Blood on the Tracks (24 page)

Next to Merkel’s picture, a miniature Confederate flag was thumbtacked to the wall. I studied that for a moment before moving on.

I looked at the two glasses of milk on the dining room table and wondered how old they were. Given the general disarray in Elise’s apartment, they could have been there for hours or for days. The sides were covered with fingerprint powder. I scrolled back to the kitchen. Dirty plates stacked next to the sink. A jumble of glasses, one of which was tipped on its side. A couple of drawers partially open. Mail in piles on the counter—envelopes and magazines and flyers. As if it had been weeks since Elise had taken care of anything around her home. The only things of beauty in the utilitarian kitchen were a painting of a mountain lake that hung between the refrigerator and the doorway and a lone ceramic cat on the windowsill.

Back to the living room. Three pairs of shoes neatly lined under a coat rack, which held four or five coats, a few winter scarves, and two woolen hats.

No sign of a struggle in the living room. Nor in the kitchen or second bedroom. No sign of a struggle anywhere except the hobo beads in Elise’s bedroom.

I returned to the photo of Merkel and the red-and-blue flag tacked to the wall next to it. Was the flag something Elise had really wanted in her house? Had she used it to mark Merkel as a neo-Nazi? Or had someone other than Elise put it there?

I felt the first tickle of excitement. But just as suddenly it drained away. Merkel’s photo and the Confederate flag didn’t make him the killer. It didn’t even place him in her home.

Something nagged at me. Something I was missing. But damned if I could figure it out.

I packed up the camera, pulled on my coat. What I had right now was a whole lot of nothing. Maybe something would show up in the autopsy or the DNA tests. Maybe one of the neighbors would remember something. All of that was now Cohen’s purview. It was his investigation, and I had cut myself out of it.

For now, I was long past the point of being able to think straight. Time to go home. Sometimes my best ideas came while I slept. Maybe I’d wake up with an idea about where Melody and Liz might be.

I threw some bills on the table and nodded good-bye to Suzie as Clyde and I made our way out. Suzie blew me a kiss. Which only reminded me of the night’s earlier kiss. And everything that followed.

Another broken tribe.

In the truck, Clyde and I gazed out the window as snow fell past a street light forty yards away, and the wipers scraped against the collection of ice. I pulled out my phone, saw that Cohen had tried to call more than an hour ago. I’d silenced my headset when we went to Melody’s house.

I stared out at the winter bleakness for a time, then called him back. He picked up on the third ring.

“Parnell. I thought you’d be sound asleep around now.”

“Sleep when we die, right?”

“Right.” Behind him, other voices called back and forth, phones rang, and someone slammed a door. The homicide room in full what-the-fuck-just-happened mode. “It’s the life we chose.”

“How’s Bandoni?” I asked.

“Doc patched him up and sent him home. Guy’s a boomerang. Right back to work. Chief tried to put him on administrative leave, but that went over about like you’d expect. He says to tell you thanks, by the way.”

In the background, I heard Bandoni say, “Fuck your mother.”

“Grateful bastard,” I said. “What about the precinct cops?”

Cohen’s voice took a turn down a dark alley. “Officer Rossi is in critical at Denver General. We’re working on IDs for the two punks in the kitchen. As for the assholes who started this shit, Frankie bled out before the EMTs got there. Petes is MIA. And not a goddamn whisper about Alfred Merkel. Frankie didn’t have ID on him, and we couldn’t find anything in the house or the cars. We’re running prints.”

“My guess is Frank Davis and Peter Kettering. Both Royer Boys.” The words were out of my mouth before I stopped to think what it might mean for Gentry.

“Okay.” Keys tapped. “We’ll look at that.”

“And what about Rhodes? How’s he doing?”

“Too early to tell. Subdural hematoma. They’re just watching him now, taking repeated MRIs to see if the bleeding goes away on its own.”

“Good,” I said. “I guess.”

“We got an ID on the civilian in Merkel’s basement. You were right. Thomas Brown. Kid had just turned twenty-two.”

I closed my eyes. Searched for words and came up empty.

“I gotta get back to work,” he said.

Sometimes Weight comes without warning. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Later then?”

I hesitated, on the verge of saying more. But I’d thrown that choice away. “Sure.”

We hung up.

