“Check this out,” I said.
Slidell joined me. I pointed to a small blue package with a Texas big-hair cowgirl on the label.
“Rough Rider studded condoms,” Slidell read. “So our boy’s a player.”
“Or wants to be. Any missing?”
Slidell counted. Nodded. Returned to the closet.
Seconds later I heard, “Hell-o.”
I turned.
“Look what our rough rider’s hiding with his loafers.”
Slidell held a shoe box. In it were perhaps a dozen DVD’s. He read several titles.
College Boys Cummin’. Gang Banging Gays. Bucking Black Stallions.
Slidell’s eyes rolled up to mine. A grin crawled one corner of his mouth.
“So Evans twirls baton for the other team. Guess that takes care of motive.”
Tossing the box to the bed, Slidell thumb-hooked his belt. “No room in the kitchen. So where would this douche bag stash a freezer?”
“There’s an interior door in the garage.”
“There surely is.” Slidell checked his watch. “Let’s have us a look-see.”
Slidell thundered down the stairs. I followed at a slightly safer pace.
Outside it was dark, the crepe myrtles a ragged barrier between Widget’s yard and the golf course beyond. No lights shone from the brooding bunker that was the main house.
The garage was unlocked. Slidell charged straight to the inside door and tried Gracie-Lee’s key. It didn’t fit.
Slidell twisted the knob to the right and the left. Shoulder-slammed the wood. The door held fast.
Slidell raised his foot and kicked hard. Still the latch held. He kicked again and again. The jamb buckled and splintered. A final hard thrust and the door flew in.
Slidell found a switch. The man was damn good with lights.
A fluorescent tube came to life with a loud, buzzing hum.
The room was about eight by ten. On the left was a sideboard or old bathroom vanity wrapped with padded quilting secured by rope. On the right was shelving.
Straight ahead, the wall was covered with pegboard studded with metal hooks. A tool hung from each hook. Hammers, screwdrivers, a wrench, a carpenter’s saw.
My heart leaped to my throat.
No way. Klapec wasn’t decapitated with a handsaw.
I scanned the shelving.
Overhead, the fluorescents hummed and sputtered.
I spotted it on the second shelf down. A cardboard box with the words 6¼ inch power saw printed on the side.
Beside me Slidell was tugging at the rope covering the quilted object. My hand shot out and wrapped his arm. He turned.
Wordlessly, I nodded at the box. Reaching up, Slidell jerked it to the floor and tore back the flaps. Inside was an old McGraw-Edison circular saw.
Our eyes met.
“Yes” is all I said.
Unhooking a hedge clipper from the pegboard, Slidell cut the bindings on the quilt with four quick snaps. Together we grabbed the fabric and pulled.
The object wasn’t furniture or cabinetry. It was a Frigidaire chest freezer, standard white, maybe eight-cubic-foot capacity.
“Sonovabitch.” Slidell elbowed me aside in his eagerness to view the contents.
“Shouldn’t CSS take photos before we open this?”
“Yeah,” Slidell said, flipping the latch and heaving upward with both hands.
Above the whoosh of frozen air and the overhead buzzing I heard a muted pop.
“What was that?” I asked.
Slidell ignored my question. “Don’t look like Evans ponied up for the auto-defrost model.”
Though the comment was flip, Slidell’s tone was stony. And he was right. The freezer’s interior was completely crusted over with snow and ice crystals.
On the upper left was a rectangular wire basket filled with plastic bags. I scraped several to clear the labels. Frozen supermarket vegetables. Ground beef. What looked like a pork roast.
Flashback to the imprint on Klapec’s back. The basket?
No. That pattern was linear. The basket was constructed of stainless steel in a woven arrangement.
I kept the observation to myself. I was mesmerized by another plastic-wrapped object tucked into a corner on the freezer’s bottom.
Roughly round. A ham? Too large. A small turkey?
I reached in and lifted the frozen mass. The plastic was surprisingly frost free. What was wrong there?
