Authors: Kathy Reichs
I studied the face. Though blanched, distorted, and badly abraded, there was no question it belonged to T-Bird Cuervo.
“How long has he been in storage?”
Larabee consulted the tag. “August twenty-sixth.”
That definitely put Cuervo in the clear on Klapec and Rinaldi.
“Why didn’t I know this body was back here?”
“He arrived the day you left for Montreal. The case didn’t cal for an anthro consult. By the time you returned, I’d put him on ice.”
And I’d had no reason to venture into the freezer.
“He’s your boy, right?”
I nodded, arms hugging my sides in the cold.
“Poor bastard took on a Lynx. Just south of the Bland Street Station.”
Larabee was referring to the brand-new light-rail arm of CATS, the Charlotte Area Transit System. A bit much with the Panthers and Bobcats, I know. But then, mass transit planners aren’t known for their subtlety.
“Cuervo was hit by a train?”
“Crushed his legs and pelvis. He carried no ID, and no one ever claimed him.”
“Did you run prints?” My teeth weren’t chattering, but they were thinking about it.
“Yeah, right. This guy was dragged almost fifty feet. Palms and fingers were raw meat.”
“How did it happen?”
“The driver thought he saw something on the track, threw his emergency brake and blew his horn, but couldn’t stop. Apparently a train going fifty-five miles per hour takes up to six hundred feet to come to a complete halt.”
“Ouch.” I was amazed Cuervo wasn’t in worse shape.
“The cross arms were lowered and the bels and lights were activated before the train approached the station. The driver had also blown his horn.”
“Was the driver tested?” I was amazed I hadn’t heard about this incident.
“Drug and alcohol clean.”
“Cuervo was alive when the train hit him?”
“Definitely.”
“And you had no reason to doubt that his death was an accident?”
“No. And his blood alcohol level was .08. Is the guy legal?”
“Cuervo held both U.S. and Ecuadoran citizenship.”
“Any family here?”
“Apparently not. He lived alone on Greenleaf, operated a shop caled La Botánica Buena Salud off South Boulevard. The INS has no permanent address for him either here or in Ecuador.”
“Makes it tough to track next of kin.”
Larabee zipped the bag and we exited to the corridor.
Back in my office, I dialed Slidel.
“I’l be a sonovabitch.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
For a ful thirty seconds, the only sounds I heard were phones ringing on Slidel’s end of the line.
“This morning I did some canvassing along that road leading to where Klapec was found. You’l never guess what’s tucked away in those woods.”
“Why don’t you tel me.” Though the freezer had calmed my tremors and settled my stomach, already I was perspiring and my head was starting to rumble. I was not in the mood for Twenty Questions.
“A camp. I’m not talking Camp Sun in the Pines, you know, canoeing and hiking and ‘Kumbaya.’ I’m talking Camp Ful Moon. As in witches and warlocks baying at it.”
“Wiccan?”
“Yep. And, according to the neighbors, who ain’t exactly thriled with al the jujuism in their backyards, things were cooking the night before Klapec turned up.”
I started to ask what that meant, but Slidel kept on talking.
“Drumming, dancing, chanting.”
“The activity could be completely unrelated to Klapec.”
“Right. A friendly little wienie roast. I want to see Cuervo.”
“Come on down.”
Slidel hesitated a beat. Then, “And I want your take on something Eddie wrote.”
I’d barely hung up when my cel phone sounded.
Nine-one-nine area code.
Larke Tyrel.
My fragile gut clenched in anticipation of the upcoming conversation.
I’d just qualified for certification by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology when Tyrel was appointed the state’s chief medical examiner. We met through work I was doing for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, reassembling and identifying two drug dealers murdered and dismembered by outlaw bikers.
I was one of Tyrel’s first hires as a consulting specialist, and though our relationship was generaly congenial, over the years we’d had our differences. As a result, I’d learned that the chief could be cynical and exceedingly dictatorial.
I drank water from the glass at my elbow, then, carefuly, clicked on.
“Dr. Brennan.”
“Tempe. Sorry to hear you’re not feeling shipshape.” Born in the lowcountry to a Marine Corps family, then a two-hitch marine himself before med school, Tyrel spoke like a military version of Andy Griffith.
“Thank you.”
“I’m concerned, Tempe.”
“It’s just a flu.”
“About your outburst with Boyce Lingo.”
