Late Rain (25 page)

The gray-haired man’s size made him hard to track. Ben had to count on following the cursing and fallen bodies in his wake.

He thought he saw the man duck into the entrance of Fun City.

Once inside, though, Ben again lost him. Fun City was a sprawl of amusements. Tiered miniature golf courses. Serpentine go-cart tracks. Ranks of batting cages and basketball goals. A large carousel and Ferris wheel. Water slides. Bungee jumps. Fast food outlets and picnic areas. Another video arcade.

The place was jammed.

Someone called Ben’s name. He spotted Brewer making his way toward him. Brewer shook his head and thumbed-down the question on Ben’s face.

Ben scanned the crowd.

Nothing.

He and Brewer split up and began working their way toward the Bluecrest entrance to the park.

Talbert radioed in. She’d spotted the guy near the parking garage on Everest. Ben told her to keep him in sight but not to approach until he and Brewer or further backup got there.

Ben and Brewer moved as fast as the crowds would allow, pushing their way to and clearing the west entrance of Fun City and then sprinting up Bluecrest.

Near the parking garage, as they ducked around a shirtless group of young men all wearing crimson and black USC caps, Brewer yelled to Ben that he couldn’t raise Talbert on the two-way.

Less than a block later, they heard the screams.

Talbert had been thrown through the window of the Gulf Stream restaurant. She lay between two vacated tables amidst a fan of broken glass and an overturned miniature ficus, her face cross-hatched with lacerations and an artery in her neck geysering.

Ben yelled to Brewer to call EMS and more backup and knelt beside Talbert and worked on pressure-pointing the artery.

Talbert looked up at him and choked out something that sounded like
hot
or
hat
.

Ben kept his index and middle fingers pressed against her neck and his voice soft, as reassuring as he could make it, but he floundered for a moment, drawing a blank on Talbert’s first name.

“Ginger,” Brewer said from the other side of the broken window. “It’s Ginger.”

“Ok, Ginger,” Ben said, “slow now. Slow and easy. You’ll be all right, a while longer, that’s all, so slow, that’s it, slow.”

The artery jumped and throbbed. His fingers were red and slick. He could feel shards of glass cutting into his knees.

Ginger Talbert looked up at him. She tried to say something. Then her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Where are those people?” Ben shouted. “I don’t even hear sirens yet.”

Brewer leaned through the window and looked over Ben’s shoulder. “Oh man,” he said.

“This is bad,” Ben said.

“Oh man,” Brewer repeated. He leaned further through the window frame and pointed.

“Her holster’s empty,” he said.

WHEN THEY GOT BACK to the room in the Sandpiper Motel, Croy Wendall put his shirt on again and gave the one named Roy the crimson and black USC cap back, and then Croy pretended to drink the beer Jay handed him. There were seven other guys in the room besides Jay and Roy, but Croy couldn’t remember their names. They were all wearing the same caps and no shirt.

One of them turned on the television to Sports Center very loud. Jay passed out some beers. Three of them were playing catch with a jumbo bag of Cheetos. A couple of others moved onto the balcony and were yelling things at girls.

“You can chill here a while if you want,” Roy told him and then went to watch Sports Center.

Croy thought about the wallets in the room.

That’s what he’d been doing ever since he killed Jamie and Missy, hanging out with the students on their break and then stealing their wallets. At night he slept in his car or on the beach. He counted the money he already had in his head and figured he’d have enough soon to get away.

The problem with that though was Croy wasn’t sure where he was going to get away to. He’d bought a map of the United States and studied it, but every place seemed like every other place except for the weather, and the weather was just what it was, like a big piece of wallpaper that had been put up on the day.

Croy wouldn’t have minded going to a place if someone told him that’s where he was supposed to go, but the only person who would have done something like that was Jamie, who had taken all Croy’s money and who was also dead.

Croy considered asking Jay and then changed his mind to no.

Jay and all the other ones wearing caps might start asking questions back at him.

Croy wondered if the policewoman he threw into the window was alive. He was very happy to have a gun again. The other one had burned up in the fire at Jamie and Missy’s.

