Tell No Lies (19 page)

“So do you.”

“Your wife works in the projects with a lot of shady characters. She has an ex with a history of violence.”

Daniel said, “Careful, Theresa.”

She held up her hands. “I’m just saying. We can’t locate her ex.”

“Well, we know he’s not in my group.”

“But who’s to say he didn’t write those letters? Or that he isn’t screwing Xochitl on the side or running with Martin?”

“’Cuz they’re all Mexicans?” he said.

“’Cuz they’re all convicted criminals.”

He tapped a fist on the stack of files. “We have two feet of documents, a hundred ifs, and nothing concrete. Is the point to grow the leads until we can’t keep track of them?”

“The point is to look at every possible option until we nail this guy’s ass to the electric chair.” She pointed with her fork to the calzone. “You gonna eat that?”

He shoved the plate at her and started to scoot out from the booth.

“When you go back to Metro South tomorrow night,” she said, “we’ll have folks in position. Someone in the garage to make sure you make it to the elevator. You’re safer inside the building past the metal detectors. The suspect’s less likely to try something public, but I’m not taking any risks. When you’re in session, I’ll be in the building. Keep me on speed dial—program it so you can hold down a single key on your phone to call me.”

“A panic button.”

“You’ll still need to be careful in there.”

“I always am,” he said, sliding out to leave. “It’s a dangerous job.”

“Yeah?” Her fork paused midway to her face. “Well, it just got
more
dangerous.”

Chapter 28

After the lunch meeting with Theresa, Daniel braved midday traffic across the city, heading to a carpet warehouse in Diamond Heights. His perky Realtor had left him a message offering to meet there so they could peruse “approved carpet choices” for his new office. This excursion was of course a pretext for her to get the lease paperwork signed. Comparing Berber to cut pile was a trifling activity on any day, but in light of recent events it also seemed mindless and distracting, and he figured he could use a little of both.

Picking over the enormous rolls, he found himself unable to process the salesman’s rapid-fire specifications of dye methods and stain treatments. He couldn’t pry his mind from Kyle Lane, tomorrow night’s group session, and the host of concerns massed around the two. Eager to get out of there, he demurred to his Realtor, who had a strong preference for a beige frost textured Saxony. Still, she caught him ducking into his car with the paperwork in her hand, pen at the ready. He set the contract on the roof, the time of lease jumping out at him—
24 months.
She must have noticed his hesitation, because she said, “Did I get something wrong?”

“No. It’s just a big move.”

“A lot of people feel that way,” she said. Through oversize sunglasses, her gaze again shifted to his bloodshot eye; she’d been too polite to ask but not too polite to refrain from staring. “The commitment can feel a bit daunting. But keep in mind, if something doesn’t work out, you can always terminate and give up the deposit and two months’ rent.” Quickly, she added, “You would, of course, have to reimburse the carpet allowance.”

“Of course,” he said, and signed on the unbroken line.

Driving home, weaving north through traffic, he realized he was going to pass within a few blocks of Kyle Lane’s house. Almost involuntarily, his hands moved the wheel, detouring him.

Crime-scene tape crisscrossed the front door. As Daniel rolled forward along the curb, the narrow side alley crept into view. He felt his temperature rise, the flashback coming at him hard and fast.

The black-clad form, scaling the gate with animal dexterity. The smell of tar. Daniel sprinting, walls squeezing him at either shoulder. The ill-timed leap, the clang as he’d hit the bars. The killer overhead, nearly through the gap, the black boot not yet withdrawn to deal him the blow to the face. A tearing sound. The ring of metal striking ground—

Wait.

Daniel hit the brakes, the car halting with a chirp.

The ring of metal. Striking ground.

He’d forgotten that part.

He heard Dooley’s words in his head:
Shit spills outta pockets, Brasher. Especially when you tear them
.

So something
else
had fallen from the killer’s pocket? A key?

But they hadn’t recovered anything metal from the crime scene; they’d focused immediately on the business card.

Daniel parked and climbed out, feeling his pulse quicken as he crossed the front lawn. He stood before the alley, peering cautiously up its length. Then he slid between the two houses, angling his shoulders slightly as he walked toward the gate.

