Laura Lippman - In Big Trouble

"I remember when I used to make overtime working cases, not pulling parade duty. The bad ol' days. Now the homicide rate's at a twenty-year low."

"Really." Although Tess couldn't put much energy in her reaction, she was impressed. Baltimore had fallen back from its body-a-day high, but not by much. In fact, the stats indicated Baltimore's killers were simply getting more efficient: fewer shootings, but a higher fatality rate. Way to go, kids. If you can't bring up your reading scores, at least you're improving as marksmen.

"It gives us time to solve cases," Guzman said. "Old ones, as well as new ones. Today's technology can solve yesterday's murders. We cleared a twenty-five-year-old case last month. I was counting on Tom Darden to help me clear another one, one almost as old. You remember Tom Darden? You made his acquaintance up near Twin Sisters, as I recall. Stocky fellow?"

Not so stocky with his chest hollowed out by a gunshot blast, Tess thought. Somewhere in her body, a warning signal was going off, or trying to go off-it seemed almost as far away as the city's church bells. See ? her body screamed at her mind. You should have let me sleep, then we could cope with this . The mind replied testily: Oh shut up and make some adrenaline .

"You know who Tom Darden is, Miss Monaghan?"

"He's the man I found."

Guzman smiled approvingly, a teacher with a slow student who had finally, after much prodding and many hints, come up with the right answer.

"That the only time you've ever seen him?"

"As far as I know. I don't really know what he looked like when he was alive."

Another smile, another nod. "Good point. They keep making bigger and better guns, but there's still nothing like an old-fashioned shotgun for ripping open some guy's face, is there? That gun we found under your friend's bed, it was old, but it could do the job, couldn't it? A beauty. Matches a gun that belongs to Marianna Barrett Conyers. I just talked to her on the phone. She confirmed that she keeps it up at her weekend place. What do you want to bet that it's not there anymore?"

Tess said nothing, but in her mind she was making another quick inventory of the limestone cottage. No bullets in any of the drawers she had pulled open, no locked gun cabinet, but she recalled a rack above the fireplace. Empty, it hadn't registered as being of any significance. Could have been a plate-holder for all she knew, or some other piece of decorative bric-a-brac. A gun rack. Go figure.

"Don't get me wrong," Guzman said. "I'm not going to shed any tears over Darden. In fact, I was counting on watching him die one day. I just thought it would be through lethal injection, a few more years down the road. The thing, is, I wanted to talk to him first about some old business, and now I can't do that. And although I'm indebted to your friend, I can't really let it go, you know? Even lowlifes have rights."

Tess started to nod, then stopped, not sure what she would be agreeing with.

"Unless-" Guzman paused as if struck by a sudden brainstorm, only he was a little too stagey. "Unless, of course, your friend killed him in self-defense. I can see that. He's staying up there with Emmie Sterne, and this bad guy breaks in. Your friend gets scared and grabs the gun. Bang, bang, bang, lots of blood and screaming. Everybody panics. It's natural. He stashes the guy in the pool house, cleans up real good, and hits the road. Then you come along, looking for your old buddy, and you find the body. Only you don't bother to tell the sheriff why you're really there. That how it happened?"

"If it did, wouldn't it be a matter for Sheriff Kolarik? His county, his body."

Perhaps the slow student was moving a little too fast now. For whatever reason, Guzman was no longer smiling and nodding at her.

"Believe me, Sheriff Kolarik would love to have you return as a guest of the county. Problem is, we know where Darden was found, but we don't know where he was killed. He was last seen alive in San Antonio, about two weeks ago, with his old buddy Laylan Weeks. Sheriff Kolarik doesn't mind if I make a few inquiries down here, seeing as the weapon appears to have shown up and all. Under your friend's bed. And seeing as Tom Darden might be the link to something where the stakes are a lot bigger."

"I hate to undermine your theory, but Crow Ransome doesn't know how to use a gun." At least, he hadn't when Tess last saw him. Or had he? Perhaps his knowledge of firearms had been something else he had mentioned in passing. My father abandoned a shot at the Nobel Prize to run off with my mother the famous sculptor and, by the way, I'm a crack shot . It was possible. Anything seemed possible just now. "He's also not stupid enough to hide a murder weapon under his own bed. Who hides anything under the bed, anymore? I haven't put anything there since I was twelve and trying to read Lolita ."

"That Russian book they made into the dirty movie on Showtime?"

Tess decided not to challenge his characterization. "Yeah."

"Man, I'd jump up and down if my twelve-year-old was trying to sneak a book like that. The only thing she has under her bed is a stash of makeup that her mother won't let her wear until she's sixteen."

"If you want her to read a certain book, all you have to do is ban it. Better yet, hide it wherever you hide your own contraband-my mom used the linen closet. Your daughter will find it there and start sneaking it out, gulping it down when you're out of the house. Leave a little Balzac behind, and she'll take it from there."

"Naw. Estrella doesn't know our hiding places."

"If you've got a twelve-year-old in the house, she knows where everything is. Including the dirty videos and drugs. Well, no drugs in a detective's house, I guess. But the videos and the booze, even contraband chocolates."

Guzman blushed. "Yes, well. Anyway, you came looking for your old boyfriend. Why did he go missing in the first place?"

The postcard with Crow's picture, the one that had started this whole mess, was in the pages of Tess's datebook. She worried for a moment that some police officer might be pawing through it even as she and Guzman spoke, then remembered the datebook was back at La Casita. With Esskay and the double bed with the polyester spread, which suddenly seemed the most wonderful bed in the world to her.

"He was trying to strike out on his own, make it as a musician. Nothing sinister."

"How did he hook up with Emmie Sterne?"

"They met in Austin." Had she just been lulled into telling Guzman something he didn't know? "Or maybe here. I'm not sure. She was looking for a guitarist, he was looking for a singer."

"What about Gus Sterne, her cousin. He have any connection to this band?"

"Not to my knowledge. Someone told me they were on the outs."

"Yeah? Everyone in this town loves her cousin, and she hates his guts? That's pretty strange, don't you think?"

"I'd say it was about par for the course as families go."

Guzman extended his index finger, as if awarding a point.

"So you know the whole story about Emmie Sterne, then? The poor little princess, orphaned before she was even three years old? A daddy she never knew, a mommy she barely remembers."

"Marianna Barrett Conyers told me how both Emmie's parents died in accidents." If he had already spoken to Marianna about the shotgun, he knew she had been there. She wasn't giving him anything new.

"Accidents?" Guzman did a double-take, neat as any professional comic. "I suppose you could call it that. I mean, rich people have fancy words for everything, so why not? Horace Morgan shot his head off after his wife left him. I guess you'd call that an accident. Meanwhile, Lollie Sterne died in a really big accident. An accidental triple homicide that Tom Darden was going to help me solve."