Flashpoint (14 page)

“I didn't go out yesterday, I didn't even get my mail. But this morning, I tried to at least get back in some kind of routine, so I made breakfast, got the paper and stuff.”

Sonora checked the tape recorder, saw it was working, then resumed eye contact. Daniels leaned his weight on the knee.

“All that time, this was sitting in the mailbox.”

He picked up the red dishcloth and uncovered a Polaroid snapshot. The picture was upside down from Sonora's point of view. She moved Keaton Daniels gently to one side.

Mark Daniels looked through the open window of the car, shirtless, hair wildly mussed. His hands were cuffed, stretched to the limits of their rings as he tried to pull them free. Sonora could see something wrapped through the steering wheel and looped around his waist. His hair looked wet, like he was sweating. No, she realized. Gasoline. He'd been doused with gasoline.

Just before ignition, Sonora thought. The look on his face was one she hoped never to see on someone she loved.

Sonora had gone through some nasty little caches before, but she had never known a killer to send one of the pictures to the victim's family. She sat down slowly in the hardbacked Windsor chair.

Her first impulse was to throw the dishtowel back over the picture, but the cop took over and she let it be. Keaton Daniels was beside her, pointedly looking away.

She took his arm. “Come on.”

She had liked the look of the living room when she'd come in, the honey beige love seat nestled between two worn bookcases filled with paperbacks, a few hardcovers, children's books and games. An old walnut desk sat perpendicular to the couch, making a corner of comfort amidst the black-leather-and-chrome furniture tastefully grouped on the other side of the room.

Sonora looked from one side to the other.

“The good stuff belongs to the guy who owns this place,” Keaton told her. “His company sent him to Germany for nine months. The junky stuff is mine.”

“By all means, the junky stuff.” Sonora sat on the love seat, and Keaton sat on the edge of the cushion beside her.

“There's more,” he told her. “I called my mother after the picture came. I was afraid
she'd
gotten something.”

“And?” Sonora had her notebook out again, the recorder going.

“No. But she had an odd visitor. She's … she's in a sort of convalescent home. She's young but … it's complicated.”

“What kind of visitor?”

“A young lady. My mother's words. Who wanted to talk about Mark, and about me.”

“About you? Did your mother describe this young lady?”

“Small and blond. Kind of fragile.”

Sonora ran a hand through her hair. “Name?”

“Wouldn't give one.”

“What did your mother think of her?”

“She was puzzled. She didn't like the woman's questions, she was too
familiar
, that's how she put it. She means—”

“I know what she means. So what happened then?”

Keaton clutched the arm of the couch. “That's pretty much all I could get out of her. I told her I'd come and see her, I'd see that it was all right. That made her happy. She likes her sons to come running.”

The bitterness came and went quickly, but Sonora wondered if the role of big brother and elder son wore thin.

“I'll go with you,” Sonora said.

He inclined his head toward the kitchen. “What about that?”

“We'll have a technician look at it. See if we can pick something up.”

“Fingerprints?”

“Prints, saliva on the seal of the envelope, hair. Whatever.”

“That would be something,” he said woodenly.

It would also be unlikely, Sonora thought. This killer was too intelligent to lick the envelope.

The papers were calling Mark Daniels's killer the Flashpoint killer, a term culled from a quote by an arson investigator who had been discussing the flash point of the fire. Around the department they were calling her Flash.

Sonora wondered if there would be more pictures. It could get a whole lot worse. She studied Keaton Daniels, wondering how he'd hold up.

He caught her eye, held her gaze. Something changed, and she realized she was breathing a little too hard. She felt high-strung, suddenly, and nervous.

“Did you change your locks?” she asked abruptly.

“Yeah.”

“No, you didn't.”

“What?”

“I'm a cop, remember? I know when people lie to me.”

“Must be hell on your kids.”

“It is, and don't change the subject. If your problem is the expense, I know somebody who will do a good job for a cut rate. Look, I'm not trying to be a pest about this. But this killer may have your house keys. She's called you, sent you a picture, maybe even gone to see your mother. I'm worried about you.”

