Jonathan Kellerman - Capital Crimes

“I’m just saying it’s a gold mine.”

“Pass the ketchup, Stretch. Stop hoarding it in the first place.”

Lamar’s huge hands stretched across the table. “Here. Drown your grub in the stuff, El Bee. One seventy, what does it take to impress you?”

“I’m impressed.”

“When’s the last time you played the damn thing?”

“Something that pricey no sense risking damage.”

“What, you got epilepsy, gonna drop it?”

“You never know, Stretch.”

Lamar said, “ You know and I know and everyone knows that they sound better when you play ’em. You open up the soundboard a bit, who knows, you could push it to one eighty.”

“And your point is?”

Lamar tugged a moustache end. “Someone didn’t take his Midol. Why do you hate the damn thing when it’s like the most important thing you own?”

Baker shrugged and smiled and tried not to think about a little boy’s voice cracking, honky-tonk smoke, loose laughter. Curled on the backseat as the old van bumped over country roads. The greasy way headlights could wash over rural asphalt.

Lamar saw Baker’s smile as consistent with his partner’s quiet manner and sometimes that would be End of Topic. Three years they’d been working together, but the big man had no clue Baker’s show of teeth was forced. For the most part, Lamar could read people real well, but he had his blind spots.

Times when Lamar wouldn’t let go, his next comment was so predictable it could be from a script. “You own a treasure and your alarm system sucks.”

“I’m well-armed, Stretch.”

“Like someone couldn’t break in when you’re on the job.” Deep sigh. “One seventy, oh Lord, that’s serious money.”

“Who knows I own it other than you, Stretch?”

“Don’t give me ideas. Hell, George Gruhn could probably unload it for you in like five seconds.”

“Is it dropping in value as we speak?”

This time, it was Lamar who was hard of hearing. “I consigned my ’62 Precision with George last year. Got twenty times what I paid for it, bought a three-year-old Hamer that sounds just as cool and I can take it to gigs without worrying about a scratch being tragic. George has the contacts. I had enough left over to buy Sue flowers plus a necklace for our anniversary. The rest we used to pay off a little of the condo.”

“Look at you,” said Baker, “a regular Warren Buffett.” Having enough, he rose to his feet before Lamar had time to reply, went to the men’s room and washed his hands and face and checked the lie of his buttondown collar. He ran a sandpaper tongue over the surface of his teeth. Returning to find all the food gone and Lamar tapping a rhythm on the table, he crooked a thumb at the door. “Unless you’re planning on eating the plate, Stretch, let’s go look at some blood.”

The two of them were a Mutt-and-Jeff Murder Squad detective team operating out of the spiffy brick Metro Police Headquarters on James Robertson Parkway. Lamar was six-five, thirty-two, skinny as a shoestring potato with wispy brown hair and a walrus moustache like an old-time gunslinger. Born in New Haven, but he learned southern ways quickly.

Baker Southerby was two years older, compact and ruddy with skin that always looked razor-burned, bulky muscles with a tendency to go soft, thin lips and a shaved head. Despite Lamar’s tendency to digress, he’d never had a better partner.

Nashville homicides had dropped to sixty-three last year, most of them open-and-shuts worked by district detectives. The routine killings tended to be gang shootings, random domestics, and dope dealers cruising into town on the I-40 and getting into trouble.

The three, two-man Murder Squad teams were called out on whodunits and the occasional high-profile case.

The last new murder Southerby and Van Gundy had worked was a month ago, the shooting of a foulmouthed, substance-abusing Music Row promoter named Darren Chenoweth. Chenoweth had been found slumped in his Mercedes behind the crappy-looking warehouse that served as his Sixteenth Avenue office. An unindicted co-conspirator in the Cashbox payola scandal, his death was a head-scratcher with serious financial overtones, possibly a revenge hit. But it closed four days later as just another domestic gone bad, Mrs. Chenoweth coming in with her lawyer and confessing. A quick plea down to involuntary manslaughter, because fifteen witnesses were willing to testify Darren had been beating the crap out of her regularly. Since then Baker and Lamar had been working cold cases and closing a nice number of the green folders.

Lamar was happily married to a Vanderbilt Med Center pediatric nurse with whom he’d just bought a fifth-floor two-plus-two condo in the Veridian Tower on Church Street. Stretch and Sue used overtime to pay off the mortgage and they treasured their meager free time, so Baker, living alone, volunteered to take all the late-night and early-morning calls. Do wake-up duty in a nice, quiet voice.

He’d been up watching old NFL reruns on ESPN Classic when the phone rang at three twenty AM on a cool April night. Not Dispatch, Brian Fondebernardi calling direct. The squad sergeant’s voice was low and even, the way it got when things were serious. Baker heard voices in the background and immediately thought, Complications.

“What’s up?”

“I disturb your beauty sleep, Baker?”

“Nope. Where’s the body?”

“ East Bay,” said Fondebernardi. “First, below Taylor, in a vacant lot full of trash and other nasty stuff. Almost a river view. But you asked the wrong question, Baker.”

“Who’s the body?”

“There you go. Jack Jeffries.”

Baker didn’t answer.

Fondebernardi said, “As in Jeffries, Bolt, and Ziff- ”

“I got it.”

“Mr. Even Keel,” said the sergeant. A Brooklyn native, he worked at a whole different pace, had taken awhile to understand Baker’s slogo style. “Central Detectives buttoned down the scene, M.E. investigator’s down there now, but that won’t take long. We got a single stab wound in the neck, looks to be right in the carotid. Lots of blood all around so it happened here. Lieutenant’s on her way, you don’t want to miss the party. Call the midget and get the heck down here.”

“Hi, Baker,” Sue Van Gundy answered in her throaty, Alabama voice. Too fatigued to be sexy at this hour, but that was the exception and though Baker thought of her as a sister, he wondered if maybe he should’ve agreed to date her cousin the teacher who’d visited last summer from Chicago. Lamar had shown him her picture, a pretty brunette, just like Sue. Baker thinking Cute, then Who am I to be picky? Then figuring it would never work, why start.

Now, he said, “Sorry to wake you, Sue. Jack Jeffries got himself stabbed.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Jack Jeffries,” she said. “Wow, Baker. Lamar loves his music.”

Baker restrained himself from saying what he knew: Lamar loves everyone’s music. Maybe that’s the problem.

He said, “Millions of people agree with Lamar.”

“Jack Jeffries, unbelievable,” said Sue. “Lamar’s out like a light but I’ll nudge him- oh, look, he’s waking up by himself, got that cute look- honey, it’s Baker. You’ve got to work- he’s comin’ round, I’ll make some coffee. For you, too, Baker?”

“No, thanks, had some,” Baker lied. “I’ll be by in a jif.”

Sue said, “He’s so tired- up doing our taxes. I’ll make sure his socks match.”

Baker drove his department Caprice to Lamar’s high-rise and waited on the dark street until Lamar’s whooping-crane form lurched out the front door, a paper bag dangling from one gangly arm. Lamar’s walrus moustache flared to the periphery of his bony face. His hair was flying and his eyes were half-shut.