El Gavilan (13 page)

Shawn felt freshly sick.

Tell said, “When you had sex with her, did you start out with a condom on? Did you put one on at any point with Thalia?”

“No, we were both drunk, like I said. It was urgent.”

“Sure. Urgent.” Tell said, “Put out your hands, Shawn.”

“I thought you weren’t arresting me.”

“I’m not handcuffing you,” Tell said sourly. “I just want to see your damned hands.”

Shawn held them out. Tell said, “No rings. You ever wear rings?”

“Never.”

“Didn’t expect so. Shawn, this is important. If someone other than me arrests you, you be extra careful not to resist in any way. In anger, don’t go punching any walls. You keep those city hands of yours nice and pink and healthy-looking like they are right now. They take you into custody, you insist that they photograph you naked. And that they get close-ups of your hands.”

“Why?”

“I’ve already said too much.”

“Why are you doing this, Chief?”

“Because I don’t think you killed this woman, Shawn. Partly it’s the way you reacted seeing her body. You’d never have been able to transport her to that field. But I expect I’m going to be nearly alone in that belief. You’re an easy,
easy
solution for a vicious and terrible crime. You are a convenient—hell, a
perfect
—scapegoat.”

“Again I ask, Chief, why are we here?”

“Because I’m trying to get at the truth and arrest the right bastard for murdering this woman. This was overkill, Shawn. Thalia was beaten to death. Kind of thing someone will likely do again, given the chance. The man who killed Thalia hates women.”

“Beaten … that’s why I should protect my hands,” Shawn said, getting it.

Tell said, “Summarizing, here: You were angry at your girlfriend. You figured you two were history, so you decided to ease your disappointment by losing yourself in the arms of another woman. You and Thalia, already both drunk, met and clicked. You took her back to the place of her choosing, fucked her ten ways from Tuesday—all of it unprotected, but mutually enthusiastic sex—then you ungallantly snuck out on her while she was asleep. Left her in her own bed. Alive and unbeaten.”

“That’s it,” Shawn said. “That’s actually the truth.”

Tell said, “Then that
is
it so far as what you should say. Makes you a heel, but not a killer. Stay to that story, whoever’s custody you end up in. I’ll move ahead looking for an alternative suspect. And yeah, you should find yourself an attorney, Shawn, and I mean now. Given the crime, I’d get myself a woman lawyer if I could find one. Might help you with a jury.”

Shawn stared at the shot-up targets on the other side of the field. “I’m a small-town newspaperman, Lyon. I’m underpaid. What kind of decent counsel can I afford? And I’m probably going to be fired by day’s end. No cash flow at all then.”

Tell said, “On my way over to pick you up, I called my so-called infamous cousin. I asked him to formulate a strategy that would maybe tie his hands if you were his newspaper employee—short-circuit his ability as a manger to terminate you.”

“Yeah? What’d your cousin say?”

“Chris’s first question was whether you’ve drafted a story about Thalia’s murder. Have you?”

“To get it in this Thursday’s paper, I’d need to do that by day’s end.”

“That wasn’t my question, Shawn.”

“I haven’t written a story yet.”

“Were you going to?”

“That wasn’t your question, Tell.”

“I’m just curious.”

“I didn’t know what to do.” Shawn looked down at his feet again. “So I’ve done nothing. What was your cousin’s advice?”

“That you draft a letter to your publisher. Chris says you should tell him or her that you were intimate with a woman who became a murder victim, and, because you had unprotected sex, your DNA links you to her. You should admit that you’re almost certainly apt to become a near-term person of interest and you’re therefore requesting a leave of absence. Use your owed personal, sick and vacation time as you have to, then go on unpaid leave if you’re not yet out from under. You need to do this in the next hour before you can be terminated.”

“Jesus,” Shawn said. “And hell, I can’t go home and do this. I can’t go to my office. Those are the first two places anyone will look for me. How—where—do I write this note?”

Tell said, “I’m going to drop you in front of the public library, Shawn. You use their computers and printers to put your note together. Then you fax and e-mail it from there before you’re picked up. Those time imprints may be important later, Chris said.”

“I’ll be picked up by your force? By you?”

“If you want to go that way, I’ll make my run at being the one to take you into custody, Shawn. Thing to remember is, even if nobody takes you away from me, I can only hold you in city jail for seventy-two hours. Then you go to county jail, under Able Hawk’s watch. Unless we can get you out on bail, first. But I’m not sure that’s the way to go, either.”