“I’d like to explain—”
“Mr. Lingo is irate.”
“He’s always irate.”
“Do you have any idea the public image nightmare you’ve created?” Tyrel was fond of the rhetorical question. Assuming this was one, I said nothing.
“This office has an official spokesperson whose responsibility it is to interact with the media. I can’t have my staff airing their personal views on medical examiner cases.”
“Lingo foments fear so he can make himself look like a hero.”
“He’s a county commissioner.”
“He’s dangerous.”
“And you think throwing a tantrum for the press is the way to neutralize him?”
I closed my lids. They felt like sandpaper sliding over my eyebals.
“You’re right. My behavior was inexcusable.”
“Agreed. So explain why you ignored my direct order?” Tyrel sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “You’ve lost me.”
“Why would you brief a reporter when I requested you cease al contact with the press?”
“What reporter?”
I heard paper rustle.
“Alison Stalings. Woman had the brass ones to cal my office for confirmation of information that should have been confidential. Tempe, you know that data pertaining to a child is particularly sensitive.”
“What child?”
“Anson Tyler. It’s beyond my comprehension how you could have shown so little respect for that dead little boy and his poor, grieving family.”
The sweat felt cold on my face. I had no memory of talking to Alison Stalings.
But Monday was a blank. Was it possible I’d made contact, hoping, in some boozy delusion, to clear up the misconception that Anson Tyler’s death was connected to that of Jimmy Klapec? To clarify that the Catawba River headless body was not linked to the Lake Wylie headless body? Or to the cauldron head we now knew to be Susan Redmon’s?
Or had Stalings caled me? Was that why I’d shut down and shoved my mobile into a drawer?
Tyrel was stil talking, his voice somber.
“—this is a serious breach. Disregarding my order. Disclosing confidential information. This behavior can’t be ignored. Action must be taken.”
I felt too weak to argue. Or to point out that Stalings was not a reporter.
“I wil think long and hard what that action should be. We’l talk soon.”
I put the phone down with one trembling hand. Finished the water. Dragged myself to the lounge and refiled the glass from the tap. Downed two aspirins. Returned to my office. Took up the Klapec report. Set it down, unable to think through the pounding in my head.
I was sitting there, doing nothing, when Slidel appeared with a grease-soaked bag of Price’s fried chicken. Normaly, I’d have pounced. Not today.
“Wel, don’t you look like something the dog threw up.”
“And you’re a picture of manly vitality?”
Unkind, but true. Slidel’s face was gray and a dark crescent underhung each eye.
Placing the chicken on the file cabinet, Skinny dropped into a chair opposite my desk. “Maybe you should go home and rack out.”
“It’s just a bug.”
“It’s just a bug.”
Slidel regarded me as a cat might a sparrow. I was sure he could smel the wine sweat coating my skin.
“Yeah,” he said. “Those bugs can be a bitch. Where’s Cuervo?”
I led him to the freezer. He asked the same questions I’d asked Larabee. I relayed the information the ME had provided.
Back in my office, the fried poultry smel was overwhelming. Slidel dug in the bag and began on a drumstick. Grease trickled down his chin. It was al I could do not to gag.
“Sure you don’t want some?” Garbled.
I shook my head. Swalowed. “What is it you want me to read?”
Wiping his hands on a napkin, Slidel puled papers from a pocket and tossed them on the blotter.
“Eddie’s notes. That’s your copy.”
I unfolded and scanned the pages.
Like the man, the handwriting was neat and precise. So was the thinking.
Rinaldi had recorded the time, location, and content of every interview he’d conducted. It appeared that those he’d questioned either lacked or withheld contact information.
Ditto for surnames.
“He got only first names or street names,” I said. “Cyrus. Vince. Dagger. Cool Breeze. And no addresses or phone numbers.”
“Probably didn’t want to spook the little freaks by pushing too hard.” Slidel’s jaw muscles bunched. As though suddenly devoid of appetite, he shoved a half-eaten chicken breast into the bag and sailed it into my wastebasket. “Probably figured he could find them later if needed.”
“He used some kind of shorthand system.”
“Eddie liked to get his thoughts down quick, but he worried some scumbag defense attorney might latch on to his first impressions and make a big deal of them in court if they later turned out to be off. So’s not to provide ammo, he kept his comments cryptic, that’s what he caled it. Cryptic. I thought maybe you could make something of it.”
