New River Blues (17 page)

‘I can get them after I don't need them any more?'

‘That's about it. And you won't get a word out of lawyers even if Hell freezes over.'

Then Menendez walked back into the section, looking cheerful and waving a report. ‘Hey, they should all be this easy.' He handed Sarah a copy of release records from Yuma.

‘Paul Thomas Eckhardt,' Sarah read out loud. ‘Three to ten for dealing. He didn't enjoy his parole for long, did he? A little over a month.'

‘Better than average month for an ex-con, though, huh?' Leo Tobin had come around the desk and was reading over her shoulder. ‘Five weeks out of the can and he hooks up with a high-dollar party-giver like Eloise Henderson?'

‘Don't give him all the credit.' Ollie Greenaway winked at Sarah. ‘Rumor has it Mrs Henderson had a fondness for bottom-fishing.'

Sarah said softly, ‘So you did talk to Cifuentes.'

‘Cifuentes? Does he know something too?' Ollie rolled his eyes to the ceiling in a ludicrous imitation of innocence. ‘I heard she went for the lawn-care guy.'

‘Oh? Fun in the compost heap, huh?' Sarah gave him her enraged-alligator face and he grinned happily. ‘And this lawn-care guy will be ready to testify in court when the time comes?'

‘Don't see why not,' Greenaway said, inspecting the point on his pencil. ‘Should do wonders for his bottom line.'

Sarah made a hissing noise, stood up, shook her head, and sat back down. ‘Seriously. Where did you say Delaney's keeping Cifuentes?'

‘I didn't. But he's right over there in cold cases, they gave him a little table.' He got up and craned his neck. ‘I don't see him right now. He must be in the records room, looking for something to work on.' He treated her to a cheerful leer. ‘Bet if you took him a doughnut you could get him to talk all day.'

‘I'll think about it.'

Tobin pulled his nose thoughtfully. ‘There was something about the crime scene, though – in view of what everybody said about it – that bothered me.'

Sarah said, ‘The screams.'

Tobin nodded. ‘Exactly. All the stories about the screams match up pretty well, don't they?'

‘Yes. They all said two screams and two shots.'

‘Right. But Delaney gave the crime scene to me, remember? I had to sketch it, measure it, photograph it. I spent a lot of time in that room. Have you read my report yet?'

‘Not all of it. I was just putting the file together.'

‘Well, it includes a detailed description of the positions and appearances of the bodies. And I can tell you, it doesn't make sense that it happened the way they all said it did.'

‘Show me.'

‘Here's a photo of the crime scene from above the bed. I got on a ladder to take it. It shows the overspray of birdshot on the bed around Eloise Henderson. But here,' he shuffled pictures, ‘this view's from the foot of the bed. Look at the overspray pattern on the headboard above the man.'

‘Outline of a head and shoulders,' Sarah said. ‘I noticed that at the time.'

‘He sat up,' Ollie said.

‘Damn right,' Tobin said. ‘Now think about the screams.'

‘She was shot first,' Sarah said, ‘from above, while she was sleeping. The noise woke the man, and he sat up.'

‘And took his shot right in the face, while he was upright,' Ollie said.

‘That's how I see it too. So then,' Tobin looked from one to the other, ‘who'd that second scream come from?'

‘I met her in a bar out on East Broadway,' Cifuentes said, staring sulkily across Sarah's shoulder into the gloom. Even buried alive in the records room, he was maintaining most of his macho snap. His black hair curled crisply around his head, his slacks still held their knife-edge crease and his aftershave lotion almost prevailed over the miasma of moldering paper in the tiny room.

Delaney had given him a folding table in poor light outside one of the two cubicles assigned to cold-case detectives, and abandoned him. Given no choice but to treat his assignment seriously, he was standing under the harsh fluorescent ceiling light in a cupboard stacked with brown folders and cardboard boxes, comparing numbers against a printout list. He had legal tablets and a laptop on the table outside, and was working his way backward through unsolved cases, beginning with the previous three months. He didn't stop searching the shelves when Sarah walked in with her hands full – just looked up sullenly across the file he was holding.

