The Ten-Mile Trials (12 page)

Luckily, before our toxic cocktail grew irreversibly lethal, Red made the mistake of giving me a cut lip one morning. She tried to keep me home from school, but I got away from her and ran for the bus. My teacher noticed my swollen mouth and took me to the school nurse. The nurse unbuttoned my shirt, found my bruises, and called the police. I spent some time in a shelter, grim but fairly safe, before they found me another foster home. I heard Red lost her license, which must have been inconvenient for her too.

‘Nothing like that is ever going to happen to Ben,' I told Trudy, holding her, kissing her neck. ‘We'll keep him safe.'

‘I know. But isn't it weird how fast parenthood turns you into a wuss? I've never felt vulnerable in my life before. Now I think about safety systems all day long.'

‘Tell me about it,' I said. ‘I've checked the air in my tires so many times the guy who runs my gas station asked me if I thought my gauge wasn't working right.'

I pulled up in front of Maxine's house at twenty after five. The house on the corner was boarded up and silent. In Maxine's house, I said a hasty hello/goodbye to Maxine and Eddy while I hoisted the little man out of his crib. He was just waking up, doing his usual greeting kicks and gurgles. Without pausing to admire them, I grabbed the big plastic bag full of diapers and bottles and the many products for keeping his tiny butt smooth, and humped the whole load out to my truck. When he was strapped firmly into the best child safety seat money could buy, I set out for the town of Mirium, forty miles distant.

It used to seem just a few tunes away – exactly right for a little decompression spin between work and home. That Monday night, as my son looked around curiously for five minutes, whimpered and gnawed his knuckles for ten, and then screamed at the top of his lungs for the remaining eighteen, I began to believe that the distance between Rutherford and Mirium was approximately the same as the width of the Sahara Desert at its widest point, and for the last few minutes of the crossing I would not have been surprised to see dying camels stretched out along the roadside.

I carried my desperately bellowing son into the house and handed him to my wife, who beamed at me as if I'd brought her a nice present. She was aglow. In two minutes she had Ben changed and contentedly drinking a warm bottle of milk on her lap. She told me there were potatoes baking, suggested I start the grill for chops. ‘Then,' she said, ‘why don't you open a couple of beers and come sit with me?' Her first day at work had been a smashing success and she wanted to tell me about it.

One good thing about parenthood, I was beginning to realize, was that it made police work seem predictable and easy.

SIX

T
uesday morning Winnie came to work looking like every teenage boy's wet dream, except for her expression, which was resolutely matter-of-fact. And because she's Winnie and everybody knows about her black belt, nobody whistled. But no work got done in any cubicle as she passed it, with those black-and-white-striped tights fitting her marathon-rounded legs like a second skin, the red hi-tops too funky for words below, and the red satin hot pants clinging to her taut little rump above.

She signed receipts for the three best pieces of unclaimed gold jewelry the department possessed, and hit the street. An hour later she was back, to get the diamond-studded wristwatch Kevin's grandmother had left him. He'd said she could use it on a second run if she was absolutely convinced by then that the place really did hold things for ninety days.

She just about knocked his socks off when she told him she'd wangled a glimpse of the shop's back room.

‘How'd you do that?'

‘I told that absolutely vile manager . . . Have you seen him?'

‘Nice old guy with sore feet?'

‘No. The one who's there today has one squinty eye and tobacco juice dripping out of the corners of his mouth.'

‘Let me guess,' Kevin said, watching her face. ‘He called you “honey”?'

‘And “sweetheart”.' Her face had turned into the mask of the Awesome Asian. ‘So I told him I wanted to pawn the best thing I owned, but I'd only feel secure enough to do it if he'd show me some of his better treasures.' Snapping back into her lively American persona, she tossed back her shining yard of hair and grinned. ‘Omigod, you can't believe the stuff . . . and I saw the dolls,' she told a delighted Gary Krogstad.

She tucked Kevin's diamond wristwatch in her bag, freshened her lip gloss, and trotted away to take a second look at the pawnshop. While she was gone, as sometimes happens in a detective division, everything changed.

