Virtue Falls (36 page)

Elizabeth laughed. “I’m sure she’s okay. She’s too stubborn for anything else.”

The two women wandered toward the resort, chatting.

Mike and Garik watched them go.

“Ya done good, Mike,” Garik said.

“You, too. What the hell does she see in you?”

“Nothing. She divorced me.” Even now, that tasted bitter. “Remember?”

“She seems awfully fond. When Courtney hugged you, Elizabeth didn’t like it at all.”

“Really?”
Cool.
“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve got that stuff you asked for, so we made the trip.” Mike headed toward the bike racks.

Garik followed. “What stuff?”

Mike dug around in his duffel bags and came up with a huge, shiny, pink, padded envelope. He handed it over with a flourish.

Garik still wasn’t getting it. “Nice packaging, man. Is this how you send out your reports?”

“Courtney got the envelope from a cosmetics company. They want her to endorse their products. I took some papers to work in it, and it seemed like a good camouflage for … this stuff.”

Garik opened it and looked inside. The smell of musty old papers whooshed out, and he saw a glint of metal. He started to reach in.

Mike caught his hand. “I brought you gloves. Handle everything with gloves. We don’t want your fingerprints on the evidence.”

“The evidence.” Garik stuck his head almost inside and stared in disbelief. “You brought me … the evidence? Of Misty Banner’s murder?”

“What did you think it was?” Mike sounded disgusted. “A random bunch of old papers with a random pair of scissors? Yes, it’s the evidence!”

“All the evidence? Holy shit, Mike. Holy … shit.” Garik looked up at his friend in awe. “How did you get it?”

“I stole Foster’s keys, snuck into the evidence room, and cleaned out the box.” As if the heat of the day was getting to him, Mike lifted his black hair off his neck. “The box is still in there, empty.”

“Holy shit.” Garik couldn’t seem to think of another thing to say. “What made you do it?”

Mike got an ugly look to his face. “I went to lunch, came back to my office, and that bastard Foster was in there looking at his mother’s body.”

“And?”

“He had her half-turned over, looking at the back of her head where I cut the hair so I could examine the wound.”

Garik’s gut tightened. “He knows you know he killed her.”

“I’d have to examine his service pistol for blood first. But yes, assuming he did it … he does. So I figured if he was going to kill me, too, I might as well get you the evidence first.” Mike talked fast. And he grinned as if he was joking.

Garik wasn’t laughing.

Mike sobered. “You don’t think this is melodrama.”

“Do you?”

“No. I wish it was, but no.”

Garik looked down at the evidence again. If Foster found out … An unstable sheriff with a couple of murders on his plate could do a lot of damage, and right now, Garik couldn’t be responsible for Mike’s safety, and Courtney’s, and Elizabeth’s, and Margaret’s. “Have you thought of leaving town?”

Mike glared. “Yeah. Because that’s so easy right now.”

“It’s tough, but not impossible. I got here. You got a four-wheel drive?”

“Yes.” Mike paced away, then came back. “You’re serious.”

“As death.” Garik wished he wasn’t. “Everyone agrees Foster is strange and getting stranger, and for the first time in his life, he’s free of his mother’s restrictive influence.”

“She may have been holding him together, you mean?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. An extreme life change frequently triggers aberrant behavior.”

“Now you’re talking like an FBI agent.” Mike couldn’t quite work up one of his cocky grins.

“Occupational hazard.” Garik was thinking it through. “He knows you know he killed his mother. Plus you stole evidence for me, evidence of a murder I accused him of committing. Even if he didn’t kill Misty Banner, he has a lot riding on the accuracy of his investigation. But he didn’t see you get the evidence. Did he?”

Mike hesitated a moment too long.

“You are kidding.” Garik couldn’t believe it.

“He didn’t see me get it. But I had it when I walked back into the morgue and caught him looking at his mother.”

Helpless with despair, Garik lifted his hand, and let it drop.

Mike pointed. “It was in that stupid pink envelope!”

Garik shook his head and started for the resort.

“Crap.” Mike followed, moving fast, heading for the porch, passing Garik.

