Burn Out Page 18

  “Jesus, all this killing.” He shook his head. “Why would somebody shoot Bud?”

  “Well, there was trouble between the two of you. What was that about?”

  “. . . We got into an argument in here a few years ago. One of those pushing and shoving things. Nothing unusual, but people in this town have long memories.”

  “What was the argument about?”

  “Miri wrote a letter to Hayley and asked Bud to hold it for her, in case she ever came home. Bud said he hadn’t read it, was keeping it in his office safe. But I could tell he was lying.”

  “How did you know about the letter?”

  “Miri got drunk in here a lot. When she drank, she couldn’t hold her tongue; she talked about the letter, but she never would say what was in it. About that she wouldn’t say a word.”

  “And why would she entrust something that important to Bud?”

  “Miri had a small insurance policy with him. When it was going to lapse because she couldn’t make the payments, Bud took them over. He was nice to her in other ways. She said he never judged her.”

  Well, that fit with what I knew about Miri’s rape and Bud covering for his brother. Guilt, plain and simple. “So you asked Bud about the letter and that led to this pushing and shoving.”

  “Yeah. Another example of what an asshole I am. I mean, Hayley wasn’t any of my business any more. We were divorced. I’d made a new life for myself. But I couldn’t let it rest.”

  “As far as you know, when Hayley came back to town, did Bud give her Miri’s letter?”

  “I didn’t even know Hayley was here till she was killed.”

  “She took out an insurance policy with Amy as beneficiary. Do you think Bud would’ve passed on the letter then?”

  “Probably. He knew Hayley would never go see her mother. She hated her. Once told me she wished she’d die.”

  After eleven. I pushed Tom Mathers’ log book aside and rubbed my eyes. I’d come back and answered my business messages, then called Ma, and finally Hy, who was in Chicago “cleaning house.” Which meant that, as part of his reorganization plan, he was firing and hiring personnel for RI’s most inept and corrupt branch office. He was tired, frustrated, and disappointed that he couldn’t get back for the weekend. I told him no worries, my case was coming to a conclusion, and I’d probably be in San Francisco when he arrived next week.

  I sounded more confident than I felt.

  I microwaved myself some mac and cheese, and then, feeling guilty about my recent poor eating habits, made a small salad. Ate while watching an old episode of All in the Family on TV. The show held up, even in this tumultuous first decade of the twenty-first century. Come to think of it, not much had really changed since the nineteen-seventies; technological advances, yes, but not matters of the human conscience and heart.

  The rest of the evening I devoted to Mathers’ log. T.C. was right: there were no notations to indicate trouble on any of the trips. I jotted down names and addresses of the clients for searches to make after I got back from Inyo County tomorrow.

  Now, even as tired as I was, I got some carrots from the fridge and took them out to King Lear. The horse whickered when he heard my footsteps, nuzzled my hand as he took his treats. I stood petting him for a while, then said, “You know what? We’ve got to get you a companion. Being an only horse is not a good thing.”

  Friday

  NOVEMBER 16

  There was frost everywhere when I looked out the kitchen window in the morning. Frost so heavy it mimicked the snowcapped peaks of the mountains. I was glad Lark and I weren’t due at the Inyo County jail till two, when the day would have warmed some; cold-weather flying is something I prefer to leave to Hy.

  I called the agency. Ted told me he’d taken matters into his own hands and was researching copy machines. He was fed up with calling the repairman for our present one, and had been lobbying for a replacement for months.

  “I’m getting to know the repair guy so well, I feel like I should invite him to Thanksgiving dinner,” he added. “Speaking of which, are you and Hy gonna make it this year?”

  Ted’s annual Thanksgiving party. God, I’d forgotten all about it! I glanced at the calendar on the wall by the fridge; I hadn’t changed it from October.

  “Uh, when is Thanksgiving?”

  Ted let out a despairing sigh. “Next week. What planet are you living on?”

  “A very strange one. Count us in.” Even if I had to fly back for just the one day.