Kevin got a call about a burglary in one of the best southeast neighborhoods, and sent two detectives to investigate. Before they reached the house, the patrolman at the scene called back. ‘We need somebody from People Crimes, too,' he said. ‘I just found an injured victim at the foot of the stairs.' Ray sent Andy, who soon called back for more help.

Ray and Kevin fed me details as the calls came in. According to neighbors, thieves had entered the house while the owners were out biking. Busily bagging up the family's extensive collection of rare coins and jewelry, they were interrupted by a teenage son unexpectedly sent home a week early from camp. Sunburned and loaded with dirty laundry, he bumped into them in the second-floor hallway. They evidently clubbed him with something, maybe a pistol butt, and threw him downstairs. Luckily a neighbor was in his back yard, saw the thieves run out the back door, and called 911. The first responders found the boy on the floor, unconscious, and called an ambulance. Nobody knew yet if his injuries were life-threatening.

Ray sent Clint and Rosie, stopped in my office to fill me in before he followed them, and told me to send Winnie along as soon as she got back from the pawnshop. ‘She's not ready to be much help,' he said, ‘but she should be in on this, learning the ropes. I have to get her up to speed fast, we need all the help we can get.'

‘I know,' I said, ‘I'll tell Kevin to send her right over there.'

Winnie came back with Kevin's pawn ticket about eleven o'clock and headed straight into his office. They came busting back out into the hall in about two minutes, both talking.

I keep my door open, so nobody knocks. They just walk in, often interrupting each other. It's messy but it works: I get the news while it's still fresh.

‘Winnie thinks she's on to something over there,' Kevin said.

‘Tell me quick, and then she's got to go.'

‘There's this . . . odd . . . group of guys,' Winnie said, ‘hanging around that shop.'

I said, ‘Odd? How?'

‘They stand around by the hour, talking on cell phones.'

‘Winnie, that describes half the people in the United States.'

‘Wearing the ugliest clothes I ever saw.'

‘Oh, well . . . in that case, book 'em, Dano.'

‘They're very loud and pushy. Some of the calls . . . I'm pretty sure they're not speaking English.'

‘Oh? What do they speak?'

‘I can't tell. Nothing I've ever heard before. It's harsh and guttural with a lot of . . .' She made sharp ‘ch' sounds, like a hostile locomotive.

‘Huh. Were they pawning cameras and dolls?'

‘Not while I was watching. But they come and go in very high-end cars. I ran the plates. None of them came up.' Winnie did a thoughtful hip-wiggle that stopped everybody's breath. ‘Pawning things out of expensive cars? What's that all about?' She pursed her glossy lips and frowned, a look comically at odds with her outfit. ‘They're adults, but they exhibit what I would call gang behavior.' She cocooned inside herself for ten seconds, came back out, and said politely, ‘I believe it would be in your best interest to have a look at these men, Jake.'

‘I'll try, Winnie,' I said. ‘But we've got a new break-in to deal with right now. Kevin told you, right? And Ray wants you over there right away. So what else? Did you pawn the watch?'

Winnie grew a tiny Mona Lisa smile. Kevin said, looking pissed, ‘The slimebag only offered her two hundred dollars. Luckily I told her before she left, if it's anything less than five hundred, bring it back.'

‘Did you?' I asked her.

‘Yes. But just in case we wanted to take another look, I told him I was going to try the other shops and might be back.'

‘Good! Well . . . Winnie, have you got any other clothes here?'

‘Yes. I'll change and go right away.' She took the address, and a list of items Ray wanted her to bring. While she was in the rest room, Kevin said, ‘She's sure these guys at the pawnshop are up to something. How about I take her to the home invasion scene, with a quickie detour first so she can show me the men she's talking about? I could take Gary along, let him see if . . . What?'

‘You get too many people there,' I said, ‘they'll make you for sure.'

‘I could take the old van, park down the block. Close enough to see but not . . . and for just a minute.'

‘But doesn't this new home invasion sound like the MO you've been tracking?'

‘Well . . . yes.'