The object was heavy, maybe four or five kilos. As I balanced it on the freezer’s edge, my own words slammed back from the past. My lecture to Slidell on the weight of a human head. About the same as a roaster chicken, I’d said.
Hands trembling, I pressed the clear plastic against the object inside. Details emerged, cloudy and blurred, like objects at the bottom of a murky pond.
An ear, blood pooled in the delicate arcs and folds. The curve of a jaw. Purple-blue lips. A nose, flattened and pressed to a blanched white cheek. A half-open eye.
Suddenly, I had to have air.
Thrusting Klapec’s head at Slidell, I rushed outside.
Gnawing at a thumbnail, I paced, waiting for Slidell to emerge. Waiting for the CSS truck to arrive.
Seconds dragged by. Or maybe they were minutes.
I heard the muffled sound of Slidell’s phone.
My eye drifted to the myrtles and the hint of golf course beyond. I crossed to the hedge, wanting a peaceful vista to calm my nerves.
And tripped over something lying in the shadows.
Something with bulk and weight. Dead weight.
Heart hammering, I scrabbled to my knees and turned.
Glenn Evans lay faceup on the lawn, eyes vacant, blood oozing from a hole dead center in his forehead.
37
SLIDELL BURST FROM THE GARAGE, HEAD SWIVELING, GUN TWO-fisted by the side of his nose.
Seeing his alarm, I realized I’d cried out.
Slidell ran to me and peered down at the body.
“What the fuck?”
Heart pounding, I stumbled to my feet and drew back toward the myrtles.
Slidell stared at Evans a very long time. Then he spoke without looking up.
“Pinder owns a white Dodge Durango. Vehicle showed up at her house an hour ago. Gunther was driving it.”
I struggled to put Slidell’s words and Evans’s death into a framework that made sense.
“Something else.” Slidell’s eyes rolled up and locked onto mine. They looked sunken and aged in the yellow glow oozing from the coach house windows. “Evans and Lingo were out of town the entire week Klapec disappeared. Including the twenty-seventh.”
For a moment neither of us knew what to say. We just stood there.
Had we gotten it all wrong? Had Rinaldi?
In the stillness I heard a twig snap behind me. Slidell’s Glock shot up and pointed in my direction.
I was turning when a gun muzzle kissed the base of my skull.
A man’s voice said, “Do this right or you both die now.”
Adrenaline fired to every cell in my body.
“Toss the gun.” Almost a hiss.
I saw a glint as Slidell’s eyes flicked sideways.
“Don’t do it, Detective.”
In my peripheral vision I could see the curl of a finger on the far side of a trigger guard. I could smell cleaning oil and old gunpowder.
“More police are on the way,” Slidell said.
“Then we’re going to move fast, aren’t we?” The words came machine-gun quick.
“It won’t work, Vince.”
The muzzle slid forward to the soft flesh under my jaw.
“What won’t work is me going to prison.”
“Being in jail is better than being dead.”
“Not for guys like me.”
I felt the front sight dig deep into my jugular, felt my blood pulse against the nub of steel.
“The gun. Now!” Staccato.
“Let’s all stay calm.” Slidell extende
d the Glock to arm’s length, then tossed it in Gunther’s direction.
“Pick it up,” Gunther ordered, mashing down on my back.
As I bent, he bent with me. I could smell pricey aftershave and stale body sweat.
With trembling fingers I scooped the Glock and handed it over my shoulder. Gunther took it and jerked me up by the collar of my jacket.
“The cuffs.”
Slidell unclipped and tossed his handcuffs. Again, I was forced to bend and retrieve them.
“Cell.”
Slidell tossed his phone. Gunther kicked it into the myrtles.
“Walk toward me, hands on your head.”
Ever so slowly, Slidell raised his arms, interlaced his fingers, and dropped his hands to the top of his head. Then he began inching in our direction.
“Faster.”
Slidell stopped. I could see fury working in his eyes. And something else. Fear.
“Don’t play with me, fat boy.” Gunther sounded dangerously amped.
“You don’t have a chance,” Slidell said.
“Yeah?”
I heard the swish of fabric behind me.
