Racing the Devil (3 page)

Her lover was wanted “for questioning”—a euphemism for “we know you did it, son, we just can’t prove it yet”—and a description of the lover and his license number followed. NRL-549.

A trickle of ice water seeped though my bloodstream and settled in my bones.

NRL-549. That was the number on my license plate.

And the name at the bottom of the article . . .
Wanted for questioning: Jared McKean
. . . that was mine too.

I
TUCKED THE NEWSPAPER
under my arm and sauntered out to the parking lot, trying not to look like a man who was wanted for murder. Sun and humidity basted the asphalt and turned the outdoors into a sauna. Through ripples of heat, I could see my truck a few spaces to the right of where I’d left it. I’d been distracted at the time, but I was sure I’d parked closer to the streetlight. I peered inside and saw a key jutting from the ignition.

On the floorboard, the handgrip of a Glock .40 caliber protruded from beneath the driver’s seat. Not mine, I told myself, as if wishing it might make it so. Mine was in the glove compartment, and I’d locked it with a combination that was not my son’s birth date (too obvious), but my horse’s.

My stomach tumbled, and my mouth tasted suddenly of bile. For a moment, I struggled to hold down my meager breakfast. Then I pulled my key chain from my pocket and counted. House key, office key, keys to Maria’s place and my brother’s house.

The key to the truck was gone.

My temples throbbed dully.

I’d missed picking up Paulie yesterday, and it wasn’t looking good for today, either. It was already eleven-thirty, and if the police wanted me for questioning in a murder case, I’d be lucky if I managed to extricate myself by midnight.

I tugged at the door handle. Unlocked. The Batman on the dashboard looked reproachful.

I punched in the glove box combination and popped it open. Stared at the empty compartment as if I could will the gun into its accustomed place. For a long moment, I stood there, considering. I could take the Glock with me, wipe it down, pour acid down the barrel, and drop it in the Cumberland River. I could throw it down a manhole or bury it in some vacant field. It would be easy. My hand stretched toward the pistol . . .

And pulled away. I shut the door and shoved my hands into my pockets. I’d made too many mistakes since Friday night. One more wouldn’t make things better.

Besides, I’d rather be jammed up for doing the right thing than for doing the wrong one. At least if things went badly, I’d have the consolation of feeling self-righteous about it later.

I moved into the shade, away from temptation, and called Maria from my cell phone. She picked up on the second ring, sounding breathless, harried.

“It’s me.”

“Jared.” There was a tremor in her voice, and I could see her in my mind, her round dark eyes like the pictures of those big-eyed kids so popular back in the sixties. “Where are you?”

“I’m sorry about yesterday. Missing Paul. I didn’t—”

“I know. Just . . . are you all right?”

“You’ve seen today’s paper.”

“Yes. And the police were here. They said you hadn’t made it home last night or the night before. They said you killed some woman.”

I took a long, deep breath, pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, and told myself not to panic.

This was easier said than done. If the police were actually saying that I’d killed a woman, it meant they had more than a license plate number. “Who’d they send out? Anybody I know?”

“Frank Campanella. Harry Kominski. Where are you?”

“Parking lot. Did they tell you what they have?”

“They said they had your fingerprints. A lot of other things.”

“They couldn’t have my fingerprints. I wasn’t there.”

I could hear the tears in her voice and wanted to rush over there and take her in my arms. But that wasn’t my job anymore, and I heard D.W.’s voice somewhere behind her, comforting and reassuring.

“I know you didn’t do it,” she said, finally. “I’m sure Frank knows it too.”

D.W. took the phone. “Look, buddy,” he said, “none of us think you did this. But you’ve got to go and talk to them, get this thing straightened out.”

“I will,” I said. “Put Paulie on. I’ve got to tell him I can’t come today.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“I’d rather.”

I could almost hear him shrug. “Okay. Just a minute . . . Here he is.”