The policewoman had been very nervous, and even with the gun pointed at him, she’d stood too close. The policewoman didn’t know Croy or how fast he could make his hands.

When she went through the window, it sounded like a big handful of quarters tossed into an empty sink.

Afterwards there were a lot of people shouting things and screaming, and Croy had looked around for the tall policeman who’d been following him. Croy kept remembering his eyes. They were dark and the kind that didn’t miss things. He’d seen those eyes on some of the men in shelters, eyes that were somehow sad and scary-looking at the same time, and Croy had always made it a point to steer clear of them.

Croy had looked around and started to run again, north and west, away from the beach.

That’s where he met Jay and the other students who weren’t wearing shirts. They were on the sidewalk in front of a little grocery store and asked him to buy them some beer. Croy made a quick idea in his head and told them there were a lot of policemen around, so it would be better if they went somewhere else.

Jay high-fived him for that and put his cap on Croy’s head, and then Croy got in the middle of the group and took his shirt off too. He made sure to tie the T-shirt so its front hung over the back of his jeans like the others. That way, it hid the gun he’d taken off the policewoman.

Croy and the students were clustered together, and they walked back towards Atlantic Avenue. The tall policeman with the dark eyes and another one had run right by them to get to the people screaming at the restaurant.

Jay and the others didn’t even seem to notice the screaming. They were very happy about the beer in their futures.

Croy got the beer, and they invited him back to their motel room to drink some. Croy knew there would be more than the two policemen looking for him now, so he did.

Jay and the others were lying around and talking about what they were watching on Sports Center and about sexing girls. Croy nodded every so often but didn’t say much because he didn’t know sports and he didn’t sex.

Croy got up from the chair and went into the bathroom and emptied his beer down the sink. When he walked back into the room, Jay handed him another before Croy could say anything about it.

Croy knew he had to do something. He couldn’t sit in the motel room pretending to drink beer forever.

Croy said some rhymes in his head. Then he did some numbers.

He imagined the world filling up with policemen.

He ate some Cheetos.

Jay let him use his cell phone. The battery in Croy’s cell phone had died right in the middle of their words when Croy and Mr. Balen had been talking before, and Croy had not called back because Mr. Balen had been very upset and mad because Croy shot Jamie and Missy, and when Mr. Balen got upset and mad, it made Croy very nervous and jumpy inside, so Croy didn’t call Mr. Balen and took wallets from the students instead.

Right now though, Croy was thinking about the tall policeman and his eyes and all the other policemen looking for him, so he took Jay’s cell phone into the bathroom and dialed the number Mr. Balen made him remember. Croy waited for Mr. Balen to be mad at him for shooting Jamie and Missy, but Mr. Balen didn’t say anything about that. He just asked where Croy was and then told him not to move or do anything until he got there.

Croy didn’t.

DETECTIVE JACKSON TOWNE was uncharacteristically on time for work when Ben Decovic stopped by the Homicide division before starting his shift. Towne was turned toward his computer and surfing the net for discount plane fares. He kept Ben waiting while he clicked on a couple more links, then swiveled his chair away from the screen, stretching his arms above his head.

Ben told him who he was.

Jackson Towne held up an index finger and frowned slightly. “Give me a minute,” he said, “it’ll come to me.” He snapped his fingers and said, “Blake and Newton, the ballistics report, your Glock.”

Ben nodded. It looked like Towne spent more on his wardrobe than Ben did on rent. He was wearing a light tan suit meticulously cut to fit the frame of the athlete he’d been at NC State fourteen years ago when he’d played power forward and led them to a division championship. Towne had blown out his knee the next year.

“Got the file right here,” Towne said. It looked pitifully thin.

“I was going to pull the other one, you getting jumped, later today, do some cross-checking, and then get in touch with you.” Towne leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “Now you can save me a little time.”

Ben waited a second, expecting Towne to take out a pen, and when he didn’t, Ben went on and filled him in on the assault at the Passion Palace, one man vandalizing Sonny Gramm’s Mustang, the other taking out the bouncer and then ambushing Ben with a sock full of heavy-gauge washers, Ben losing his gun, the two men getting away on foot.