It was true, but she hadn't meant it to sound so personal.

He moved away from her on the couch. Shrugged. “I had some idea that if she came here, I could take her on.”

“Pictures change your mind?”

He nodded.

“Good.” Sonora glanced back at the front door. Glass panels lined both sides, which meant locks would not keep the killer out. “You might want to think about an alarm system.”

“I'm subletting. I can't do something like that without permission.”

Sonora leaned against the desk, faced him. “I've got something I want you to take a look at.” She dug into the briefcase, maroon vinyl, a gift of love from her children who had spent some time saving up for it. She took the sketch and set it on the couch beside Daniels, then stood in front of the desk.

The artist had worked with Ronnie Knapp for two solid hours, and Ronnie had been happy with the results. Sonora had made a point of asking him later, in private. People often said the sketch was good when the artist was in the room—afraid of hurting his feelings.

The woman in the profile was blond and unsmiling, though she did not look ethereal to Sonora. That kind of quality would be hard to catch.

Keaton Daniels frowned, but his eyes held the light of recognition.

“I don't know,” he said.

“Keep looking. She says she knows you, but you don't know her.”

“She
says?
”

“She calls me too.”

He looked ill. Went back to the picture, chewed his lip. “I can't be sure, but she's familiar. Like I've seen her around, or something, but I can't place her.”

“Anything comes to mind on it, let me know. Look, I need to make a call, can I use your phone?”

“Sure. One right there, and one in the kitchen.”

“Let me take care of things in the kitchen. You get ready, and we'll go pay a call on your mom.”

“Do you think she's in danger?”

“I wouldn't think so, but I'd like to hear what she has to say.”

Sonora went into the kitchen, took the red cordless phone off the wall mount, looked at the picture of Mark Daniels while she dialed. Eversley's words from the morning autopsy echoed in her ears.

Another Kodak moment.

17

Keaton Daniels's mother lived in a convalescent home in Lawrenceburg, located between Cincinnati and Lexington on the Kentucky side. The “home” was several miles down a two-lane rural road. Sonora followed Keaton's rental, a navy blue Chrysler LeBaron. He turned left into a dirt and gravel drive—more dirt than gravel—and stopped beside a wood-and-brick ranch house that had been built sometime in the sixties or seventies.

Keaton led Sonora to the side of the house and up three steps to a concrete patio. A rusty grill, red paint flaking off, sat next to a wet mop. The grill was full of water. Lumps of white, burned charcoal floated in soot-streaked sludge. Old lawn furniture, black wrought iron, floral-print vinyl, was stacked in the corner. The cushions were torn, the chairs missing legs.

Daniels knocked at a screen door that opened into a dark cluttered kitchen.

“They expecting us?” Sonora asked.

“I like to drop in unexpectedly.”

Sonora glanced over her shoulder. The house was surrounded by tobacco fields, stubbled with the withered brown stalks of stripped burley. The lawn was patchy and full of clover.

“Well, Keaton, oh, my word.” The voice was loud and hard edged, and a woman opened the screen door in obvious invitation. “Keaton, honey, I'd thought you'd come sooner. Come in, come in, bring your little girl in.”

Keaton stepped up into the kitchen and was gathered into an awkward hug that neither he nor the woman seemed to find palatable.

“This is Police Specialist Blair,” Keaton said.

“Police?”

“She's a homicide detective, Kaylene. About Mark.”

The woman's mouth opened wide, exposing stubbles of yellowed teeth, one going black, several missing. She was a hefty woman, solidly built, and encased in a loose tentlike print dress, gaping armholes exposing a grimy beige slip. The woman was bra-less, and her breasts sagged onto the expansive soft belly. Her hair was gray, sparse, pinned into a bun. Her eyes were pale blue, the whites yellowed, like wax buildup on a kitchen floor. She had a faint but noticeable mustache on her upper lip.

Sonora wondered if Keaton Daniels hated his mother.

“Honey, this whole thing is jest awful, jest awful.” She led them through the dark kitchen to a dining room and den that had obviously been added on. The family pictures on the walls perpetuated every nasty rural stereotype Sonora had ever heard.