“It’s you,” Garik called. “You’re a superhero concerned with justice for all.”

“Bite me.” Mike turned and walked backward. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone you’ve got it.”

“I promise.”

“No one. Not even Elizabeth.”

“Not a problem, man. She’s the last one I’ll tell.” In all his life, Garik had never meant anything so much. “Elizabeth has this unnerving habit of blurting out the truth at the most unfortunate moments.”

“Right. Good.” Mike walked forward again, then backward. “What am I going to tell Courtney about our unexpected trip?”

“That you want to take her to the city to ride out the earthquakes?”

Mike stopped, and said in disgust, “She’s got big tits. That doesn’t mean she’s stupid.”

“That’s too bad.” Garik meant it, too. “Then … you’ll tell her the truth?”

“I guess.”

Garik flung his arm around Mike. “Let’s get this over with. We’ll get a map. I can show you some of the trouble spots, and then, let’s get you on your way. I’ll feel a lot better when you’re gone.”

“Yeah, me too.” Mike sighed. “When I saw you, I knew you were going to be trouble.”

“You sound like every girl I ever dated.”

“If that’s what you think”—Mike shoved at him—“take your arm off me.”

It wasn’t funny, but they laughed like it was, and walked into the resort.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

That night, after dinner and some quiet, civilized conversation with Margaret, Garik and Elizabeth went to their respective bedrooms. They faced each other across the suite, wished each other good night, then Garik firmly, carefully, shut the door between them.

He didn’t want Elizabeth to surprise him now.

Picking up the shiny pink padded envelope, he spilled the contents on his desk. Papers, brown-edged papers, lots of them, slid across the brown wood surface, and on top of them—the scissors, enclosed in a Ziploc bag.

The scissors.

This relic had the same impact for an FBI agent as the golden mask of King Tut had for an archeologist.

Using the disposable gloves Mike had given him, Garik picked up the bag by the corner and held it aloft, close to the desk lamp.

A little rusty, still bloodstained, with long blades and sharp tips. Good scissors. Sewing scissors. Scissors Misty had used to make the curtains for her home, dresses for her little girl, maybe that flowered dress she had worn when she was murdered …

Taking the bag, he headed downstairs to the resort’s mail room. He enclosed the scissors in bubble wrap, slid them into a medium-sized Priority Mail Flat Rate box, sealed, addressed, and put postage on it. He didn’t know when he would have the chance to mail it, but he knew the local postal carriers. He’d gone to school with a couple of them. And that kind of connection had turned out pretty well with Mike Sun …

As he headed back to his room, package in hand, he spared a thought to the Suns.

Courtney was not pleased with Mike.

Mike was not pleased with Garik.

But Garik had helped them pack their four-wheel-drive Wrangler, close up their house, and waved them off as they set out across lousy, broken roads toward Portland, because better safe than sorry.

Now he had the paperwork from the Banner case to examine, and all night to do it in. Good thing he wasn’t going to sleep anyway, not after almost scoring with Elizabeth today in the truck. He’d march right into her room and give it another hot shot, except if she didn’t yield, he’d wonder if she couldn’t stand to sleep with a pathetic loser whose father beat him up, and if she did yield, he’d wonder if she did it because she felt sorry for the pathetic loser …

No use telling himself he wasn’t a pathetic loser, that that was the memory of his father yelling abuse in his mind. As Elizabeth would say, he knew that logically. But what the hell did logically have to do with emotions that snapped at his courage and ripped at his heartstrings?

Better concentrate on the work at hand. When it came to this kind of research, he knew himself to be the best on the force, and thus in the world.

He shuffled through the reports. Found the one he wanted, the one that identified the fingerprints on the scissors.

Misty. Charles. And three others, unidentified.

Not surprising. In any given household, scissors got used by a lot of different people: residents and visitors. Lots of people had never been fingerprinted, so again, not surprising to have unidentified prints. Yet the failure of this report was that it didn’t mention the position of the prints.

People handled scissors by the handles, of course, unless they were handing them to someone else, and then they grasped the blades.

