Cemetery Road (12 page)

It only took me a few seconds to slip over to the red Toyota and exchange bags through the driver’s side door the kid had left open. He sensed something going on behind him, but O’ put the gun to his nose the instant his head started to turn, and I was back on the sidewalk, leaving the scene with R.J.’s order of Chinese food, before he had a chance to register anything amiss.

I was three blocks away when O’s Camaro burbled up to the curb alongside me, the man behind the wheel grinning like a crazed degenerate.

I jerked the door open and got in. ‘You didn’t hurt him, did you?’

‘Naw.’ He smoked his tires taking off again. ‘He’s gonna have to go home and change those pants, though.’

We laughed, slapping two open palms together loud enough to raise the dead.

‘Just as long as he makes his delivery first. If you scared him too bad, he might run, and then we’re fucked,’ I said, voicing one of our greatest concerns about the plan we’d just set into motion.

‘I don’t think he will. He’s a pretty tough little bastard.’

I began to rummage through the contents of the brown paper sack in my lap, looking for the container of spare ribs. ‘You want some of this?’

‘I do if that’s the right bag.’

‘Shit. You saw me make the switch.’

‘Yeah, I saw you. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t fuck it up.’

I found the ribs, popped one into my mouth to gnaw eagerly on the bone. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Not yet. Ask me again in an hour.’

In one hour, if I
had
fucked up, I was going to be out on my ass. Only moments after picking it up, I’d spiked every course of the meal I’d ordered at the Jade Inn with a liberal dose of chloral hydrate, a liquid sedative we’d purchased from an intern of R.J.’s acquaintance who worked at a hospital in Culver City and dealt prescription meds on the side. He’d given us his assurance that a few ounces of chloral hydrate would render a large adult unconscious less than an hour after he’d ingested the drug, and the test we’d done using O’ as a guinea pig had proven his sales pitch to be not only accurate, but somewhat understated. A chloral hydrate-spiked chocolate shake had knocked O’ out in exactly forty-six minutes, and left him that way for several hours afterward.

‘This all going to work, O’?’ I asked him now.

He checked my face, saw that I’d grown serious.

‘Guess we’ll just have to wait and see,’ he said.

THIRTEEN

T
he Coughlin Construction business complex was in Torrance. It took up most of a full city block, and consisted of one four-story office building and a half-dozen or so utility structures, all surrounded by a security fence crowned with razor wire any minimum-security prison would have been proud to own. Heavy machinery spread colors of gold and green in various lots all around, tractors and earth movers, forklifts and bulldozers. The guard at the gate didn’t care for my looks, but I’d called ahead to arrange for a pass, so he had little choice but to instruct me where to park and wave me on through.

The man I’d come to see had been R.J.’s immediate supervisor. He was Coughlin’s chief of security, a bullish, stone-jawed black man I remembered seeing at the funeral named Mike Owens, and getting him to agree to see me on such short notice, just before three on a Tuesday afternoon, had been the hardest work I’d ever done over the phone.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have much time for you, Mr White,’ he told me the minute I’d taken my seat in his office. It had a window looking on to a vast spread of workers’ cubicles, but the view it afforded him of life in the Coughlin lane was hardly worth the cost of the glass. ‘Tell me again who you are?’

‘Just a friend of the family. R.J. and I went way back.’

‘And you’re here because?’

‘Because his wife and daughter would like to be sure the police don’t miss anything significant in their investigation into his murder.’

‘Anything significant. Like what?’

‘I’m not really sure. Anything that could lead to the right people being held responsible, as opposed to the wrong ones, I suppose.’

‘I see. You’re a private investigator, then?’

‘No.’

Something in the room was intermittently making a dry, buzzing noise that was wearing on my nerves, and the focus of my thinking kept shifting to the mystery of its origin. Between that, and answering the same questions about how R.J.’s murder was any of my business, I was becoming one impatient sonofabitch.

‘No?’

‘I’m just doing the ladies a favor, Mr Owens. They’ve asked me to talk to some of R.J.’s friends and co-workers to see if anybody might know what happened to him, and that’s what I’m doing. If you don’t feel comfortable talking to me because I lack a private investigator’s license, I’m sure they’ll understand.’

