Megan Abbott - Phoenix Noir

The cops asked, “Was he wearing sneakers?”

No one knew for sure.

“Did he have blood on him?”

No one recalled.

The chase restarted south of Chandler. The assumption was that because the decoy had been placed to move north, then the perp was actually moving south. A fine theory, but it came to nothing. No one was found. A helicopter joined the effort. The night was still dark but the helicopter had thermal imaging equipment. It was not useful. Everything single thing it saw was hot.

Dawn came and the helicopter refueled and came back for a visual search. And again, and again, for days. At the end of a long weekend it found something.

“Go on,” I said.

The thing that the helicopter found was a corpse. White male, wearing sneakers. In his early twenties. He was identified as a college student, last seen the day before. A day later the medical examiner issued his report. The guy had died of heat exhaustion and dehydration.

“Consistent with running from a crime scene?” the cops asked.

“Among other possibilities,” the medical examiner answered.

The guy’s toxicology screen was baroque. Ecstasy, skunk, alcohol.

“Enough to make him unstable?” the cops asked.

“Enough to make an elephant unstable,” the medical examiner answered.

The guy beside me finished his beer. I signaled for another.

I asked, “Case closed?”

The guy beside me nodded. “Because the kid was white. We needed a result.”

“You not convinced?”

“He wasn’t middle-aged. He wasn’t neatly dressed. His sneakers were wrong. No sign of the knife. Plus, a guy hopped-up enough to run himself to death in the heat wouldn’t have thought to set up the decoy with the phone.”

“So who was he?”

“Just a frat boy who liked partying a little too much.”

“Anyone share your opinion?”

“All of us.”

“Anyone doing anything about it?”

“The case is closed.”

“So what really happened?”

“I think the decoy indicates premeditation. And I think it was a double bluff. I think the perp got out of the bus and carried on north, maybe in a car he had parked.”

I nodded. The perp had. Right then the car he had used was parked in the lot behind the bar. Its keys were in my pocket.

“Win some, lose some,” I said.

Tovrea Castle

Spoiled little assholes,” Blankenship said, looking down at the two bodies. The girl had crumpled onto her side and lay twisted on the concrete floor. The young man remained sitting but his head sagged forward, a thin line of blood trailing from his mouth. Detective Gene Conover stepped out onto the top-floor landing of the castle and stood beside the uniformed cop. It took him a moment to catch his breath.

“What am I looking at here, Tom?” he said.

“I’d say a murder-suicide type of setup. Sid Vicious over here put a plug in his girlfriend and then took himself out.”

A crime scene photographer hovered, clicking shots of the dead pair from various angles. He nodded to Conover and retreated. Several other techs and uniforms hung around downstairs.

The detective slipped on a pair of latex gloves and examined the surface of the waist-high retaining hall. He then took out his Maglite and did a complete circle of the small observation deck. Blankenship waited for him to speak.

“ID?” Conover finally asked.

“Nothing on Sid here, but we found the girl’s purse. Her wallet was inside. Cash and credit cards hadn’t been touched. Name’s Kelly Hodge. Mean anything to you?”

Conover shook his head. “Not really. Does she have a sheet?”

“Well, she doesn’t have a record exactly, but we know this girl. You’ve never seen her before, eh?”

Conover leaned over and looked again closely at the two bodies. “I don’t think so, Tom. Should I have?”

“She’s Ed Hodge’s little girl,” Blankenship said.

“The liquor guy?”

“The very same. This is gonna be a mess.”

The detective squatted down and studied the entrance wound on the girl’s chest, noting the size and shape of the powder burns. He was careful to avoid the blood, which soaked her lower torso and pooled out on the concrete floor. Conover also recognized fresh needle marks on her arm.

“I’d say whoever shot her knew what he was doing,” he said, glancing over at the gun lying next to the dead guy’s feet. One of the techs had already drawn a chalk circle around it.

“Why, because of the pop gun?” Blankenship asked.

“Easy to miss with a .22. The guy shot her directly in the heart. Couldn’t have been more than a foot or two away.”

“Did himself the same way from the looks of it.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Looks pretty straightforward, Gene. Scumbag boyfriend shoots the Hodge girl, then punches his own ticket.”

“You may be right,” Conover said. He stood up and stepped back from the two bodies. “Where are the shell casings?”

“Bagged and tagged already.”

“How many?”

“Just the two, and only two missing from the clip.”

“Interesting,” he said. “Who called it in?”

“Bouncer over at Angels heard the shots.” Blankenship consulted his notes. “Dispatch recorded the call at 3:55 a.m. Let’s see, guy’s name is Everest or Everett. Something like that.”

Conover looked out across the desert toward Washington. The all-nude club’s neon marquee was clearly visible a couple hundred yards away.

Blankenship bent down on one knee and crooked his neck to the side to read what was written on the girl’s shirt. “Wonder what the hell 45 Grave means,” he said. “Some kind of satanic shit?”

“Rock group’d be my guess,” Conover said.

“Think they’re in some weird cult or something?” Blankenship frowned at the young man’s appearance. The kid looked like a collapsed marionette, dyed black hair hanging in front of his eyes, face smudged with sweat and eyeliner.

“I seriously doubt it, Tom.”

“Well, it looks like our boy’s shirt is pretty accurate, anyway.”

Conover noticed the lettering on the young man’s shirt, nearly obscured by blood — Bad Brains. He humored Blankenship with a smirk.

The detective glanced at his watch. It was just after 6 a.m. He’d wait for the autopsy and ballistics reports to con-firm his suspicions. In the meantime, he refrained from saying much to the uniform. Blankenship was basically a decent guy, but he wasn’t too smart and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. This was true of a lot of cops Conover had known over the years.

“It’s going to be hard to contain for very long. We’ll have to break the news to Hodge before the media gets wind of it,” Conover said.

“There’s gonna be a shit-storm.”

“Yes, I imagine there will be.”

“Perhaps we can hold off the vultures for a bit. I’ll see what I can do,” Blankenship said.

“I’d appreciate that, Tom.”

The detective ducked under the crime scene tape and walked out the front door. He stood for a moment looking up at the castle. Half the windows were broken or missing and graffiti stained the stucco walls. Must have been something back in the ’30s, he thought. But that was fifty years back. These days the property’s only occupants were junkies, prostitutes, and squatters.

Conover shook his head and proceeded down the weed-strewn path, Blankenship falling into step behind him. The sun finally appeared over the mountains to the east, and the decrepit, overgrown cactus garden lay exposed in the golden light.

“Anybody contact the Tovrea family yet?” Conover asked.

“We’re trying to reach the widow. She lives out in Paradise Valley.”