To the white-globed fixture above him, he said quietly, "Everybody that watches television doesn't have a motive to kill your mother."
"I didn't hurt her. I'd
never
hurt her. I
loved
her."
"All those people watching CSI aren't Bev's sole beneficiary, either." David lowered his eyes. "And they don't have a boyfriend whose fingerprint was on the mirror in the car she had cleaned inside and out the day before she died."
Kimmie Sue looked at him, her face slack, her body limp, as though waking from anesthesia. She was thinking, though. Hard and fast. Weighing her options, David assumed. Demand counsel? Play innocent and shift all the blame on Jarek? Try to cut a plea bargain for herself by flipping on him? Or go mental again and let the psychiatrists duke it out?
Presently, she said, "Rocco and I had nothing to do with my mother's death. If we hadn't stopped in Joplin because of the storms, we might have gotten here in time to save her life."
"That's two hours"
"I know how his fingerprint got on the mirror."
"Uh-huh."
"It was back in March. The sixteenth, I think. The date'll be on my credit card statement."
"Yours? Or your mother's?"
"The card is in Mom's name, but mine's on the account." She fidgeted. "It was just for emergencies."
David figured a manicure was an emergency to her, but Marlin probably had the account information and copies of the statements by now.
"Rocco had this calendar shoot in Miami Beach. I was between jobs, so I flew out with him. We were scheduled for a two-hour layover in Kansas City, but it started sleeting and they grounded all the flights out."
She paused, her eyes awash in tears. Wiping them away, she stammered, "II just realized, that was the last time I saw Mom."
David prompted, "What was?"
"That night, in Kansas City. I called heryou know, to tell her we were stuck at KC-I until morning. She insisted on coming up there to take us out to dinner."
"Let me get this straight. An ice storm grounded your plane, but Bev
drove
up there to meet you at the airport?"
"It was in the middle of the afternoon, David. The highways were fine. If it started to get slick, Mom was going to stay at the hotel with us."
"Go on."
"I know how this sounds, but it's the truth. Ice and snow didn't faze her. She's used to it, but city traffic made her nervous, so Rocco drove us to the restaurant, and"
"When he adjusted the rearview mirror," David broke in, "that's how his print got on it."
"Yes! That's the only possible way it
could
have."
David ought to be insulted that she thought he was dumber than rocks and the box they came in. Instead, he just felt profoundly sad.
* * *
During business hours, parking spaces around the town square were in greater demand than the available supply. A mossy carriage block and a couple of surviving hitching posts beloved by the historical society had Hannah wondering how streets built for horse-drawn wagons and carriages could be too narrow to accommodate motorized vehicles. Dodge City never had traffic jams like this in
Gunsmoke
episodes.
On her fourth circuit, the parking gods smiled on herabout average on a sunny day. Rain brought out the Dramamine and her finger-happy inner bitch.
Hannah waved at the security camera above the Outhouse's exterior door. Annoying Marlin Andrik was always fun. It also beat confessing to David that Code Name: Epsilon was by default, a cold county case.
A buzzer extended an invitation to pull open the Outhouse's heavy, tinted glass door. Twice before, she hadn't responded fast enough and had to press the stupid buzzer again. Making it three would put Marlin in a good mood, but Hannah had her pride.
Even without the sudden switch from bright sunlight to gloom, entering the detective unit's headquarters was always disconcerting. She nodded at Josh Phelps and Cletus Orr, each involved in an apparent one-sided phone conversation, of which they weren't the active participants. Marlin was also on the phone, but cradled the receiver before Hannah reached his grotto at the back of the room.
"What's up, toots?" He stood, like the gentleman he was, despite compelling evidence to the contrary. "You taking me to lunch?"
Hannah sneered at the nickname, as expected. If Marlin had a clue she liked it, he'd be crushed. "Sure," she said. "Why not? You pick the place. I'll pick up the check."
He sighed. "Thanks, but I'm babysitting Clyde in the interrogation room, while Hendrickson does the rubber-hose number on Bonnie at the courthouse."
She frowned, as did her stomach, which hadn't considered food until a second ago, but was now highly in favor of having some. "Well, if you can't go to lunch, why'd you even bring it up?"
"For the rain check you have to give me," he said, as though she was born yesterday and accidentally dropped on her head. "Otherwise, you'd get to bug me about God knows what for nothing."
While Marlin answered another phone call, Hannah sat down and pondered the Andrik Free Lunch program. She could have used the Garvey version in Chicago, but there are two sides to every promissory note. By Marlin's reckoning, she owed him lunch, but that obliged his cooperation now. She hoped.
He grunted monosyllables into the receiver and scribbled illegible notes on a legal pad, leaving her to peruse the anthropological study that was his desk. Pencils and pens. Exacto knives and bullets. A magnifier, tissues and mutant tweezers. An accordion file's flap hung dangerously near his smoldering plant saucer-ashtray. A gnawed jumbo Butterfinger and a diet Coke can rested atop the two-volume L.A. County business pages atop a closed laptop computer. A five-by-seven studio portrait of his wife and two teenage children smiled out at enlarged crime-scene photos, photocopied bank statements and pawn shop stubs.
Near his elbow were a pile of clear-plastic evidence bags anchored by a clothing catalog and three library books. Their spines were considerably easier to read upside down than a yellowed Sanity Police Department missing persons' report: a Kathy Mallory mystery by Carol O'Connell, a Caribbean travel guide and a biography of the Duchess of Windsor.
Eclectic, to say the least. Hannah's eyes strayed to the logo on an envelope sticking out from under the bottom book.
"Jeezo-peezo," Marlin said, hanging up the phone. "Hey, Grasshopper," he yelled to Josh Phelps. "Take my calls for a while. Unless it's Hendrickson or my wife, I'm in the can reading War and friggin' Peace."