Sarah stood holding two cups of fresh hot coffee and a basket of pastries, saying, ‘Got a minute?'

He made a superbly ironic gesture toward the comfortless space around him and said, ‘Mi casa, su casa.'

‘Let's go back out to your table.' She pushed some records aside, put her pastries and coffee down, went into a corner, and brought back her own folding chair. This coffee was the first friendly gesture she'd offered him since the day he came on the crew, so he had a right to an attitude. But she didn't have time to indulge it now.

‘This is good apple Danish, try some.' She shook out the chair and sat down. ‘OK, you got a raw deal. You might as well just get over it, Oscar, because nobody on this crew is going out on a limb for you.'

‘You come over here to gloat?'

‘I might enjoy that a lot, but I don't have time. I'm stuck with this case that was supposed to be yours. Delaney's on my tail about it because it involves well-connected people he can't afford to offend, and every place I try to grab it, it slides away.'

‘And I'm supposed to care about that because?'

‘I came to trade.'

‘You have something I want?'

‘If you want to get out of this hole, yes.'

He gave a small shrug that indicated the answer to that was too obvious to state.

She blew on her coffee and took a sip. ‘I can tell you where you should be looking.' His dubious little smile said how unlikely he thought that was. She put down the cup sharply and said, ‘Oh, come off it!' The coffee slopped over and scalded her hand. Mopping up the spill, her voice gritty with pain, she asked him, ‘How many other good offers have you had this morning?'

She had been counting on his opportunism. It kicked in now and goaded him to ask, ‘And all you want for this so-called favor is for me to disobey a direct order not to talk about Eloise Henderson?'

‘That's right.' A little edge of amusement showed around his eyes – he'd expected her to temporize. ‘You tell me everything you know about Eloise Henderson, I shut up about where I heard it and steer you to the one case in that records room that's guaranteed to get you off Delaney's shit list if you crack it.'

It didn't take long after that. He even unbent and tried the apple Danish. She sat quietly with dust motes from the files in front of them tickling her sinuses, while he told her about the night he met Eloise Henderson.

‘The Claim Jumper, I think it's called. Funky place with an ore car and a stone donkey out front? They serve burgers and ribs at long tables, have this little stage in one corner of the main bar. Live band on weekends, country music. Seemed like it was more bikers than cowboys that night, and rough and ready girls in jeans and big hair.

‘And then all of a sudden, standing at the bar –' his voice took on an edge of wonder as he remembered – ‘this beautiful woman in hand-tailored pants and a beaded sweater, carrying a Chanel bag that must have cost as much as everything on the back bar.' Seeing Sarah's surprised expression, he said, ‘My sister owns a little boutique. She wants me to buy in and help her expand. I'm learning about women's clothes.'

He enjoyed a bite of pastry while he thought back. ‘She wasn't lost, she hadn't just stopped in to ask directions. She was there with two friends – not as high-end as she was, executive types. They'd all had a fair amount to drink. They were talking about an awards banquet and then an after-party. Now they wanted to cut loose. They stood out so much in that crowd that the men around them were holding back a little, waiting for somebody else to make the first move. I sent them a drink and went over and asked Eloise to dance.

‘I'm a good dancer and when I get the right partner I enjoy doing it well, but I figured this for a seduction scene, you know, two or three times around the floor and we're feeling each other up.' He shrugged. ‘Eloise surprised me. As soon as she realized how good we could be together she said, “Oh, well now, isn't
this
fun!” and just went after it.'

The music in that place was pretty simple, Cifuentes said, but they started experimenting, trying out their good moves on each other, laughing when they tried something clever and it worked.

‘We did every possible variation on the two-step, we boogied. That funny little band played a tango and we did one with so much sizzle it lit up the whole corner. People all around us had begun to watch, the band was playing whatever we asked for.

