T. Parker: Red Light

“And on to California, to start over.”

“I think it’s sad. What do you have?”

She ran down what she knew. She and Zamorra would do a walkthrough later today, as the early lab work was done. That was when they could really put things together. But for now — one shooter who might have used a silenced weapon; possibly someone Aubrey had known well enough to open her door to; no rape or robbery. Motive — none as yet. Witnesses — one who heard noises. Suspects — none. Unless you wanted to include the johns in her black book, of which there were many.

Mike listened, his eyes moving left and right. When something was bothering him his eyes got restless and wouldn’t land.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “A wad of money in her purse, no rape, nothing taken? Why kill her? To hear what a silenced automatic sounds like?”

“I can’t add it up either, Mike.”

“She was... well, nineteen.”

“I think she knew him. Lynda said the place was crawling with prints, like any domicile. It’s just a matter of running some of them through CAL–ID and AFIS, see what pops.”

“Is the black book coded?”

She shook her head. “Half-assed, maybe. Plenty of initials and names to go on.”

“Some of them get elaborate on their codes. It’s more to do with denying the john’s individuality than for security.”

“Not her, from the looks of it.”

“Then you might have the key. That and the brass, if you get a suspect and a gun.”

Mike opened the yogurt, looked at the inside of the foil lid. He had long blond eyelashes and when he relaxed and stared at something he looked innocent and bewildered. Sometimes she wanted to hold him close, like she held Tim, Jr. There was something gentle in Mike — she saw it most often when he worked his dogs. Mike ran the bloodhounds for the department. He had told her straight out that he was a dog person, not a people one. He’d been trying hard to change that, for reasons that didn’t seem entirely his own.

“Merci, I’d like to ask Brighton to let me work the murder with you.”

Brighton was the sheriff; and working the case with her was out of the question.

“No,” she said.

“But we’ve got a big overlap with the outcall op we’re running, I can help. Believe me.”

“Then help, Mike, but I don’t want anyone assigned to this except me. It’s mine and Paul’s.”

“Hell’s bells, Merci, you could think about it for more than two seconds.”

“Why? I don’t have to.”

Through her fatigue and growing anger, Merci saw Mike’s face with his disappointment. He looked like Tim, Jr., when he first understood the bottle was empty: crushed in a new way, time after time.

“Mike, look. I’ll share what I have with you. I’ll keep you in the loop. But I don’t need a vice sergeant in the brew right now. I’ve got all the help I need.”

“ ‘A vice sergeant in the brew.’ ”

“Right.”

“Is that like a fly in the ointment?”

“No, Mike. It is not.”

“Are we still on for the movies tonight?”

“I’m already worn out. Rain check?”

“It isn’t raining.”

He stood and lifted his tray all in one motion. She watched dump the food into the trash can, rack the tray and walk out.

Melvin Glandis, assistant sheriff, stood over her desk with a stack of tattered files under one arm. He was a big triangle of a man, wide shoulders, narrow hips, short legs, small feet. He was rumored to be an accomplished ballroom dancer. His face was pink and good-humored. It was eight that morning.

“Here’s your Christmas present. Solve it by New Year’s Eve, you get a smoked ham.”

“Leave the file. Keep the ham.”

Glandis dropped it to the desktop. “Patti Bailey, shot and dumped, nineteen sixty-nine. Add it to your dead hooker list. Maybe you’ll have better luck with it than we did.”

She knew what the file was. At the end of every year, Sheriff Brighton randomly assigned an unsolved murder to each of the investigators in Homicide Detail. It was a way of cleaning house, and every once in a while they got results.

These results were trumpeted to the press and public, positive PR for the department, as when a deputy saved a life or helped a woman give birth because she couldn’t make it to the hospital in time. It helped citizens to believe that even forty-year-old cases weren’t just being closed and forgotten. The detectives either loved or hated the unsolveds, depending on whether they wanted overtime or not.

Merci thought that they were primarily a waste of time, overtime included. If the dicks of yore couldn’t button down their own cases, how could anyone else?

“You look tired,” said Glandis.

“So do you.”

“Up all night with the hooker?”

“More or less.”

“A silencer. Jesus.”

Merci had long ago lost her amazement at the speed of gossip within her department. The air inside the county buildings was stiff with it.

Glandis shrugged. “Let me know if I can help. I was first-year robbery-arson back then, but I remember some things.”

“Thanks, Mel. How are we on the body-parts boy?”

Most of an eight-year-old boy had been found dismembered, decapitated, his parts wrapped in plastic trash bags and buried neighborhood. No arrests or suspects yet. The case was taking fist bites out of Rayborn’s soul. Wheeler and Teague got it, good investigators, but Merci wished it was hers. It wasn’t personal but it was personal.

“We found a kiddie raper living one street over, ex-mental patient. They haven’t located him yet.”

Merci shook her head and thought about her own son meeting such an end. A dark, svelte violence in her shifted and stared out past its coils.

“How’s Junior Tim?”

“Totally great in every way.”

“I’d expect that, coming from you.”

He knocked twice on her desktop with his big knuckles pivoted in shiny black shoes and turned to Zamorra’s unoccupied desk. He slapped down another unsolved file, then moved on.

She made her usual nine o’clock call home. Her father told her that Tim Jr., had gotten up regular time, wolfed his breakfast and was now hurling blocks around his room. Merci heard shrieks of delight in the background. The words body parts in plastic bags shot through her mind and she banished them with force.

“Kid’s got an arm for a one-and-a-half-year-old,” said Clark.

Arm in plastic. Banished again.

“Take his temperature when he settles down, I—”

“Already did, dear. Ninety-eight point six.”

“After lunch—”

“I will.”

She missed him. By his absence she could feel his shape: a large, round, warm part of her. Missing. Gone. Elsewhere. But there WAS NO way she could be there all the time, even if she wanted to. There was work to do. Work held her little family together. And it held her together, too. It always had.

“We’re going to take the trike out later if it warms up. Then hit the market. We’ll be here when you get home.”

Clark had moved in with her two years ago, after her mother’s death. Merci had watched him crawl toward his private abyss, then crawl back away from it. Tim, Jr., had a lot to do with that turnaround. Her father was great with him. She thought of them as The Men.

“I miss my Men.”

“ ’Bye honey. We miss you. Don’t work too hard.”

Noon came but Paul Zamorra didn’t. No call. No message. No word. She’d only worked with him for three months, and this was the first time he’d done anything so unprofessional and disrespectful.

Merci called his home at one, got the machine. The hospital, she thought. She found the number Zamorra had given her for his wife’s room at UCI Medical Center, but decided not to call. She felt powerless over medical conditions, and she was afraid of what she felt no power over.