Jackie’s muffled voice answers, “Good morning.”
The shower door is steamed, and I swipe at the glass with my fingers, making out the marine-blue smudge of Jackie’s robe. I open the shower and she’s standing there smiling, but in a puzzled way.
“What’s this?” she asks, holding up something long and flowing in her right hand.
“It was on the bed,” she adds.
It stirs in her hand in a snakelike fashion, flexing subtly in contrary motion between the inrushing cooler air of the bedroom and the heavier, heated air of the shower. About six inches long and scarlet, it first looks to be a ribbon from a party package. But it is the missing section of hair cut from Lana’s scalp. It had not been on the bed when I got up an hour ago to go running.
I stand in the shower for an instant, and then bound toward her, drenched and scattering shampoo foam. It startles her, and her mouth opens with a burst of surprised air until I place my palm against her lips, silencing any further noise. Her eyes are wide with alarm, but I shake my head, cautioning her to stay silent.
My bedside table is just outside the bathroom door and I reach for it, ease the top drawer open, pull out the SIG Sauer. I rack the slide quietly, the metal slipping in my wet hands. I’m hoping the running shower will mask the metallic click, and I motion for Jackie to stay where she is. There is no one that I can see in the bedroom, the bed in disarray from where Jackie has thrown back the covers. My eyes focus immediately on the bed frame, high enough off the ground to allow someone of reasonable size to hide underneath.
After taking a few steadying breaths, I throw myself down on my side, arms extended, and sweep the gun along the space. There is nothing there, and I quickly stand, my naked ribs and thigh stinging from rug burn. The bedroom door is partially closed and I slip behind it, look through the space at the hinged side for any movement coming from the living room.
I step around the door and walk softly across the large, open space of the living room to the opposite side, where the office is, leaving splatters of water in my wake, my bare skin goosefleshed from the air-conditioning blowing through the vents above my head. Listening for any sounds in the office, I crouch down, grab the door handle, twist it, and propel the door open with as much force as I can manage. There is no one in the room, and before I can talk myself out of it, I make a run for the closet, yank the sliding door open, and sweep the gun inside the small space. The closet is empty.
The gun lowered to my thigh, I pad shivering back into the living room and check to make sure I’d locked the door upon returning. I know that both locks were secure when I returned from my run because I used my keys to get in. Someone had to have had keys to gain access to the apartment while I was gone.
Jackie is standing in the bathroom, breathing shallowly, holding on to the section of hair. Through her eyes, I must look as though I’ve morphed into some dangerous, aquatic nymph. I’m fully naked; my hair, speckled with drying shampoo as with sea foam, sticks to my face and upper body in untamed, stringy clumps; the length of my right side glows an angry red from the dive to the floor.
“What the hell is going on, Betty?” She’s whispering, as though afraid to hear the sound of her own voice.
“Jackie, put that back on the bed,” I tell her. “Exactly as you found it.”
She sets it on my side of the bed, coiling it around like it’s a serpent.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Baby, I need you to be very calm right now.” I set the gun on the bedside table. “It’s a piece of hair from a murder victim.”
“What?” She wraps her arms around herself, following me into the bathroom. “Did you put it on the bed?”
She can tell from my face that I did not.
The water has been running the whole time and I step into the stall, frantically rinse off the remainder of shampoo crusting my scalp and skin.
I get out of the shower, wrap myself in a towel. “The girl who was murdered at the Benson house, Lana Yu, had a piece of her hair cut off and taken from the scene.”
“You mean like a trophy or something?” Jackie asks.
“I don’t know. The missing hair was dyed a bright scarlet. That information was withheld from the press.”
“Oh my God,” she whispers, sagging against the bathroom cabinets, her knees buckling. “Someone was in our apartment. While I was sleeping.”
“Both locks were locked when I got back from running.”
“Who would have a key? Is it the killer?” she asks. Her eyes, searching my face, have begun filling with tears.
