Immoral (45 page)

Serena rolled over, and he was treated to the sight of her naked breasts and soft brown nipples. Her eyes blinked slowly, then opened to narrow, unhappy slits, unwilling to face the daylight. She brushed her long hair from her face. “What time is it?” she asked sleepily.

“Late. Almost eight-fifteen.”

Serena groaned. “Shit. Cordy will be coming soon.”

He moved to touch her breasts, but Serena nimbly slapped his hand. “None of that, Lieutenant. We only have five minutes to shower.”

“I can do five minutes,” he said.

“Hush.” She scrambled out of bed, and his eyes followed her as she retreated into the bathroom. He heard her shout, “Make coffee, okay?”

“Okay.”

Naked, he made his way downstairs. He hunted through cabinets and found a mason jar filled with ground coffee. With some difficulty, he figured out how to use her Scandinavian coffeemaker and started it perking, then returned upstairs. Serena was back on the bed, rubbing her damp hair with a towel. Beads of moisture glistened on her bare skin.

“I know what you’re thinking, and don’t think it,” she told him casually.

“How do you know what I’m thinking?”

Her eyes traveled southward, and he looked down. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Now get in the shower. I suggest cold water.”

When he emerged from the shower, he smelled the aroma of coffee. He didn’t see Serena, but a few seconds later, she came back into the bedroom with two steaming cups on saucers in her hands. She was half dressed, wearing bikini panties and a white V-neck tee.

“We better get moving, Jonny. Cordy’s always on time.”

“So if we’re going to do something, we better move fast.”

“What you’re going to do is get dressed,” Serena told him. Then he saw her eyes slide down his body again. She cocked her head. “Can you really do five minutes?”

Stride sat in the backseat of Cordy’s Cruiser as they headed south on I-15, leaving the Strip behind and heading into the wasteland. He felt a rush of anticipation. Somewhere ahead of them, on the fringe of a desert road, was a man who knew Rachel after her disappearance. Someone who had seen her in her life after death. Someone who might be able to give him answers to four-year-old questions.

They were also about to meet a man who might have bashed in the back of a young woman’s skull and dumped her body in the desert. Serena had retrieved her 9 mm SIG-Sauer pistol from the locked glove compartment of her own car and lodged it securely in a shoulder holster under her loose, waist-length bluejacket. Stride’s own Ruger was similarly holstered inside his charcoal sport coat.

Cordy turned off the main highway and kicked up a trail of dust on a frontage road. He pointed down the road a quarter mile, where Stride saw a ramshackle trailer just off the north side. “Down the road, that’s him.”

“This is where she was found?” Stride asked.

“This is it,” Serena said.

Cordy parked the car directly in front of the trailer, leaving the engine running. Serena turned to Cordy and said, “Give us a few minutes with him, okay?”

Stride and Serena both got out. Stride studied the surroundings. The trailer was gray, permanently encrusted with dirt and grit blown from the expanse of desert around it. There was no sidewalk, only a worn path where visitors went to and from the door. He pricked up his ears, listening to a strange cacophony that rose and fell on the wind. It was a grotesque tune, without any rhythm, just a tinkling noise like a thousand children playing with toy bells.

“What the hell is that?” he asked.

“Wind chimes,” Serena said. “A lot of them.”

Serena led them up the trailer steps, which sagged under their weight. At the screen door, she stopped, banging on the aluminum siding of the trailer. There was no answer, just the singing of the chimes.

On the door, someone had painted the words
ALWAYS OPEN
. Serena glanced back at Stride, shrugged, and pulled the door open carefully. She stepped inside, with Stride immediately behind her. The noise inside the trailer was deafening. A window in front of them was open, creating a cross breeze that made several dozen stained glass wind chimes spiral and clang against each other in a wild, multicolored dance. They both put their hands over their ears. Serena took two steps and banged the window shut. The breeze died, and slowly the chimes settled down, tinkling softly like a formless music in the background.

Then they heard a voice.

“So you figured it out.”

They both spun around. Bob sat at a card table six feet away, in front of a lopsided curtain that separated the shop from the rest of the trailer. A metal cash box sat on the table next to him, its lid open. Bob’s T-shirt hung on his skinny frame, and his shorts were several sizes too large. He wore ratty old sneakers.