  “Good. Is it okay to go ahead with the new copier?”

  “Yes. But don’t finalize the sale till you okay the price with me. And now let me talk to Patrick, please.”

  Patrick sounded tense. “Six new clients yesterday, Shar. All corporate. Derek and Thelia and I have split them up among us, but there’re other cases that’re backlogged. What with Mick in rehab . . .”

  “Thelia needs an assistant.”

  “I know.”

  “Find her one.”

  “Me?”

  “You. First, call around to the agencies we cooperate with and ask if they have any recommendations. If not, run an ad. You know what kind of person we’re looking for. Then interview the most promising ones.”

  “But I just can’t go ahead and hire—”

  “By the time you complete the interviews, I’ll be back to make the final decision and negotiate salary and benefits.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I can do this.”

  “Of course you can. If you get really swamped with new cases, call on Rae. She delivered her latest book to her publisher last month.”

  We discussed a few other matters, and by the time we ended the conversation, Patrick seemed more confident and in control than ever.

  Way to delegate, McCone.

  Next call: Mick. I hadn’t heard from him about his deep backgrounding on Trevor Hanover since Wednesday. There was no answer at his extension at the rehab center. Probably in therapy, I thought. But it wasn’t like him not to keep me posted, so I called Rae.

  “Oh, God, I should’ve let you know!” she said. “Yesterday afternoon he had an episode of internal bleeding and they had to transfer him to UC Med Center to perform more surgery.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “He will be. I’ll tell you, this experience has taught him a lot. Us, too. We should’ve kept in closer touch after his breakup with Charlotte, given him the support he needed.”

  “I should’ve, too. I was so mired down in my own situation I didn’t realize how bad off he was. When’s he going back to the rehab center?”

  “This afternoon.” She paused. “Oh, I just remembered—before he went into surgery he told Ricky that there was some information on his laptop that ought to be forwarded to you. But Ricky forgot, and he had to go to LA this morning. He only called a while ago to tell me about it. Do you want me to go over to the rehab center and try to access it?”

  “No, don’t bother. I assume when Mick’s back there he’ll send it along. Give him my love when you see him.”

  “Frankly, I’d rather give him a good slap upside the head. God, I’m glad I never had children!”

  “Yeah—and instead you became stepmother to six of them.”

  “Independence traffic, Two-Seven-Tango, turning for final.”

  “Two-Seven-Tango, Three-Eight-Niner. I’m still behind you. That’s a damn pretty plane you’ve got.”

  “Thank you, Three-Eight-Niner.”

  I glanced over at Lark. She had her eyes closed. She’d closed them when we’d taken off from Tufa Tower, then kept them rigidly focused on the instrument panel during most of the trip. She was capable of speech, however, and we’d discussed the scenario for our interrogation of Boz Sheppard.

  Lark had spoken with her superiors and the DA in Mono County, and then the sheriff and DA in Inyo. Together they’d worked out a plan that would ensure Sheppard’s cooperation without either jurisdiction giving up very much. While we were aware that Sheppard—like any criminal or,
for that matter, anyone who watched crime shows on TV—knew the good-cop bad-cop routine, very few of them failed to be rattled by it.

  “Are we there yet?” Lark asked.

  I leveled off, then set the plane down on the runway without so much as a bump.

  “Are we—?”

  “We’re there.”

  “What?” She opened her eyes and looked around as I braked and turned off toward the tie-downs. “When did—?”

  “That was one of my better landings. And since you had your eyes closed, you couldn’t tell where we were at.”

  “No way! I could feel every motion—”

  “I’ll demonstrate on the way back.”

  “The hell you will!”

  An Inyo County Sheriff’s Department car took us to the jail, and a guard led us to an interrogation room that was much smaller than the visiting area where I’d earlier spoken with Sheppard.

  Lark pulled out a chair from the metal table and looked around. “The ambience is perfect. Very claustrophobic.”

