In Big Trouble

Chapter 21

Minutes went by, six-hundred-second minutes in which A. J. and Tess just couldn't find the will to get up off the floor and walk out into the bright sunshine, where they would have to face the consequences of their discovery. The smell seemed to worsen as they lingered, taking on a life of its own and wrapping around them, jeering at them. Still they sat, their legs too rubbery to use just yet.

"According to the laws of osmosis, you're supposed to get used to it," Tess remarked.

"I don't think the laws of osmosis apply here," A. J. said, taking short, shallow breaths and trying to pull the neck of his shirt over his nose, so he looked like a kid playing bandit, or that weird guy with the sweater from the old Bazooka bubblegum cartoons. "The question is, who should we call first? The cops, or my photographer? You got a cell phone?"

"No," Tess lied. "You?"

"At the office. I didn't count on writing today. Guess I'll be filing after all."

"You can't write a story. You're a witness."

"Who are you, the ombudsman? I'm a reporter with a first-person story on a murder at one of the most notorious murder scenes in the city. Wonder who that is in there. But even if it's nobody, it's a story."

Nobody indeed. He might be a dead, decaying stranger, but Tess had no doubt they had found Laylan Weeks, Tom Darden's pal. Which meant he was no longer a viable suspect in Darden's death. Which meant Crow and Emmie were.

A. J. stood up, his legs shaking hard enough to make the change in his pocket jingle. "Guess I'll walk up to that ice house on Alamo and make the call."

"Do that, and the cops will be here and have it roped off before you get back," Tess said quickly. "I'd hold my ground, if I were you. Let me walk to the gas station. I'll call the paper, they can get another reporter and a photographer out here. Then I'll wait fifteen minutes and call the cops, like a good citizen. Your guys will already be in, and you'll have told them what you saw. So if you get held up at the cop shop, giving a statement, your paper still gets the story."

A. J. thought about her proposition. Tess knew he wasn't bothered about waiting to call the police, he was just trying to figure out the best way to keep control of the story. He wanted to keep his exclusive, and maybe prevent the local television stations from getting it for the early news. Once the call went out on the police radio, his advantage was lost.

"How about if I give you the beeper number for a photog? The city desk might send one of those hungry youngsters who-well, let's just say there's not always a healthy respect for territory. We'll get the photog in and out, with a statement from me, before the cops get here. Then I'll have the photog call the cops, report it as a break-in."

"Sure," Tess said, suppressing a smile. "Write the number on the back of your business card."

"Do you think-I mean, can't I wait just outside the door, but inside the fence? I don't want to stay in here-" Tess knew he was about to say "alone," then felt sheepish. "I mean, I think it's better if I'm outside when the cops come."

"I do, too," she assured him. "I'm off."

She shouldered her knapsack and felt her phone pressing into her back, beneath the bag's false bottom. Too bad she had to double-cross A. J. He was a nice enough guy, but he put his interests first, which forced her to do the same. She walked briskly down the block until she was out of sight, then broke into a jog. She had to run almost a mile up Alamo Street before she found a cab to take her back to her car.

She called Rick Trejo from the cab's backseat, then the Eagle city desk. The person who answered the phone was either very young or very old-the voice was cracked and quavery, which could be from tentativeness or overuse. At any rate, the woman on the other end was blessedly dull and asked no questions when Tess left word that A. J. Sheppard was having car trouble, and probably wouldn't be in for the rest of the afternoon.

"You didn't call the cops? Jesus, Tess, what were you thinking?"

"That we could use a head start."

"Why?" Crow asked. He was sprawled in the only chair in the duplex's living room, his guitar in his lap. "I've been here all day, I obviously didn't sneak down to this restaurant and murder some guy I've never even met."

"Trust me, it's not today you need an alibi for," Tess said, remembering the smell and A. J.'s description of the maggots.

Rick paced the small living room. Tess realized she had finally made it inside Crow's house. The shotgun duplex was charming in a funky, retro way, or could have been. It had old-fashioned built-in bookcases and a huge fireplace, which had been converted to gas. The wood floors needed refinishing, but were basically sound, the windows large and numerous. But there were no domestic touches, no indication that Crow and Emmie had considered this anything but a way station to wherever they were headed.

"If Tess is right, and that's Laylan Weeks in Espejo Verde, the police will want to question you again," Rick told Crow. "I wouldn't be surprised if they find a way to charge you this time, if only to coerce you into finally telling them what you know."

