The Walt Longmire Mystery Series Boxed Set Volumes 1-4 (99 page)

He smiled. “I bet you do.”

The requisite amount of time had passed, and in the next few minutes Michael and his team would begin a very noisy descent from the roof. We were counting on it.

I watched as Chavez and Johnston moved around the discarded van and started working their way across the street and over the sagging fence. They stayed apart, and I didn’t hear any warning sounds coming from the Fort as they slowly covered the fifty yards to the abandoned car.

I draped the Mossberg down along my leg after rechecking the safety, resting the end of the barrel on the toe of my boot. I figured if anybody were looking out the window, it would be prudent to not advertise the shotgun. I moved along the side of the van for a better vantage point and watched as the squad cars returned after pulling a quick U-turn. Michael and his group should now be descending the stairwell inside the building.

I could hear the thud of the back door being kicked in and watched as Chavez and Johnston disappeared into the darkness. People were yelling all over the place, and I could make out someone from inside shouting that they were the police and that whomever they were talking to should freeze. There was more yelling, and I watched as the beams from the cops’ Maglites flashed inside the row house, some on the third floor and some on the second.

There were people running everywhere; the patrolmen coming from around the front tackled a few. Some of the more lithe individuals were able to slip by and disappeared into the streets and alleys beyond.

It was then that I heard the first shot, that cattle-prod reaction to the sharp sound of gunfire. It doesn’t sound like in the movies; it is more like a quick smacking sound that makes you second-guess. I heard the sound again and was pretty sure it was coming from the second floor. I looked down at the 12-gauge in my hands, noticing that I had already clicked off the safety.

I moved across the street and was approaching the sagging fence when I saw some commotion at the second-story window and heard the report of a handgun. I sped up.

An uneven image crowded the window, and I watched in horror as what looked like two men scrambled and then tumbled from the second story. They crashed through the partial aluminum awning of the first floor and slid onto the back porch. There were more shots with a lot of screaming and yelling before one of the figures stood and leapt from the stoop, clearing the back of the collapsed porch in one leap. He turned as other people crowded the doorway and reached for something at his waistband. He tripped but converted the fall into a lope that brought him back up on a course for where I now stood.

It appeared as if his eyes were right on me as I stood there at the fence with the shotgun trained at his middle. I could make out Chavez’s voice screaming for him to stop and prayed that they wouldn’t open fire with me directly in line, but no bullets came whizzing from the Fort, only a half-naked man who still seemed to be fussing with something in the low-hanging pants at his midriff.

The police behind him screamed again, but he wasn’t listening, intent only on his line of escape. As he got closer, I could see the well-defined muscles that covered his body and figured he was roughly my size, but in a lot better shape.

I looked over the shotgun and then thought about what I was doing and where I was. I clicked the safety back on. As he got closer, I could see the tattoos that seemed to cover his body. He was a monster. I stayed alongside the abandoned car for a moment and then took two steps, catching him halfway over the fence.

* * *

There were two things they taught me when I was an offensive lineman at USC back in the Dark Ages. One: after a holding call, grab anything that moves because they’re not going to make two holding calls in a row. Second: never underestimate the power of a good clothesline tackle. I felt the liquid thump of a body giving way as my right arm came up and caught him in the middle of the chest, forcing the air out of him,

He didn’t make it over the fence, but what was in his waistband did; a small 9 mm semiautomatic pistol that struck the sidewalk and skittered over the curb and into the street, next to a sewer grating.

I watched as he gurgled for a moment, then breathed in an unsteady motion, clutching his abdomen and rolling from side to side; I noticed in a moment of irony that he was wearing black alligator cowboy boots. As one of the cops made it to the fence, I slipped the shotgun under my arm and walked into the street to look for the automatic, but I was pretty sure it’d dropped into the sewer.

There was a gaggle of police vehicles and EMTs, all with their gumballs going, at the front of the Fort, so before anybody with more authority could get back to where we were, I handed the shotgun to a patrolman named Fraser. His partner rolled the already complaining man over and cuffed him.

“This one had an automatic, but I think it dropped into the sewer grate.”

