The Trojan Colt (22 page)

“Lou's in conference and Drew hasn't come in yet,” she said. “I'll take care of it myself. Sit down somewhere, Eli. You look terrible.”

“I'd say that you ought to see the other guy,” I said wryly, “but the whole exercise is about finding out who the other guy is and why he wants me dead.”

“We don't have any medics here,” she said. “But go into the bathroom and clean the blood off. We've got bandages there.”

“Blood?” I repeated, frowning. “What blood?”

“Just go,” she said, starting to type on her keyboard. “You'll figure it out.”

I went to the bathroom that was attached to the room I'd been staying in, turned on the light, and peered into the mirror—and found that I was bleeding from my right ear and two spots on my right cheek. I hadn't felt it in the heat of the chase, but the shot that shattered the window had sent some slivers of glass against the right side of my face and cut it open.

I checked the cabinet, found some anti-bacteria spray, closed my right eye and sprayed it on my face, then stuck a couple of bandages on. The ear bled right through, so I covered it with two more, one on top of the other, and that seemed to do the trick.

When I went back out to Bernice's desk, she already had the information.

“Well?” I asked.

“It looks like you were right. Or maybe it was Lou who suggested it. Anyway, the guy in the blue Mercedes matches Horatio Jimenez's description.” She paused. “What the hell happened, Eli?”

“The son of a bitch tried to kill me again.”

“Why?”

“I wish to hell I knew,” I said. “A week ago I'd never heard of him, and I'm sure he'd never heard of me. I'm no closer to knowing what happened to Tony Sanders than I was the minute his parents approached me—and yet he's tried to kill me twice.” I sighed and shook my head. “I'd give my kingdom, such as it is, to know what he thinks I know.” I paused a moment and thought about it. “Hell, I don't even think he knew it was me. I was in a different car, and I don't think he got a decent look at my face.”

She frowned. “Then why was he shooting at you?”

I thought about it, and then thought about it some more. “It doesn't make any sense, does it?” I said at last.

“Did he mistake you for someone else?” asked Bernice dubiously.

“No, he couldn't have,” I answered. “Not unless we assume he was waiting to kill some guy who drives a two-year-old green Chevy.”

“What was he doing in his car when you spotted him?”

“Taking a break, staking it out, waiting for a friend, who the hell knows?” I answered with a growing sense of frustration.

“That doesn't make any sense, Eli,” she said.

“Name me one thing about this case that does,” I shot back.

“Well,” she continued, “there's one positive aspect about this whole mess.”

I stared at her. “I'd love to hear it.”

“There is a solution, and you must be very close to it,” said Bernice. “Otherwise, why would they have tried to kill you?”

“Like I just said, I don't know for a fact that he knew it was me.”

“He knew it was you after you took me home from dinner,” she said. “And even if he didn't recognize you today, he was parked there, and he didn't shoot the first hundred or so cars that drove past.” She stared intently at me for a moment. “Oh, shit! You're bleeding right through that bandage on your ear.”

She summoned another uniformed policewoman, who arrived about half a minute later.

“Eli, this is Officer Hutchinson, but you can call her Jeanine. Jeanine, this is Eli Paxton. He's been staying with us the past few nights, though I don't think you've met him. Right now he's concentrating on bleeding all over himself and also on our nice clean floor. Would you please take him somewhere and clean him up properly, and see if you think he needs to see a doctor?”

“I'll be happy to,” said Jeanine. “It beats listening to the guys talking about who should and shouldn't be starting for Big Blue this fall.” She turned to me. “Follow me, Mr. Paxton.”

“Call me Eli,” I said.

She smiled. “You may not feel so friendly after I finish working on that ear.” She peered more closely at me. “Your cheek doesn't look all that good either.”

She led me to a small lab—not forensics, not anything in particular, just a little room with a bunch of computerized equipment and a hell of a lot more supplies than the bathroom's medicine cabinet.

“I'll be as gentle as I can,” she said, “but this is probably going to hurt.”

She pulled the bandages off my ear, and I couldn't stop myself from grunting in pain.

“Bad guys, or just careless in the kitchen?” she asked as she began cleaning the wound a lot more thoroughly than I had.

“One or the other,” I said.

“Hey, I'm one of the good guys.”

“A guy took a couple of shots at me while I was driving, and shot out a window.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” she said, picking up a small metal tweezers. “Your cheek seems to be okay, but you have a little sliver of glass in your ear lobe.” She very carefully pulled it out. “How clever of you to tape it in so I could see it for myself.”

“Anything to please a cop,” I said, suddenly wincing as she touched something tender with the tweezers.

“Sorry,” she said. “It's out now.” She began applying some kind of salve. “All done. Don't wear your earrings tonight.”

“I'll resist the temptation,” I said.

She continued looking at the earlobe. “I think exposure to fresh air is best for it. You've bled all over your collar and shoulder already, so you can't do much more damage to the shirt.” She stuffed some cotton and a bandage in a plastic bag and handed it to me. “If it starts bleeding again, use this.”

“Thanks, Jeanine,” I said when she backed off to indicate she was all through patching me up.

“I've got two sons,” she replied with a smile. “This is old hat to me.”

We walked back to Bernice's desk, I thanked her again, and she vanished into the inner recesses of the building.

“Lou says he'll catch up with you—I think his exact words were ‘I'll debrief him'—in about forty-five minutes. Maybe he can figure out what Jimenez was doing there.” She paused. “We can still go out to dinner if you're up to it—and if you have a clean shirt. If you feel you'd rather skip it, that's okay too.”

