Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
"Take Main south
to Pine," he said. "East to Lakeview."
At the corner was the
entrance to Elsinore Shores trailer park. Merci sized up the place as she made
the turn: old trailers, failed dreams and broken lives. It was the kind of
place she used to see as a kid and feel afraid that was where she'd end up.
Until she realized, many
years later, how powerful she was, how she could make things go the way she
wanted simply by using her will. Will. She had created that power herself, bit
by bit and over time, but it still astonished her to know how large it was.
Once she had understood it, she knew she'd never end up in a spot like this.
But it still made her think of all the people who didn't have the juice to get
what they needed out of the world. A lot of them ended up taking it away from
someone else and those were the kind of people she threw in jail, which is
where they belonged.
Hess aimed a thick finger
to the right. "That's his building, there. He must live in his
shop."
She slowed and studied the
little complex as she drove past. Two long cinder-block buildings faced each
other across a concrete alleyway. The buildings were divided into workshops.
Their doors were all the same aqua blue color, the kind that slide up, wide and
high enough to get a small truck in or out.
She came back around and
parked a block short of the entrance. She took the H&K nine off the seat
and holstered it.
The blue door to Lee
LaLonde's space 12 was closed all the way down. Merci glanced at Hess, then
rapped the backs of her knuckles against the metal. She waited a moment and did
it again, harder.
"Second,"
said a thin voice. "Comin'. Who is it?"
"Deputies
Rayborn and Hess. Open the door, Lee."
"AH right."
"You alone in
there?"
"Yeah. Second.
The runner on the door's rusty."
There was a moment of
quiet, but none of the drug addict's usual scuffle to hide stash, Merci
thought. Nowhere for him to go but out the window. Then the clang of metal on
metal inside. A padlock. The door began its screeching way up. Merci got her
badge holder ready in her left hand and rested the other inside her jacket, on
the butt of the nine.
LaLonde manifested, bottom
to top. Bare white feet. Baggy, dirty jeans slung low enough to fall off. The
bunched elastic of boxer shorts sprouted just above the waistband. Flat stomach
with a knife scar on it, narrow chest, thin arms. His face was odd but not
particularly unpleasant. His hair long, blond, wavy.
She badged him quickly.
"Step back from the door, please. Now."
"Okay, lady. I'm
steppin'."
Stop right where you are
and turn around," said Merci. He started his turn. When his back was to
her she stopped him with a strong take of his right wrist, a firm twist to
bring his arm out with the elbow down. She stepped up behind him and braced the
back of his shoulder with her left hand so it was easy to see down the extended
arm or to break the elbow. She felt him comply because he'd complied a thousand
times before.
"Staying off the
meth, Lee?"
She ran her fingers over
the veins in his forearm, snapped her nails against them, then angled his elbow
into the weak light for a view down the muscles.
"I never did
shoot it," he said slowly.
"Just smoked it
by the ton."
"Yeah."
"I can tell. It
kills brain cells."
LaLonde stood back. He was
shorter and thinner than she'd expected. Speed freaks tend to stay skinny in
life and LaLonde looked the part. His long blond hair hung over his forehead.
His face was narrow and all of its features seemed crowded down into the lower
half. Big mouth, goofy teeth.
"Lead the way."
She let ten feet open up behind him, then followed. The shop was big—sixty feet
deep and thirty wide, she guessed. It was lit by fluorescent tubes hung from
the ceiling by chains.
There were workbenches
along each of the two side walls. Vices. Spools of wire. Indeterminate projects
in indeterminate stages of completion or repair. Bench vices, an electric
grinder and polisher, a benchtop drill press. Toolboxes. More tools were neatly
hung on the Peg-Boarded wall behind the benches.
Merci walked and studied.
In the right back corner was a sleeping area, and behind that a bathroom. There
was a counter, a two-burner stove and a small refrigerator. LaLonde stood
beside a dilapidated plaid couch and gestured for Merci to sit.
"I'll stand.
You'll sit. Tim, make yourself comfortable."
Hess waited for LaLonde to
take one end of the couch, then he sat in the middle. Merci crossed her arms
and stared down at LaLonde without comment. LaLonde looked at his hands. She
let a long moment pass.
"Lee, look at
me," she said. He did. She thought he looked like a parrot fish. She
remained standing a few feet away from him, leaving some slack to take up if
she needed to.
"Janet Kane was
murdered week before last. We know you knew her. We got your prints out of the
back of the BMW. Those are facts. Now, we can talk about her here or we can
take you back to Orange County with us. If we talk here and you lie to me I'll
have you cuffed and stuffed in about thirty seconds."
He looked at Merci, then
at Hess, then at Merci again. She watched his face hard because that first
denial was sometimes the hardest one a creep would make. Half the fuckers
couldn't even lie right. They giggled or blushed or started crying. The better
ones broke a sweat or their faces twitched and if you saw it you had them. The
rest could tell you a lie you might believe the rest of your life if you didn't
know better. She saw no trace of guilt or dishonesty in LaLonde's face yet.
"I got no idea
what you're talking about."
"Get one."
"If I knew a woman
who'd let me in her BMW, I'd marry her, not kill her."
He grinned, lips
spreading tight, teeth amok.
"What were you
doing in her car?" she asked.
"I don't even
know her."
"I don't care if
you knew her. I care if you killed her."
"I didn't."
Where were you last
Tuesday night? Don't think, just tell me."
"My girlfriend
was here."