Dreams die hard, whether it’s love or hope or money. We mean to live our lives one way, end up with something completely different. Thomas Brown had gone to Alfred Merkel’s home to avenge his sister’s death. But in the end, all it had gotten him was the same thing I had.

A whole lot of nothing.

C
HAPTER
20

We all get our chance to sit alone in the dark, cheek by jowl with the devil.

—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

At home, I parked on the street figuring I’d shovel the driveway once the sun was up. I let Clyde into the backyard so he could stretch his legs. In the harsh glare of the porch light, I used the broom leaning by the front door to sweep the stairs. Then I knocked the remaining snow off my boots and let myself inside.

The house was quiet and warm. The furnace hummed softly. I pulled off my boots and coat and went into the kitchen, where I flipped on a light, took off my headset, dropped my bag on the table, and hung my duty belt on a chair. I could sense the dead private’s earlier presence in the room like a faint trail of burn in the air. But the man himself—or his ghost, rather—was absent.

The greasy diner eggs sat heavy in my stomach. I decided to try eating something else, then catch a few hours’ sleep. After that, I would take another crack at finding evidence against Merkel.

Bent deep into the refrigerator, contemplating the contents of a ceramic casserole dish, I barely registered the warning squeak on the linoleum behind me. I grabbed the heavy dish, but before I could turn, something slammed into the back of my knees, buckling me. I crashed into the refrigerator door. Food and shelving rained down. Hands hauled me up, then someone kneed me hard in my lower back. The casserole dish flew out of my hands, spraying chunks of meat and potatoes in a sloppy arc before it smashed into pieces against the cupboards.

I didn’t sail nearly as far but landed just as violently, smacking my face and forearms into the floor.

Outside, Clyde—alarmed at the sudden racket—launched into a five-alarm bark.

For a few seconds, I lay stunned. The linoleum squeaked again. I raised myself to all fours.

“Don’t,” said a deep voice. “I
will
hurt you.”

Whip, I thought. Alfred Merkel. Come to do to me what he’d done to Elise.

I feinted a collapse, rolled to my side, and scrabbled toward the chair where I’d hung my gun. I made maybe six inches of ground before my assailant slammed a boot into my ribs, then gripped me by my shoulders and flipped me onto my back before bringing his boot down on my chest. A supernova exploded in my sternum. I sucked for air and felt nothing come through my windpipe. Black bloomed around the edges of my vision.

“If I’d wanted it to, that kick would have cracked your sternum,” he said. “Now look at me.”

My lungs opened enough to allow a thin slide of air. I hauled myself to a sitting position, hands clutched to my chest, and shook my head to clear it.

A man stood over me, dressed in filthy woodland camos, eyes as dark as his skin. He sported a month’s worth of beard and a glint in his eyes like an unsheathed blade.

Not Whip.

This man was black. His face was vaguely familiar, but my rattled brain couldn’t place him. He looked around forty-five, wore thin gloves, and had a Colt M1911 aimed at my face. If he fired, there would be nothing left of my head.

“Tell the dog to be quiet,” the man said.

I tried to summon the air to say “Go fuck yourself” but nothing came.

“Tell him. Or I’ll shoot him.”

The man spoke with calm urgency. His hands on the gun were perfectly steady. There was enough steel in his eyes that I believed him not only able but willing.

My windpipe opened and my lungs filled. “Clyde, quiet!”

Clyde stopped barking and whined.

“Tell him again,” the man said.

“Geh rein!”
I said. “Be quiet!”

Clyde’s whimpering stopped. But I could hear him on his paws, turning a tight figure eight outside the door.

“Good,” the man said.

I had him placed now. From the photos in his apartment. Max Udell, aka Sarge. The man who, back in Habbaniyah, had notified the Sir when Tucker’s unit found Resenko and Haifa dead in her house.

Sarge, who’d created a shrine to Iraq and been photographed with Malik and the CIA spook—the same dead spook who’d been hanging around in Sarge’s apartment for whatever reason the dead hang around. Sarge, the alcoholic whom Jeremy Kane had to roust out of bed most Sundays to get him to his job.

This man looked nothing like an alcoholic with an on-again, off-again girlfriend and a roach-infested apartment.

He looked like a machine.

A terminator.

The first rule in a hostage situation is to avoid aggravating your captor. I kept my eyes on him but said nothing, doing my best to look scared and compliant. It really wasn’t much of an act. My whole body felt as if I’d been dropped off a cliff, and an acetylene torch burned behind my breastbone.