Towne nodded in the right places, but as Ben finished, talking about the difficulties and dead-ends with the follow-up, Sonny Gramm’s refusal to cooperate and entrenched belief that Wayne LaVell was behind the vandalism, Ben had the distinct impression that Towne had quit listening some time ago.

That impression reinforced everything Ben had heard around the department about Towne. He was the first African-American to get his gold shield under the new restructuring of the force, and there’d been no little amount of resentment from certain quarters about the promotion. At one time, Towne had been a good cop, but somewhere along the line, he’d become more interested in exploiting affirmative-action quotas than in field work. He cut corners everywhere except in paperwork; he knew that’s what ultimately counted for the higher-ups, and Towne had become a master at paper-trailing and padding out reports. He gave no sign he cared what any of his fellow officers of equal or lesser rank thought of him. He dressed sharp and looked good in PR photo shoots. There were any number of division heads looking over their shoulders and worrying about the status of their jobs within the next couple years.

“The two at the Palace,” Towne asked. “What’d they look like?”

“They were wearing masks, and some of the lights in the lot were out,” Ben said. “They were Caucasian though. The one with the crowbar was about six feet and thin. The one that jumped me was short, his chest and arms out of proportion to the rest of him. He had short gray hair.”

“I had people out canvassing right after the shootings,” Towne said, “but you know how things go on Sentinel. You got to assume 99 percent of what you get is 100 percent bullshit.” He paused and glanced down at the file. “A neighbor, one Marilyn Keane, said there was a guy hanging out all the time at Jamison Blake’s. She said he was a white man. Nothing about short or gray hair though.”

Towne turned a page. “Blake’s house is pretty much a total loss. The fire department did what it could, but the place went up quick. We’re not going to find a lot to help us there.”

“No other leads on the shooter?” Ben asked.

“To repeat, we’re talking Sentinel Avenue here and all that entails about cooperating with the police,” Towne said. “Right now, the only thing we know for sure is it was your gun used in the shootings.”

“What about Blake and Newton?” Ben asked. “Any priors that might point at something?”

Towne glanced down at the file. “Jamison Blake, a string of assaults and B&Es. Melissa Newton, shoplifting, disturbing the peace, one resisting arrest. We’re not talking master criminals here.”

“Are you going recanvas?” Ben asked.

Towne’s tie was pale blue and the same color as his shirt. He carefully smoothed the front of both and said, “We did a solid sweep the first time. I’m not sure a second is warranted. A case like this, you know how it usually works.”

Ben did. Down the road, someone gets picked up on something unrelated and ends up confessing to the Blake and Newton murders or cuts a deal and snitches out the one who did. Wait and see. The case closes itself.

“Still,” Ben said, “another look might kick something loose about the gray-haired guy.”

“There’s that,” Towne said and nodded. “Of course, the odds are equally good that the guy sold your Glock right after he took it from you and has nothing to do with who eventually used it on Blake and Newton.” Towne sat back and smoothed his tie again.

“He threw Talbert through a window,” Ben said.

“How do you even know it was the same guy?” Towne said. “What, there’s only one short white man with gray hair who’s committed a crime?” Towne paused and shook his head. “You’re on patrol, a gray-haired guy spots you and starts running. Because he’s guilty. But not necessarily of ambushing you at the Passion Palace. You said yourself, the guy and his partner were wearing Halloween masks. You can’t be sure he’s the same one.”

Towne tapped his pen against the desk top in a miniature drumroll. “Like I said, someone more than likely unloaded the piece on the street and then somebody else used it on Blake and Newton. Remember, we’re talking Sentinel. You don’t need much of a reason, pull a trigger there.” Towne got up from behind the desk and straightened the lines of his suit.

“I’ll keep you posted,” he said, “anything turns up.”

A dress rehearsal, Ben thought. That’s what this session with Jackson Towne had been, a dress rehearsal, Ben giving him the opportunity to practice his lines, work out the scenario that would eventually end up in the paperwork. Sentinel Avenue, after all. Wait and see. The case will close itself.