  “And scenic.” I nodded at an ugly water stain on the ceiling. “Where do you want me?”

  “Stand over there by that big crack in the wall. Fold your arms and look relaxed.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Seconds later Sheppard was brought in. He looked pretty bad—drug withdrawal, I supposed. His face was pale and pinched, more like a lab rat’s than ever.

  “Hello, Boz,” Lark said. “You remember me? And Ms. McCone?”

  Sheppard grunted and sat down across from her.

  “I’m going to be taping this session,” she said, activating the recorder on the table. “I’ve been talking with the authorities and DA’s offices down here and up in Mono. I can offer you a deal, depending on the information you’re willing to give up.”

  Flicker of interest in his eyes. “Yeah? What kind of deal?”

  Lark began ticking off the items on her fingers. “No charges in the Hayley Perez murder. No charges in the attack on Amy Perez—”

  “Amy? She didn’t know I was the one—”

  Snared. Snared and stupid. But Mono wasn’t giving up anything, because they had no evidence Boz had killed Hayley, and Amy really couldn’t identify him as the perp.

  “Yes, she knows,” Lark lied. “And she’s willing to testify to that effect. On the other hand, McCone is willing to forgive you on the trespass on her ranch and assault charges. You tell us what you were looking for in Amy’s cabin, it all goes away.”

  “. . . A letter from Miri Perez. Something Bud Smith gave Hayley. What this meeting the night she was killed was all about—the one she was gonna profit from. I tore the trailer apart, but it wasn’t there. So I figured she’d given it to Amy.”

  “You have to beat up and cut Amy to search for it?” I asked.

  Sheppard started. He’d forgotten I was there. “I didn’t know the little skank was in the cabin. She woke up and tried to hit me with a lamp. Real fighter, that one.”

  “Don’t browbeat the man, McCone,” Lark said, glaring at me. She turned back to Sheppard. “Tell us about your history with Hayley.”

  “What about the rest of my deal?”

  “This information is to cement the deal with Mono.”

  “Okay, okay. I met Hayley in Vegas. She was hooking.”

  “And you were . . . ?”

  “Working in a casino.”

  “Which one?”

  “Same one she was.”

  “The name?”

  “I forget.”

  I said, “He was probably dealing—but not cards. Or pimping. Were you her pimp, Sheppard?”

  “Leave him be, McCone,” Lark said.

  “He wasn’t doing anything legitimate in Vegas, that’s for sure.”

  Again Lark glared at me. “Not relevant.” She turned her attention back to Sheppard. “Okay, you knew Hayley in Vegas. When?”

  “When she was first there, I don’t remember how many years ago. Then I did a stretch for possession. I was railroaded.”

  I said, “That’s what they all claim.”

  “And after you got out?” Lark asked him.

  “I decided to go to Vernon. I had connections—”

  “Drug connections,” I said.

  Lark gave an exasperated sigh. “You see Hayley in Vegas beforehand?”

  “Yeah. I stayed with her a few days till my parole officer gave me permission to leave the state. She said she had family here and might visit me sometime. And she did—late September, I think. She needed a place to stay. She’d come up HIV-positive, was already feeling sick.”

  So that was why she’d taken out the insurance policy with Amy as beneficiary. The county’s pathology reports hadn’t showed any evidence of her illness because they hadn’t been looking for it. Which meant the life-insurance policy benefiting Amy would pay off.

  “And?” Lark asked.

  “I let her stay. Next thing I know, she’s talking about cashing in on something, living out the rest of her life in luxury.”

  “Something that was in the note Miri left for her with Bud Smith.”

  “I guess.”

  “Did Hayley own a gun?”

  “Hayley? Jesus, no. What would she need a gun for?”

  “Violent johns?” I said.

  “McCone, I’m warning you!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Okay, Boz, do you own a gun?”

  Silence.

  “Part of your deal.”

  “. . . Okay, I’ve got a thirty-two I bought off of a guy in Reno.”