“All my people were upset about your brother, Keaton. We're all family here. And honey, your mama. Your mama like to die. I wished you could of come up just that night.”

Keaton looked stricken.

“I'm afraid Mr. Daniels was with the police all night,” Sonora said.

Kaylene opened her mouth, then closed it. “Oh, well. Well then.”

The den wasn't dirty exactly. In fact, Sonora decided, it was clean. But the furniture was old, the flowered orange-and-yellow couch worn through on the armrests. An avocado green easy chair with a footstool had newspapers in the seat and a soiled lace doily on the headrest. A space heater glowed orange in the corner of the room. The fireplace was boarded up, and a black wood-burning stove sat in front of the hearth. There were baby pictures of toothless infants with unusually large heads, and a bronze pair of baby shoes sat atop a stack of
Reader's Digests
on the mantle.

Keaton glanced around the room and over his shoulder. “Is my mother in her room, Kaylene?”

“That's where she is, hon. You go on, go on, I know she's wanting to see you.”

Keaton looked uncertainly at Sonora.

“Take a few minutes alone,” she said.

He nodded and moved down a corridor to the left. Sonora wondered if that was where Kaylene's “people” were. If so, they were a quiet bunch.

“Come on and sit down, honey. I guess I should say Detective.” Kaylene settled onto the green easy chair and patted the footstool in front.

Sonora wondered if she was expected to sit at the woman's knees. She settled on the edge of the couch and hoped Keaton would get a move on. She'd felt safer working undercover narcotics.

Sonora put a tape in the recorder. “How long have you run this home, Mrs.—”

“Oh, you can call me Kaylene. But if you need it for your records, my married name is Barton, and my maiden name is Wheatly.”

“Kaylene Wheatly Barton.”

The woman gave her a royal nod. “Honey, you want some ice tea, or a pop?”

“No thanks.”

Kaylene picked up a Popsicle-stick fan that had a romantic picture of Jesus on the front—brown curly hair, soulful eyes, white skin. Angelic sheep and storybook children clustered around his knees.

“I don't know about you, but I'm burning up. I got to keep it warm for my people, because they get cold. Blood thins, I guess, when you get old. Mr. Barton says the blood will thin.”

Sonora began to feel fascinated by this woman with bad teeth who called her husband
Mister
Barton.

“How long has Keaton's mother been here?”

“'Long about four years.”

“What's wrong with her?”

“I guess, you know, it's her laigs.”

Must mean legs, Sonora decided. She heard the deep male mumble of Keaton Daniels's voice.

“I understand she had a visitor.”

“You must mean that little girl come by yesterday.”

“What was her name again?”

“Well, Lordy, Detective, you know she never did say. Just told me she was a friend come to call. Mr. Barton told me this morning I ought not to have let her in, but
I
didn't know. She didn't hurt nobody. But, oh, Miz Daniels, she was awful upset after. Awful.”

“What did she say when she came to the door?”

“She come to the front door. Most of my people's family come to the side door there by the kitchen, we hardly use the front. And she says she's here to see Miz Daniels. Well, she's a pretty little thing. Tiny, you know, and that blond blond hair, not quite down to her shoulders, and wavy like. Brown eyes, and pale skin, but her cheeks was bright red. Scarlet, like she'd got a fever. I thought she might be sick even, and she seemed kind of shy. So I let her in, and took her to see Miz Daniels. I was expecting to see family and such, with Mark kilt like that.”

Sonora nodded.

“She's in there, and I was in the kitchen, making up some corn pudding for supper. My people love that corn pudding. It's sweet and they like that. I got the recipe from my cousin. She wrote a cookbook once, self-publish by my brother-in-law.”

Sonora nodded again. Patient, always.

“And then I hear crying. I might not have heard much in the kitchen, but I was going through the den to check on Mr. Remus, 'cause he needed his Haley's flavored M-O. My people have schedules, you know, and they don't want to miss. It upsets them.”

Sonora was unclear on exactly what was scheduled, and had no intention of asking.