Sarge backed off a couple of feet, but kept the gun trained on my right eye.

“My orders are to kill you,” he said. “You think of any reason why I shouldn’t?”

My body twitched and my eyes darted to my gun, hanging just out of reach.

“Next kick will put you out of your misery forever,” he said.

Sarge hadn’t been high on my suspect list. But now that I’d met him, the image of Elise, flayed like a sacrificial lamb, rose darkly in my mind.

I pushed the image away. If he simply wanted me dead, he would have already killed me. He was here for something more. I raised my hands, fingers spread in a conciliatory gesture.

“Max Udell, right? Sarge.” Remind him that we’re both Marines. “You want to tell me what this is about?”

He said nothing.

I drew a breath, winced at the pain, but kept my voice calm. “Sarge, let’s talk, okay? Whatever it is that’s on your mind, let’s talk about it.” My mind dredged up Tucker’s nickname for Jeremy Kane. “Jeezer’s worried about you.”

He barked a laugh. “You think I don’t know Jeezer’s worried? Hell, he’s the one gave me heads-up about you and all your questions.”

Thank you, Jeremy Kane. “I’m guessing he didn’t suggest you put a bullet in my brain.”

“My orders to kill you come from higher up.”

Panic later, I told myself. Panic kills. “Was it the Alpha?”

Another laugh. “The who?”

“The man who gave the order to cover up Resenko’s death in Habbaniyah. I call him the Alpha.”

“Like in a wolf pack.” Sarge nodded. “It works.”

“He have a name?”

“We’ll stick with Alpha.” Sarge pulled out a chair from the table and propped a booted foot on the seat.

“Look, I—what if I swear to you I’ll never bring up Habbaniyah again? And that I’ll never look for this Alpha? My bad for trying to dig up stuff that should stay buried. I get that. I’ll stop.”

He shook his head gravely. “The Alpha wants you taken care of.”

“Then why am I still breathing?”

“You are just a child, aren’t you?” He actually looked sad. “You are still alive, child, because the killing doesn’t come right away. There are some things we have to take care of first.”

My stomach lurched.

I am not here. I am far away. Nothing can touch me.

The smells of burnt plastic and charred flesh and the sick-sweet stench of rotten eggs filled my nostrils. Mortars whistled overhead. My body began to shake with adrenaline.

Not our day to die.
Gonzo grinned at me as we lay side by side, holding our helmets tight against our skulls.
Not our day. Not yet.

“Truth is,” came a man’s deep voice over the wail of the mortars, “I
don’t
want to kill you. Got your whole life in front of you. Fellow Marine, gave a lot for your country. You got your grandmother to take care of. Your dog. But I got my orders.”

Panic kills
,
Gonzo said to me, his face black with soot.

I began to count, just like the therapist had taught me. One. Two. Three. Breathe. Four. Five. When I reached ten, the bombs fell silent. The kitchen clock tick-tocked. The furnace whooshed.

Gonzo was gone. In his place stood Sarge. In my home.

I groaned, and Sarge shook his head at me.

“If you cooperate, if you talk, it will go easier on you.”

“But you’ll still kill me.”

“I got my orders.”

“Then why should I talk at all?”

Sarge grabbed my arm, yanked it straight, and slammed the Colt into my elbow.

I screamed.

Clyde barked once, a sharp, angry sound, then fell silent again.

Sarge dropped my arm. “Feel like talking now?”

I cradled my elbow. “You’re no Marine.”

“War does funny things to all of us.” He studied me with something akin to pity. “One thing it does is make us want to live. Gives us that survival instinct. So think of it this way, Corporal Parnell. Every word that comes out of your mouth buys you a little more time on this filthy fuck-up of a world.”

A shiver rattled through me. I might have had moments of doubt before, dark moments since the war, but now I knew that I did not want to die. Not today. And definitely not on someone else’s terms. Buying time was all I had.

I said, “Tell me what you want.”

“Who else besides Jeezer have you talked to about Habbaniyah?”

“Just him and Tucker. That’s it.”

“What about that detective you’ve been hanging with?”

