Stripped (7 page)

She had only told Jonny bits and pieces about her past and about what was happening to her now. Partly, she was used to relying on herself and dealing with her problems alone. She didn’t want help. Partly, she didn’t want to scare him away by showing him that she wasn’t solid to the core, that her armor had been pierced.

Besides, she knew
he
was struggling, too, trying to find his way. Homeless. That was as much as he’d been able to say to her. He felt homeless. Serena understood how he felt, being displaced from the only life he had known, but hearing him talk like that set off all kinds of warning bells in her mind. As if one day he would decide that home was somewhere else, away from Vegas, away from her.

Serena pulled into an open-air lot on the north side of the Meadows Mall. It was
her
mall, just a few miles from her town home; she had shopped there for years. No talking statues and giant aquariums, like at Caesars. No stores catering to celebrities who dropped a hundred thousand dollars a visit. It was just Macy’s and Foot Locker and RadioShack, the kind of ordinary stores where ordinary people shopped. Serena loved it, because the whole mall felt normal, like it could be dropped into any other suburb in any other city. There was nothing Vegas about it.

At five in the morning, the parking lot was a vast, empty stretch of pavement, just a handful of lonely cars spread out like pins on a map. The streetlights were still on, throwing pale circles of light on the ground, but dawn was near. Halfway across the lot, a patrol car was waiting for them. Its headlights were on, its engine running. As they pulled alongside, Serena saw that the officer at the wheel had his window rolled down, his arm dangling outside, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. The car they had come to see was parked twenty yards away, a midnight blue Pontiac Aztek.

Seeing them, the policeman scrambled out of his patrol car and reached back in to stub out his cigarette. He was gangly and tall, and his uniform was baggy at the shoulders. His blond hair was cut as if his mother still sat him in a chair and clipped him with a bowl over his head. He kept picking at his long chin as if he had a pimple that wouldn’t go away. Serena didn’t think he could be more than twenty years old, and she realized that he was both terribly earnest and terribly nervous.

Serena got out of her Mustang. “Good morning, officer,” she said. “You got us out here pretty early.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he told her, with a Texas twang in his voice. “I do realize that, and I’m real sorry. I’m Officer Tom Crawford, ma’am.”

Serena introduced herself and Cordy, and Crawford did everything but curtsy.

“How long have you been on the force, Tom?” Serena asked.

“Oh, coming on a month, I guess.”

Pretending to rub his eye, Cordy glanced at Serena and mouthed, “Shit.”

Serena shook her head and sighed. Rookies.

“Well, Tom, you’ve got a blue car here. We had a witness who thought she saw a blue car speeding away after the hit-and-run on the boy, but that was in Summerlin, which is several miles and a few tax brackets away from here.”

Crawford nodded, still scratching his chin. “Yes, ma’am, I read the incident report about that boy Peter Hale and the hit-and-run in Summerlin. Terrible thing. Word for word, I did. And I’ve had my eyes open all week for a blue car. See, we got a call overnight from the security company that patrols these lots, and they said this here car hadn’t been touched in at least a week or so, and they were figuring it was abandoned. They were planning on having it towed, and they wanted to know if we wanted to take a look at it first. The overnight super, he thought we should just let them yank it, but I heard it was blue, see, and we’re just a whiz straight down the parkway from Summerlin, and that accident was just about a week ago. So I thought it was worth checking out.”

“It took the security company a week to call it in?” Serena asked, shaking her head.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so. They rotate a lot, is what I think, and the guy who made the rounds tonight hadn’t been in the lot since last weekend.”

“Go on,” Serena told him, yawning, and hoping she hadn’t been dragged out of bed for nothing.

“Well, when I came out here, the first thing I did was check the front of the car. And sure enough—well, let me just show it to you.”

With loping strides, Officer Crawford guided them around to the front of the Aztek and used the big steel flashlight on his belt to illuminate the car. Serena sucked in her breath. The dead center of the hood was bowed, the grill punched in. The shell of the bumper was cracked and the license plate twisted as if it were on its way to becoming a paper airplane.

Crawford got down on his knees. “If you look real close here, you can see fibers stuck on the grill. There’s other stuff, too, could be skin and blood.”

