The Blade Itself

26

There were things about being a detective that Sean Nolan loved.

The almost entrepreneurial sense of being his own boss, working a case the way his instincts dictated. The look of gratitude he sometimes saw from people he treated with respect, people used to mistrusting the Poh-lice. Those fleeting instants when he knew, with a certainty that most citizens never felt, that by doing his job he made things better.

But then there were days he had to haul floaters out of his river only to find he’d known the victim. And moments when he stood with his holster unsnapped, one hand on the grip of his weapon, not sure what he was about to walk into, but knowing he would walk into it regardless.

A low-bellied gray sky threatened to open up on the old gas station at any moment. The blue Ford was parked behind them, beside where the gas pumps used to be. Matthews stood a few feet back and off to one side, keeping an eye on the street. It wasn’t anywhere you’d expect someone to live, and Nolan would’ve assumed the address was bogus if he hadn’t snuck around back to peer through a window at a tall wooden dresser and an unmade bed.

Yesterday, before they’d left what passed for a crime scene – the river had played hell with everything – they’d noticed that Patrick’s back was a darker color than his front. When a victim’s heart stopped beating, gravity pulled blood to whatever side was down. If Patrick had been shot on the riverbank and rolled in, there shouldn’t have been a chance for the blood to settle so neatly. Which meant that he’d likely been shot somewhere else and dumped later.

It could have happened anywhere. But police work was about elimination. This defunct gas station apparently used to be Patrick’s home. They might well find a pool of congealed blood inside. Or a killer trying to clean it up.

That was the thing – you had to be up for anything. “Ready?” Nolan asked, feeling the edge of adrenaline. Matthews nodded, a hand on his own gun.

Nolan took out the ring of keys they’d pulled from Patrick’s pocket. A sodden gray thing that might once have been a rabbit’s foot dangled from them. Two keys looked about the right size, but the grooves on the first didn’t fit the lock. Heart loud in his chest, Nolan slipped the second key in one notch at a time until he felt it seat. Then, gently, he eased the deadbolt back. He took a last look at Matthews to confirm the man was ready to move, drew his weapon in his right hand, and with the left pushed the door open wide. Before it had even finished opening he was in, gun pointing low. Matthews moved behind him, his back to the wall to cover the opposite corner.

Venetian blinds strangled the light. The room was an open space dominated by mismatched recliners facing a TV. A poster hung above it, Telly Savalas as Kojak. The air smelled faintly of popcorn and sweat socks. Nolan turned, still in a shooter’s crouch. Canvas screens separated the back half of the room, where he’d seen the bed through the window, and there was a door on one wall. He nodded to Matthews, who crossed to the other side of the room, pistol up, as Nolan stepped quickly behind the partition. Clear. He spun back to the inner door. There was no lock. He yanked it open, staying low.

The room beyond was the remnants of the service station garage, and the only part of this place that looked right. The concrete floor was pitted and scarred. A low-loader tow truck sat in the center, a red toolbox beside it. The space was large, with corners he couldn’t see from here. Time to step up.

“Police,” Nolan yelled, lunging into the open space with his gun leveled. “Don’t move!” His voice was a cop’s best weapon, more effective than the pistol. Aggressive behavior cowed people. They’d freeze before they had a chance to think about it. Matthews came in behind him, moving well, the two of them fluid, Matthews yelling just as loudly. Nolan stooped to look under the truck, checking for feet. He sprinted to the side and spun around it, then leveled his pistol across the hood and nodded. Matthews darted to the opposite corner to clear his lines of fire.

But apart from their echoes, the garage was silent. There was nobody here. Nolan could sense it, like returning home after a vacation, the way a place just felt empty. They went through the motions on the rest, checking the remaining cover: inside the truck, the small shop bathroom at the rear, the closets, but they found no one. Nolan’s nerves settled. He straightened and holstered his weapon. “You want this one or the other?”

“I’ll check the living room.” Matthews turned and walked back the way they’d come.