Which, of course, was my way of telling him they wouldn’t understand at all.

‘I’ve got no problem talking to you,’ Owens said, straightening a necktie that could have come off the rack at any drugstore in the world. ‘Anything I can do to help Bobby’s family, I’m only too happy to do. But there are matters of confidentiality to be considered here, Mr White, as well as the trouble I could conceivably get into with the police, who’d probably take my talking to you as some kind of sign that I’m as concerned about their competency as you are.’

‘Of course. Except that nobody’s saying the police are incompetent. Yet.’

He fell back in his chair and nodded, determined to be as difficult to move in person as he had been over the phone. The irritating buzz in the room erupted again; it was coming from somewhere on the computer workstation behind him. ‘So what would you like to know?’

‘Why don’t we start with the most obvious question first: You have any idea who might have killed R.J., or why?’

‘Absolutely none. The man was an extremely likeable person and a fine employee. We’re going to miss him here at Coughlin a great deal.’

‘How long had you worked together?’

‘Nine years. He was here when I hired on.’

‘Did you consider him a friend?’

‘A friend?’

‘As opposed to just a fellow employee.’

‘We didn’t socialize with each other outside of the office, if that’s what you’re asking. I was his supervisor, and he was my subordinate. But we were friendly, sure.’

‘Was he more than “friendly” with anyone else here?’

‘Sorry, I don’t follow.’

‘I’m wondering if there was anyone here at Coughlin in particular he might have spent considerable time with
away
from the job.’

‘You talking about a woman?’

The question caught me off guard. ‘Not necessarily.’

‘Good. Because if you were, I’d have no comment on the subject. We have rules against employee fraternization here, Mr White, but anything our people choose to do after hours that has no impact on their work performance is entirely their own business.’

He was telling me R.J. had been having an affair with a co-worker by way of not telling me. What I couldn’t determine was whether this was intentional, or inadvertent.

‘Assuming their relationship with R.J. was strictly platonic, if I wanted to speak to the people who were closest to him here at Coughlin, who would they be?’

‘You thinking somebody here killed Bobby?’

‘Not at all. I’m simply thinking it might be helpful to ask the people who knew him best how he’d been doing lately.’

We stared each other down. Owens, because all this was making him extremely uncomfortable, and me, because he was giving me nothing else to do. Meanwhile, the raspy, cough-like sound that kept drawing my attention rejoined our conversation, and this time I caught enough of it before it went away to recognize what it was.

‘Sylvia Nu
ň
ez and Doug Wilmore are the ones who first come to mind,’ Owens said. ‘Sylvia works in HR and Doug’s one of our senior uniforms; he and Bobby came in together, I believe.’

I wrote the names down. ‘Any chance either of them are here right now?’

‘Doug’s out in the field, but Sylvia should be around. I’ll point the way to HR on your way out if you like.’

‘I would, thanks.’

‘We about done? Don’t mean to rush you, but I’m a little pressed for time this afternoon, like I said.’

‘I just have two or three more questions. I’ll make them quick.’

‘Please.’

‘R.J. was a security consultant for Coughlin, is that right?’

Owens nodded.

‘Could you explain what that means, exactly? What did he actually do?’

Owens had to give his answer some thought before offering it. ‘Basically, he toured all our work sites to assess their potential for theft, and suggested ways to make them more secure.’

‘That’s it?’

Owens shrugged. ‘Pretty much.’

‘Sounds like a fairly simple gig.’

‘It isn’t rocket science. But it does require a certain amount of knowledge and expertise.’

‘And R.J. had it.’

‘After eighteen years in the field? Most certainly.’

‘Would you consider the work stressful in any way?’

‘Stressful? No. The police asked that question too, and I told them the same thing. Whatever pressures might have led Bobby to get himself killed that way, they didn’t have anything to do with his work here at Coughlin. He had a good job, he did it well, and everybody here seemed to like him. End of story.’ He stood up. ‘Now, I’m sorry, Mr White, but that’s really all the time I can give you today.’