I’ve put on a shirt and a pair of pants, and I’m tugging on a boot, but I drop it to the floor and pull Jackie to me. The flesh beneath her neck is exposed by the robe falling away from one shoulder. I kiss the pulsating hollow above the collarbone where the rose tattoo lies, hugging her tightly, as much for my own comfort as for hers. I’ve got the shakes bad; the muscles at my temples are clenched to stop my chattering teeth.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “But first things first: We get some cops here, and the locksmith. Then I ream the super for being so careless with the master key. We’ll figure this out.”
As soon as I mention Jimmy the super, though, I realize he would never willingly give up a copy of a tenant’s key, especially ours.
18
Sergeant Taylor sits in a chair in the task room, his heavy-lidded eyes gazing at me in a wary fashion, the way a bull terrier might watch a person who’s stepped on its tail one too many times. There is a milky film at the corners of his mouth from the antacid tablets he’s been chewing. He peels back the paper wrapper on the roll and pops two more onto his tongue like candies from a Pez dispenser.
In the room with us are the usual suspects, Craddock, Hoskins, and Ryan, as well as Maclin and his partner, Tate, from Homicide. The sergeant has just informed the group that Forensics has confirmed a match of the hair segment left on my bed to the dyed hair on Lana Yu’s scalp. It’s been several hours since the home invasion, and Taylor has spent a good part of the morning in his office hunched over his phone, head in hands, talking to his department chiefs.
I stare at the whiteboard, where the red lines indicating deceased are multiplying like stripes in a candy-cane factory. El Gitano’s name has been crossed out, along with eleven others’: Bender, the patrolman, the Good Samaritan with the schnauzer, the kidnap victim in the Lincoln Town Car, Lana, Ruiz’s bodyguard, and the three Mexican dealers and two reenactors killed at the camp.
What Taylor has not said is that he’s under enormous pressure from the department to shut tight the Ruiz case. What started out as a straightforward drug investigation has morphed into a murder case to be handled by Homicide. The FBI has withdrawn all support, moving on to another high-profile Mexican supplier.
“Detective…Detective,” Taylor says, and I realize that he’s speaking to me. “You look very unhappy at this moment. You have something you want to say before we let Homicide get on with their day and we get on with ours?”
“There’s a connection between Ruiz and my home invasion,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he responds. “But there were no drugs involved. The hank of hair is related to the Lana Yu murder investigation. Your home invasion is now linked to that case as well. Let Detective Maclin and his partner connect all the dots.”
“But it wasn’t their homes that were broken into. Or yours, with all due respect, Sergeant. I’m really pissed off about this.”
“I know it,” Taylor says, holding his hands out in a placating way. “That’s why it’s better that Maclin and his department take over.”
“Look,” I say, “I’m not ready to let the Ruiz case go. Not yet.” I struggle to keep my breathing even. I swallow, relaxing my throat muscles so that my voice stays out of the flying-monkey-squawk-box range. “There is a connection between Bender, Ruiz, Lana, the delivery guy, and now my apartment. And it has everything to do with drugs. We just haven’t found the link yet.”
“That’s why we’re going to offer every assistance to Detectives Maclin and Tate. But, Betty,” Taylor says, holding me with his gaze, “you need to let them spend their time and their resources solving this. We have two teenagers dead from Mexican heroin. Last night, four more kids were brought into North Dallas hospitals comatose, most likely from the same stuff.”
“And I will begin working with the team on that right away. But, with respect, Sergeant, with just a little bit of digging—”
“Has anyone noticed the body count?” Taylor asks sharply. He stands and points to the whiteboard. “I count twelve since this benighted case started, including the poor costumed bastards in Weatherford. You don’t seem to be hearing me this morning, Detective Rhyzyk. The Ruiz drug case is closed. It is now the Ruiz-Yu murder case, and it’s been passed on to the proper department. We,” he says forcefully, using his finger like a metronome, gesturing back and forth between us, “are not murder investigators.”
The gathered cops are all looking at either their shoes or, under their brows, me.
