Magic Line (16 page)

‘Oh?' She chewed a while, drank some milk. ‘What about?'

‘Well . . . you've got that spare room you're not using, and you've got chores that need doing. Couldn't we figure out a swap?'

‘You mean a certain number of hours' work for room and board?' She quit chewing for a minute and considered, her head on one side. ‘I don't have all that many chores, really. Just occasional odd jobs.'

‘But the driving,' he said. ‘And the car needs to be washed. I could vacuum it inside, get it looking really nice.'

‘Well,' she said. ‘You're a big eater.'

‘Not really,' he said. ‘Mornings, coffee and toast is plenty.'

‘I don't know,' she said, ‘I like things kept neat.'

‘Have I been throwing things around? But, hey, you like your privacy, I understand, forget I said anything.'

‘Oh, well now, don't be so hasty. Now that I think of it, there's the reading. That could add up to some hours.'

‘The reading?'

‘Maybe you haven't noticed I have macular degeneration. That's why I can't drive.'

‘So those books you got from the library—'

‘Somebody has to read to me. I've been a reader all my life, I can't just stop. Valerie used to come over almost every day for an hour or two. But lately it seems like her time is pretty much taken up with her studies.'

‘Well, you're right, that's another chore. Driving and vacuuming and reading. I could read a little bit from the paper every day too, if you wanted to take it again. Does that get us anywhere close to a deal?'

‘Maybe so. Let's test drive the reading, shall we? You can sit in this chair, it's got the best light.' She had a book called
Our Man in Havana
, an old book, dog-eared and smelling like decay. In the very first line he choked up on the word nigger and looked up at her in surprise.

‘It's an old book and there's just the two of us here,' she said. ‘Go ahead.'

Zeb thought it was damn odd reading for a lady, which is what he thought you called bookish women even if you did find them slumped at a bus stop. But OK, he went on and made the best of it, had trouble with all the names and stumbled on the word colonnade. After forty-five minutes she said, ‘Let's stop now and maybe have a little more after dinner? I'll show you how to work the shower and then I think I'll take a nap.'

After she showed him the shower she turned in the bathroom door, looked at him straight and said, ‘You're not thinking about beating my head in while I sleep or anything, are you? I don't have much worth stealing.'

It was a fair question and he had been wondering if she wasn't thinking about it. He put on what he hoped was his sincere look and said, ‘No. You want to pat me down, make sure I'm not carrying any concealed weapons?' As soon as he said it he remembered, with horror, the Lorcin pistol in the side pocket of his cargo pants. He stared at her with his mouth open for a long moment, feeling his brain freeze. Finally, in a desperate effort to explain away his horrified reaction he crossed his hands in front of his crotch and squeaked, ‘Please say you won't.'

It worked. Her delighted laughter pealed in the hall, surprisingly youthful. She gave a little dismissive wave as she turned away, saying, ‘Don't worry, Zeb, I'm quite sure I can resist your manly charms. Just barely, of course, but I can.' She laughed again as she turned into her own room and closed the door.

OK, so he was insulted again, but he was in – she thought he was funny, not scary. Now he'd better figure out where to stash the weapon.

He walked back into his small bedroom, looking for a hiding place. The ceiling was solid. There was a tiny closet with nothing hanging in it yet. He didn't have enough clothes to put in the dresser drawers to hide anything under. The bed . . . she might take a notion to change his bed without telling him, but . . . there was a box spring and a mattress. She was small, with short arms. He shoved the Lorcin all the way to the center, between the spring and mattress, backed out and smoothed the covers.

The home invasion on Spring Brook Drive was one of the lead stories in Wednesday's paper. It included pictures of Earl and Homer, two of the multiple victims ‘found dead at the scene.' There was a brief criminal history of both of them – Zeb was shocked to see how far over his head he'd been in the van in front of the stash house, and twisted with shame when he remembered how light-heartedly he'd called them ‘Darrell-and-Darrell.'
They stayed and took the bullets while you were running.

The other two dead men, the story said, were still unidentified. There was a survivor of the shooting who had escaped from the rescue van carrying him to the hospital. He was still at large and there was a number to call if the reader had any information that might help.
Jeez, Robin, you really kicked the hornet's nest this time.
Zeb read every word of the story twice without finding one word about himself.

He felt as if he'd crossed over some kind of a bridge he hadn't even known was there. He had sat in a van on Monday with those men in the pictures and now they were dead. And Robin was on the run and would have to stay that way, now, forever. It gave him a queasy, dislocated feeling, knowing there would always be something in his life, now, that he would have to hide.
And that's if I'm lucky
. The skin of his arms grew goose pimples when he realized how much of the rest of his life was going to be thanks to luck. Well, and cowardice. Let's not forget how much I owe to that.

While Doris was still napping he brought in his box and unpacked, took a shower, shaved. Clean clothes felt luxurious to him now. He looked pretty good, in fact, except for his hair. He'd thought this was such a classy cut when the girl in the Unisex shop talked him into it but now, three weeks later, it was already too long. Justin Bieber looked tousled, but never shaggy – how did he do that? He must get it cut every couple of weeks. Zeb knew he couldn't afford a high-style haircut twice a month on a handyman's cash flow. I'll find a regular barber, he thought, and get it cut really short.