“I didn’t kill that woman, Tell.”

“I don’t think you
killed
her, Shawn. It’s the reason we’re having this discussion that we’re not having.”

* * *

Time was getting on. Tell was still skeptical on the question of rape. He increasingly suspected Shawn had slipped Thalia the drug. But that was for later.

Tell said, “Get in now. I’m going to drive you to the library. Take care of your note and get it off to your publisher. Then sit down with a phone book and start thinking about attorneys. At ten fifteen
A.M.
, I’ll come to the library and quietly escort you out and we’ll take you and book you, kid. Then we’ll let you call that lawyer you’ll have lined up. Not that I’d let him or her press for bail, were I you. Just remember, when I see you again, it’s for the first time this morning. Agreed?”

The journalist nodded, looking like a lost kid. “Thanks for helping me like this, Tell.”

Tell opened the passenger door. He said to Shawn, “Like I said, this vicious bastard who killed Thalia will likely do it again. I need to focus on catching
him
. You’re no more than a goddamn distraction.”

Tell started the engine and got his truck in gear, driving back out toward the gate.

Shawn gestured at the paper sack on the seat between them. “She made a couple of those for me a time back,” he said.

Not quite so much bitterness in his voice, now, Tell thought.

Shawn asked, “Patricia put you up to this? To helping me, I mean?”

“She doesn’t even know you’re about to be a suspect,” Tell said. “I told you, this meeting between us is secret.”

When Tell got out of his truck this time to open and reshut the gate, he took his car keys with him—worried Shawn might panic and try to run.

As they pulled back onto the road, they drove past a billboard dominated by two narrowed, piercing gray eyes: “
El Gavilan
is watching!”

SIXTEEN

Tell received double takes from the librarians. One of them—fortyish, slender and handsome—said, “Is there some trouble, Officer?”

“No trouble,” Tell said, smiling. “I’m new to town and a reader. Actually have a crime novelist in the family. You have a pretty good crime fiction section?”

The librarian smiled back. “Pretty good. I handle acquisitions, and it’s nearly all that I read.”

“Then I’ll try to get back in a day or so to get a card,” he said. “For now I’ll look around.”

Tell strode toward the computer carousels at the back of the library, behind the stacks. Shawn was sitting in a corner stall. He appeared a short step from slipping into a fugue state. He looked up at Tell with wide, wild eyes. Shawn’s hands fidgeted with an empty cigarette pack. Tell asked, “You doing okay?”

Shawn said, “Guess it’s time, huh?”

“It is.” Tell sat down beside the flustered reporter. “You get your letters off okay?”

“Yeah. Publisher sent me back an e-mail receipt. No answer, but at least I know he’s seen my note and I’m not fired yet.”

The publisher was probably busy calling
his
lawyer. Tell said, “We should get going now, Shawn. Get you in my custody before someone else can lay hands on you.”

Shawn sighed and stood, looking pale. “You going to handcuff me, Chief?”

“No,” Tell said. “We walk out of here together, like we’re going to a late breakfast or something. You got any pets or anything like that needs looking after back at your place, Shawn?”

“Uh,
no
.”

“Got an attorney in mind?”

“Yeah.”

“You can call him, or her, from my office.”

“
Her
.” Shawn had decided Lyon was right about the importance of having a woman represent him in court if it came to that. “And thanks for doing it this way, Chief.” Shawn tossed his empty cigarette pack in the trash receptacle on the way out the library door. “Think we could stop and get a carton of cigarettes on the way? Maybe something to read?”

Tell looked at him sourly and said, “Why not?” They’d do their shopping, Tell figured, then he’d read the kid his rights.

* * *

A shadow fell across Tell’s desk. Able Hawk was looming over him.

Tell said, “Hey, Able.”

“Hey there, Tell.” Able took off his mirrored sunglasses. He nodded at Tell. “You take a walk with me?”

“Surely.”

On his way out, Tell paused at Billy Davis’s desk. Billy was dunking a Bismarck in his coffee. Tell said, “Any trouble, I’m on my cell phone—stay off the damn radios.”

Able Hawk nodded approvingly. “I’m the same way. Especially with anything related to this case. Damned police scanners are the bane of my existence.”

“We’ll go out the back way into the alley,” Tell said.