Fraser smiled. “We’ll light it up and take a look.”

“Everybody okay over there?”

“Moretti stepped on a nail, so the big pussy’s going to have to get a tetanus shot.”

The large man in the cuffs cocked his head and stopped groaning long enough to yell toward me. “Hey, motherfucker, my ribs are broken!”

I looked back at Fraser. “What was all the gunfire?”

“Hey, motherfucker, who are you?!”

He motioned to the drug dealer. “One of his buddies threw a few into the stairwell before shooting himself in the leg.”

“Motherfucker, I asked you a question!”

The other cop yanked him a little to the side. “Shut the fuck up, DuVall!”

“Who went out the window with this guy?”

The patrolman looked serious for a moment. “Johnston.”

Two of the EMTs were working on Rayfield by the time I got there. He had dislocated his shoulder and broken a collarbone, but he was smiling when I leaned against the porch, eye to eye with him. They were stabilizing his arm and preparing a gurney to transport. “How you feeling?”

He groaned. “Like shit. How’d we do?”

I looked around at the assembled cops, spotting Chavez and some of the others smiling like guys who had gotten away with something. “I think pretty good.”

* * *

My nostrils flared, and my nose hurt. I rubbed it cautiously and looked at Cady. I thanked Lena and apologized for being late, but I didn’t ask the usual changing-of-the-guard question, whether there had been any improvement, and Lena hadn’t volunteered any information. I wondered if that was the first phase in giving up, if I had passed over some threshold of hope. I didn’t want to start saying Cady as I had said Martha, with a level of such misery and despair that I just couldn’t say it without people looking away.

I sat in the chair by Cady’s bed and remembered a game we used to play when she was around eight. If I would get home late, later than her bedtime, I would carefully make my way down the creaking hallway of our rented house, softly push apart the painted surfaces of the door and jamb, and stand in the backlight of the doorway. She was supposed to be long asleep, and she was a very good actress, but I could tell. If I thought it was a performance, I’d walk over to the bed and place my face only inches from hers, say the magic word, and be rewarded with an explosion of giggles.

I scooted my chair over and rested my chin on the sore arm that I had carefully placed on Sleeping Beauty’s bed. I leaned in very close to her face and whispered. “Faker.”

She didn’t move.

8

This time I got the ride downtown; as a matter of fact, I got a ride to another state.

The big Crown Vic took the Broad Street entrance ramp onto I-95 southbound. There were ducks on a lake off to the right; I felt like joining them.

By the time the PPD had gotten its investigative ducks in a row and been fully informed about what I’d been up to, it was late in the afternoon. Katz and Gowder had picked me up from Cady’s, where I had retreated for a shower, and hadn’t mentioned anything about missing our breakfast. Henry had taken the afternoon shift at the hospital and had called to warn me of the detectives’ impending arrival. I had taken Dog for a walk, and they had been waiting when I returned.

I studied the small red dots on the frames of Katz’s designer glasses and wondered where he had gotten them. “So, you guys are going to drive me back to Wyoming?”

He sighed deeply as Gowder changed lanes, took the unmarked car into the far lefthand one, and leveled off at an even ninety; evidently, wherever we were going, we were in a hurry.

Katz cleared his throat. “I’m trying to figure out if I have made a terrible mistake.”

I could feel my face redden a little. “No, you haven’t…”

He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’m trying to figure out if you are going to be an asset or a detriment.”

Gowder was watching me in the rearview mirror as I answered. “An asset. Cross my heart.”

Katz blinked for the first time. “We have about 350 homicides per annum here in Philadelphia, and we try to keep the number of police officers on that list to a minimum.” He glanced at Gowder, who might have smiled. His eyes returned to me. “Do you have any idea how lucky you were last night?”

“Probably not.”

He nodded. “Personally, I don’t think you have any idea, but since the Chief Inspector’s son was injured…”

“He stepped on a nail.” It was the first time Gowder had spoken, and Katz looked at him like he was a potted plant with blight. He stared at the side of Gowder’s head until Gowder leaned an elbow on the window ledge and covered the smile with his index finger.

After a moment, Katz looked at me again. “So, do you mind telling me how your adventures last night are going to aid in our investigation?”

