Shakedown

Chapter Fifty-eight

Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice in Wonderland that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there. My midnight trip to Strawberry Hill would have made the Mad Hatter proud, though I had learned enough to get me back on my feet.

Wendy was alive. I didn’t know where she was or how I would find her, but she was alive. Colby had implied that she was as guilty as he was. I wouldn’t believe that unless Wendy told me. Even if it was true, it changed nothing.

I focused on what I knew. Colby said that I had screwed up his plans by doing my job. My last job had been shutting down Marcellus Pearson. That threatened Colby because Marcellus would have given him up to make a deal with the U.S. Attorney.

That explained what Colby was doing near Marcellus’s house the night of the murders. He’d come there to kill Marcellus, only Latrell had beaten him to it, just as Marty Grisnik had surmised. Colby must have waited around long enough to be certain that the job was finished, letting Latrell kill Oleta Phillips.

With Marcellus out of the way, he knew we’d go after Javy Ordonez next. Colby couldn’t let that happen because Javy would also give him up in a heartbeat, so Javy had to die, too. Colby followed Latrell, found the murder weapon, and used it to kill Javy.

Colby must have blessed his luck when he found the photograph of Latrell and his mother. He left the murder weapon beneath a Dumpster where it was likely to be found and planted the photograph of Latrell, nailing him for the murders he was guilty of while framing him for one he didn’t commit.

His relationship with Tanja Andrija raised more questions. She had kept her cool until I asked her if there was another way out of the bar besides the front door. I had assumed from her?ash of panic that Colby was hiding in the back but, once again, I was wrong, which meant that she was hiding something else in the back of the bar.

In any other case, I would have immediately called Troy Clark and Marty Grisnik, and told them to blanket the area with cops, FBI agents, dogs, and helicopters until we captured Colby Hudson. We’d pick up Tanja, her brother Nick, and her parents, letting Tanja get a look at her parents being interrogated in their pajamas. One of them would turn on the other because that’s what crooks, even family, always do.

I would disregard Colby’s warning about Wendy, taking my chances that we could find her. But this wasn’t any case, it was my daughter’s case, and I refused to take the chance that Colby was bluffing or wrong about what would happen to her if he were arrested. I didn’t care if he and Tanja got away clean, both of them living to be a hundred and twenty.

Now I knew which road I was taking and that I was taking it alone. It was the road that started at Pete’s Place, though I didn’t know where it would end.

I left the car parked in the alley and walked down Sixth Street, keeping to the shadows, until it?attened out. A thrift shop and a tire store backed up to the bar and restaurant. Neither the owners nor the city had invested in lighting, leaving their corner of the world dark and deserted.

Both buildings were one story. A forklift was parked on the side of the tire store, the forks raised to within a few feet of the roof. I climbed onto the top of the cab, high-stepped onto the forks and pulled myself onto the?at-pitched roof. The exterior walls rose two feet above the roof. I crouched against the far wall, looking over the edge at the back door to the bar.

The area behind the thrift store, tire store, bar, and restaurant was paved with access to both Fifth and Sixth Streets. A sedan was parked behind the bar next to an air-conditioning tower that was running full out, the rushing air and whirling fan obliterating any other sounds. The back door to the bar had warped, leaving cracks of light along the frame.

I settled in against the wall, the tarred surface of the roof rubbing hard against my knees. Fifteen minutes went by without any activity. Then a light pickup truck with a lid over the bed swept into the parking lot from Fifth Street, the driver backing it up to the rear door of the bar.

Tanja opened the door, the light catching the driver’s face. It was her brother Nick, wearing a wife-beater and a pair of jeans. He bulled past Tanja, waving his arms and shaking his head. She waved her arms in reply, giving as good as she got, and closed the door. Though I wasn’t able to hear anything they had said, I was willing to bet that the nicest thing was “fuck you.”

When the door opened again a few minutes later, they began loading cardboard boxes and bulging garbage bags into the rear of the pickup. They worked quickly, finishing in fifteen minutes. Nick loaded the last box, shoving it into the truck bed and slamming the tailgate shut.

Tanja said something to Nick. He stabbed her chest with the end of his finger. She smacked his hand away and he threw his arms into the air again, got in his truck, and drove away. She stared after him, hands on her hips, and then reached in her pocket for her cell phone, running her hand through her hair as she listened, her shoulders sagging as if the call was another burden she couldn’t bear. She locked the door to the bar, grabbed a shoulder bag from her car, and marched toward Fifth Street, turning north when she reached the sidewalk.

I looked at my watch. It was after one. I guessed that the call was from her parents and that she was going to see them, choosing to walk rather than drive either to delay the visit or give her time to cool down from the confrontation with her brother.

I followed her, taking a parallel path between the houses and buildings on Fifth and Sixth, waiting until I saw her pass in the open spaces between them so that I could match her pace. Fortunately for me, the fences I had to climb were low and any watchdogs were asleep.

A small stand of juniper bushes in the Andrijas’ backyard provided perfect cover. The kitchen was in the back of the house and the lights were on. Petar and Maja, dressed in their pajamas, sat next to each other at the table, the arms of their chairs touching, Petar’s arm around his wife. She rested her head on his shoulder while he stroked the side of her face with his other hand. From the tender way he held her and the way her chest was rising and falling, it looked like she was crying.

Tanja entered the kitchen from the front of the house. One look at her parents and she dropped her bag, raced to her mother’s side, and glared at her father as he spoke. When he finished, she took out her phone and punched in a number, resuming her wild gesturing.

She stomped around the kitchen, her parents crouching and cringing if she came too close to them. When Tanja was done, she tossed her phone onto the counter and stared past them into the yard as if they weren’t there. I knew that the light would blind her even as she looked straight at where I was hiding. After a moment, she yanked on the blinds, cutting off my view.

Watching them, I was convinced of one thing. Colby hadn’t been hiding there. He had broken in. The question was why.

Petar and Maja had probably been asleep. Maja heard something and woke Petar, telling him to take a look. Or maybe Petar got up to pee and heard a noise, turned on the lights, and?ushed Colby from the darkness, scaring him and his wife to death. They waited before they called Tanja, doubtless more afraid of her than they were of Colby. I didn’t blame them.