“Just in case some flunky of Walt Pierce’s is watching out front?”

“You called it.”

The sheriff said, smiling crookedly, “How’d you get first word on that DNA?”

Tell shrugged. “I leaned hard on the coroner, so don’t blame him. I really stepped into him, Able.”

“I guess to save face I’ll choose to believe your kind damn lie, Tell. So far as Shawn goes for the killing, I’m not buyin’ that poon-hound scribbler for the murder. Not even a little,” Able said. “He was tied up with us all morning. He couldn’t have dumped her body. And not weak-stomached as he is, either.”

“Agreed,” Tell said. “He couldn’t hope for better alibis than the likes of us.”

“Unless of course someone tries to argue Shawn had an accomplice. But then we’d have to expect his DNA to be all over Thalia’s insides like Shawn’s was.” The sheriff pushed his hat back on his head. “You can only hold him so long, Tell.”

“And I aim to hold Shawn here in my jail just as long as I can,” Tell said. “Then I mean to charge him for rape and move him to county. Give him over to you. Then it’s up to you to hold him for as long as you can. Try and stall out Walt Pierce on charging him for murder.”

“Then you’ve heard?”

“That Walt Pierce has determined Thalia Ruiz’s body was found in his county? Yeah. Not a happy development.”

“Old Walt, he’d eat Shawn alive, he got hold of him in his jail,” Able said.

“You’d know better than me,” Tell said. “So far as Walt goes, I just know the fat son of a bitch rubbed me wrong from the get-go.”

“So you’re a solid judge of character too.” Able stopped walking and put his broad back to the wall of the New Austin police HQ. He stared down the alley. A rat scuttled from a drainpipe and scampered under a dumpster. “Tell, I’m talkin’ out of school confiding this next, but, well, a number of folks have perished in Walt’s custody over the years. Most of those lost souls looked real good for the crimes they were collared for, but they didn’t ever get to trial. Some hanged themselves. Some choked on their own vomit. One or two somehow smuggled in pills and OD’d. Or so the coroner found later.” Able looked at his own feet. “Did I mention that the Vale County coroner is Walt’s brother-in-law?”

Tell leaned a hand against the brick wall above Able’s shoulder. “Not as I recall, Able.”

“Well, you see how cozy that is. That DNA of Shawn’s is going to be a tough thing for Walt to walk away from. And maybe for a jury out this way too. Especially Shawn’s sperm being found in Thalia where it was. That doesn’t exactly say, ‘consensual,’ to conservative minds out this way.
I’m
more broadminded—different strokes, so to speak, and all that. Old Shawn’s a wild one. I didn’t know Thalia was.” Able hesitated. “I’m gonna need to talk to Shawn’s girlfriend I met that night I met you the first time. Need to know some things about Shawn’s bedroom predilections. I’m not sure I don’t think he drugged my Thalia.”

“Can see why you might think so,” Tell said evenly. “You’ll have to handle that interview, although I think it’s a waste of time. That was a different kind of relationship. Be obliged if you and your folks concentrated on clearing Shawn. I’ll focus, personally, on finding the real killer.”

Able smiled. “Can’t promise you an exclusive on that, brother. I’ve got a far bigger force and we can multi-task just fine. But you share and I’ll share, and we’ll share the collar, it comes time. Yeah?”

Tell shook Able’s hand. “Right. Let’s just be quick about it.”

“About that,” Able said. “You should know, the past three years, there have been three pretty similar crimes—all of them rape-murders. All three were committed in Vale County.”

“Send me the files?”

“What I’ve got, sure,” Able said. “But it’s precious little. They were Walt’s cases.”

“Appreciate anything you can dig up on them, all the same.”

“I should go in and see Shawn now, if you’ll let me.”

Tell nodded. “
Mi casa es su casa
, Able.”

Able slapped Tell’s arm. “Doesn’t help our cause a lick that Shawn diddled Thalia so down and dirty like he did. Like I said, this is a conservative county, most ways.”

“Yeah, I can see it. And, like you, I’m not sure Shawn didn’t drug Thalia.”

Able nodded. “He’ll be sorry if I find out he did that to her. I’d be sorely tempted to kill him myself, that being the fact. Now, no more tricks, right, Tell? No more stuff like finessing Doc Parks into givin’ you DNA results first?”

“I wasn’t trying to screw you, Able. I just wanted to stay out in front of your neighbor—Walt Pierce.”