“Hi, Daddy. Mama crying.” The gravelly little voice made my heart twist. I could see him perched there, maybe on Maria’s lap, his stubby fingers curled around the receiver, his slanted eyes crinkling. A little Buddha with Down syndrome, happy to hear from me, worried about his mama.

“I know, Sport. You give Mom a hug for me, okay?”

“You come get me?”

“Not today, Sport. Something came up. I’m sorry, buddy.”

“Moon pie, Daddy. You said Moon Pie.”

“Next time, Paulie.” The festival would be long over, but he wouldn’t care. I had promised him Moon Pies; it didn’t matter where they came from. I was proud of him for remembering.

“You come get me,” he said again. “Today.”

“I’m sorry, Sport. Another day. I love you.”

“I love you. Come today.”

There was a long pause as the phone switched hands. D.W. again. “He’ll be all right. You just get this business taken care of. And call Jay, if you haven’t already. He’s frantic.”

JAY WAS CHRISTENED
with three first names. Theodore Jay Ambrosius Renfield. If names are destiny, Jay was destined to be an entrepreneur, an actor, a brigadier general, or gay. His parents, I think, had visions of a wealthy southern gentleman in a white linen suit. Pert blond trophy wife; three perfect, berry-brown children; sprawling estate with a pillared mansion and rolling green hills dotted with walking horses.

When we were in preschool and he preferred paper dolls to matchbox cars, his mother called him “sensitive.” When he wore her eye shadow to school in the fifth grade, she called it a phase and took comfort in his manlier pastime of assembling models of plastic horror movie monsters. By the time he reached junior high school, it was obvious to everyone that the trophy wife was out, and that Theodore was, in his own words, a flaming fag. He went by ‘Ted’ then, and the guys in P.E. called him ‘Ted Red.’ “Hey, Ted,” they’d call. “You on the rag?”

He began to call himself by his second first name (Ambrosius being out of the question). This resulted in a brand new nickname—‘Gay Jay.’ Since, objectionable as that was, it was preferable to being named after a woman’s monthly inconvenience, he decided to keep it.

When we were in grade school, we hung out together—Jay and Jared, two tow-headed boys that people often mistook for fraternal twins. But I was no more comfortable with his burgeoning homosexuality than the rest of the guys in our class, and by our junior year, we had pretty much drifted apart. Then one afternoon, I walked into the locker room and found the captain of the football team pushing Jay’s head into the toilet.

I didn’t think.

I charged.

Two cracked knuckles (mine) and half a dozen stitches (the football captain’s) later, I found myself with a seven-day suspension and Jay’s undying gratitude.

We lost touch not long after high school. I went to the police academy, got married, got a Criminal Justice degree with a minor in Psych, and had a son. Jay got a scholarship to Vanderbilt and moved in with a leather-clad, B&D biker boy with bleached blond hair and a Marilyn Monroe tattoo. His parents disowned him. He made a small fortune designing computer games and graphics.

I was lucky to get the bills paid.

Needless to say, we moved in different circles.

I hadn’t seen Jay in ten years when he called me up out of the blue and told me that the biker boy, to whom Jay had always been utterly faithful, had left him high and dry and HIV positive. A lingering cold had been the impetus for him to get the test, and it had shown him to be on the brink of full-blown AIDS. He hadn’t even known his lover was infected. When they’d been tested years before, they’d both been clean.

Months after my divorce, when I’d lost my job on the force and was trying to set myself up in the private detective business, it seemed only natural for me to move in with Jay.

All right, maybe not natural, but right. It was a good trade. I got cheap room and board, a place to board my horses—a palomino quarter horse named Tex and a black Tennessee Walker called Crockett—and unlimited use of Jay’s swimming pool. He got someone to take care of him.

The boyfriends came and went, but I was his family.

I flipped open my phone again. The battery was low, so I dug through my pockets for a couple of coins, went back inside the motel, and called home.