Nolan moved through the garage, careful not to touch anything. Tools lay strewn on the floor, a pile of tarps in one corner. There was a workbench with a Saint Christopher’s medallion hanging on it. He guessed you could take the man out of the parish, but not the parish out of the man. A radio on the floor, what they used to call a ghetto blaster back before things got politically correct. The bathroom was tidy, the toilet and tile clean. The floor had plenty of stains, but most of them looked like oil.

There was no pool of blood to be found.

He cursed quietly. Murder cases had infinite variations, but only two categories – those with witnesses and evidence, and those without. If you caught a break within forty-eight hours, then the first category had a good chance of being cleared. Unfortunately, this one was shaping up to be the latter. The body had been in the water about a week, invisible until the expanding gases in the belly brought it to the surface. That would have given a killer plenty of time to clean up his mess. The river also destroyed most physical evidence; about the best they could hope was that the medical examiner would pull a bullet they might be able to ballistics match. And with nothing at Patrick’s place, their likeliest crime scene had turned up snake eyes.

He sighed and walked back into the living room.

“You knew this guy, right?” Matthews was poking around with the tip of a pencil, lifting a newspaper from the coffee table. Normally they would need a warrant for all of this, but in the case of a body, the residence was fair game.

“A little.” Nolan moved to the small refrigerator by the bed, put on a pair of gloves, and opened it: a couple of take-out containers and a six-pack of Harp. Nothing smelled too foul – it hadn’t been abandoned long. “We grew up in the same neighborhood.”

“He run with bad people?”

“Last I heard he was small-time, a car thief. He got busted a couple years ago in somebody else’s Caddy.”

“He go down for it?”

“No.” Nolan turned in a slow circle. No sign of violence, no furniture knocked over, no broken glass. “Owner turned out to be dealing heroin out of an apartment in Uptown, and the whole thing fell apart.”

Matthews nodded. “So what now?”

“Interviews.” Murder cases were like reading a book in reverse. There was a personal drama that ended in a body. That was where the police came in. Without evidence, the thing to do was work backward, talking to family and friends, a boss if the victim had one. You were trying to figure out who saw him last, because that was the guy that dumped him in the river.

Matthews groaned. “We don’t find a witness, state’s attorney’s going to kick this back to us.”

“Yeah.”

“You ask me, the first squad on the scene should have thrown rocks at the body till it drifted back across the river. Let Area Four deal with it.”

Nolan laughed. There was an answering machine on the dresser. He went to look at it. The old-fashioned tape kind. The message indicator was blinking, and he pushed PLAY.

“Paaaaaatrick,” a woman’s voice. “Where are you, my bad boy? David’s in Milwaukee, and I’m lonely.”

Nolan rolled his eyes at Matthews, walked over to check the bedside drawer. Condoms, a couple of motorcycle magazines. The woman went on for another minute, hung up without leaving a number. They’d have to pull the phone records and find out when she’d last seen him, work forward from there. Sounded like she was married – the husband could be a suspect.

After that were a couple of hangups, and then a male voice came on, blues thumping behind it. “Patrick, it’s Danny.” Nolan straightened, his fingers tingling. “I need your help. It’s – it’s about that thing we talked about. Look, just call my mobile when you get this, would you? Day or night.” The machine beeped again.

The detectives looked at each other. Nolan pressed REWIND and then PLAY, and the voice came back, the captured blues riff repeating behind it. He listened carefully, trying to filter out the noise behind the voice, the distortion of the crummy answering machine. “Huh.”

“What?” Matthews asked.

“I think I know that guy.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded. It made sense – if he remembered right, Danny and Patrick had been friends back in the old parish. Now Danny was running scared, with Evan out of prison and shaking him down. Maybe Danny decided he needed help. Maybe he thought back and remembered a name, a tough-enough character.

Maybe, just maybe, Danny Carter had hired Patrick to take Evan out.

It was thin. Way too thin for a warrant. But worth exploring.

“I think,” Nolan said, “we need to have a chat with a guy I know, claims he’s in construction.”