Serena had seen half-eaten corpses in the desert without her stomach turning over, but something about the damage to the car—not much damage at all, really, for what it had done—left her swallowing back bile. “Good work, Tom,” she told him somberly.

Cordy was silent, but his copper skin paled. He kicked the ground with the toe of his shoe, his hands shoved in his pockets. Only Crawford seemed unaffected and even enthusiastic about what he had found—but he was young, and this was a big deal, the kind of story he’d be telling the other rookies for the next year. He hadn’t been in the Summerlin street last Friday afternoon to see Peter Hale’s broken body, blood puddling under his head. To hear his mother wailing. To see the vacant, dead grief in his father’s eyes.

It was an upper-middle-class neighborhood, the kind where both parents had good jobs and twelve-year-old boys were latchkey kids, taking the bus home after school, letting themselves inside to watch television and play video games. Linda and Carter Hale thought they were lucky. Linda Hale didn’t work. Peter had someone to open the door for him after school. He had been playing outside in the driveway, tossing a tennis ball against the door and catching it in his mitt, when Linda Hale heard the thump all the way inside the kitchen. And she knew, the way any mother knows that something catastrophic has happened. She found Peter outside, half on the sidewalk, half on the street. No one around. No witnesses. The most they found was a maid three blocks away who caught a glimpse of a blue car racing through the neighborhood around the time of the accident. The lab was dragging its feet figuring out the model from the blue paint and the pieces of grill. Serena knew that didn’t matter now. It was an Aztek. It was this car.

“Did you search inside the car?” Serena asked.

“No, ma’am, I sure didn’t,” Crawford assured her. “The car was locked, and that wouldn’t be procedure anyway. I didn’t touch a thing.”

“How about running the plates?”

“Well, that I did do. Yes, ma’am. The car is registered to Mr. Lawrence Busby. He doesn’t have a sheet. Thirty-four, African American, six-foot-two, two hundred forty-five pounds. Or that’s what his driver’s license says. Mr. Busby reported the car stolen at eight thirty last Friday night.”

“Several hours after the accident,” Serena said. “Isn’t that convenient?”

Crawford offered her a shy, country-boy smile. “I thought so myself. A little too convenient. That’s why I offered Mr. Busby a free ride over here to collect his vehicle.”

“You did what?” Cordy asked.

“I got the supervisor to send a patrol car over to Mr. Busby’s home on Bonanza. You know, in case he decided to make like a prairie dog and scamper. Then I called him. Told him we had found his car and we’d be happy to bring him over to the scene. He should be here in a couple minutes.”

“You’re one smart Texan, Officer Crawford,” Serena told him.

“Thank you, ma’am. That’s what my mama says. My wife, she’s not so sure.”

“How did Busby sound on the phone?”

“Well, the first thing he asked was whether there was any damage,” Crawford said. “Guess that’s natural, but I thought it was interesting. I told him it was nothing a good body shop couldn’t make go away.”

Serena thought about it, trying to put herself in Busby’s shoes. He’s just killed a kid. He’s afraid someone saw the car, or that he left evidence behind at the scene that would lead them right to his doorstep. Another perp who watches too much
CSI
. So he ditches the car at the mall, then hops the bus home and reports it stolen. If he’s lucky, no one ever connects it to the accident. If they do, he’s laid the blame on someone else.

But something didn’t smell right. The Summerlin neighborhood in which the Hales lived was lily-white, and she figured that a black man the size of Lawrence Busby would have attracted somebody’s attention. She also couldn’t understand why Busby, who lived a couple of miles from downtown, would be speeding around a residential neighborhood on the far west side of the city.

“Open the car for us, will you, Crawford?” Serena asked. “I’d like to take a look before Busby gets here.”

“Don’t we need a warrant for that?”

Serena shrugged. “That’s a stolen vehicle, according to Mr. Busby. We need to look for evidence of who stole it.”

Crawford popped the trunk of his patrol car, pulled out a stiff narrow wire with a loop at one end, and disengaged the lock on the driver’s door of the Aztek in a few seconds. Taking care not to disturb any prints, he gingerly swung the door open.

Serena peered inside, then squeezed behind the wheel. She looked around. Busby had cleaned up after himself. The interior was spotless, vacuumed clean, no papers or trash. With the tip of a pen, she opened the glove compartment, but found only the owner’s manual inside. She pulled open the ashtray. It was unused.