Jay picked up on the first ring.

“It’s me,” I said.

He let out an audible breath. “Thank God. Where have you been? I didn’t worry when you didn’t come home, but then the police were here, and . . . They went through your room. I couldn’t help it. They had a warrant.”

Worse and worse. If they had enough on me for a judge to issue a search warrant, it was looking very bad indeed.

“What did they take? Do you know?”

“Hair samples. From your comb. They looked through all your clothes. Something about fibers and bloodstains. And they dusted for fingerprints. What a mess.” He was quiet for a moment. “They seemed especially interested in your theatrical makeup.”

It had been years since I’d done any community theatre, but I’d found that a little facial hair could change a man’s entire appearance. Back when I worked undercover in vice, it came in handy. It still did.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll call Frank and see what’s going on. If they’ve got DNA, this’ll be over with in no time.”

“God, I hope so.” I could hear the mixture of anxiety and relief in his heavy sigh. “How can they even think you’d be involved in a thing like this?”

“Somebody stole my truck last night. No, night before last.” I still wasn’t clear on the timing. I’d lost a day at least, but I wasn’t sure how. Had the cloying sweetness of the wine concealed something more sinister than fruit? “I’m sure this’ll all be cleared up soon.”

But something niggled at the back of my mind. I hadn’t been in Hermitage on Friday night. I didn’t know the murdered woman, and I’d never visited the Cedar Valley Motel.

So why did the police have my fingerprints?

MY NEXT CALL
went to Frank Campanella, Metro Homicide. For seven years, he was my partner. Now he was dusting my room for prints. It was his job, but the thought left a hollow feeling in my belly just the same.

He answered on the third ring. “Campanella here.”

“It’s me.”

“Jared. Where the hell are you?”

“Everybody wants to know where I am. Frank, you know I didn’t do this.”

There was a long pause. When he spoke, there was a tinge of anger in his voice. “You want to hear what we’ve got so far?”

“You know I do.”

“We’ve got hair and semen. It’ll be a few weeks before we get a sure DNA match, but serology results show it’s your blood type. AB negative. I don’t have to tell you how rare that is.”

He didn’t. It was a trait my brother, Randall, and I had both inherited from our father. “Okay. So it’s rare. There’s still plenty of guys in Nashville with AB negative blood.”

“We’ve got your fingerprints. We’ve got your name all through her Palm Pilot. We’ve got a message from you on her voice mail telling her she’s one dead bitch if she doesn’t quit screwing around. We’ve got a witness puts your truck at the crime scene, and the receptionist there says a man of your approximate height and weight checked into that room. Guy had a beard, but we all know you wear disguises.”

“You think I’m dumb enough to leave my hair and semen all over a crime scene? Or forget to wipe my prints? You think I’m dumb enough to leave a threat like that on tape?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. But it’s a crime of passion, which as we both know, makes men stupid.”

“You really think I did this?”

“I don’t know what I think. Why don’t you give us all a break? Come on in and tell us how it happened.”

“I can’t tell you how it happened. I wasn’t there.”

I heard a long exhalation on the other end of the line. When he spoke again, his voice had softened. “Mac, I can help you, but you gotta give me something.”

The nickname was a razor through the heart. I’d trusted Frank with my life, as he had trusted me with his, and now that trust was eroding like a child’s sand castle. But if he could still call me ‘Mac,’ maybe there was hope for it. I squeezed a breath past the knot in my throat and said, “Look, I’ll get back to you later, when I know what’s going on.”

I hung up before they could trace the call. Hand on the receiver, I laid my throbbing forehead against the wall and thought about Heather.

I’ll get rid of this on the way to the fridge
. But had she? She’d stopped at the trash basket, but had she actually dropped the condom in it? Or had she put it in the refrigerator when she went to get the wine? I remembered how she’d held the glasses, primly, by the stems, and thought that maybe it was something more than primness that had made her hold them that way.