‘Then her phone rang. She'd left that big expensive satchel on the bar, the bartender was watching it for her, and when her phone started to ring he got her friend Nancy to answer it. Nancy came teetering out on her stilettos on to the dance floor, giggling and carrying the phone, saying, “Your Prince is calling, Weezy.” Eloise took the phone and stood there in front of the music saying, “Yes. Yes. Yes,” with her eyes going dead. By the time she folded up the phone her face was white. She said, “I have to go,” and walked away without a backward look.

‘So I figured, of course, that was the end of it. She'd sneaked out to play, hubby jerked her chain, and back she went. Classic. Too bad the sex part got interrupted, but hell, I get plenty of sex.' He brushed a crumb off his lap matter-of-factly. ‘I did think, you know, that she wasn't just a hot-to-trot housewife, she had class and she was fun. But I didn't make any effort to find her, I don't need that kind of trouble. I knew if I ran into her in a bar again I'd ask her to dance, but that was it.

‘A couple of weeks later, she called me at work.' He shook his head ruefully. ‘It was my second day in Homicide. At first I couldn't remember who she was, I kept asking, “Who?” She was quite pleased with the fact that she'd found out who I was and where I worked. She said, “How's this for detective work?”'

She wanted him to come to a party at her house. A Thank God It's Friday Party, everybody coming after work, he was sure to know ‘ever so many people.' She babbled gaily on the phone, and left many sentences unfinished. It was like talking to a teen.

‘I had two people in front of my desk and calls waiting, so I said yes and took down the address and time because I had to get her off the phone. I mentioned it later when I was having a drink with a buddy from Auto Theft – Artie Cruz, you know him?'

‘Oh, yes.' They exchanged, for the first time ever, understanding smiles.

‘Artie said, “Ay Chihuahua, if you got a invite to a house in El Encanto you be crazy not to go, amigo.”' Cifuentes, it turned out, could do a spot-on Artie Cruz. ‘He said, “I worked parties in that part of town when I was in school, horses' doovers so good they make you cry.”'

‘Artie's a funny guy.'

‘Good cop, too. So I went to the party and . . . well, you know what her house looks like.'

‘Beautiful.'

‘Like her. The CA was there, several members of his staff, enough lawyers to start a whole other county. A couple of judges and several MEs. The ones who noticed me at all looked at me like, “What the fuck are you doing here?”' He scratched his ear thoughtfully. ‘I had a little trouble deciding on a stance.

‘Cruz was right about the hors d'oeuvres, though. And after I'd eaten a few and had a couple of drinks my hostess asked me to dance. We didn't do so many fancy steps that night, and we certainly didn't snuggle. She danced me sedately around her piano and said, “We had fun that night in the bar, didn't we?” and after I agreed we did she said, “Let's do it again some time.” I said, “Mrs Henderson, are you trying to have your way with me?” She smiled the sweetest smile you could possibly imagine and said, “I always try to have my way with everyone if I possibly can.” Her eyes were telling me that if I had any balls at all I would go for it and I did.'

He was silent, thinking, for so long that Sarah finally said, ‘You want some more coffee . . . ? I could—'

‘No.' It came out muffled but then he sat up straighter in his chair, put his feet flat on the floor and his hands on the table in front of him like a good first-grader, and resumed his tale. ‘At first she didn't want anything from me but a good time and I was happy to provide that. She was wonderful in bed, wanted everything, enjoyed it all. I said to her once, “If this is a dream I don't ever want to wake up.” She laughed and said, “This is real. Everything else is made up.” And for three or four weeks we stayed in that magic bubble, where nothing mattered but the time we were together.' He turned a little sideways in his chair, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, turned back, and resumed his classroom posture. ‘Then something changed. She wanted to
talk
, one afternoon when we met. I thought, Oh boy, here we go, because usually “We have to talk” means “I'm ready to start making demands.” And I just don't
go
there. If I needed that I'd get married again.

‘But she didn't want anything in particular, she was just on a talking jag. It wasn't original stuff, either – global warming, the importance of helping some Africans she'd seen on TV. Then she got passionate about carbon footprints. She'd read Kingsolver and had this great idea for tearing out her tennis court and planting vegetables.