“We'll go,” I said. “Even potential murder victims get hungry.”

“And are you still going back to Cincinnati tonight?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “I don't know what I've missed that they think I know, but they've tried to kill me twice, and I'm damned well going to find out why.”

Her computer started beeping, and a minute later an officer brought in a man who'd been drinking way too much way too early in the day, and I could tell I was in the way, so I went to “my” room, lay back on the cot, and tried again to dope out what they thought I knew that warranted my death.

Lou Berger came into my room in about half an hour.

“I hear you've had an exciting day,” he said.

“And it's only half-over,” I replied wryly.

“You want to tell me exactly what happened?”

I recounted everything from when I drove to the Kroger and how I managed to get away from my pursuer.

“That was quick thinking,” he said. “Quick, but dangerous. I don't think I'd have gone the wrong way into traffic.”

“You would have,” I said, “if the guy behind you was shooting at you.”

“Maybe,” he admitted, and then added: “Especially based on the descriptions we've got.”

“I know,” I said. “It was Jimenez.”

“Looks like. We can't be sure, but it figures. What we can't figure out is what the hell he was doing there. I checked, and not a house or condo on that block has changed hands in more than a year.”

“I don't know,” I said. “Hell, you could fill a book with what I don't know about this case.” I pulled a pack of cigarettes out of my shirt pocket. “Sorry,” I said as I lit up. “I need this.”

“Terrible for your health,” remarked Berger.

“Not as terrible as getting shot at by a pro,” I said, taking a deep drag. “I don't suppose anyone's found him yet?”

“Eli, the guy had a gun in his hand, and he'd been shooting at you. Do you really think anyone followed him?”

“No,” I admitted. “Hell, I wouldn't have either.”

“You might have,” he said. Then he smiled. “But you'd have checked to see if there was a reward first.” He stared at me for a long moment. “So are you staying on the case or going home?”

“I was all set to leave,” I admitted. “I thought I'd hit a dead end, and I was just wasting the Sanderses' money.”

“And now?”

“Damn it, Lou, if they're still shooting at me, I'm close to something, even if I don't know what the hell it is.”

“But was he shooting at you?” he asked. “I mean, did he know he was shooting at Eli Paxton? The way Bernice described it when she reported it to me, there's every possibility that he still doesn't know who he was shooting at this morning.”

“That's probably true,” I agreed.

“Then I don't follow you,” said Berger.

“Jimenez is involved in this in some way. He tried to kill me a couple of nights ago. Today he may not have known it was me, but he was ready and willing to kill anyone who spotted him—and he had to know I was writing down his plate number or maybe taking a photo of him, something so that I slowed to a crawl right opposite him and then tried to hide my face.” I finished the cigarette, reached for another, and exercised just enough willpower not to pull the pack out. “Now I have to assume he's not on the lam from the law anywhere, because he was willing to be seen during the auction. That means that whatever reason he had for shooting, it wasn't simply that someone in a green Chevy knew that this guy with no warrants out for his arrest was in Lexington.”

He took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I hadn't thought of that,” he admitted.

“Anyway,” I concluded, “it's just vaguely possible that he recognized me, though he didn't get much of a look at me even the other night. It was dark, he ran me off the road, and then a couple of hours later he took a shot at me across a parking lot just half a second after I opened the door. He may not know even now what I look like. Maybe he does, but I'd give heavy odds that if you or Drew drove by him exactly the way I did, not in squad cars, he'd have shot at you too.”

“Makes sense,” he said. “But what the hell is there? I've pulled up a list of everyone who lives within a block of where you told Bernice he was parked. There are a few doctors, a lawyer, a minister, no breeders or trainers, no jockeys.”

“If I knew that, I'd have this thing half solved,” I said. “I'm still trying to find a connection between Tony and Billy. As far as anyone knows, they never met, not even once. One worked for Chessman and one worked for Standish. They didn't even have any friends in common, in or out of the horse business. The only link is that they rubbed the same horse, and one was gone before the other was hired.”

“I wish I could say something useful,” replied Berger. “You've pretty much convinced me they're dead, but there are no clues, no nothing. I'll help you all I can, and so will Drew, but I can't put a lot of men on this case. If one kid surfaces next month in Los Angeles and the other shows up a year from now in South Beach after we've spent a thousand man-hours trying to prove they've been killed, heads are going to roll around here, and I'm a little long in the tooth to retrain for a new profession.”

“What about the Mercedes?” I asked.

“Rented in Tulsa,” he said.

“To?”

Berger made a face. “Joe Smith.”

“Well, at least you know you're looking for a Hispanic guy carrying a license that identifies him as Joe Smith,” I said with a smile.

“We know who we're looking for,” he said seriously.

Then one of his men stood in the doorway and cleared his throat.

“Yeah?” said Berger, turning to him.

“Seven-car pile-up on the interstate ramp, sir.”

Berger turned to me. “Sorry. I've got to go figure out who's available to send to the scene of the idiocy.”

I nodded, not that a show of disapproval would have kept him in the room, and then I was alone again and still puzzling over what the hell I was supposed to know that made me a target.

Things started getting busy—mostly traffic problems, but there was an attempted holdup at a currency exchange, a couple of domestic violence cases, and some kid stole some other kid's car. Lou was kept busy, Bernice was even busier, and Drew was still working the night shift, so I had the next couple of hours to amuse myself before Brenda showed up and Bernice and I could go out to dinner.