He had manic eyes, fierce and tiny, like two black holes. He studied them both in turn, first Serena, then Stride. His eyes lingered on Stride, and he squinted as if he saw something in Stride’s face that was strange and unexpected. The longer Bob stared at him, the more Stride felt like an insect pinned to a collector’s board. The eerie sensation went deeper, because when he stared back, his brain flashed a message.
I know you
.

But the man was a stranger to him.

“What’s your name?” Stride asked.

Bob shrugged. “It’s on the sign.”

“It won’t be difficult for us to find out,” Serena said.

“No?” Bob asked. “Well, I have no records, I file no taxes, and I’ve never been fingerprinted. So you tell me how you plan to find out anything about me.”

“You sound pretty smart,” Serena told Bob. “I expected an old drunk.”

Bob scowled and thrust a thumb toward the rear of the trailer. “The gin’s in back. It’s there in case I chicken out.”

“Chicken out?” Serena asked.

Bob rubbed his long beard and pulled at the tangles. He put a finger to his head like a gun and pulled the trigger.

“You’re planning to kill yourself?” Serena asked. “Why?”

Bob turned to Stride and smiled darkly, as if sharing a secret joke. “
You
know.”

“How would I know?”

“You’re a man. Why does a man do anything?”

“A woman,” Stride said.

Serena leaned closer to Bob. “Are you talking about Christi?”

Bob’s anger subsided, and he looked wistful. His voice cracked as he stared at Serena. “You look a little bit like her. She had green eyes, like you. But hers were cold. She destroyed me. I mean, just look around. Look at my life. But if I could get her back, I’d go through this hell all over again.”

Serena’s eyes narrowed. “You wanted her that much? She was that good?”

“Not good. She was never
good
. She was evil.”

“What was it?” Serena asked. “Did she reject you?”

Bob laughed wildly. “If only it were that fucking simple! It’s like having the keys to the palace, okay? And then one day they change the locks. And you look back and realize you gave up everything, destroyed everyone around you, for a
fantasy
.”

“When did you see her last?” Serena asked.

Bob waved his hand impatiently. “Don’t waste my time. You want to ask me? Ask me.”

Stride knew the question he meant. “Did you kill Rachel?”

“Someone had to,” Bob said.

“But did
you
do it?” Stride asked again.

“Isn’t that what you want me to say? Won’t that make it easier for you?”

“We just want to know what happened,” Stride said.

Bob flicked a cockroach off the table. It skittered away toward the rear of the trailer. “No, you don’t. You already know all you need to know.”

“We don’t know why,” Stride said.

Bob laughed. “It was a game to her. She destroyed people. When you do that, sometimes people destroy you back.”

“I think we ought to continue this conversation somewhere else,” Serena told him cautiously, reaching for her cuffs. “Why don’t you come down to the station with us? We can clean you up, get you a decent meal.”

Bob’s eyes snapped open with the gleam of a predator. “You don’t get off so easy,” he snarled at them.

His speed caught them off guard. Bob’s left hand dove into the cash box, and with a shout, he leaped to his feet, the chair toppling backward onto the trailer floor behind him. Bob’s left hand swung upward out of the cash box, his whole arm a blur of motion. He pointed his arm straight up, almost grazing the roof of the trailer. Stride saw the object clutched in Bob’s fingers—a Smith & Wesson revolver with a four-inch barrel.

“
Gun
!”

Stride and Serena jumped backward, tumbling into a maze of wind chimes that clattered and then fell around them, shattering on the floor. Stride twisted to his right and slammed his body to the ground. Broken glass cut his hand as his palm scraped the trailer floor. He snaked his bleeding hand inside his jacket and slid the Ruger into his slippery palm. In a single motion, he flipped off the safety and rose to one knee, taking aim at Bob’s chest.

Three feet away, Serena did the same. She came up on both knees and steadied her automatic with both hands.

Bob didn’t move. He stared them down with a bizarre grin of triumph, his eyes darting between the two detectives like a Ping-Pong ball. The revolver quivered in his hands.

“What are you waiting for?” Bob demanded.

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Serena told him, her voice steady. “Put down the gun.”

“I’m getting out,” Bob said. “And you’re going to help me.”

Stride saw Bob’s fingers tighten on the grip of the revolver. Bob lowered his gun arm.

