mortals.

His attorney didn’t feel any harm had been done. The detectives were fishing, and Scoville had nothing to hide.