New River Blues (28 page)

‘Can't you put a guard on at night?'

‘We did, we had to. The insurance company wouldn't cover us any more if we didn't. But the kids come in on bikes, or on foot . . . don't make any noise coming. You hear glass breaking, by the time you get there, they're gone.' He answered his chirping phone again. It was almost a fixture in his ear as he drove around. He answered each call, ‘Bird,' without taking time to excuse himself, then with no apparent hesitation dealt with whatever poured out of its tiny speaker. ‘Sweet,' he said once, in response to another damage report, and about a problem piece of equipment, ‘Perfect.' He had a whole vocabulary of one- and two-word retorts. ‘Keen. Hell
yeah
. Totally.'

‘Well, you seem to be staying calm,' Jason said, as they drove back to the gate.

Dan Bird gave him the bare edge of an ironic half-smile. ‘I'm not the one paying interest on several million dollars' worth of construction loans, Detective.'

‘How's Roger Henderson taking it?'

Dan Bird gazed across his dusty domain, scratched his soul patch and sighed. ‘Roger Henderson is a very smart guy. Hen-Trax will make it through this meltdown if anybody will. But . . . he's lowered the price on these houses twice, and we may end up selling some of them for less than they cost to build. Because as you can see here, letting them sit empty is not an option.'

‘What about Rio Nuevo?' Jason said. ‘I keep reading about all that tax increment money—'

‘Beautiful green money, who wouldn't want it? Pays for the infrastructure and the low-interest loans . . . we've done a couple of those jobs already, and we're bidding on that big project at the foot of Sentinel Peak, the one they call Gray Hawk Terrace.'

‘How's it looking?'

‘Down to just us and that Ames Construction from Las Vegas. Should be out of committee any day now. We get Gray Hawk, that'll carry us till the rest of the business turns around.'

‘What's left to do?'

‘For us, nothing. Try not to die of impatience while the city fathers debate.' His smile added a few more creases to his face. ‘The boss said the other day, “We get through this recession I'm never going to another city council meeting as long as I live.”'

‘How long have you worked for him?'

‘Twelve years.'

‘Guess you must like your job.'

‘Oh, it has good days and bad.' The little bark of laughter again. ‘Roger's a hard taskmaster, but he's not . . . tricky. Do your job right, you make out OK.' He stopped at the gate. As Jason got out he said, ‘If you been thinking he killed his rich wife to get at her money, you can forget about that. Long as I've known him he's been working his butt off to show everybody he didn't need his wife's money.'

‘Thanks for giving me the time,' Jason said, ‘and the tour.'

‘You're welcome,' Dan Bird said. ‘Tell your friends we got some real bargains out here.' He winked, put the truck in reverse, and drove away toward the earth-mover.

Waiting for Nino, Sarah finally found a few minutes to put the Henderson file in order. With all that paper safely in one box, she got the extra table moved out, brought her chairs back in, and dusted her desk. Feeling like a mountain-moving winner, she brought in a fresh cup of coffee and read through the file.

Halfway through the Roger Henderson interview she looked up and told her desk lamp, ‘I still haven't finished that!'

Tracy Scott had done all the work to expose Roger Henderson's leaky alibi for Sunday night, and she still hadn't followed through on it. If Nino proved to be the shooter, she had no idea what his motivation could be. Who was to say he wasn't working for Roger Henderson?

She checked the time; 11:30.
Even a Frisky Lady should be up by now.
She said it to herself, knowing probably none of the women who got their assignments there lived in that house, and then asked herself,
Why do I always feel compelled to make jokes about prostitution? It's the least funny subject I can think of.
She had never worked Vice, felt awkward about her lack of expertise.
But is anybody an expert in this subject?
She didn't know.
So I make these stupid jokes.

So ask.
She dialed the number. After three rings a light, pleasant voice with no accent said the number and waited. Having no name to ask for, Sarah said, ‘This is Detective Burke at the Tucson Police Department. I need to talk to somebody who can verify a time and date for me.'