Rinaldi had questioned a chicken hawk named Vince on Saturday. I read the entry.
JK. 9/29. LSA with RN acc. to VG. RN-PIT. CTK. TV. 10/9-10/11? CFT. 10. 500.
“Vince must be the informant Rinaldi mentioned when you talked by phone as we were leaving Cuervo’s shop. Maybe he’s VG. JK could be Jimmy Klapec. RN could be the john Vince described as looking like Rick Nelson.”
Slidel nodded.
“The numbers are probably dates,” I went on. “LSA is standard code for ‘last seen alive.’ Maybe September twenty-ninth is the last day Vince remembered seeing Klapec with this Rick Nelson character.”
“So far we’re on the same page,” Slidel said. “But Funderburke first spotted Klapec’s body on October ninth, caled it in on the eleventh. If that’s what this Vince is saying, where’s Klapec from late September until early October when he gets himself dead? Assuming Funderburke and his pooch ain’t totaly wacko.”
I was too busy running possibilities to answer.
“CFT would be Cabo Fish Taco,” I said. “He was meeting Vince there at ten. Maybe Vince wanted five hundred dolars for his information.”
“TV?”
“Vince had seen Rick Nelson on television?”
“PIT? CTK?”
“PIT is the airport code for Pittsburgh. Maybe those are abbreviations for cities.”
I logged onto the computer and opened Google.
“CTK is the code for Akron, Ohio,” I said.
“What’s the significance of that?”
“I don’t know.”
Slidel laced his fingers on his bely, dropped his chin, and thrust out his legs. His socks were Haloween orange.
“Eddie did some digging while waiting to go back out to NoDa,” he said. “Read his last entry.”
RN = BLA = GYE. Greensboro. 10/9. 555-7038. CTK-TV-9/27. VG, solicitation 9/28-9/29.
GYE 9/27?
I Googled the two three-letter combos.
“BLA is the airport in Barcelona, Venezuela,” I said, somewhat deflated. “GYE is in Guayaquil, Ecuador.”
“If he’s referencing cities by code, why write out Greensboro?”
It was a good point.
“The seven-digit sequence looks like a phone number,” I said lamely.
“It is.”
“Whose?”
Slidel’s answer was a shocker.
25
“I PUNCH IT UP, A VOICE TELLS ME I’VE REACHED COMMISSIONER Lingo’s office.”
“Why would Rinaldi have Lingo’s number?”
“Good question.”
I reread Rinaldi’s last entry.
VG, solicitation 9/28-9/29.
“VG could be Vince. Maybe Rinaldi learned the kid’s last name, and the fact that he was busted for solicitation.”
“Right around the time we’re guessing Klapec disappeared.”
“Why did Rinaldi think that was worth noting?”
Slidel shrugged. “Can’t hurt to pul arrest records for those dates. If nothing else, it might give us Vince’s last name. Kid’s in the wind, by the way. No one’s seen him since Saturday.”
“Where does he live?”
“His buddies ain’t busting their bals to share, but they think he was mostly sleeping on the streets.”
“Do you plan to pay Lingo a visit?”
“Later. Right now I’m retracing Eddie’s steps, seeing what I can score on this dipshit Vince.”
“Strictly regarding Klapec,” I said.
“Strictly.”
“Anything new on Asa Finney?”
“Unless I find a smoking howitzer in the guy’s shorts, he sees a judge on the bones rap, posts bond, and they kick him tomorrow.”
“What’s your take on him?”
Slidel snorted. “Could have been a stud except for the head-on with zits.”
I ignored the unkind remark. Finney couldn’t help the condition of his skin. “But a kiler?”
“Finney’s a witch. Witch camp’s a spit from the Klapec scene. Neighbors report a lot of drumming and rattling the night before the kid’s body turns up. One says he saw a Ford Focus leaving the area long after the party was over.”
I remembered the car in the Pinevile driveway.
“Finney drives a Focus,” I said.
“Don’t take a genius to connect the dots.” Again, the tensing of the jaw. “I’m thinking Finney’s wizard pals maybe also capped Eddie.”
“Why?”
“He was learning too much.”
As I started to reply Slidel shot upright in his chair.
“Rick Nelson.” A beefy finger jabbed the air in my direction. “Except for the zits, Finney’s a dead ringer for Rick Nelson. Think about it. The hair. The come-fuck-me smile.