Slidell’s eyes went wide.
Lights exploded in my brain.
Then there was nothing but blackness.
I became aware of pain first: Throbbing in my head. Burning around my wrists. Aching in my shoulders.
Then sounds: The grinding hum of a motor. The murmur of tires on pavement. Soft thumps and clanks as things jostled around me.
Smells: Gasoline. Rubber. Exhaust.
Shifting and swaying told me I was in a moving vehicle.
I tried to sit up, realized my hands were tied behind me.
I opened my eyes. Darkness.
A new sensation. Nausea.
I lowered my lids. Swallowed.
Memory crept back. Evans. Gunther. Slidell’s shocked look.
Deduction. Gunther had knocked me unconscious and thrown me into a car trunk.
Dear God. Where was he taking me?
Sudden terrible thought. Was Slidell dead?
I listened for clues. My battered brain couldn’t interpret what my ears sent its way.
Breathing through my mouth, I lay still and counted the left and right turns. Willed myself not to vomit.
Finally, the car stopped. Doors opened. I heard male voices. Then silence.
Again, blindly groping for a sense of control, I counted. Sixty seconds. One twenty. One eighty.
The trunk lid flew open and I was hauled upward. Trees arced past my vision. Brick. Pillars.
My stomach roiled. I tasted bile and felt tremors under my tongue.
A familiar back stoop.
Fear shot through me. We were at the Annex. Why?
Dragging me from the car, Gunther prodded me toward the porch, muzzle once again pressed to the base of my skull.
I stumbled forward, grasping for comprehension. For details to remember. To recount. To reconstruct.
Back door open. Kitchen windows casting rectangles of light on the lawn. Purse tossed, contents scattered like wind-blown leaves on the grass.
Gunther shoved me up the steps. I entered my home on trembling legs.
From somewhere in the house I heard frenzied rattling and scraping. Birdie? Too loud. Then what? I couldn’t tell. Blood jackhammered in my brain.
Gunther paused, licked his lips. For the first time I had a view of his face. He looked like someone’s older brother, a tennis coach, a preacher at the church. His eyes were green, but shifting wildly. His hair was chestnut and neatly side-parted. He had one thing right. Switch-hitter though he was, with his feminine good looks he’d be grade-A prime in prison.
Moving almost imperceptibly, I flattened my back and shoulders to the wall beside the jamb and raised up on my toes. Something clicked, and the light falling through the door changed subtly.
Where was Bird? I listened for the jangle of the bell on his collar. Nothing.
Pushing hard, Gunther forced me through the swinging door into the dining room, then through to the hallway.
Slidell’s back was to us. He was hunched, wrenching at cuffs chaining his wrists to the newel post of the staircase.
“Easy, Detective.” Agitated and tense.
Slidell whirled as best he could.
“You’re going down, you dickless shit.” Slidell’s voice was ragged from exertion and rage.
“Then what have I got to lose with two more corpses?”
Moving me into Slidell’s field of vision, Gunther jammed his gun into my trachea and forced my chin upward.
Slidell hauled on the cuffs, fury radiating from him like heat.
Gunther forced the barrel so deep I cried out in pain.
Slidell’s fingers curled into fists. “You hurt her I’ll fucking kill you myself.”
“Don’t see how you’ll manage that. Turn around.”
Slidell didn’t budge.
“Move! Now! Or your buddies will be scraping her brains off the wall with a sponge.” The calm was gone and Gunther again sounded psychotically overwrought. Was the man roller-coastering on speed or some other drug?
Eyes burning with hatred, Slidell began a slow pivot.
Lunging forward, Gunther arced the gun fast toward Slidell’s temple. It connected with a sickening crack.
Slidell went down and lay still, cuffed arms crooked heavenward as if he were a supplicant in prayer.
Then, Gunther moved fast. So fast I couldn’t react.
Shoving me to the staircase, he mashed me facedown, produced a key, and freed Slidell’s left hand. Looping the chain through the banister uprights, he clamped the free cuff onto my right wrist. I heard movement and felt pressure on my arms. In seconds, the ropes fell from my hands.