“It’s been a dirty business, Sergeant,” Maclin says. “Detective Rhyzyk is certainly not the first lead on a case to stack the bodies. But she didn’t start the war.”
Taylor sits back down. “I don’t mind the scumbags dying, Mac; it’s the citizens being killed that are of concern to me. And now we’ve got a newcomer, possibly our delivery guy but possibly not, leaving a section of hair from a murder victim in a police officer’s home.”
Not to mention Ruiz’s head, Hoskins mouths to Craddock.
There is a dangerous moment when Craddock begins to smile, but I glare at him and the smile disappears, and he busies himself by pulling a bag of corn nuts out of his shirt pocket.
I then look at Maclin, whose profile is turned toward me like a Byronic portrait. His comment that I couldn’t be blamed entirely for the mounting carnage feels like support from a fellow officer. Almost. Except that I know his murder investigation is still wide open. For some as-yet-unknown reason, I seem to be of interest to the perpetrator, who keeps leaving gruesome or provocative offerings at my apartment like some demented Christmas elf. Maclin is thinking that by staying close to me, he’ll stay close to the killer.
“Right,” Taylor says, “if there’s nothing else, this meeting is closed. I’ll let the team know who’s taking lead on the high-school investigation. And, Detective Rhyzyk, you need to find someplace safe for a while until we find out who’s leaving body parts at your apartment. I’m telling you this not as your sergeant, but as your friend.”
Maclin follows me out of the meeting room and into the break room. He signals Tate to go on and stands against the door frame, arms crossed.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Great,” I answer, crossing my arms as well.
Ryan starts to walk in, coffee cup in hand, sees the two of us standing like guardians to the underworld, and ducks away again. Maclin belongs to the 1 percent of humanity who don’t look corpselike under fluorescent lighting, since he spends two hours every day at the gym pinking his skin to Aryan perfection.
“You know we’ll do everything to find out who’s stalking you.”
“I’m sure you will, Marsh.”
“Jimmy Aubrey, the super at your building, says all of his keys are accounted for. Nothing missing, nothing stolen.”
“And…?”
“And you’re certain all your keys are accounted for?”
I nod curtly. “Jackie’s too. We’re not missing any keys.”
“Weird. And yet someone watched you leave your building at five in the morning, gained access to your apartment, and left some of Lana’s hair.”
“On my bed, without waking Jackie,” I add. The apartment locks had been changed by nine o’clock that morning, replaced with top-of-the-line, expensive cylinders, but I was working on Jackie to stay at her mother’s place until I felt we were safe again. No surprise that she was reluctant. I had already decided that I’d rather camp out in the middle of the Chiapas Mexican rain forest than have a sleepover at Anne Walden Nesbitt’s house. I could stay at Seth’s. He’d already called twice to get updates and offered his place to me and Jackie, but his apartment is tiny and messy, with a constant parade of women playing nursemaid. Not conducive to a restful night’s sleep.
“Homicide’s dusting every inch of the apartment for prints,” he says. “Searching outside, too, for shoe impressions. Problem is, that complex is really busy.”
“Sounds like you don’t have much to work with. But I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“What would you do differently?” he asks.
I want to repeat to him an old Polish proverb that Benny used to say when he was done with something: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” But what I say is “Well, for one, I would have asked Jimmy if he’d had any unexpected delivery- or repairmen to the office lately. Someone who might have been left alone, even for a few minutes, who could have copied the keys. There are phone apps that can scan a key to be copied in a few seconds. But I’m not a murder investigator, so what do I know.”
“What else?”
I just smile at him. “Let’s not kid ourselves that this is a partnership. Of any kind.”
“Too bad,” he says. He moves toward me, but with palms open, as though he’s showing harmless intent. He reaches around me for the coffeemaker and pours himself a cup while standing close enough for me to smell the starch in his shirt, like he’s a point guard in a basketball game. His hair is artfully tousled, carefully gelled, fingered into layered perfection.