"Maybe I should come back another time," Hannah said.
"The hell. You're my excuse to slack off." He shook a Marlboro from the pack on the desk, saw that it was one of two remaining, then tamped it back in. "Fieldwork, I like. They should've executed Alexander Graham Bell when they had the chance."
"After they tortured him. Telemarketer calls 24/7, until he begged for mercy."
Marlin did the lip twitch she assumed was a smile. David attributed it to a muscle spasm, but admitted it happened more frequently when Hannah was around.
The first time they met, she'd topped Marlin's prime-suspect list in a homicide investigation. From that auspicious beginning, they'd gradually grown on each other. They weren't exactly friends and certainly not enemies. More like fraternal twins separated at birth making up for all that lost sibling rivalry.
Hannah pointed at the library books. "Thinking about a cruise to get away from it all?"
"Yeah, sure, toots. Being stuck in the middle of an ocean with a boatload of drones is just what I need to relax." He glanced at the books. "All this stuff's from the Beauford house."
"I'm sorry, Marlin. I know she was a friend."
"Uh-huh. The wife's pretty torn up about it." In other words, tough guys don't grieve in front of a witness.
"Funny, but I'm a Carol O'Connell fan, too," she said. "And I get that clothing catalog. At least I did, when I could afford the clothes."
"Expensive, huh?" Marlin tugged it from under the pile. "Like what, Victoria's Secret expensive?"
Hannah squelched a grin, imagining his horror at bras and panties that cost more than his favorite sport coat. "Closer to Saks Fifth Avenue expensive. Plus shipping and handling."
"No shit?" He set the catalog aside, rather than return it to the stack.
Leaning forward, Hannah indicated the envelope under the Windsor biography. "What's really weird is that years ago, GMEI was one of our clients at Friedlich & Friedlich. Rob Friedlich designed that logo on the envelope."
A hot, multinational advertising agency lured away GMEI, and F&F took a major hit in the accounts receivable department, after its CEOs spent their projected earnings before they were earned.
Marlin regarded Bev Beauford's personal effects with increasing interest. "So, what's GMEI stand for, anyway?" he asked, pronouncing it "Jimmy-I."
"Global Media Entertainment, International," Hannah said. "It's a conglomerate that distributes everything from retro hula hoops and video-game systems to LED stadium screens and surround-sound equipment."
"They do direct marketing?"
"It's possible, I guess. Like I said, it wasn't my account and it wasn't Rob Friedlich's for more than a few weeks. GMEI is the shark of leisure-time activities. They gobble small distributors and manufacturers as if they were minnows."
"Name a big company that doesn't." Marlin's nicotine lust got the better of him. He inhaled carcinogens and exhaled bliss. "Since I'm slicing another seven minutes off my life expectancy, you'd better tell me why you're here, in case that's all I've got left."
"Not funny, Marlin."
"Like I've told you before, toots, I'm a realist with a piss-poor attitude." He tapped the cigarette on the ashtray. "Plus, somebody's gonna blow the whistle on my recess any second."
For the second time in as many hours, she handed over a copy of the newspaper article on the Moody disappearance to a criminal investigator. "I realize this was before your time, but the Sanity police say the case files were transferred to the county. I thought maybe they're here, or you could tell me where to look."
"Why." It wasn't a question.
She gave him the easy explanation. "Something David said the day you arrested Rudy Moody piqued my curiosity about his father. It's bothered me ever since."
"You? Or the wackos at Geritol Springs?"
"Let's call it a little of both."
"Here's a better idea. Let's call it nothin' doin'." Marlin started to return the photocopy, then squinted at the date. "Who told you the file was transferred to us?"
"Lieutenant Williams."
"Good man. Wish he'd promote himself to the sheriff's payroll." Marlin handed the copy over. "He's wrong about the files, though. Neimon Vestal was chief of detectives back then. He wouldn't blow his nose on a city case."
"I saw the memo noting the transfer. The lieutenant thought somebody in the courthouse had a special interest in it."
Marlin's chin buckled. "Didn't happen. If a friggin' meter maid had tried to moonlight it, Neimon would've heard, and then there'd have been two missing persons."
Arguing would trim minutes off Hannah's life expectancy and she wouldn't even get a nicotine buzz out of it. Puppy-dog eyes had worked in the past. Not today. Switching to an
I can be as stubborn as you can
glare didn't, either. Marlin owned the copyright and the patent.
"That file has to be somewhere," she said, her eyes cutting to the mismatched file cabinets lining the wall. "Twenty-three years old or not, it didn't vanish into thin air."
Marlin stubbed out his cigarette. "You don't really want me to look for it, do you?"
"Here's a tip. Try
M
for Moody."
"Cute." He yelled at Phelps, "Take the hold off my calls. The next one's mine, no matter who the hell it is." Pushing to his feet, he said to Hannah, "The file's not here, toots."
"But"
"If by some friggin' miracle it is, I won't let you see it, and you'll go ballistic and try to grab it, and I'll have to arrest you for assault. So whaddya say we spare me, you and the bail bondsman the hassle. Okay?"
"Fine." Hannah grabbed her shoulder bag and started for the door. Spinning around, she said, "But you can forget about that rain check on lunch."
Marlin jammed his hands into his trouser pockets. "Call me psychic, but I had a feeling you were gonna say that."
* * *
Delbert sat hunched over in the waiting room's chrome-and-vinyl sling chair. His forearms were braced on his thighs. His lucky golf cap spun in his hands. A talk-radio program nattered from somewhere in the back of the cinder-block building. The joint smelled like fertilizerchemical, not manure.