The person on the other end said, ‘Hold on.'

In a few seconds a new voice, older and darker, a smoker's voice, said, ‘This is Joyce, how may I help you?'

She said her name and title again and then, ‘Joyce, this is Frisky Ladies, right?'

‘Yes it is.'

‘Good. Will you verify that a person was at your establishment during certain hours Sunday night?'

‘No, I can't do that.'

‘Even when I get a subpoena?'

‘Still won't be able to help you, Detective. We don't record the names of our clients.'

‘You don't know who's coming tonight?'

‘Who's coming tonight is some peaceful individuals with code names I've given them. They'll pick up their escorts, who have other code names. I have no idea where they will go together, and I certainly don't need to know their names.'

‘OK. But I have information indicating that my person of interest stayed at your house for several hours, both Saturday and Sunday nights.'

‘Then your information's wrong, Detective. This is an escort service, not a whorehouse. Prostitution is illegal in Arizona.'

‘But if I can prove that my person's vehicle was at your house during the hours I'm interested in, bearing in mind that you don't want to lie to the police, especially during a murder investigation, then we could have a conversation, right?'

‘If you come to my house and show me your badge while you hand me the subpoena, then we could have a conversation in which I point out that I don't always know which vehicles are parked in front of my house. Yes.'

‘Good system,' Sarah said. ‘Talk to you later, Joyce.'

‘Any time, honey,' Joyce said.

She wanted to talk to Delaney but he was on the phone, and then he had somebody in his office. Then his phone was busy a long time and finally he walked past her, talking on his cell. She wanted to ask him if he still thought they should keep the tracker information in-house. To her, it felt like time to go after Henderson with it, get the question of his whereabouts Sunday night settled once and for all, clear him or implicate him. But since they'd agreed on a policy about the tracker she didn't want to change it without Delaney's OK. And just then her phone rang and Arturo Espinosa said, ‘I have your suspect in my car, Detective.' Together, they figured out the probable time he'd get to Lordsburg. By the time she had finished the second phone call that started a Highway Patrol car toward Lordsburg, it was well past noon.

She said, ‘Oh, well . . .' took an energy bar out of her desk drawer, and walked out to the parking lot. In the back corner, she ate the bar and then sat on the wall for half an hour, staring at an imaginary blank spot three million miles away, while pure November sun scrubbed all but basic information out of her brain.

It was a meditation technique she had cobbled together from a couple of magazine articles and an improbable old TV show about a Chinese monk stranded in the desert. She knew she probably wasn't following the exact recipe, but since it refreshed her during the tired ends of tough weeks she did it every so often anyway and called it, if anybody asked, ‘zoning out.'

A message light was blinking on her phone when she got back. When she pressed the button Menendez' voice said, ‘Sarah, call me before you do one other thing.' The authoritarian manner was so unlike him that she obeyed at once. When he answered she said, ‘Hey, whaddup?'

‘Just got a call from that sweet pretty Henderson girl you told me not to mess with.' He sighed in mock distress. ‘But what's a guy supposed to do when the chicks can't leave him alone?'

‘Ray—'

He dropped his joking pose abruptly. ‘She sounds really worried, Sarah. She said, “You told me if I ever needed help I could call you. Now I need help.”'

‘OK, so?'

‘So will you help me talk to her?'

‘Ray, Nino Giardelli's being brought over from Lordsburg right now. We need to get ready to interview him.'

‘I know. This will only take a few minutes. I thought . . . you seemed to like her.'

‘I do like her, but . . . when does she want to see you?'

‘She's in the lobby now.'

‘Oh. You think she has something new to say about the crime?'

‘No, I think she wants to talk about her brother, the hard case. What do you think, shall I hold an interview room?'

‘For sure. Member of the family, you never know what will come up. But who've we got to monitor the video? Anybody in here?' She stood up and peered around. ‘I'll go get Mickey out of cold cases, she'll help us.'

