Chapter 39 #2
Kay Myers stared at the ceiling above her bed as though the cracks in the paint were a map that might reveal where he was hiding.
Listened to the couple making love in the next-door apartment, as though their cries might tell her something.
All kinds of disparate thoughts swirled around inside her head.
Mrs. White’s bird. Ted Springer’s pin-striped suit.
Walker’s bass voice. The man at the porn theater with the present for his daughter.
The phone call from Bob Oz requesting the file on Perez, a homicide case from 1995.
Was there some pattern here? Something she should have spotted, something that would reveal exactly what his next move would be?
She checked the time. Twelve hours until the opening at the U.S.
Bank Stadium. Why think about that? It wasn’t her responsibility anymore.
Springer and Hanson, from now on Gomez was their problem.
She’d called the woman who called in the tip-off from Cedar Creek but got no reply.
Kay decided she would head up there early in the morning so she could cross it off her list. What she should do now was sleep.
The couple through the wall had fallen silent now.
She envied them their lovemaking. Envied their waking up together.
It had been a long time since she’d had anyone else in her bed, man or woman.
She felt the mattress dip at the foot of the bed and an instant later the cat came snuggling up next to her as though it had read her thoughts.
She closed her eyes and stroked its head.
She thought of the painter. How a mask through which all you saw was a pair of eyes left you free to invent the rest any way you wanted.
Make your own imaginary person. What was it he wanted to show her on Sunday?
She thought briefly about it, then her thoughts moved on.
Who was Perez? What—if anything—did Bob know that neither she nor anybody else had seen?
The phone on her bedside table rang. She checked the screen and recognized the number.
“Yes, Fortune?”
“Sorry to call so late, Myers. I’m at Regency Hospital, I’m standing outside the mortuary.”
Marco Dante, she thought. He’s dead.
“An ambulance brought in a body from the Rialto a few hours after we were there. They didn’t contact us because they didn’t see anything suspicious about the death.
It isn’t the first time an overweight man past fifty has died of a heart attack or whatever while watching a dirty movie.
But then they took a preliminary toxso…er, toxsilogical… ”
“Toxicology test,” said Kay.
“Yeah. And they found traces of…hang on, I wrote it down here. Tetrodotoxin. It’s supposed to be the same kind of poison you get when you eat those Japanese fish that haven’t been cooked properly.”
“Fugu.”
“Eh?”
“Japanese puffer fish.”
“Yeah. So I asked did they think the guy had been eating fish while he was at the movies. But even though those things mean certain death, it apparently works slowly, so the guy could have gotten the poison in him several hours before he noticed anything. And being as how this isn’t exactly the kind of fish you cook in your kitchen at home I figured that here is one restaurant that is going to be in deep shit.
But now I’ve checked the guy out and when I saw his record I called you straight off. ”
“I get it. So who is he?”
“Wes Villefort. Male, fifty-eight years, black.”
She groaned. “You gonna give me his height too?”
“I’m saying black because he was the only black there.”
The pimp, she thought. “Okay. So, the record?”
“Narcotics.”
Kay thought about this. She saw no immediate connection between narcotics and Dante, Karlstad and Patterson. The death might just be accidental. Or it might not.
“Thanks for telling me,” she said. “I’ll take a look at it in the morning.”
—
Olav Hanson headed down toward the river with his fishing rod in his hand.
He needed to calm down and think things over before tomorrow.
And he and Violet had argued after Sean’s visit the previous night.
It ended with her leaving to spend the weekend at her parents’ place.
She would calm down, so that was okay by him, it meant he could fish the whole night through if he wanted.
The steep path was muddy. It always was, no matter how long it had been since the last rain.
The moon dipped in and out behind the clouds, and in the dark it wasn’t easy to see where to put your foot without slipping.
Having a bad knee on a tricky slope didn’t help and several times he had to reach out and hold on to tree trunks for support.
A sound. He stopped. Something moving in the trees.
Too big for a squirrel. He peered but saw nothing.
Either it was the same dog as last time or his ragged nerves playing a trick on him again.
He kept going unsteadily down the path. Events over the last few days had cost him, but with a bit of luck it might all be over by tomorrow.
If Lobo really did make an attempt on the life of the mayor then, statistically speaking, the most likely outcome was that the problem would solve itself.
Olav had learned this during a meeting that afternoon at which Springer said that the majority of so-called lone-wolf terrorists ended up being killed, whether or not they succeeded.
Olav couldn’t care less about Mayor Patterson; with that statistical fact in mind, he just hoped Lobo would turn up at the U.S.
Bank Stadium tomorrow armed with a rifle.
As he reached the river’s edge Olav saw that another fisherman hadn’t gone home yet. That was fine. It meant he wouldn’t be standing there alone on a dark night like this.
“Catch anything?” asked Olav as he pulled the cover off his rod and got ready to cast.
“Not yet,” the man said without taking his eyes off his line. Olav thought he recognized the voice, but he couldn’t immediately put a face to it. There were quite a few regulars who fished down there.
“Perch bites better at night,” said Olav. He heard a twig snap behind him and peered up into the trees.
“Oh, I was hoping for something a little bigger.”
“Oh yeah?” said Olav. He heard a single bark from the trees.
So it was the dog. Olav could tell his pulse was high now because he could feel it slowing down again.
“Yellow pike, you mean?” said Olav as he stuffed the rod cover into his jacket pocket.
He was looking forward to the fishing now.
Showing how far he could cast. “You need luck for that, man.”
“Not yellow pike,” said the other. “I’m after the Milkman.”
At first Olav Hanson thought he hadn’t heard right, that his nerves were playing a trick on him. Then, slowly, the fisherman turned. The peak of his cap shadowed his face, but once he had turned around completely and raised his head, Olav saw who it was.
“Remember me, Hanson?”
Olav swallowed. Wanted to say no. Then changed his mind when he saw the gun. Tried to say yes, but his mouth was so dry all that came out was air.
“Thirty years, Hanson. That’s a long time, but you know what? I remember you like it was yesterday.”
“I…” Olav stopped right there, because he had no idea what to say. Maybe it was best to say nothing.
“Remember how you gave me your personal word you would catch the people who killed my family?”
“I…we…we sure tried.”
“Three weeks ago I spoke to the man who killed my daughter. The girl in the wheelchair, remember? He told me how you interfered with the technical evidence, you changed witness statements and made sure the guilty men were never caught. That that’s what Die Man paid you for.”
“Who…who is Die Man?”
“That doesn’t matter. He is no longer with us. I stuck a needle through the seat and into his back at the movie theater.”
Olav considered whether to try to go for the gun in his shoulder holster.
He’d buttoned it in before he started down the steep path in case he slipped, and that would make it more difficult.
No, this wouldn’t be like it was with the kid with the knife.
But Olav had practiced drawing the gun from the shoulder holster, and he was quick.
A lot quicker than Joe Kjos anyway. Olav looked up at the sky.
A dark cloud heading toward the moon. Olav moved his fishing rod into his left hand.
“What are you going to do to me?” Olav asked.
“Ever heard of rogue taxidermy?”
“What?”
“I’m going to stuff you. Then display you. Somewhere public, for the enjoyment of the people. You’ll be a modern work of art, Hanson.”
The cloud slipped over, obscuring the moon, and in the darkness Olav Hanson went for his gun.