He arrived and crouched, exhaling with disappointment. Nothing on the ground.

Backing up, he kept searching in case the object had bounced away. A downspout brushed his elbow. He followed the corrugated pipe up to where it intersected the gutter, then down to where it met the ground. Dropping to all fours, he peered behind the pipe’s mouth. Wedged behind it, barely visible, was a sliver of notched metal.

The edge of a quarter.

Daniel removed a credit card from his wallet and used it to poke at the coin until it rattled free out the other side.

It looked brand-new, the silver face so shiny that even here in the alley it winked back the diffuse sunlight. Careful not to touch it, Daniel drew closer to read the date stamped beneath George Washington’s neck—
1967.
Nearly fifty years old.

And yet its condition was pristine.

Was it a keepsake? A collector’s piece?

Daniel flashed on being inside Kyle Lane’s living room with Dooley, how when she’d set her feet on the coffee table, they’d jangled the change resting in a black Wedgwood dish. Were those special coins? Had the killer stolen the quarter from that dish?

Back around to the porch now, excitement and anxiety quickening his step. The front door was still askew from when the rookie officer had kicked it in. Daniel lifted a knuckle through the slants of crime-scene tape and tapped a splintered panel. The door creaked unevenly open. Bending at the waist, he crab-stepped inside.

The quiet of the house felt strange. A foyer table held a bouquet of browning roses and an empty cardboard box on its side, giving out a spill of packing gauze. Staring at the photograph of the wind chimes on the box’s side, Daniel thought about the life interrupted here. Just a few days prior, Lane had placed these flowers in the vase and hung the new chimes, nestling himself into another week.

Down the hall, the wind sucked at the broken bedroom window.

As Daniel moved to the living room, he was drawn to those framed photographs on the piano—Kyle Lane with his wispy ponytail and focused, intelligent eyes. Where was he? What had been done to him?

Daniel crossed to the stack of coffee-table books on Tuscany, the black Wedgwood dish resting atop them as an accent note. Half filled with coins, most of them scuffed and worn. He stirred the mound with a forefinger, but the underlying change, too, looked ordinary enough.

He breathed the silence, making out the faintest jangle of the chimes—
ting, ting.
The sickly-sweet potpourri scent was making him vaguely nauseous, and he had a sudden urge to flee.

He forced an even pace back to the front door and ducked through the crime-scene tape out onto the porch. The breeze had died, the air laced with car fumes.

Ting-ting.

He froze on the wooden slats, noting the dead air, too still to coax music from a wind chime.

Slowly, he turned his head to take in the ornate chime. There it hung from the overhead hook.

Except each suspended metal tube was still packaged in shipping foam, locked in place apart from the others. Kyle Lane hadn’t yet had time to free the chimes, which meant it wasn’t possible for them to jangle against one another.

What, then, had Daniel been hearing all this time?

Ting-ting.

As the sound registered again, he stared at the chimes, perfectly still, perfectly silent.

Though his gaze never faltered, the phone was lifting to his ear, his thumb speed-dialing. He waited through two rings, and then she answered.

“I’m at Kyle Lane’s,” he told Dooley. “Get here now.”

“Lane’s? You’re not inside, are you?”

He hung up and stepped back into the house.

He’d been late through a door once, and it had cost Marisol Vargas her life. No matter what waited, he wasn’t going to let it wait longer.

An electric buzz prickled his skin as he inched back into the living room. His cell phone rang—Dooley calling back—and he silenced it quickly. He set his feet down carefully, straining to make out the noise again. Ahead in the china hutch, the wineglasses gleamed in all their variety—Burgundies with their fat bowls, pinot noirs with their flared rims. He looked from them to the collection of Tuscany photography books, then eased silently into the simple galley kitchen with its bare counters.

No wine fridge. No wine rack. He checked the cupboards.

No wine.

Ting-ting.

The noise was barely audible, yet he tensed in his shoes. He turned to the back hall, the framed Campari posters and wall sconces, the white shag carpet and the Aztec rug.

A rug. On a carpet.

Given Lane’s taste, this seemed an odd choice. Unless he’d been trying to cover something up.

