Life or Death (36 page)

She presses her ear against the door and listens for footsteps or movement or chatter. Her mother would have switched on the TV, which is worshipped like a deity at her parents’ place.

Nudging the door with her foot, she steps into the short entry hall. The gun is warm and weirdly sticky in her hand. At the far end of the hall there is a living room and a thin galley kitchen. The bedroom is on the left and bathroom to the right. She has lived in this apartment for three years. Now she sees it differently. The shadows have become hiding places and the corners are blind.

She searches the bedroom first, swinging the gun from side to side, checking behind the door. The long narrow room has a queen-sized bed pressed into the far corner, a wooden dresser and wardrobe and large red chair. Everything is as she left it, with her dry-cleaning draped across the bed, the black jacket and trousers, still in plastic. On the nightstand is an antique silver picture frame with a black and white photograph of her mother and father, taken on their wedding day.

Across the hall is the bathroom. The sink is cluttered with shampoos, bubble baths and talcum powder. More products line the glass shelf where she has a wicker basket full of those complimentary mini-bottles you get at hotels. The shower curtain is closed. Did she do that? Did the curtain just move?

Reaching behind her with her left hand, she turns on the overhead light. The white curtain is translucent. There are no shadows. The bath is empty. A tap drips.

She turns and moves back into the entry hall and on to the living room. There is a sofa, an armchair, a coffee table and a bookcase with books that she wants to read by authors she thinks she
should
have read. She looks at a pile of unfolded washing, the basket of ironing and the breakfast dishes in the sink – evidence of neglect or single-mindedness, she doesn’t know which.

Wasn’t there a folder on the coffee table? It had copies of crime-scene photographs from the armoured truck robbery, specifically the images showing the dashboard cameras on the police cruisers. Statements. Notes. Clippings.

She scans the room. The folder is not on the bookshelf or benches. Did she take it into the bedroom? She drops to one knee and looks under the sofa and beneath the coffee table. Pressing her cheek to the floor, she feels a faint breeze. A window must be open – or perhaps the sliding door to the balcony.

In the same breath it occurs to her that she rarely unlocks the sliding door unless it is to water her lone plant. She should have checked the balcony. This is her last thought before a shadow moves across the light and an object strikes the back of her head.

Moss wakes an hour before dawn with a bottle of bourbon propped in his armpit and a smudged glass on the pillow next to his head. Lying very still, he hears the slow beat of his own blood and the wind gusting outside. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, just the disjointed dream – a parade of faces from his prison years. They say that a killer dreams about the people he murdered, but Moss has never thought twice about the man he beat to death with a barbell in the exercise yard. It’s not that Dewie Heartwood didn’t deserve it, but Moss is older now, wiser, more self-possessed.

Stumbling into the darkened bathroom, he bends to suck water from the tap, soothing his parched mouth. Outside he can hear homeless voices fighting over cardboard boxes or cigarette butts.

In the bedroom, he turns on the TV. The small screen fizzes and blinks. A woman is delivering a traffic report, making it sound life-changing. The image shifts and two newsreaders report the day’s top headlines.

‘A fugitive wanted for the murders of a Houston mother and child is believed to have kidnapped a sheriff’s son who was last seen leaving his high school yesterday afternoon.’

Moss turns up the volume.

‘Audie Palmer escaped from a federal prison a week ago and is now at the centre of a massive manhunt involving police, FBI and the US Marshals Service.

‘The missing boy, aged fifteen, is Maxwell Valdez, the son of Dreyfus County Sheriff Ryan Valdez, who arrested Palmer more than a decade ago after an armoured truck robbery. The family is expected to hold a media conference later today…’

Moss isn’t concentrating on the rest of the bulletin. He’s trying to work out why Audie would do such a thing. During all those years in prison, Audie was the cleverest man Moss had ever met. He was Yoda. He was Gandalf. He was Morpheus. Now he’d become a walking suicide note. Why?

Moss’s brain hurts and it’s not just the bourbon. Motivation is overrated as a controlling force in human affairs, he decides. Shit just happens. There’s no logic. No grand plan.