She heard the back door open.

“Anything up front?” Cordy asked.

“Zip.”

“I’ll check under the seats.”

Serena saw a flashlight beam scooting like a searchlight on the floor.

Cordy whistled. “Come to papa,” he said. “Got a piece of paper here. Looks like a receipt.”

Serena got out of the car and watched Cordy maneuver his arm under the seat. He emerged triumphantly a few seconds later, clutching a two-inch by three-inch white slip in the tiny jaws of a tweezer. He shined the flashlight on the paper, and Serena leaned in with him to get a better look.

The receipt was from a convenience store somewhere near Reno, more than four hundred miles to the north. Six Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a Sprite at eight in the morning. Breakfast of champions. The receipt was dated more than two weeks prior to the accident.

“I reckon that’s Mr. Busby now,” Crawford said, as a second patrol car pulled silently into the lot.

As the car drew closer, Serena could see what looked like a grizzly bear in the front passenger seat. His driver’s license stats didn’t do him justice. Lawrence Busby had to weigh three hundred pounds. He had a moon-shaped face, black hair cut as flat as a pan on top of his skull, and jowls that drooped like the face of a bloodhound. Serena could see a sheen on the man’s ebony face. He was sweating.

“I bet
his
breasts are bigger than yours, too,” Cordy said, winking.

Serena fought back a grin. She saw Busby reaching for the door handle, and she held up a hand like a crossing guard stopping traffic in its tracks. The woman cop inside the car spoke sharply to Busby, and Serena saw the whites of his eyes get bigger. He put his hands back in his lap. Now he was sweating and scared.

Cordy crooked a finger at the cop in the patrol car, who got out and joined them. Serena approached the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. She left the door open, then used a button to roll down the passenger window. Cordy came over on that side, leaning his elbows on the door.

The car stank. Busby was wearing a gigantic Running Rebels T-shirt, and odor wafted from the wet stains at his pits and under his neck. His legs, like tree trunks, grew out of white shorts. Shifting nervously, he passed gas, then mumbled an apology. His eyes darted back and forth between Serena and Cordy.

“Mr. Busby?” Serena asked. “Is that your car there?”

Busby nodded. His chins swayed.

“How long have you owned it?”

“ ’Bout two months,” Busby mumbled. For a large man, he had a voice so soft that Serena had to strain to hear him.

Cordy jutted his face through the window. “You fit in that car, man? I wouldn’t think you’d fit in that car. What do you do, steer with that gut of yours there?”

Busby looked like he was about to cry.

“That’s enough, Cordy,” Serena said sharply. “What do you do for a living, Mr. Busby?”

“I’m a chef at the Lady Luck downtown.”

“A chef!” Cordy hooted. “They ever wonder why the guests look hungry and you got a big smile on your face?”

Busby meekly shook his head. “I don’t steal nothin’.”

“Do you work any other jobs?” Serena asked. “Anything to bring in a little extra cash?”

“No, I’ve been full-time at the Lady Luck for five years.”

“You ever been to Summerlin, Mr. Busby?”

“That rich place out west? Don’t think so. No reason to.”

“You didn’t go out there last Friday afternoon?” Serena continued.

“No. Like I said, I’ve never been there.” He wiped his forehead with a hand the size of a football. “What’s this all about?”

“This is about the kid you killed, you lying sack of shit,” Cordy told him.

Busby shook his head furiously. His eyes got even bigger and whiter. “I never killed nobody.”

“You ran down a little boy,” Cordy insisted. “Then you ran away like a piece of pussy, didn’t have the balls to tell his mother what you did.”

“You’re crazy,” Busby murmured. He turned to Serena. “He’s crazy. I didn’t do that. No way.”

“You want to tell us how your car got stolen?” Serena asked coolly.

“I parked in the Fremont Street lot downtown last Friday. When I came back, it was gone. I called it in. That’s what happened.”

“This was about eight thirty in the evening?”

“Guess so,” Busby replied. “Sounds about right.”

“And what were you doing downtown?” Serena asked. “Playing the slots?”

“I wasn’t playing, I was working,” Busby said. “Like I told you, I cook sausage and eggs at the Lady Luck.”