Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

She seized her fork and scooped quinoa into her mouth.

“I’m not here to create problems for him,” I said. “The opposite. I know he didn’t kill Donna Zhao. Tell him that, please.”

She chewed, chewed.

I said, “His sister Kara is concerned about him. So’s his mom. His pastor; Ellis Fletcher. People haven’t forgotten about him. They want to hear from him.”

I took out my card, scratched out the office number, wrote my cell on the back.

“I’m not in town long,” I said. “I have to go back tomorrow afternoon. I was hoping to speak to him before then.”

I pushed the card across the desk.

She didn’t touch it.

Reaching in my pocket again, I took out an amber pill bottle. Held it up.

“This is a thirty-day supply of Risperdal,” I said. “Julian came looking for it a couple months back. I don’t know how he’s fixed now. But at the time he was desperate enough to break into Walter’s house. He’s lucky he wasn’t arrested.”

I placed the bottle on the desk, atop my card.

“If nothing else, I want him to know that somebody believes him.” I stood up. “ I believe him. Please tell him that.”

I headed south out of the parking lot, driving a hundred yards before making a U-turn and pulling over. I had an unobstructed view of anyone entering or exiting the parking lot. Which meant they would have the same view of me.

I reclined the seatback as far as I could without losing my sight line.

I listened to the radio.

I ate beef jerky and a gas station muffin.

Intermittent snow fell.

I guessed she’d stay through the end of the workday.

Close.

At four fifteen, the Jeep made a rolling stop at the lot entrance and headed north, away from me.

I started my car.

The roads were icy, and practically every vehicle on them was an SUV, which added to the challenge of keeping an eyeball on the Jeep. At that hour the winter sun drooped on the horizon, the glare giving me a slight advantage when she got on the freeway heading east.

Moving within one car length, I opened the map on my phone, tracking our location, trying to get a sense of where she was headed.

Not home; I knew that much. I’d looked up her address, south of the lake.

Traffic had begun to congeal well before we reached the Nevada state line. I fiddled with the map, pressing my head up against the window to check on the Jeep. Its green paint job stood out at first, but the oncoming dusk reduced every not-white color to a generic muddy hue, pierced by hundreds of stuttering brake lights.

The land curved and swelled, loosely mimicking the river. Billboards began to poke their heads up, rodent-like. Tawdry, bright, and basic; promising jackpots of every kind. Cheap food. Cheap sex. Easy money. Salvation in the Lord’s embrace.

I crested the hill and the lights of Reno exploded into view.

The procession squeezed through the pass, groping toward the city. Two lanes became four. I struggled to keep sight of the Jeep, repeatedly losing it in a shifting maze of panel trucks. Gunning ahead, only to discover it behind me. It was rush hour. I was driving like an asshole.

My phone vibrated in the cup holder.

I muttered and reached down to silence it.

The caller ID read NATE SCHICKMAN.

I hit SPEAKER.

“Yo,” I said. “Can I call you back? I’m right in the middle of something.”

“You can,” he said, “but I think you want to hear this.”

The Jeep had moved into the rightmost lane, toward the 395 interchange. I signaled and began forcing my way into line. “Go ahead.”

“I looked in the evidence box,” he said. “The knife’s a match: brand and model.”

“Excellent,” I said.

“Hang on, not done,” he said. “Seeing that, I thought I’d take a poke through the rest of it.”

I throttled the steering wheel eagerly. “And?”

“In the hood of the sweatshirt,” he said. “I found hairs. Nice, long blond ones.”

“Please tell me you’re not kidding.”

“Three of them. Root and all.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “That’s him. That’s Linstad.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure they don’t belong to your boy Triplett.”

“Fuck me. ”

He was laughing. “Don’t get too excited.”

“Fuck that. I’m excited. How soon can we run them?”

“I still need to clear it with my lieutenant. I think he’ll bite, though. While I’m at it I want to run the knife, too. If it is the murder weapon — no guarantee there, but if it is — we might be able to pick up offender blood. That’d be even better.”

“You think Linstad cut himself while stabbing her?”

“Happens all the time. Especially if the victim puts up a fight.”

I remembered the crime scene photos. “She sure did.”

The Jeep juked toward Susanville. I went after it, cutting off a van. The driver leaned on his horn.

“Where are you, anyway?” Schickman said.

“Let you know when I get there. Hey, but, that’s fucking fantastic, man. Thanks.”

“No worries,” he said. “Thank you. ”

The bulk of the traffic split off southbound: downtown Reno, airport, Carson City.

Karen Weatherfeld went north, toward the hilly fringes of civilization.

Finding myself directly behind her, I eased off on the accelerator. I still had my chains on, and whenever I broke forty miles an hour, a guttural protest rose up from the undercarriage. The Jeep had no such trouble. It had snow tires. The gap between us began to grow, until all I could see was two dancing red spots.

We’d been traveling for over an hour and a half. It was fully night now. In my rearview mirror, the lurid glow of downtown receded. Homes and businesses began to thin, blank patches appearing on the phone map.

Without warning, the Jeep veered from the middle lane toward the exit.

I cursed and gave chase.

The off-ramp bent violently, forcing me to jam on the brake. Once I’d straightened out, I spotted her taillights far ahead. The highway had dwindled to a single, unlit lane. I sped up, ignoring the noise, the steering wheel battling me. Drawing closer, I made out the Jeep’s square profile as it turned left, toward Panther Valley.

The road doubled back under the freeway, and for the next half mile the modern world flared up in the form of freight yards, an RV park, off-brand gasoline. Soon, though, darkness pressed down its thumb, and the asphalt broke up into gravel, warped spurs running off into oblivion. Fists of cloud silenced the stars, smothered the moon.

It was just the two of us out there. No streetlamps. If she was even the slightest bit aware of her surroundings, she would’ve realized I was following her.

Quickly I consulted the map. The neighborhood we had entered was stubby and self-contained, petering out in dead ends. There was only one way out, the same way we’d come in. Unless she intended to go off-road, she couldn’t get very far.

I took a measured risk: I pulled over and cut my engine, letting her drive on.

The Jeep bobbed, swayed, vanished.

I sat out five long minutes, restarted the car, and crept forward.

According to the map I was on Moab Lane. Snow clumped in the desert scrub. Shoved back from the road, every hundred yards or so, were small clapboard houses, half a step above trailers, dropped down at nonsensical angles. Weak moonlight touched mangy grass, woodpiles, lengths of collapsing chain-link, propane canisters, lots of vehicles in varying states of decay. The odd mailbox, sitting atop a four-by-four post, hammered into the dirt.

Near the end of the road I came to a compound of sorts, though nothing to inspire envy in the likes of, say, Olivia Harcourt. To the right of the main house stood a pair of padlocked wooden sheds. Junk lay out like rejected offerings: hubcaps, a smashed-up bicycle. A hammock drooped. I could make out the shape of a fourth structure toward the back of the property, most of it hidden behind an orange pickup a quarter of a century old. A black Camaro, no more recent, sat up on blocks.