The Debt Collector (32 page)

“You see, I had this prejudice when I got into this business. I thought the majority of the clients were …” He waved a hand. “Deadbeats. People who run up bills, people who have no intention of paying, cons and criminals, people on the fringe. Guys who, if they aren't actively working the underbelly, have connections to that world, leanings if nothing else. I figured I'd get the debts paid, maybe give these jokers a break for information, pass it along to my old buddies on the job. Keep my hand in, even make a sort of living in the only world I know.”

“And what about the people who are just hitting a rough patch? People like Joy and Carl Stinnet?”

He raised a finger. Gave her a crooked half smile. “Ah, yes. But I had that covered, or so I thought.
Those
people would be treated with kindness, Detective. Hell, I've been there myself; there were times when my son was young, Lacy and me scrambling for groceries, packing lunches. I planned to let it go, forgive debts, when I could swing the finances. Plenty of times I let people off the hook. Check it out if you don't believe me.”

“I did.”

He lifted his chin. “Of course you did. Of course you did, Detective. But there were so many of them. So many good people, all in some kind of a bind, medical bills, work layoffs. People dying of cancer. Single mothers struggling in shit jobs with low pay and child support coming about as often as a blizzard in July. How could I collect from people like that? I kept … losing track.” He tapped the side of his head. “I have good days and bad days. Some days, would you believe, I have no sense of smell? Other days, it's so acute it's unbelievable, I'm like a basset hound, it's wonderful.”

He pointed at the flower in her hair. “Can you smell the orchid? It's a beautiful scent, a delicate thing. I always keep one on my desk. One, because my wife loved them. I know this because I have it written down. And two, because if I can smell it then I know I am together and I can face the day. When I can't smell the orchid, I stay in the shadows.”

Sonora leaned forward, elbows on her knees, empty cup dangling from her fingers. “You have it written down? That your wife loved orchids? What do you mean by that?”

“Haven't you been listening? Detective, have you ever lost anyone close to you?”

She knew he had checked her out, researched her. She knew that he knew about Stuart. “Don't play with me, Van Owen.” A dangerous button for him to be pushing. His first serious misstep.

“Four years ago you lost your brother to a serial killer.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“Everybody does. Were you close?”

“Not playing.”

“Close.” He tapped a finger on the desk. “As much as your grief … pains you, wouldn't it be worse if his name was only that? A name? And you lost all your memories of him? There are worse things than losing someone to death, Detective.” He pointed to the left side of his head. “Lose their memory, and then they're really gone. When my wife and son died, I was … I went under. It was like a wave over my head. But bad as that was, I see it now as something precious. For two years, that grief looked out at me in the mirror every morning when I shaved, every night when I brushed my teeth.” He massaged his temples. “That bullet didn't just take my job, it took my grief. You, who lost your brother, you can understand about missing grief. Sometimes I remember my wife, and it's like I lose her all over again. But the pain is worth it, Sonora, because I get her back here.” He put a fist over his heart. “And that, Detective, is a pain that I cherish.”

She did not want to understand, but she did.
He is weirder than shit
, she told herself, in a hard inner voice, looking for distance as fast as she could. She set the coffee cup on the floor, at the edge of the brick-red rug.

“How could you let it happen, Jack? Aruba and Kinkle? Turned loose on people like the Stinnets? You knew better, you had to know. A cop like you, with your street smarts, your instincts. Crick says you were damn near psychic. And it's not just Crick. You are—you were—a legend, Jack. I never hear your name without reverence. You've been gone for eleven years and they
still
talk about you, dammit.”

“Kinkle worked the phones and the desk in the storefront on Delaney Road. He wasn't ever supposed to leave the office. I never figured on Aruba.”

“You didn't hire him?”

“
Aruba?
I didn't even know he was out of jail.”

“He was Kinkle's uncle.”

“Step-uncle.”

“You sent them out to do collections, Jack. How could you?”