He fumbles for a bottle of aspirin in his jacket pocket and crunches two tablets between his teeth. Then he drops to the ground and rips out fifty push-ups that make his headache even worse. Flexing his muscles, he looks at himself in the mirror, aware of how soft he’s growing.

He showers, shaves and pulls on his jeans, buttoning his shirt. Picking up his jacket, he hears paper crumple in the pocket. His fingers find the notes that he made at the library. He reads them again, trying to make sense of the robbery and its aftermath. The names and dates have been smeared by Moss’s sweat. He remembers meeting the old man who witnessed the shoot-out and who had rambled on about keeping his mouth shut.

Theo McAllister had been frightened – but not of Moss. What scares a man who lives alone in the woods with a shotgun next to his door?

51

Desiree sits on the edge of the sofa, holding an icepack to the back of her head. A female paramedic shines a penlight into her eyes, asking her to look up and down, left and right.

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘Not counting your thumb?’

‘How many?’

‘Three.’

Senogles is watching from the balcony. ‘You should have checked the balcony door first,’ he says, masterfully stating the obvious.

Desiree doesn’t answer. Her tongue is swollen. She must have bitten it when she was bludgeoned.

‘Why didn’t you call it in straight away?’ asks Senogles.

‘I wasn’t sure.’

He looks around her apartment, running his fingers along the titles in her bookshelf. Philip Roth. Annie Proulx. Toni Morrison. Alice Walker.

‘It was probably some crack addict.’

‘Crack addicts don’t normally pick the lock,’ says Desiree, fighting another wave of nausea.

‘And you said nothing was taken.’

‘Except for the file.’

‘Of photographs and statements that shouldn’t have been here.’ Senogles is now studying her cookbooks. ‘You do realise that I’m in charge of this investigation? You take orders from me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Desiree knows the dressing down is coming and that self-preservation requires that she remain silent and suck it up. At the same time she’s trying to understand why somebody would take the file. Who knew that she had copies of crime-scene photographs and statements? Her name was in the register at the records office. She visited Herman Willford. She asked Ryan Valdez about the dashboard cameras.

Senogles is still talking, but Desiree holds up her hand. ‘Can we take this up again later? Right now I need to throw up.’

Finally the paramedics and forensic technicians leave and Senogles tells Desiree not to come into the office in the morning.

‘Am I suspended?’

‘You’re on sick leave.’

‘I feel fine.’

‘Then you’re suspended from active duty until further notice. And don’t bother calling Warner. He approved my decision.’

After showering, she sits on the edge of the mattress, her thoughts creaking in the darkness. Padding barefoot through the apartment, she gets another icepack from the fridge. Her cell phone shows two missed messages. She calls her voicemail and hears Jenkins in Washington:

‘That vehicle you wanted to me to trace – the 1985 Pontiac 6000. It was first sold in Ohio in 1985 and had three former owners. The last one was a guy called Frank Robredo in San Diego, California. He buys up used cars and turns them around. Says he sold the Pontiac to a guy who paid him nine hundred bucks in January 2004. He signed the pink slip and provided a bill of sale and lodged the release of liability form within five days, but the transfer was never completed because the purchaser didn’t visit a DMV office to lodge the transfer application or pay the fees. He didn’t remember the guy’s name, but he does recall talking to a Dreyfus County deputy who told him the buyer had used a fake name. I’ve contacted the Californian DMV to see if they still have the original paperwork. I’ll let you know how it’s going.’

The message ends and another begins. Jenkins again:

‘California DMV came back to me about the Pontiac 6000. The digital version of the paperwork is missing, but they’re searching for the hard copies. Here’s the really weird thing – somebody else has been asking for the same thing. It was six months ago. The request came from a prison librarian at Three Rivers FCI.’

Desiree looks at the time. It’s too late to call the prison. The message continues:

‘I also chased up those names you gave me. Timothy Lewis died in a light plane crash seven years ago. I can’t find anything on Nick Fenway owning a bar in Florida but I’ll keep trying.’