Adrenaline surged through me as comprehension dawned. I was handcuffed to Slidell. Gunther planned to kill us both.
Stall, Brennan.
Pushing to my knees, I half turned to face my aggressor.
“You already burned a kid, a cop, and one of your ex-clients, right? Why more murders?”
“Kiss my ass.” Gunther’s eyes were jumping all over the room.
“He’s right, you know.” I swallowed back nausea. “They’ll hunt you down and run you to ground. There’s nowhere you can hide.”
“The cops don’t know I exist. Your pal here cracked under pressure. Murdered Evans, then you, then committed suicide.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Despondent over the death of his partner. Over getting poor Asa Finney shot. Over killing you.”
“No one will believe that. It’s preposterous.”
“He blamed you for making him arrest the wrong man. For goading Lingo into stirring up trouble.”
Slidell groaned. I looked at him. In the murky light I could see an angry welt on his temple.
“I know what you’re thinking. But I watch television.”
My eyes snapped back to Gunther.
“That bruise will look wrong when they do the autopsy. I’ve thought of that.” Gunther shot a hand through his hair. “I’ve thought of everything. That’s where the nice bullet will blow through his head.”
He’s delusional. Keep him talking.
“You fed Rinaldi false information,” I said. “You must have done a lousy job if you had to kill him.”
“The man was a moron.”
“He was smart enough to figure out you killed Klapec.”
“Jimmy made a big mistake. He cut into my trade. I had to straighten up his thinking. Things got out of hand.” Gunther licked his lips. “I didn’t mean to waste Jimmy. It just happened.”
“And Rinaldi?”
“Skank made the mistake of tying Klapec to me.”
“So you eliminated the competition, then threw suspicion on your disloyal customer.”
I saw Gunther’s finger twitch against the trigger. “Brilliant, eh?”
“Why behead Klapec?”
Gunther snorted a laugh. “To fit him into a
n old crone’s cheap-ass freezer.”
A chill traveled my spine. The man felt absolutely no remorse.
Buy time.
“Why carve him up?”
“When that cauldron story broke, I said to myself, ‘Vince my man, the devil’s looking out for you. You got a frozen headless body you need to offload and ole Lucifer’s offering the perfect cover.’”
Again, it was as though a switch had been thrown. Abruptly, Gunther sounded calm, confident, almost amused.
“You put Klapec’s head in Evans’s freezer tonight to tighten the noose.”
Gunther clicked his teeth and cocked his head.
“Don’t forget the saw. That was a nice touch.”
“You made one mistake. You shot Evans with your own gun.”
“Please. Don’t be dumb. Every cop carries backup. After Slidell used his thirty-eight on Evans he came here and shot you. The bullets will match. Then, being old school, Slidell ate his own piece.”
“No one will believe a scenario as absurd as that. The homicide detectives know you are in town and that you have access to a white Durango. They’ll be on you within hours.”
Gunther’s face tensed and his eyes went hard and began to dance. “I know what you’re trying to do, lady. You think you can delay me. You think you’re smart. But it won’t work with me.”
Gunther shifted the thirty-eight to his left hand and yanked Slidell’s Glock from his waistband. The chink-chink of the slide sounded deafening in the closeness of the hall.
Ignoring the pain in my wrist, I hurled myself past the newel post and stretched out over Slidell as far as my manacled hand would allow.
I heard angry footsteps, then a hand grasped my hair and jerked my head up. Vertebrae crunched in my neck.
Still clutching my hair, Gunther knocked me sideways with an elbow to the face. My head ricocheted off the banister.
The room pressed in, drew back. I felt warmth trickle from my nose.
With one boot, Gunther levered me from Slidell and rolled me to the left.
“No!” I screamed, struggling to rise up on all fours.
Through a tangle of hair I saw Gunther bend over Slidell.
I stretched out a hand, tears streaming my cheeks.
Reaching down, Gunther pressed the Glock to Slidell’s temple.
The moment froze into a deadly snapshot.