“I’m going to take the shot,” Serena called.

“No!” Stride insisted. “Wait! Wait!” He saw his one window on the truth sliding closed.

Bob hadn’t cocked the hammer. He wasn’t ready to fire. But he was now pointing the black hole of the barrel directly at Stride’s head. Stride stared back along the path of Bob’s outstretched arms, sighting down the barrel of his pistol. The revolver gaped back at him. Stride’s arm twinged where his friend in Ely had shot him. He could hear the sound of that gun in his memory and feel the flesh ripping apart in his shoulder.

“Bob, you’re not going to shoot me,” Stride told him. “Put it down, and this time you win. You can beat her.”

Bob shook his head. “She always wins.”

Stride clicked the safety back into place on his Ruger. His fingers loosened, and the gun slipped upside down in his hand. He bent down slowly, laying it on the ground.

“Jonny, what the hell are you doing?” Serena hissed.

“I’m just not going to do it,” Stride told Bob.

Bob was silent, hesitating.

Ting-a-ling, ting, ting, went the wind chimes.

“It’s not me doing this,” Bob said. “It’s her. It was always her.”

Stride shook his head. “You can’t blame her anymore. She’s dead. This time, it’s all you. Is that what you want?”

Bob’s hand trembled. He exhaled a long, mournful breath, and his muscles seemed to cave in as the air went out of his body. His gun arm sagged, the revolver going limp in his hand.

“Now just lay it on the table. Real easy. Real slow. Okay?”

Stride felt a wave of relief wash over him.

Then Bob’s face contorted in panic and fear. His eyes widened as if he were a frightened child. His mouth dropped open, and he took a horrified step backward. He was fixated on something just behind Stride.

“
There she is
!” Bob wailed.

“Jonny, he’s losing it,” Serena warned.

Stride knew she was right. Bob was disintegrating.

“There’s no one here,” Stride told him firmly.

“YOU’RE DEAD!” Bob bellowed.

He swung the revolver up in a single motion, its barrel quivering. His jaw clenched, and he bared his teeth. Bob’s thumb flicked to the hammer of the gun.

“Stop!” Serena screamed.

Stride tensed, waiting for Bob to fire, expecting to feel the air sucked out of his chest.

Serena’s bullet blew Bob backward onto the floor. The gun spilled harmlessly from his hand. He landed hard, his eyes wide open and terrified. He gurgled, unable to breathe, and foam and blood sputtered from his lips. His whole body twitched, his limbs rocked by spasms.

Serena scrambled from her knees and ran to him.

Bob had enough strength to lift his head off the floor and contemplate the wreckage of his chest and smile. Blood was filling his lungs. He tried to speak, but the words died in a rattle, and his jaw went slack. His eyes flitted between them, his pupils giant and black.

“Cordy!” Serena shouted as the trailer door burst open. “Get an ambulance!”

But they both knew Bob would be gone before they heard the sirens.

Stride realized he was watching the mystery die with him.

He sat in the backseat of Cordy’s car, the rear door open, his legs outside. For the first time in months, he felt the craving for a cigarette, and he rubbed his fingers together as if one were lit in his hands. He felt a trickle of sweat on his neck, dripping to the back of his spine.

Twenty yards away, two internal affairs detectives, looking cool as snakes even under the relentless sun, grilled Serena about the shooting. Her beautiful face was stoic—void of emotion, no hurricane churning inside her. Stride knew better. He had seen the delayed reaction among cops in Duluth, even tough veterans who had seen plenty of bodies, all killed by someone else. Firing your weapon, taking a life, watching someone die at your hands, was devastating. It sent cops into therapy. Some left the force.

Then came the second-guessing. People who weren’t there, who hadn’t experienced those terrible moments, felt entitled to question your judgment.

All Stride could do was sit tight and wait his turn, then tell them what it was. A good shooting. Unavoidable.

The ambulance had arrived too late to do anything but attend to the corpse. He watched as two orderlies maneuvered a stretcher through the doorway of the trailer. Bob’s body lay beneath a white sheet, with a bloom of red in the center where the blood seeped into the fabric. A dusty breeze erupted from the desert floor, picking up a corner of the death sheet and fluttering it in the air like a flag of surrender.