  “Where was this gun the night Hayley was killed?”

  “. . . In the trailer.”

  “So Hayley had access to a weapon of the caliber that killed her.”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  All three of us were silent. Then I said, “Don’t you want to discuss the deal you’ve got here in Inyo?”

  He shot me a look of pure rage. “Who the hell’re you, coming in here and trying to take over from her?” He motioned at Lark.

  “Somebody who thinks you’re pond scum. All right if I tell him about his deal down here, Lark?”

  “Sure, be my guest.”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “But she said—”

  “She said that she talked with the authorities and DA in Mono and down here. She said ‘I can offer you a deal.’ Not we—I.”

  “You stone bitches!” He started to rise from his chair, but the guard, who had been standing by the door the whole time, stepped in quickly to restrain him.

  Lark and I exchanged glances. Then she extracted the tape from the machine on the table, and we left Sheppard in the hands of the Inyo County authorities.

  “Amazing!” Lark said. “I thought we were headed straight for Tufa Tower, but that’s June Lake down there. I didn’t even notice when you turned.”

  “Because you had your eyes closed again. You didn’t notice that it was a steep bank, either.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Want to close your eyes one more time?”

  “Uh, why?”

  “It’d be interesting to know if you could tell when we were upside down.”

  “No way!”

  “Just one little spin.”

  “Spin! Jesus, like a tailspin—?”

  “Then I guess you’ll have to keep your eyes open and enjoy the scenery.”

  Back at the ranch house, I found a message from Mick: “Call me ASAP. I’m at the rehab place and Nurse Ratched has confiscated my laptop. Says I can only speak to you for three minutes.”

  I dialed, and a woman’s voice answered. I almost asked her if she was Nurse Ratched, then realized it was Charlotte Keim.

  Well, well . . .

  She passed me along to Mick.

  “Charlotte’s forwarding you the information on Hanover that I accessed—she’s allowed my laptop—but I thought you’d want to hear this.”

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Okay. But listen, they really mean it
about the three minutes. What I found out is that Trevor Hanover owns property in Mono County. A lot of it—one thousand acres.” He gave me the parcel number, adding that a map was on the way via e-mail.

  I booted up my laptop in preparation for Keim’s incoming file, while asking Mick more questions about his health. The nurse wrested the phone from him as the e-mail arrived.

  The map showing the location of Hanover’s property didn’t really surprise me. I guess at some level I’d suspected it all along: Hanover was the owner of Rattlesnake Ranch.

  A wealthy man from the East Coast, who flew to his private airstrip in his own jet. A man who had been a New York City bartender who happened to get lucky because of his ingratiating manners and impressive knowledge of finance. A man whose financial empire and private life were now crumbling.

  A man who, under his real name, held a degree from a prominent Eastern business school. Who had ceased to exist shortly after attaining that degree because he couldn’t risk the future possibility of being named a rapist, if for some reason his brother decided to tell the truth.

  A man who used to be called Davey Smith.

  Time to proceed slowly and cautiously. Build a case that no high-priced defense attorney could tear apart.

  I couldn’t confide what I knew to Lark. In spite of her elation at our handling of Boz Sheppard, the woman seemed on the ragged edge. In fact, she’d called earlier from her home to tell me her superior officer had told her to take a day off. Her voice had been slurred, and I’d heard ice tinkling in the background. I didn’t want her alcohol-impaired judgment to get in my way.

  Ramon was at the stable when I went out there, cleaning King’s stall. I asked if Amy was still at his house. Yes, she was. I said I was going over there, I needed to talk with her.

  Before I left, I slipped King the carrots I’d brought for him.

  Amy was clad in a bathrobe that enveloped her petite frame; I assumed it was Sara’s. She sat on the living-room couch, listlessly watching a game show while her aunt bustled around in the kitchen. I turned the TV set off and sat down next to her.

  “How’re you doing?”

  She shrugged.

  “I hear everything went well with Kristen Lark.”