Joseph Kanon - Los Alamos

“I’ll do that. Now suppose we both get down off our high horses and look at what we do have.”

“Such as?”

“Such as another case down in Albuquerque just three weeks ago.”

“Same MO?”

“Close enough. Parking lot behind one of those bars I guess you’re talking about. Another guy caught with his pants down. Stabbed this time. They found him behind his car.”

“Who was he?”

“Local businessman. Ran some laundries down there, which is a good business since the war got going. Seems he met somebody in the bar and they went outside to have themselves a conversation. Must have been about money, since he didn’t have any left in his wallet when they found him.”

“All this according to-?”

“The bartender. He’s the one found him.”

“Any idea who?”

“No. Boys there think it was a Mexican, on account of the knife, but they always think it’s a Mexican, so you probably can’t count on that.”

“They get a description from the bartender?”

“Yeah, I’ll get you the file on it. I’d say it was a little on the vague side, though. Medium height, medium build, medium nothing. ‘Course, his memory isn’t the best. He doesn’t remember anyone else being there. I guess they don’t have any regulars. They sure haven’t had any since-nobody’s been near the place.”

“He might have to close it.”

“The police had that idea too.”

“What about the victim-any signs of sexual activity?”

“Plenty. At least this one got his money’s worth.”

Connolly frowned and got up to pour some coffee, pacing and looking up at the ceiling as he talked, as if he were thinking aloud.

“Okay, so what do we have here? Let’s reconstruct.”

“Shit.”

“Well, let’s try it. A guy goes into a bar, meets another guy, and they go out to the parking lot to get friendly. Either because they took a shine to each other or because one of them’s paying. Now what do they do?”

“For Christ’s sake, Connolly.”

“No, follow me for a minute. What do we think happened? What’s the lab report?”

“You mean the semen? Everywhere. In his mouth, some on his face.”

“But nothing behind?”

“No.”

“So they got to know each other real well. Then one stabs the other and takes his money. So we have to assume it’s not a lover’s quarrel, not with the money gone. How old was the victim, by the way?”

“Forty-one.”

“Right. How old did the bartender say the other one was?”

Holliday turned over a folder cover and glanced at a sheet. “Twenty something. Not under drinking age, of course. He wouldn’t allow that. Not him. I don’t think you can go by any of this,” he said, closing the folder with disgust.

“No. But not middle-aged, either. Clothes?”

“Jeans. Blue shirt. Like I said, anybody.”

“Even a working man. Bar cater to that?”

“I don’t know. From the sound of it, I’d say it was a fairly democratic place. I don’t think they care about your job.”

“Okay, so let’s take this same guy-you assume it’s the same guy, don’t you? — let’s take him and put him in our case. What do you think happened?”

“You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you? I think they met somewhere, maybe one of those bars I don’t know about that you think the town’s full of. Maybe just sitting in the plaza. Anyway, they meet and go down to the park and do whatever they do in the bushes. Then one smashes the other on the head, pulls him further into the bushes, takes his wallet, and gets away.”

“So what’s wrong with this?”

“I don’t know, what?”

“I don’t know either, but there’s something. Let’s take our boy from Albuquerque-let’s say he’s young, let’s say he’s still in jeans and workboots, and let’s say he lets guys give him blow jobs. Probably for money. In Albuquerque something goes wrong. Maybe the guy won’t pay, or maybe our boy’s ashamed or-So he meets Bruner, or Bruner meets him, and they strike a deal. But why should Bruner pay? He’s young too. Good-looking.”

“There’s nothing in that. Why do guys go to hookers?”

“Okay. So let’s say he likes the convenience. Or even just likes the idea. They go to the park. They have sex, but before they even finish our guy kills Bruner, takes his money, keys, everything, steals his car. Is this the same guy? Why not finish? Who stops in the middle of a blow job?”

Holliday followed Connolly around the room as if he were watching a court performance, caught up in the story. “Well, I sure as hell never did. From a woman, I mean. Unless I was going to—”

“Move on to something else. Right. But they never did.”

“They didn’t in Albuquerque either, remember?”

“Yes, but our guy’d already finished. Maybe the other one was still hoping. So why stop this time? There’s something we’re not getting here. Why take everything? You just have to get rid of the wallet somewhere else. Why even bother?”

“Maybe he’s not real bright.”

“And the car. That’s just looking for trouble. It’s not so easy to lose a car.”

“Well, that’s where I disagree with you. Everybody wants a car these days-when’s the last time you saw one for sale? So we put a trace on the license, which it won’t have anymore, and check out the used lots and the black market-yeah, we do have that-but I’ll bet it’s already gone. You just drive down the road to Mexico and first thing you know you’ve got money in your pocket and keep the change. Hell, they don’t care down there. If it’s got wheels, you can grab yourself a stack of pesos.”

“But he didn’t do it before and he was in a goddamn parking lot.”

Holliday was quiet. “Well, maybe it’s like you say,” he said finally. “But you know what that means?”

Connolly nodded. “Somebody else did it.”

“And where does that leave us? We got a victim we don’t know anything about and a killer we know even less. No victim, no suspect. Fact is, the Albuquerque case is all we’ve got. Without that, we might as well hang it up.”

Connolly leaned on the back of the chair. “But it doesn’t fit.”

“And here I was having all this fun, just like a big-city detective.” Holliday grinned at Connolly. “You spend your life handing out parking tickets and then you get a real live murder and the next thing you know you’re up a creek without a paddle. Guy says nothing fits. Might as well go take a vacation. But it’s got to fit somehow. Look, we’re making this too hard. It could have happened just the way we said it did in the first place, couldn’t it?” He looked up calmly. “Couldn’t it?”

Connolly shrugged. “I guess so.”

“In fact, you might even say there’s no reason-no real reason, anyway-to think it didn’t happen that way. So he took the car. So what? Maybe he needed a way home. We don’t know where they met. Maybe your man drove him all the way from Albuquerque and he didn’t want to hitch back. You might even say it’s likely that it happened the way we said.”

Connolly nodded. “But I can’t picture it.”

“Oh. Is that some of that professional police work you were telling me about earlier? The kind we don’t do?”

Connolly smiled. “All right. But I can’t. Why the pants?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why would he have his pants down? Why would he need to?”

“Maybe they were taking turns.”

“Maybe. But that doesn’t sound like your parking-lot guy.”

“Maybe he was playing with himself. It’s possible.”

Connolly nodded. “Okay. Then why don’t I believe it? Why can’t I picture Bruner doing that?”

“Maybe you need to be-you know, to imagine it.”