“They’re not.”

He compressed his lips. “You can’t do things like that anymore.”

We rode along in silence, Katz studying me a while longer before handing me a manila envelope with more than a few files inside. I looked back up at the two of them as we rocketed down I-95. “Devon Conliffe?”

Katz spoke over his shoulder. “You’ve got thirty minutes.”

I opened the envelope. “Do you guys mind if I ask where we’re going?”

“The opera.” Gowder smiled, and the mole under his eye kicked up in the rearview mirror.

* * *

The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware, incorporated the same wedding-cake characteristics as Philadelphia’s City Hall but with slightly less drama, inside or out. French Second Empire with a cast-iron façade, it was lit from below with floodlights that highlighted the detail.

A grumpy, elderly gentleman was sitting on a stool in the lobby and ushered us into the main auditorium, where Gowder and I sat just below the balcony. Katz continued on into the dark of the theater to a large soundboard that straddled two rows at house center and tapped the stage manager on the shoulder.

The young woman pulled her earphones aside and spoke with him. He waited as she returned to her headset, prefacing and ending her conversation into it with the word “Maestro.” The seats were comfortable; I watched as Gowder propped his feet over the back of the next row, and I noticed that his socks did, indeed, match today’s ensemble. He whispered, with his head inclined toward me. “Where in the world did you get the idea for the crack house?”

I also whispered. “OIT.”

“What’s that?”

“Old Indian Trick.”

He smiled the becoming smile, and we watched the rehearsal. It was the end of Act II, where Monterone confronts the hunchback, reaffirming the curse he had placed on Rigoletto and the Duke. The irony of the father/daughter opera was not lost on me, and I could only hope that Cady and I would have a happier ending.

The scenery and costumes were brilliant, with the Duke’s salon and adjoining apartments drifting to the sixteenth-century Mantuan skyline. It was night, and the jester was watching as the tortured father was dragged away. Inspector Victor Moretti cut a bold figure as Monterone, in a torn robe stripped aside to reveal his lashed back. He was tall and lean like a Doberman, and even from this distance I could feel his eyes. Lena was right about his voice; Victor could sing his baritone ass off.

I watched and thought about the manila folder the two detectives had shared with me. The chain holding the gate to the north-side entrance of the bridge closed had been cut with a substantial pair of bolt-cutters, and there had been a scuff mark on the sidewalk next to the railing of the bridge that indicated that the perpetrator had worn leather-soled shoes or boots. There were no fingerprints at either location, and it was surmised that the killer had also worn gloves.

The decedent had been propelled over the railing and across the PATCO rail lines before landing in the alley below. Somebody had thrown Devon in an arch close to twenty feet before he fell. I would have suspected me, too.

The topper was Devon’s blood sample, which indicated that he was loaded with ketamine hydrochloride, otherwise known as Special K, a club drug that he had snorted in powder form. A chemical cousin to the animal tranquilizer PCP, ketamine creates a dreamlike state by binding the serotonin transmitters in the brain, consequently destroying the user’s ability to regulate mood, appetite, sleep, and temperature, but it supposedly feels good.

That was probably how Devon had been coerced onto the BFB late that night, in search of another hit; he’d got it, all right, and then had been thrown off the bridge. I was working on a Rasputin-like scenario when I noticed Detective Katz standing in the aisle with Verdi’s Monterone.

They were talking sharply, but sotto voce, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t in English. I looked at Gowder. “Are they speaking Italian?”

He nodded. “Asa does it to piss Victor off. His Italian is better.” He chuckled to himself. “He does everything he can to piss Victor off, including fuck his wife.”

I sat there for a moment and then turned in my seat. “What?” He didn’t have time to answer because the next thing we both knew, Chief Inspector Moretti was standing with his arms folded in the aisle in front of us. It could have been the stage makeup, but he seemed like the most intense person I’d met in quite a while. His hair flourished in a sweeping mane with eyebrows to match, and he wore a silvered goatee. With the torn robe and lacerated back, it was like meeting the returning Jesus Christ; a pissed-off, returning-like-a-lion Jesus Christ.