But someone, the killer, had held the handles of the scissors backward, and slashed and stabbed and killed. The fact that those fingerprints hadn’t been specifically located and proven to be Charles Banner’s showed gross negligence on the part of the investigator. And that investigator knew it, too, because this paper hadn’t been scanned and included in the report pertaining to the case.

Garik was glad Mike and Courtney had left town, because Dennis Foster had a lot to answer for.

Garik looked at his computer, and sighed. He’d stalled long enough. He had to check in with Perez and tell him what was going on, and for that, he needed Elizabeth’s phone.

So he made his way through the sitting room to the open door of Elizabeth’s bedroom. Not that he wanted to; after his confession this afternoon, he didn’t want to see her again tonight.

But he sucked it up and knocked on her door.

“Come in,” she called.

He swung the door open. “Can I use your…”

She sat on the floor, clad in a man’s oversized white shirt, her right hand pressed on the floor, her fingers spread wide, frowning as she put polish on her nails.

“… phone?” he croaked.

She didn’t look up. “Sure.” When he didn’t move, she added, “It’s on the night stand.”

He crossed the room, picked it up, noted the signal was strong, and headed for the door. He shouldn’t say another thing, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to ask. “What are you doing?”

“Painting my nails.”

“Painting your nails.”

“Yes.”

He rubbed his head and wondered if he’d fallen into another dimension. “Where’d you get the stuff?”

“From the resort’s spa.”

“Oh.” He supposed that made a weird sort of sense. Except … “I didn’t know you knew how.”

“Just because you never saw me do it, doesn’t mean I don’t know how. I learned in college, when I was a shoe model.”

Women. Did they ever make sense? “You painted your nails so you could model shoes?”

“The photographers loved to take photos of me doing this.” She stood, struck a pose, and cupped her boobs with her own hands.

He halted in midstep.

The polish was red. Her shirt was white, and unbuttoned to the middle of her chest. She was barefoot. She was not wearing a bra. And her cleavage swelled, rich and sinful as whipped cream. “It sold shoes. Shiny, high-heeled, fuck-me shoes.” She let herself go, sat back down, and returned to painting her nails.

“Yes. I can see it would.” Somehow he got out of her room, across the sitting room, and into his bedroom without falling to his knees and begging that she sit on his face. Because he was in control of himself.

Either that or he was a rank coward who was afraid of being rejected.

Plugging Elizabeth’s phone into his computer, Garik brought up the FBI’s secure instant messaging, logged in, and and typed a message to Tom Perez.
Got the contents of the evidence box for the Banner case. I’m sending you the scissors via Priority Mail, or however else I can wrangle it. Still no mail service, but as soon as I get it sent, I’ll give you the heads-up so you can be on the lookout.

Five seconds later.
Did you get the evidence by legal means?

Best not to ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.

You know the shit I’m getting because you’re missing in action? Why should I do this for you?

Garik rubbed his hands together, and typed,
Hey, you’re right. I’ll send the scissors from the
infamous Banner murder case
to someone else to get the prints. Maybe … let me think … that detective with the Las Vegas police. What’s her name? Alexis Long. Didn’t you sleep with her for a while? She would do me a favor to have a shot at this celebrated piece of crime history. And she’d be gettin’ all that publicity when it turns out Charles Banner didn’t commit the murder …

Mail me the scissors.

I don’t want to get you in trouble.

Mail me the scissors.

If you insist. If you really want them.

Mail me the fucking scissors.

Of course, boss.

A pause. Then,
You have any reason yet for thinking Charles Banner didn’t do it?

Not all the reports got uploaded to the online case file.

This reply returned immediately.
Juicy
.

The sheriff is one scary dude.

Suspect?

Right now, my number-one. But there are others.
Garik thought about Marrero. He liked Marrero for the crime. That slimy little bastard.

Then he thought about Rainbow, about that grip she’d had on his arm earlier today. She was a big woman, strong, with man hands, and Elizabeth had named her as a possible for Misty’s lover.

Dr. Frownfelter with his weird psycho obsession with Charles. Who else had Margaret named?