‘Of course. Many thanks for your help,’ I said, getting to my own feet for fear he might carry me out otherwise, chair and all. I shook his hand, said, ‘If I left you my number, would you have Doug Wilmore call me when he has a chance? Providing he’d be willing?’

When Owens grunted affirmatively, I wrote the number on the back of one of his business cards and left it on his desk. ‘Now where would I find HR?’

He gave me directions and I started for the door, only to turn back at the last minute, as if I’d just remembered something I’d nearly forgotten to ask. ‘Oh, one last thing . . .’

He had his arms crossed now. ‘Yes?’

‘When I called today, I originally asked to speak with Mr Allen, but the receptionist told me she couldn’t find anybody by that name in her directory. That’s how I ended up talking to you. Is Mr Allen no longer with the company?’

I thought I saw the man’s eyes flicker slightly, but I could have been mistaken. ‘I don’t know anybody named Allen. Who’s he?’

‘R.J.’s daughter says he’s the man at Coughlin who originally got R.J. hired on here. The name’s not familiar?’

‘I’m afraid not. Maybe he left before I came aboard.’

‘How about Darrel Eastman? That name ring any bells?’

‘Eastman? Sorry.’ He shook his head.

‘You’ve got a bad fan in that PC case,’ I said by way of farewell, gesturing at the computer behind Owens as its cooling fan’s death knell started up again. ‘You might want to get it replaced before you cook your motherboard.’

My conversation with Sylvia Nu
ň
ez was woefully brief. A full-bodied, almond-skinned woman with dark brown hair and flawless skin whom I took to be in her middle forties, she was seated at the first desk I saw when I walked into Coughlin’s Human Resources office. She was warm and friendly for about five seconds, and then I told her who I was and what I wanted.

‘Mr Owens told you to talk to me?’ she asked, keeping her voice low out of obvious concern for the one other person in the room, an older white woman feeding documents into a copying machine behind her.

‘He said you and R.J. were good friends. I was wondering—’

‘R.J.? You mean Bobby?’

‘Bobby, right. R.J.’s what we called him in high school. Listen, if you’d rather we don’t talk about this here—’

‘There isn’t anything to talk about,’ she said, cutting me off for the second straight time. ‘Bobby and I were friends, sure, but I’m friends with a lot of people here. I can’t tell you anything about him that anyone else who worked with him couldn’t.’

She wasn’t going to change her mind, no matter what I cared to offer in the way of encouragement. Some people braced themselves for a fight in such a way that their body language alone made the futility of pushing them abundantly clear, and Sylvia Nu
ň
ez was one of them. Perhaps this was why R.J. had been drawn to her, as I could sense myself being drawn to her now.

I apologized for bothering her and left.

Out in the parking lot, just as I was unlocking the door to my rental car, I saw a white Ford Explorer with the Coughlin insignia emblazoned upon its doors pull into a marked space along a row lined with similar vehicles. The middle-aged white man who got out from behind the wheel happened to be someone else I remembered seeing at R.J.’s funeral seven days before. The surly, firmly set expression on his face was the same, but today he was wearing a dark blue blazer with the Coughlin logo stitched on to its breast pocket, and as he approached the administration building’s main entrance, he walked with the authority of someone who knew the place backwards and forward.

‘Pardon me,’ I said, closing my car door to approach him carefully. ‘You wouldn’t be Doug Wilmore, by any chance?’

He stopped and regarded me with some suspicion, eyes like a bird of prey’s taking me in from head to foot. ‘That’s me. How can I help you?’

I told him who I was and what I wanted, deviating little from the story I’d fed Mike Owens and Sylvia Nu
ň
ez moments earlier. Wilmore softened a little upon hearing it all, but not much; twenty seconds in his company, and I could already tell the only time he let his guard down was when he was asleep.

‘Bobby was a good guy. Naturally, I’d be happy to help you any way I can,’ he said. ‘Except, I don’t know what I could possibly tell you that the police don’t already know. Bobby and I just worked together, that’s all.’