The message ends. Desiree gazes out the window at the quiet street. Audie Palmer had access to the library computer, but why would he be interested in the Pontiac? This entire case is riddled with discordant notes like a child plinking the keys of a piano, making noise instead of music.

Sitting at her desk, Desiree unpacks her satchel and takes out her iPad. She runs through her old emails. One of them has an attachment – Palmer’s prison file, along with the names of people who visited him over the past decade.

She scans the list, which runs to barely half a page. Audie’s sister visited him a dozen times. There are eight other names. One of them is Frank Senogles, who must have interviewed Audie when he was in charge of the cold case. He visited the prison three times: twice in 2006 and, strangely, only a month ago. By then he had handed the file to Desiree. Why talk to Audie when it was no longer his cold case?

She looks at the other visitors on the list. One of them, Urban Covic, used a Californian driver’s licence as identification. Desiree types his name into a search engine and comes up with a businessman from San Diego. Covic is quoted in several articles about a golf course development called Sweetwater Lake that drew protests from a local environmental group who claimed it would threaten a local wetland. The group’s headquarters was firebombed and there were allegations of illegal donations to city counsellors.

Desiree logs into the FBI database, typing in her username and password. She carries a fob on her keychain, which generates a random number, providing an extra layer of security. Having gained access, she searches for Urban Covic and finds an immediate match. Covic has four aliases and according to intelligence reports, he once worked for the Panaro crime family in Las Vegas but broke with the family in the mid-nineties when Benny Panaro and his two sons were convicted of racketeering.

Since then Covic had made a fortune running nightclubs and skin joints in San Diego before branching out into construction, property development and farming.

Why would Urban Covic be visiting Audie Palmer in prison?

The file contains a list of addresses and known associates for Covic, including telephone numbers. Desiree looks at her watch. It’s approaching midnight. Still 10 p.m. in California. She calls. A man answers, grunting rather than greeting.

‘Is that Urban Covic?’

‘Who wants to know?’

‘I’m Special Agent Desiree Furness of the FBI.’

There is a heartbeat of silence.

‘How did you get this number?’

‘We have it on file.’

Another pause.

‘What can I do for you,
S
pecial
A
gent?’

‘Ten years ago you visited a federal prison in Texas. Do you remember?’

‘No.’

‘You went to see a prisoner by the name of Audie Palmer.’

‘So?’

‘How do you know Palmer?’

‘He once worked for me.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘He was my gofer. If I wanted something he’d go fetch it for me.’

‘How long did he work for you?’

‘I can’t remember.’

Covic sounds bored with the conversation.

‘So he wasn’t particularly valuable as an employee?’

‘No.’

‘But still you travelled halfway across the country to visit him in prison.’

Silence greets the comment. Covic sighs.
‘If you’re about to accuse me of something,
S
pecial
A
gent, I suggest you piss or get off the pot.
’

‘Audie Palmer was convicted of hijacking a truck and stealing seven million dollars.’

‘Nothing to do with me.’

‘So you visited Audie Palmer as a friend?’

‘A friend!’
Covic laughs.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘He stole from me.’

‘What did he steal?’

‘Something I cherished very dearly – along with eight thousand dollars.’

‘Did you report the robbery?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I decided to handle it myself, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to bother.’

‘Why not?’

‘Audie Palmer fucked up all by himself.’

‘So why did you visit him?’

‘To gloat.’

52

Awake now, Audie stares at the ceiling and feels dazed at the preposterousness of what he has done – kidnapping a boy, expecting another wrong will somehow balance all the others and make things right. Odds don’t change because a coin has landed on the same side a dozen times or more. And there is no invisible set of scales or grand ledger that has to be balanced over the course of a lifetime.

When people survive a disaster – a flood or a hurricane – they are often asked by reporters how they coped. Some of them credit God for answering their prayers or say it ‘wasn’t my time’, as though each of us carries a hidden expiry date. Normally, they have no answer. No secret. No special skill. That’s why so many survivors feel guilty. They didn’t earn their good fortune by being braver, or cleverer, or stronger. They were simply lucky.