The Impaler

Chapter 28

Markham hit an accident on the belt line, so it was just after eight-thirty by the time he turned into the Donovans’ driveway. The skies above were almost black, the rain coming down in sheets, and the enormous, five-bedroom Mc-Mansion appeared out of the gloom like some giant toad waiting to snatch him up with its tongue.

He parked his SUV in front of the three-car garage and sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts. The gravestone and the connection to Leo were huge, as was the discovery of the shell casings, but still he felt empty and unsatisfied. All still theory, no concrete proof. And Christ, he was tired; had to piss like a racehorse, too. He grabbed his briefcase but did not bother putting it over his head as he exited the TrailBlazer—he was still soaked—and made no attempt to avoid the tiny puddles that had formed along the Donovans’ brick walkway.

The house was dark inside, but Markham didn’t turn on the lights. He knew the layout well from the week before and went straight for the bathroom off the kitchen. He urinated with the door open, steadying his breathing to the blinking clock on the microwave. He was off about Donovan being a closet homosexual. He could feel it. So what the hell did he expect to find here?

But now that you can tie Guerrera to Angel’s, a voice said in his head, now that you know he was with Rodriguez on the night he died—well, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to solve that mystery.

Maybe Guerrera was blackmailing Rodriguez. Maybe he followed him to Angel’s and threatened to tell his family. Could’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It’s possible. But that’s three out of four victims we can tie to Angel’s for sure. Most likely Vlad would have thought Guerrera was gay if he saw him in the alley with Rodriguez. Odds are that Donovan played for the other team, too.

Markham responded by flushing the toilet.

All right then, the voice in his head continued. What if Donovan wasn’t gay?

“Then that means Vlad had a different reason for killing him,” Markham said to his reflection in the mirror. He washed his hands and splashed some cold water on his face, dried himself, and went upstairs.

He began in the master bedroom, rifled through the lawyer’s top dresser drawer, and removed the porn DVDs. There were three of them—higher-end, more “conceptual” fare made in the early 2000s starring no one he’d ever heard of. Then again, he hadn’t seen a porno since college. The only DVDs on his shelf were from the Criterion Collection, a film distribution company that released “important classic and contemporary films” to cinema buffs. Markham didn’t consider himself a cinema buff by any stretch, but nonetheless most often gravitated toward movies with a more intellectual bent. One of his few indulgences outside of work; one of the few hobbies that he allowed himself to get excited about since the death of his wife.

The cases for the Criterion DVDs were numbered on the spine, which made cataloguing and collecting them quite simple—that is, if you could find them. Some had gone out of print, which made them quite valuable to collectors. Indeed, Markham’s latest acquisition had been an out-of-print copy of John Woo’s The Killer, number eight on the Criterion list. He’d paid a pretty penny for it from a dealer, too, but it was worth it—not because The Killer was anything to write home about, but simply because it filled the space on his shelf between number seven and number nine.

Markham stared down at the porn flicks and suddenly wished he was back at his town house unpacking his DVDs. He’d found the lawyer’s stash the week before, but thought it best at the time not to mention to Tracy Donovan that he’d already been snooping around her house.

He opened the cases and checked the labels; traced his fingers over the discs and wondered if Donovan could have switched out the movies for some gay porn instead. Then he returned the DVDs to the drawer and left the bedroom feeling foolish. He wandered through the children’s bedrooms, through the big bonus room where Tracy Donovan kept her treadmill, and in and out of the upstairs bathrooms. He didn’t bother with the family photos in the living room as he’d done the week before; didn’t shine his flashlight into the kitchen cupboards or behind the boxes in the attic.

He ended up in Randall Donovan’s office and sat down in the lawyer’s big leather chair—propped his feet up on the desk and listened to the rain for a long time in the dark. The air hung cold about his wet clothes; the empty rooms above his head like a guilty conscience. The books, the lawyer’s papers had already been searched by the FBI; the safe in the wall, empty. Anything of note had been removed and shipped off to Quantico. He’d already printed out the updated inventory list from Sentinel, so what was there left for him to find?

Markham flicked on the desk lamp and removed the Donovan file from his briefcase. He scanned the evidence inventory and saw that Donovan’s hard drive was still being analyzed at Quantico. He would have to tell them what to look for now—perhaps something the FBI missed on their initial sweep; something subtle that might stand out in light of his new theory about the connection to Leo. The same went for the Rodriguezes’ computer. That had been shipped off to Quantico, too.

If they don’t find anything, Markham thought, I’ll bring back Marla Rodriguez’s computer myself. Don’t forget the beautiful lion’s little sister.

The beautiful lion …

Markham found himself staring down at the Donovan file—a flash of an image, vague, unclear, colored with something Alan Gates had said last week at his town house. He flipped through the file, found his copy of the initial police report and read the description of the crime scene—the results of the fingerprint analysis of Randall Donovan’s car. Forensics had found nothing, but it wasn’t the killer’s fingerprints that Markham was interested in.

“Donovan’s car,” he read out loud. “A red, 2004 Peugeot 307 coupé convertible.”

Import, expensive and hard to find. Just like your Criterion DVDs.

Peugeot … Peugeot …

Markham ran from the office, quickly negotiated his way in the dark to the opposite end of the house, and was out the kitchen door in less than ten seconds. He flicked on the garage light. Randall Donovan’s red Peugeot was at the far end, on the other side of a white BMW. Markham headed straight for it—leaped over a stack of boxes and stopped dead before the grille.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said to himself, panting.

The Peugeot logo seemed to sparkle back at him.

The answer had been on the hood of Randall Donovan’s car all along.