“That would be stupid. Going public with Habbaniyah would hurt me as much as anyone. I’m still in the reserves. I can still be court-martialed. I swear to you—”

“Then why did you go anywhere with it, girl? You remember all of us talking afterward? How we each took an oath that we’d never talk to anyone about what we’d done, not even to each other. How your CO said
lives
were at stake. You remember that? Yeah, you’re nodding now. So why the
fuck
did you show up at Jeezer’s house with all this talk about Iraq?”

Clyde had stopped pacing outside. His dog tags jingled as he moved away. I had never felt so alone.

“To
protect
him!” I said. Helpless rage bubbled in my voice. “I made a promise to Tucker that I would try to find Elise’s killer. I wanted to clear him, keep him from going to trial where the whole sorry story of Habbaniyah would come out. I was trying to help all of us. But in order to do that, I had to know if there really was any link between Elise’s death and Habbaniyah. I had to find out who Elise might have talked to.”

“The girl knew what happened in Iraq?”

“Some of it.”

His eyes went to lasers. “What’d you learn?”

“That she’d been pushing Tucker and Jeremy Kane to come clean. But I didn’t find any evidence she’d gone further with it. You’d be the next person she would have talked to, and if you’re here asking me about it, I’m guessing she never approached you.”

Sarge scratched his neck. “Fuck all. Then what did get her killed?”

“The police are still working the case. But Elise had also been working a little girl’s disappearance from ten years ago. Elise tangled with some violent skinheads over it. That’s probably what got her killed.”

“Butchered is what it said in the paper. That true?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know if it was skinheads who killed her, but I do know this. If she’d been killed over Iraq, it would have looked like an accident. Or suicide.”

I remembered the arterial spray in her room and knew Sarge was right. If I hadn’t been in such a panic after Tucker brought up Habbaniyah, maybe I would have realized that. Elise’s death said rage, not expediency.

Gonzo’s voice echoed in my skull.
Panic kills.

The muzzle of the Colt moved from my right eye to my left and back, as if Sarge were trying to make up his mind which eye to use when he distributed my brain across kingdom come.

“Okay.” I forced myself to ignore the gun and look him straight in the eye. “It wasn’t you or your Alpha. Her death had nothing to do with Iraq. The police will find the skinhead who killed her and they’ll release Tucker, and that will be the end of it.”

He gave me a sad smile. “I’m here for the intel, girl. Then I gotta take care of you.”

That one threw me. Intel? “You bastard. What danger am I to anyone?”

“You know things from Iraq that you shouldn’t.”

Panic kills.

I summoned a look of contempt. “What intel do you think I have? I worked the
morgue
, for Christ’s sake.”

“But you spent your free time fucking a spy.”

“Dougie wasn’t a spy,” I said. “He was—”

“Hush.” Sarge dropped his foot from the chair and crouched so that he was eye level with me, the gun between us. He took my chin in his hand, squeezed hard. “Lying won’t get you anywhere. But coming clean will buy you a clean death. Answer my questions. Turn over whatever it was Ayers gave you, and I promise it will be quick. A single shot to the temple. Over before you know it.”

If I fought back now, if I screamed, would a neighbor hear and call the police? I sucked in air.

“Nuh-uh.” Sarge released my chin and pressed his finger to my lips. “Don’t.”

I released my breath. “No,” I whispered.

“Good,” he said. He stood and returned to the chair. “Where’s Malik?”

“What?” My brain fumbled. “Why are you asking me about Malik?”

Faster than I thought anyone could move, he was back in front of me. His backhand knocked my head into the wall.

“I’m asking the questions now. Now tell me—”

The scrape of Clyde’s claws on hardwood.

Sarge froze for a moment, looking confused.

It was a moment too long.

Clyde was already in the room. Sarge spun on his heel raising his gun as he turned.

“
Fass
!” I shouted.

Clyde leapt and grabbed Sarge’s upraised arm in his mouth, biting deep. Man and dog went down in a flurry of fur and flesh, tangled up in a chair that toppled over with them. The revolver hit the floor with a thud.

Sarge bellowed in pain.

Geh rein.
Inside. It had taken Clyde a while to find the narrow window in the crawlspace that I always leave ajar, and probably longer still to worm his way into the house then get himself through the defunct heating duct and into the hallway. Clyde and I had only run this scenario a few times, a year or more ago. But he’d done it.

I got my feet under me and snatched up the Colt. I yanked out the cartridge, made sure the chamber was empty, and tossed it out of reach on top of the refrigerator. I grabbed my own gun. The one I knew I could trust.