Looking up with eyes that were miles away, deep in the case she was reading, Mickey marked the page carefully and came along. A striver and a learner, Mickey would soon, Sarah hoped, become the second female on the Homicide crew.

Patricia was a little put off that it wasn't going to be a tête-à-tête with Menendez, but he said, ‘I asked Sarah to sit in on this because she's good at family stuff.' Sarah thought that was a stretch, but tried to look wise. Finally Patricia sat down on the round stool with that businesslike nod, so like her father, that seemed to be her default reaction in tight emotional corners.

The next hurdle was the recording equipment. She wanted it off, said she couldn't put this conversation on the record. But Menendez nudged her elbow and said, ‘We have to do it, Patricia, so we can prove we aren't pouring water up your nose in here.' She looked into his face then and laughed charmingly and Sarah thought it was only natural that he flashed every dimple he owned.

Then Patricia turned abruptly grim, took a deep breath and said, ‘OK, here goes. I feel rotten about narcing on my own brother, but I don't see anything else to do.

‘Adam had a key stashed somewhere. As soon as he heard from you guys yesterday that you were done working at the house, he went home and took a bunch of stuff. Two or three pieces of Mom's jewelry and an inlaid chess set, I don't know yet what else. He helped himself to some money I had in a drawer, too, which is pretty spooky because it means he went through my room.

‘He took the jewelry and stuff to a place he knows about, hocked it, and bought meth and dope and vodka. Maria called Dad to come home because of the noise. Dad found Adam up in his room, stoned out of his mind, with a rap station turned up as high as it would go.

‘Then we had the calamitous family scene. Every time Adam comes home, you can count on at least one – this time it happened faster than usual and a little louder. Dad called me at school and told me to come home, made me listen while he recited the latest grievances and laid down the law.

‘Dad took away the keys to the rental car, told Adam he was not allowed out of the house till after the funeral and then we'd see what comes next. But Adam – see, he's got this idea now that he's going to have a whole lot of his own money and he doesn't need to care what Dad thinks any more. It's made him just impossible. He keeps saying, “I'll do whatever I please, you don't control me any more!”

‘It's total war in the house. Dad made me return Adam's rental car. He's gone through the house and sequestered all the keys and drugs and liquor. Even the medicine chests, God help anybody who gets a headache at our house this week. And he told Adam if he took one step out of the house before the funeral tomorrow he would have him arrested, and I honestly believe he's ready to do it.'

Sarah said, ‘What's Adam doing now?'

‘Sitting up in his room with a gooney grin on his face, reading some silly old Goth novel from seventh grade. Pretending to read – I hate to imagine what he's really thinking about. I tried to talk to him and he just . . . cut me off. “Don't worry about a thing, sweetheart,” he says. He's got this new way of talking like Humphrey Bogart and calling everybody sweetheart. “As soon as tomorrow's over, sweetheart,” he told me, “I know exactly what I'm going to do and there's not a damn thing he can do about it.”

‘Which of course is just plain crazy. He's only sixteen years old, no matter how much of Mother's money we're going to get eventually, nobody's going to deal with him as an adult this week, especially when he's acting so loony.'

‘What do you think your dad will do?' Menendez asked her.

‘What he's always done – keep the lid on, if he can. I feel so bad for them both. Until about three years ago, when Adam discovered the drug scene, he and Dad got along really well. I mean, Adam was always closer to Mom because she let him have his way all the time. But Dad really tried, they used to go fishing and watch sports together. Once Adam found dope and booze, though . . . it was, like,
at last, the right answer
.'

‘The right answer to what?'

‘Feeling like a dork, I guess. He always had a hard time in school. He hated having to have tutors and do summer school to get through. And when he got into controlled substances, he had his toking friends and he didn't have to try any more. In that group it's understood, trying is not cool. You stay a little high all the time, get really wasted on weekends, and you don't do squat.'