He was shaking his head. “No, Sonora, no possible way. They were screwing me, the two of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that when I let a debt go, Kinkle and Aruba would collect and pocket the money.”

“Oh my God.”

He was nodding. “I told you I have bad days? Kinkle knew that. Knew I didn't always … have a handle on things. Do I think he would have done it without Aruba? I don't think he had the nerve, but the idea had to be his. Maybe they hatched it together. It's too easy to underestimate Kinkle.”

“There was a third man, that day at the Stinnets',” Sonora said.

Van Owen's face stayed impassive. “No.”

“Somebody punched Aruba. Somebody stopped him from raping that girl.”

“Kinkle.”

“Kinkle my ass. Joy Stinnet saw him. She called him the Angel. That was you, wasn't it, Jack? You're the Angel.”

Van Owen smiled with a self-confidence that was unsettling, that told her she was wrong wrong wrong, she didn't have it yet.

“Detective, we are talking about a woman who was near death. A woman who was saying her catechism. Maybe she was having a religious experience. Maybe she
saw
an angel.”

“How did you know that?”

“Know what?”

“That she was saying her catechism.”

A pause. “I read it. It was in the report.”

“No it wasn't.”

“It was in the report.”

“If it wasn't you, Jack, who then? Who are you protecting?”

“Give it up, Detective. You've got your men, Aruba and Kinkle.”

“Both dead.”

“They deserved to die.” He waved a hand at the wall. “Look at that. I've looked at it every single morning since it happened. I face that every day and know it was my fault and my responsibility. I will never take those pictures down and I will never forget. And I take care of my responsibilities.”

“It was you, Van Owen. You're the Angel. You set this up, you made it happen, you walked into that crime scene and you made it stop, you were just too damn late.”

“I was shopping at Wal-Mart, Detective, like the rest of the population. I wasn't there. And I guarantee you that you have not found one piece of evidence, one strand of hair, one drop of blood, one tiny little scrap of DNA that puts me there, because if you had, you wouldn't be sitting over on that couch all by yourself. It's time to let go, Detective. I read you the last page, I showed you the end, now walk away.”

She stood up. “I am not going to let this go.”

He looked tired suddenly, almost uninterested. He rested his elbows on the top of his desk and looked up at her. “You have a life, Sonora. You have kids, you have a career and a mortgage and a horse. Walk away.”

66

Sonora, trying to sleep in the next morning, found that she couldn't. The thought of walking into the bullpen, the thought of seeing Crick, was like a brick wall she could not get around. She headed into the kitchen to make coffee, passed the television, saw the little footprint in the dust on the screen. Thinking how children can be precious and horrible all at the same time.

She didn't want coffee. She didn't want to be at work, she didn't want to be in the house. She decided to go shopping.

Sonora took the Visa card she had paid down, kept it tight in a sweaty fist, looking at all the pretties. She took her time, bought two portable CD players that were on sale for sixty-nine dollars and ninety-eight cents apiece. Imagined Heather and Tim's faces when they saw them. Then she went to Abercrombie & Fitch and bought each of them a flannel shirt, gift-wrapped for no particular reason. She stopped at the pet store and got pig ears for Clampett.

She was home before the kids got out of school. Walked in through the garage, saw Clampett stretched out in front of his water bowl, watching a mouse perched on the edge, drinking tiny mouse sips.

“You are way too kind, puppy dog.” She sent him straight to dog heaven with three pig ears all at once.

For some weird reason she was crying as she arranged the gifts on the kitchen table, a big surprise for the kids. Something out of the blue, because Mom loves you.

This business with Crick was a hard one. She felt bewildered, and oddly hurt. She had always looked up to him, admired him. He was a tough boss and a good cop and kind of scary to work for, demanding and cynical, but with an ethical core she could depend on. He protected his people, ran interference; no one could have been kinder when Stuart was killed. And now. Now she didn't know what to think. Maybe best if she didn't.

On impulse she called Gillane, caught the message on his machine. “Hi,” she said. “Just called to say hello.”