‘And they couldn't be in two places at once, could they? So aren't you better off concentrating on today's break-in?'

‘We can do both. Take a quick look at the shop and go right on to the house. Where I already have two detectives, by the way. If we get many more detectives over there, we'll be investigating each other's nose hairs.'

‘True. OK, go ahead. Keep me in the loop, now.'

‘Of course.' Winnie came out of the rest room in denims, with her hair in a braid, and began assembling the equipment Ray wanted. When she had it bagged, Kevin said, ‘Here, let me carry some of that!' and yelled over his shoulder, ‘Gary? Come out here.' The three of them loaded up and clattered off toward the freight elevator, Kevin talking fast, selling his plan.

They'd only been gone ten minutes when Ray walked into my office and said, ‘Got a minute?'

‘Sure. Are you back so soon because the house got too crowded?'

‘No. We just about got the whole crew over there when the mother phoned back from the hospital to tell the dad that the boy was OK. A bump on the head but no concussion, she says. Dad cried with relief for about thirty seconds and then went back to being furious at his kid for getting thrown out of the Explorers Anonymous camp. He said, “My wooden-headed son has survived his first mugging.”

‘Maybe because he was so relieved the kid wasn't dead, he launched into this infuriated rant – said the kid has always been a Mama's Boy, that she protects him when he goofs up. “So,” he says, “I paid for this big adventure that was supposed to straighten him out. Bought a pile of expensive outdoor clothing, went through his suitcase when he was done packing it to be sure he wasn't taking any dope along. Now, I still have to be the one who takes him to the woodshed and beats some sense into him. And trust me, I'll get plenty of grief from my wife for doing it, too.” I thought for a while we were going to have to take him to the hospital, he was turning purple.'

‘Wow! So this time the break-in turned into home invasion aggravated by assault.'

‘But luckily not homicide. I told Clint to stay and finish the report. The rest of them will come back as soon as they've had lunch.'

‘You want to have yours with me in the break room? I've got about a gallon of Swedish stew.' Now that Ben was sucking up the little bit of after-mortgage cash that was left in our house, Trudy and I were brown-bagging lunch.

‘And maybe darning socks and saving string before long,' Trudy said when she handed me last night's leftovers in a plastic container. Swedish stew is basically goulash without the paprika. Today's was long on pasta and short on meat, but thanks to Trudy's cooking it tasted good. We nuked it in the microwave and dug in with plastic forks.

‘We caught a break in Friday's murder this morning,' Ray said. ‘LeeAnn tried a different search, widened it from just firearms to all burglaries, and our Smith & Wesson Victory model popped up on a list of stolen items in Phoenix. I guess they hadn't got around to transferring it to the gun list.' He stared across my shoulder, looking bleak as only a Bailey can look, and said, ‘I
guess
it's a break.'

‘Except it means whoever popped that guy in the grow garage has quite a reach.'

‘That's what I was thinking.'

‘Have you talked to Pokey any more about that Mass card you found in the jacket?'

‘No. I've been waiting to hear what BCA has to say about it.'

I told him about yesterday's lunchtime conversation. ‘If his hunches are right about the sores on your victim's head . . . maybe it would pay to have a conversation with the Phoenix PD about that Smith & Wesson.'

‘Yeah. Maybe I'll try that.'

‘Anyway, good for LeeAnn, huh? To think about widening the search.'

‘Yeah. She gets better at her job all the time.'

‘I know. I just went over and gave her an attagirl. I wish I could give her a little bump in pay, too, but—' My phone rang. As soon as I picked up the receiver, Kevin said, ‘Jake, you have absolutely got to see these guys. Can you come over here right now?'

‘Kevin, are you still at the pawnshop? Is Winnie still there with you?'

‘Well, yeah,' Kevin said. ‘We just got here, Jake, we've only been watching a couple of minutes. Are you coming?'

‘Uh . . . yeah, I can come in about five minutes. But hang on one.' I put the phone against my chest and asked Ray, ‘They're still diddling around that pawnshop. You don't want Winnie to go to the home invasion now, do you?'