He sniffs theatrically at the air above my head. “Detective, did you change your shampoo? It’s like a fruit orchard…”
I stiffen, remembering the peach-shampoo residue in my hair as well as my vulnerability being naked and afraid in my own home only a few hours earlier. “Is this one of your interrogation techniques,” I ask him, “or is this you being charming?”
He takes a sip of coffee and smiles, his face a few inches from mine. “Wow, Betty, remind me never to invite you to any of my poker games. You could break a cement trowel off your face right now.”
“Is there a problem here?” a voice from the doorway asks.
It’s Hoskins, his neck reddening beneath his too-large shirt collar, forehead bulbous and shiny, his coffee cup clenched in one hand. He glares at Maclin with a heat he usually reserves for failed border raids. I think at first he’s irritated that the coffeemaker is being hogged. Then I realize that Hoskins is angry because he thinks I’m being harassed and bullied. He’s being protective—of me.
Hoskins, a good five inches shorter than his Homicide counterpart, moves purposefully into the room. “Excuse me,” he says loudly to Maclin, crowding him out of the way. “Some of us here actually have work to do.” He takes his time filling his cup from the carafe, adding powdered creamer, methodically stirring the liquid. He sips loudly from the cup, on which is printed COFFEE, BECAUSE CRACK ISN’T ALLOWED AT WORK.
“Detective,” Hoskins says to me, “when you’re ready…” And he strides out of the break room, casting one last warning look over his shoulder.
I step around Maclin, grinning, and follow Hoskins through the door.
Hoskins, Craddock, and I gather at Ryan’s desk. Following my directive, Ryan’s been quietly running system matches on meth dealers resembling the description of our delivery guy: tall, muscular build, red-haired, pale skin, about twenty-five to thirty-five years of age.
I look around to make sure Taylor is in his office and then tell Ryan, “All right, you’ve got five minutes.”
“No matches yet,” he tells us. “But I did do a deeper background check on Bender’s family, and some interesting things popped up.” To my questioning look he adds, “I figured if Lana Yu’s murder was not cartel-related, maybe it was something more personal.”
“Show me,” I say.
Ryan begins rustling nervously through some files next to the computer screen as though he’s been
asked unexpectedly to hand in a homework assignment, and I think how perfect he’ll be working undercover at the high school. With his pressed jeans and collared polo shirt, he’d be every student counselor’s wet dream. Also, his arm’s still in the sling, and the injury to his shoulder causes him to move more cautiously, more tentatively, giving him a vulnerable air. The teenage girls will be on him like white on rice.
He opens a slender folder and pulls out a photograph. “There are no remaining blood relatives. Bender’s parents and sister passed away. However, he was married briefly to a woman named Evangeline Roy. After five years of marriage, they divorced, in 1997. A few months after the divorce, Evangeline Roy was arrested for the manufacture and sale of meth.”
Ryan hands a photo to me. Taken at the Smith County jail, it’s a color mug shot of an attractive but disheveled woman with the vacant eyes of a person firmly in the grip of a stone-cold addiction. And her hair is a bright coppery red.
“Guess who posted bail for her?” Ryan asks.
“Bender?” I ask.
“Right. No jail time was given, mandated six-week rehab stay. I did a search for her last known address and found it just outside of Tyler. The house where she was living burned down in a meth lab explosion in 2003. They found three corpses, burned to a crisp, but no positive ID could be made due to the condition of the bodies. No fingers, no teeth. Skulls bashed in, either from falling timbers or intentional blunt force trauma. From that time, Evangeline Roy does not show up in a jail, hospital, or DMV database in Texas. Officially, she is presumed dead. But the Smith County Sheriff’s Office has doubts because of the suspicious nature of the burn site.”
“Did she have any children?” I ask.
“Two sons born of a previous marriage, Tommy and Curtis Roy, who were both teenagers at the time Evangeline married Bender. But I can’t find anything in the system for the Roy brothers either.”
“So what now?” Craddock asks me. “There were no prints on the box containing Ruiz’s head. And Homicide will likely not find any prints at your apartment either. But somebody must have seen this delivery guy around. He’s big and redheaded—”