Authors: Kathy Reichs
“They’re coming.”
Typical Slidel. Giving himself a window alone at the scene.
Slidel moved to the stairs, but must have seen something he didn’t like. Squatting, he inspected the first step. Then he rose and stepped high onto the step above.
I looked down.
A wire stretched low across the riser. I nodded that I’d seen the trap.
On the top landing, Slidel waved me behind him with another palm gesture. Then he banged on the door. “Glenn Evans?”
A train whistled somewhere very far off.
“Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police. I have a warrant to search these premises.”
No answer.
Slidel drew his gun and leaned close to the door. After turning his head left then right, he stood back and banged again.
“I have a key, Mr. Evans. I’m coming in.”
The door opened easily.
Every shade was down. A floorboard creaked, otherwise the interior was deathly stil.
Slidel flicked a wal switch.
The kitchen was European modern. Black and white floor tile. Sleek black cabinets with lots of glass. Stainless steel appliances.
No freezer large enough to hold a body.
“Stay here.” Gruff.
Glock double-fisted beside his nose, Slidel strode to an open door opposite the entrance and pressed his back to the wal. I darted to his side.
Slidel whipped my way and glared. I raised my hands in acquiescence. I would stay put.
Slidel disappeared through the doorway.
I peeked around the jamb. Darkness.
Drawing back, I waited. It was so quiet I could hear my breath rising and faling in my throat.
Finaly, a second light went on.
“Clear,” Slidel said.
I stepped from the kitchen into a short interior hal. Doors opened on the left, the right, and straight ahead. Slidel was banging drawers beyond the latter. I joined him.
“Real palace, eh?” Slidel’s tone was once again dialed to disparaging. “Living room, bedroom, kitchen, bath. Guess Lingo don’t overpay his staff.”
I looked around.
The room set a new standard for understatement. Beige wals, furniture, drapes, and carpet. White ceiling and woodwork. No funny coasters or pilows. No snapshots of dogs or friends in bad party hats. No trophies, photos, mementos, or artwork.
A brass floor lamp rose from behind the couch. A flat-screen TV occupied the top shelf in a set of recessed shelving. To the left of the recess was a series of built-in drawers.
That’s where Slidel was searching. To its right was a cabinet.
The shelves below the TV held scores of DVD’s. Puling on latex gloves, I walked over and ran through the titles.
The Matrix. Gladiator. The Patriot. Starship Troopers.
A trio of flicks having to do with Bourne.
“Evans likes action,” I said.
Slidel slammed a drawer and yanked out another. Rifled with one gloved hand.
I opened the cabinet. Liquor.
“He isn’t a teetotaler.” I checked labels. Johnny Walker Blue Label scotch whiskey. Evan Wiliams twenty-three-year-old bourbon. Belvedere vodka. “The guy drops some bucks on booze.”
I looked around. Slidel was on the bottom drawer. Seeing nothing else of interest, I moved on to the bathroom.
Clean enough. Old-fashioned pedestal sink and commode. Black vinyl shower curtain. Black and white towels.
On the toilet back were a boar bristle brush, a Bic razor, a can of Aveeno shave gel, and a Sonicare toothbrush in its charger.
The medicine cabinet held the usual. Dental floss. Toothpaste. Aspirin. Pepto. Nasal spray. Band-Aids. A tube of dandruff shampoo sat on the tub ledge. Rope soap dangled from the showerhead.
Slidel clomped up the hal. I joined him in the bedroom.
Here Evans had shown a bit more flair. The wals were red, and a fake zebra-skin carpet lay on top of the beige wal-to-wal. A black sateen spread covered the mattress, and a leopard-skin hanging served as a headboard. The rest of the room was taken up by a pair of bedside tables and a metal cart holding another flat-screen TV.
“Toad should have stuck with bland.”
For once Skinny’s comment on taste was apt.
Slidel slid back a closet door and started going through clothes. I opened a drawer in the near bedside table.
“Check this out,” I said.
Slidel joined me. I pointed to a smal blue package with a Texas big-hair cowgirl on the label.
“Rough Rider studded condoms,” Slidel read. “So our boy’s a player.”
“Or wants to be. Any missing?”
Slidel counted. Nodded. Returned to the closet.
Seconds later I heard, “Hel-o.”
I turned.
“Look what our rough rider’s hiding with his loafers.”
Slidel 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.
Slidel’s eyes roled 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, Slidel 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.” Slidel checked his watch. “Let’s have us a look-see.”
Slidel thundered down the stairs. I folowed 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. Slidel charged straight to the inside door and tried Gracie-Lee’s key. It didn’t fit.
Slidel twisted the knob to the right and the left. Shoulder-slammed the wood. The door held fast.
Slidel raised his foot and kicked hard. Stil the latch held. He kicked again and again. The jamb buckled and splintered. A final hard thrust and the door flew in.
Slidel 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 wal 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
6
¼
inch power saw
printed on the side.
Beside me Slidel 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, Slidel jerked it to the floor and tore back the flaps. Inside was an old McGraw-Edison circular saw.
Our eyes met.
“Yes” is al I said.
Unhooking a hedge clipper from the pegboard, Slidel cut the bindings on the quilt with four quick snaps. Together we grabbed the fabric and puled.
The object wasn’t furniture or cabinetry. It was a Frigidaire chest freezer, standard white, maybe eight-cubic-foot capacity.
“Sonovabitch.” Slidel elbowed me aside in his eagerness to view the contents.
“Shouldn’t CSS take photos before we open this?”
“Yeah,” Slidel 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.
Slidel ignored my question. “Don’t look like Evans ponied up for the auto-defrost model.”
Though the comment was flip, Slidel’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 filed 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 smal 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 Slidel 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 Slidel, I rushed outside.
Gnawing at a thumbnail, I paced, waiting for Slidel to emerge. Waiting for the CSS truck to arrive.
Seconds dragged by. Or maybe they were minutes.
I heard the muffled sound of Slidel’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.
Slidel 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.
Slidel 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 Slidel’s words and Evans’s death into a framework that made sense.
“Something else.” Slidel’s eyes roled up and locked onto mine. They looked sunken and aged in the yelow 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 al wrong? Had Rinaldi?
In the stilness I heard a twig snap behind me. Slidel’s Glock shot up and pointed in my direction.
I was turning when a gun muzzle kissed the base of my skul.
A man’s voice said, “Do this right or you both die now.”
Adrenaline fired to every cel in my body.
“Toss the gun.” Almost a hiss.
I saw a glint as Slidel’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 smel cleaning oil and old gunpowder.
“More police are on the way,” Slidel 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 al stay calm.” Slidel extended 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 smel 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 colar of my jacket.
“The cuffs.”
Slidel unclipped and tossed his handcuffs. Again, I was forced to bend and retrieve them.
“Cel.”
Slidel tossed his phone. Gunther kicked it into the myrtles.
“Walk toward me, hands on your head.”
Ever so slowly, Slidel raised his arms, interlaced his fingers, and dropped his hands to the top of his head. Then he began inching in our direction.
“Faster.”
Slidel 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,” Slidel said.
“Yeah?”
I heard the swish of fabric behind me.
Slidel’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.
Smels: 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. Swalowed.
Memory crept back. Evans. Gunther. Slidel’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 Slidel dead?
I listened for clues. My battered brain couldn’t interpret what my ears sent its way.
Breathing through my mouth, I lay stil and counted the left and right turns. Wiled myself not to vomit.
Finaly, 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. Pilars.