"What did you
do?"
"Watched TV.
Ate. She drank some beers."
"Name and
address."
LaLonde gave her name;
didn't know her address.
"Then what about the
fuse—the little 20-amp auto fuse that had your thumb and index prints on it?
The one we found in Janet Kane's car."
He looked at her with deep
suspicion and his eyes gave him away. Something wrong. Scrolling back. A hit He
looked away with a nonchalant shrug and she knew she had him. Hess glanced up
at her with a questioning expression on his face. He missed it, she thought—but
I didn't.
"I've worked with
fuses in my life, Sergeant. I use them in my inventions sometimes. I used to do
some electrical stuff down at the marina here. Yeah, I've worked with 20-amp
fuses, but I never killed anybody."
"When's the last
time you touched one?"
"The
last
time? I wouldn't know the last time exactly."
"When? When's the
last time you personally touched an automobile fuse, that you can remember,
Lee?"
"That would have been
about... maybe... three months ago." He was ad-libbing now, and she knew
it.
"You're shittin' me,
Lee. You sit there and think about what lockup's going to feel like again. All
the boyfriends you can make. Maybe think of a way to stay out of it. I'm going
to take a tour of this shitheap you call a shop."
She looked over the
kitchen and little bathroom, checking the magazine rack by the head because
she'd found an automatic in a rack once before, hidden between the curling
covers of nudie magazines.
Hobby Magazine. Arts & Crafts. American
Inventor.
No automatic. LaLonde didn't strike her as violent and his sheet
wasn't violent, but that didn't mean a thing to Rayborn because there was a
first time for everything and a creep was a creep pure and simple.
She toured the
workbenches. The closer she studied what she found on them, the less sense they
made. For instance: umbrellas with inverted domes and hollow tubing that led to
detachable plastic bags. A collection of mouthpieces with rubber teeth
protruding. And an odd contraption involving a small gyroscope and a large
outdoor patio lamp. A set of large concave plastic circles, like giant contact
lenses, connected with what looked like a headband. And a collection of wooden
cigar boxes with metal antenna protruding from their backs. She opened one and
looked at the bird's nest of batteries and chips and solder and circuitry
inside. No fuses that she could see.
"What are these
for?" She waved one of the cigar boxes.
"Those are for
jamming eavesdroppers on a cell phone."
She turned and studied
him. From a distance he looked less like a fish and more like a regular guy
with a not-very- good face.
"You can buy 'em
new for a hundred bucks," she said.
"Mine go for
twenty-five. I do okay with them."
"Where is it
that you do okay with them?"
"Swap meet out
here. Sundays, at the Marina Park."
"Where did you
learn electronics?"
"High school. My
dad was an engineer. I've got a knack."
"Got a knack for
stealing cars?"
"Cars are
easy."
"What about the
alarm systems?"
She turned and looked
at him again. LaLonde shrugged.
"I didn't mess with
those. If you work with a partner you can pry and clip pretty quick, or use a
code cutter."
"Well, did you or did
you not work with a goddamned partner?"
"Right. No. I
worked alone, used a slapper."
She set the cigar box
down.
"What do these
upside-down umbrellas do?"
"Collect rainwater.
It runs down the line into the bag. You clip the bag on your belt or
pants."
Merci picked up an
inverted umbrella and looked at the way Lee LaLonde had reconfigured the ribs
and nylon. She looked back at him again. "What, because we live in a
desert or something?"
"Yeah," said
LaLonde. "We're supposed to get less water from the Colorado River
soon."
"They say that
same goddamned thing every year."
He shrugged.
She picked up a
tooth-studded mouthpiece. The gums were soft and the teeth were firm.
"What's with the mouthpieces?"
"Protect the teeth
while eating. Abrasion wears out more enamel than cavities."
"You chew with
these things on?"
"That idea
started out as a way to make your own false teeth. Cheap. Different styles. You
know, so you could change them around like clothes. Like, different teeth for
different occasions. I called them Occasional Smiles. It was one of those good
ideas that aren't so good when you do them."
She looked at LaLonde,
considered his dentition, then dropped the rubbery gums to the bench.
"You're a real
loser, Lee."
LaLonde said nothing.
"Where's Janet
Kane's body?"
"I don't know. I
honestly don't."
"We know about
Lael Jillson, too."
"I don't."
She nodded.
"Tim, please handcuff this dirtbag."
Hess looked at her, then
stood and helped LaLonde off the couch. Merci watched as he handcuffed
LaLonde's wrists behind his back. Hess guided him back down to the couch.
"Thank you,"
said Merci. "Lieutenant Hess, why don't you step outside, pull that door
shut behind you. Have a look around out there."
She waited by the bench as
Hess plodded across the shop. He looked at her once on his way past but she
couldn't read the expression. He pulled the door down behind him and Merci
listened to the metallic echo.
"Sounds like
lockup," she said.
"It don't sound like
lockup when you can open it anytime you want."
"They treat you
bad inside?'
"What do you
expect, a guy like me?"
"I expect
bad."
He nodded, not looking
at her.
"You're always
working on something, aren't you?"
He nodded again. She could
feel his irritation rising, just what she expected in the absence of Hess.
"I don't think
you killed her."
"I didn't."
"Get up."
He stood and Merci turned
him around by one shoulder. She was surprised how light he was. With her arm
extended she guided him into the bathroom with the tip of her left index
finger.
"Kneel down in
front of the toilet. Do it."