That night she worked alone, sitting behind her desk in the bullpen in the middle of the night, feeling weirdly nostalgic. Her life seemed divided now, to before and after the Stinnets. She missed the before, missed the time when being behind that desk in the dead of night felt like overtime, not refuge.

She missed the hell out of Sam. She was odd man out now; she knew she was watched, suspected, banished from the inner circle. It would not be possible to feel more alone.

Sonora rubbed her face, stared at the computer screen. She had the accident report; she had gone through every death certificate in every relevant year. Lacy Van Owen had died thirteen years ago in a car accident in Union, Kentucky, but there was no mention of son Van Owen, and no death certificate that she could find. She did, however, find a birth certificate, dated 1972. Angelo David Van Owen: aka—the Angel?

Sonora stood alone, barely breathing, in the hallway on the seventh floor of Van Owen's warehouse. There was no light, except what leaked in through the grime-soaked windows, neon and moonlight, the uncaring eye of the city. This was, indeed, a place that she knew, a place she did not want to be, but a place she had known was coming. Portents.

Her night vision was not good. She gave her eyes time to adjust. For once in her life she was not in a hurry. She had come before, in her mind, many many times. And she had never, in her mind, come back out again.

Some people never made peace with death. It was not a bad place to be.

Sonora was aware of the beat of her heart. The crumbling black plastic quarter round at the base of the brick walls. The mildew-stained linoleum. She smelled the accumulated filth of the institution. She smelled the years of minimal, uncaring upkeep combined with heavy, indifferent use, which had left layers of scent and fatigue. No one had ever loved this building.

She walked slowly, listening. She had her barn boots on, worn brown Ariats, and they gave her an elusive frisson of good feeling, bringing to mind the smell of horses, the feel of old tack, the sweet scent of baled hay. But they also made her footsteps loud. She crouched close to the floor, unlaced the boots, and left them behind.

Before, she had been like a swimmer, not wanting to touch her feet to the bottom of that dark place, struggling up to the surface for light and air and relief.

She would not struggle, no longer willing to make that particular effort. She would let her feet touch bottom and she would be still. There was no light in the depths where she was, but she could still breathe, slowly and quietly, she could feel her way, blindly and—wonderful, this—peaceful now, and not at all afraid.

67

Sonora had passed him by before she paused and headed back two steps, drawn by the black shaded lamp and the man who sat alone behind the desk, contemplating the pool of light. He was as still as death; she thought for a moment he was dead. All she could see was the back of his head, the battered brown leather chair, his feet flat on the floor.

“Your feet must be cold, Detective.”

The chair turned ever so slowly. She could only think, as she always did, how easy it was to watch Jack Van Owen. Wondering what he would do next, wondering what he would say.

What was it about him that drew the eye, even in a room full of people? How could he generate such presence—was it a natural attribute, did he do it on a conscious level?

Perhaps it was a primitive recognition that this man was way ahead, having thoughts and opinions you definitely wanted to know. Intentions it would be safer for you to be aware of.

Perhaps it was a recognition of danger. No point in watching your back if this man was in the room; better for you if you watched him.

Sonora curled her toes. Her feet were indeed cold, and it was a shocked joyousness, that cold through the socks on her feet.

Either way she could not take her eyes off Jack Van Owen. She listened for footsteps behind her and heard nothing. She did not think she would have looked away.

So familiar now, the roundish face, the stocky build, five feet ten inches tall. Thinning black hair, brown eyes that went flat with danger but were warm now with an intimacy he could project from across the room.

And there he was smiling at her, and she caught herself smiling back. There was something in his eyes, an attentiveness she craved.

“You think about it a lot lately, don't you, Sonora?”

Sonora swallowed. She knew exactly what he meant. She should arrest him now and end this. But she couldn't. She wanted to hear more. He was talking about her now, the inside of her, like he knew. And she believed that he did know. And she could not help but wonder if he had some kind of insight here. Maybe, somehow, he could save her. Maybe it was not too late.