Daniel braced himself and walked over as silently as possible, each step an agony. With the toe of his shoe, he flipped back the rug to reveal the outline of a hatch in the carpeting.

Wine cellar.

Ting-ting.

The sound, rising through the floor.

His heart thudding, he leaned forward and lifted the hinged metal ring from its groove. A drop of sweat ran into his left eye, stinging, but he didn’t dare move his arm to wipe it away—
ting-ting
—because any superfluous gesture and he’d lose his nerve. Bracing, he threw the hatch open, the sight ten feet below grabbing at him—
ting-ting
—Kyle Lane sprawled on his back on the concrete floor, his skin so gray it looked nearly reptilian, a bib of blood hanging on his shirt. One of his hands was caked with blood and clamped over his own throat, his sleeve sodden to the elbow. The other hand was nestled weakly in a tangle of silverware that had fallen from its velvet-lined box—
ting-ting
—sounding a meek alarm.

His throat had been sliced, and the only thing keeping the breath in his windpipe was the seal of his own hand.

Slits beneath his eyes drained blood. His legs were twisted, one ankle tied with a strip of cloth to the leg of a knocked-over wooden chair at the periphery of the shaft of light. Wine racks rimmed the small cellar, save one set of shelves devoted to storage, from which Lane had no doubt jarred free the silverware with which he was trying to summon help.

With horror, Daniel realized that Lane had been sounding that same alarm even last night as the cops had creaked the floorboards with their heavy boots. Even as Daniel had arrived and talked with Dooley, chased the attacker, returned to walk everyone through the house yet again. How tantalizing the murmur of conversation must have been overhead. And yet Lane couldn’t grunt or scream or cry for help, couldn’t even move his hand off his throat without leaking his air and sputtering to death. All he’d been able to do was stir the fallen forks and spoons with his fingertips and pray that someone heard the sound and found him entombed in this concrete box.

The scene below was like the sun—staring at it directly made something burn behind the eyes. It nailed Daniel to the floor, iced the breath in his lungs, turned him to stone. No more than a second or two had passed.

The bulging eyes fixed Daniel. The fingertips weakly nudged the spilled silver—
ting-ting
—a last time, and then Daniel was scrambling down the brief ladder, shouting for help though he knew no one could hear, his panicked voice bouncing off the walls. He slid across the floor to Kyle, his knees scattering the silverware—
ting-ting-ting-ting
—and cradled him, firming his hand on top of Kyle’s fingers, helping clamp the throat, his palm instantly warm and tacky.

Kyle’s hand went loose beneath his, the muscles no doubt spent. Daniel fastened his grip, trying to preserve the airway. With his other hand, he fought his cell phone out, thumbed
CALL
—“Where the hell are you?”

“Turning onto the block now,” Dooley said. “What’s—”

“Get an ambulance here,
now.
”

Kyle clutched at Daniel’s collar with his free hand. The words, a drawn-out rasp. “…’on’t ’eave…”

Daniel let the phone fall, tried to steady him. “I won’t leave. I won’t leave. It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not—”

Kyle’s arm went limp, giving out entirely, and Daniel felt the next breath hissing through their fingers. He flung Kyle’s hand aside and clamped the throat directly. “I got you. I got you now.”

Kyle arched his back violently, his heels rattling the floor.

“No,
no.
You’re okay. They’re almost— The ambulance— You’re okay.”

A few bubbles emerged at the sticky seams between his fingers.

And then no more.

He heard Dooley barrel through the front door overhead, shouting for him, but he couldn’t find his voice to yell back. A few moments later, he sensed her shadow darken the cellar floor, and then she was half falling down the ladder, at his side, checking for a pulse, saying, “He’s gone. Daniel. He’s gone,” but he wouldn’t let go.

Eight minutes later when the ambulance arrived, he finally let her pry his cramped fingers from Kyle’s throat.

Chapter 29

Breathing in the stillness of Kyle Lane’s powder room, Daniel leaned over the faucet, scouring his forearms, the cracks of his knuckles, the beds of his nails. As he scrubbed, the water turned rust-colored in the bowl of the sink. He kept at it, waiting for the water to stay clear against the porcelain.