Crow ran his fingers lightly over his guitar strings, humming softly to himself. He was like a little kid who puts his hands over his ears and chants to avoid hearing what he didn't want to hear.

Tess leaned toward him. "You do know something, don't you, Crow?"

"I know Emmie's not going to surface until she's good and ready. All we can do is wait."

"You'll be waiting downtown," Rick said.

Crow looked unconcerned. "Big deal, so I spend the afternoon down there. They'll take me in, they'll try to get me to tell them something, they'll let me go because I don't have anything to tell."

"You better be prepared for the reality that you could be charged and held without bail," Rick said. "It's a homicide rap, you're from out of state. They'll argue you're at risk for flight. You could be in jail until your trial comes around."

"They can't do that."

"If there's one shred of physical evidence to tie you to that scene, they can. Someone's already tried to frame you once, and only police incompetence kept it from working. Why wouldn't they do it again?"

Tess saw a flash of orange in the gloom of the Espejo Verde kitchen, and then remembered Crow happily dying his Cafe Hon T-shirt in her sink, until his hands were bright yellow and the sink had a permanent ring. It had been that same mango-y color, almost exactly, as the stained cloth she had seen. "I used to have a Cafe Hon T-shirt," he had told her Saturday night.

"I can't be in jail this weekend-"

"Why, Crow?" Tess asked. "What's going to happen? What's Emmie going to do?"

"Nothing," he said, and his eyes went dark and flat. "But we've got all these gigs. The Morgue paid us in advance, and we'll have to give it back if at least three-quarters of the band doesn't play Friday and Saturday. And I don't have it, okay? It's already gone, blown on frivolous things like food and gas for my car."

"You won't have to worry about those things if you're in jail," Rick said. "If you do get charged, and I can get bail, will your parents be able to cough up the money?"

"Call my parents and I fire you," Crow said firmly. "I don't want them bailing me out of anything, literally or figuratively. Besides, if you're right, there's not going to be any bail."

Rick glanced at his watch. "I have to call the cops. Better I call them before they call on us."

Crow smiled, a bitter, downturned smile. "I'll brush my teeth so my breath will be kissing-fresh for the interrogation."

Rick picked up the phone, which sat in a curved niche in the wall. "Detective Guzman," he said into the receiver. Then, to Tess, as he waited to be put through. "You should have called me from there. It looks bad, the way you handled it. As if you assumed he was guilty."

He made her feel like a child, and she answered in a child's whiney tone. "I'm tired of talking to cops. I'm tired of finding dead bodies. Let A. J. give them the blow-by-blow. He saw everything. Besides, as long as Crow surrenders, what's the big deal? There's no reason we should assume he's involved in this."

"I just hope Guzman sees things your way," he said. "If he ever picks up. I hate to think of how many minutes of my life I've spent on goddamn hold. I want those minutes back. When death comes for me, I want back every minute I was on hold, in traffic jams, and behind people with eleven items in the ten-items-or-less line."

For all its windows, the living room was fairly dark, perhaps because it faced north. Crow's neighborhood was quiet in the late afternoon, and Tess became aware of the sounds around her-Rick's tuneless humming, the wind moving through the trees, a car moving slowly down the block, bushes rustling, a burst of barking from what sounded like an entire kennel of dogs a block or two away. The steady, muffled sounds of traffic from the nearby highway.

Then she became aware of the sounds she wasn't hearing-running water from the bathroom, Crow's footsteps as he moved about the rear of the house, gathering his things.

"Rick-"

But he was hearing, or not-hearing, the same thing. He dropped the phone, even as Guzman's voice came on the line. They ran down the narrow hall to the bathroom, a large old-fashioned room with a vanity flanked by high built-in cabinets and small square windows bracketing the vanity's mirror. The window closest to the door was up, and the screen had been pushed out on the ground below.

"The car's still there," Tess said, pointing to the Volvo with Maryland tags.

"Only because his key ring is in the front door. And with the park nearby, he can get a good head start on foot," Rick said. "I just wish I'd known he was going to do ‘Norwegian Wood' for his encore."

"Norwegian Wood?"

"Sure. This Crow had flown." And he laughed mirthlessly at his own bad joke, while Tess just stared at the empty space where a screen had once been, where Crow's body had been only minutes ago. It was such a small space, even for someone as slender as Crow. It couldn't have been easy to slide through it without making too much noise, to drop to the ground without a thump that would draw their attention.

Such a small space, yet it reminded her just how big trouble can be.