He bundled his dirty clothes and put them in the empty box, thinking that laundry was the next thing he'd have to negotiate. He came out into the kitchen feeling a little awkward about his cleaned-up appearance, but Doris didn't even look at him. She was on the phone, saying, ‘Good! We'll do that.' When she hung up she told him, ‘Eddy's got my spare tire repaired.' She handed him the keys. ‘Would you run the car down there so he can put it back in that well where it belongs?'

He drove the two blocks carefully, thinking she knew where her spare tire was, she just didn't want to talk about it. He parked alongside the station and waited while Eddy brought the tire out and bolted it in the well.

Standing behind the car he realized suddenly that the person gassing up at one of the pumps was his sister. He hadn't thought of her since she threw him out, had forgotten he was still in her neighborhood. She turned from the pump and met his eyes by accident, reacted with open-mouthed shock and turned away.
OK, Jan, don't say hello. But you don't own the whole neighborhood, so just ease up on the outrage.

When he got back to the mobile-home park Doris was on the phone again, having what sounded like a nice civilized chat with somebody who was not family. He'd never thought about it before but you could tell the difference by the lack of heat. When she hung up she said, ‘That was Betty Lou Tolliver, one of my neighbors here in the park. She used to have a big shop but she's retired now – she just takes a few customers in her house.'

‘Doing what?' Zeb asked her, just to kill time, not caring.

‘She's a beautician. She says she has a kitchen blind that needs its pull cord replaced, and she was wondering if you'd like to trade that job for a haircut.'

He had to turn away, pretend to check his shoelace, to hide his smile. Their tentative deal wasn't more than a couple of hours old and already she was shopping him around the neighborhood.
She wants me to stay.

He wanted to tell her she had the makings of a great pimp, but he just said, ‘I haven't done a whole lot of pull cords but I'll see what I can do.'

FOURTEEN

‘
T
wo o'clock already,' Sarah said. ‘What's next? Where were we before we became media stars?'

‘This is what's next,' Delaney said, walking out of his office with a message in his hands. ‘Can you believe it? AFIS actually got a match on a print.' It was so rare that a lifted print was good enough – every time anybody expressed the hope for a match somebody said, ‘In the movies.'

‘A print from the house in Midvale Park?'

‘From that carpet cleaner's van. Off the passenger's-side door, they said.'

‘You think it could be – well, I guess it could be just about anybody's, couldn't it?'

‘Could be, sure. But the match is to a DUI arrest four months ago. Right here in Tucson. The guy's name is, get this' – he read off his note – ‘Zebulon Montgomery Butts.'

‘No fooling – for real?'

‘Sounds like a joke but it's what's on the record.'

‘How do we know he's connected to our case?'

‘We don't yet. But there's a Tucson address. We can pick him up as a person of interest and see what else he matches.'

‘That's all that's in the record, one DUI?'

‘All they found, yeah. I know, big jump from there to home invasion. But . . . the house at his last address has a phone number in the name of Luella M. Butts. I called it and got no answer, but it's a working phone. I was just coming out to see – if you've got time why don't you get somebody to go with you? If you find him you can bring him in.'

She found Ollie in his work space. ‘I'm getting ready to go interview Luella Butts, you want to go along?'

‘God, yes,' Ollie said. ‘Who's Luella Butts?'

‘Probably some relative of Zebulon Montgomery Butts, whose print we lifted off the carpet cleaner's van.'

‘And if Luella is his mother we want to ask her why she names her children after well-known historical figures?'

‘That, and he got a DUI four months ago that the print matches, so Delaney thinks we should bring him in for questioning.' He wasn't standing up yet so she said, ‘You can be the one who holds up the picture of the running man – won't that be fun?'

‘What the hay,' Ollie said, getting up. ‘It's a chance to get out of the building and ride with a major babe who spent the morning pawing over dead bodies.'

‘Oh, Ollie, it's so swell to have a pal who shares my interests.'

On the way they talked about the photo op they'd just been to. Ollie said, ‘Did you know Delaney could smile like that?'

‘No. And the chief going on about fine team work – first he heard about that house was when we brought him the cash.'

‘It makes a good story, though.'

‘Sure. The stories always look as if we're winning.'

‘Why do you hate them so much? It's just the standard drill.'

‘It seems so
Keystone Kops
, posing for a picture. With all the guns and money on a table, us standing behind, grinning like trained apes.'

‘Hey, take a breath. The chief needs to show results. If he can get the city council to refrain from cutting our budget any further we might even hang onto our jobs.' He treated her to a cheery gap-toothed grin. ‘Besides, there won't be any more pictures now till we catch the ex-dead-guy, which will apparently be never. Looks to me like he's too quick and clever to get caught.'

‘He's not. I'm with Delaney on this one – in the end, we're going to get that guy. Is this the place?' Luella Butts lived in a courtyard full of stucco casitas, four to a unit, with small balconies. Tiny gardens by the front doors held a cactus, a clay pot, and cutesy figurines, mostly howling coyotes with neck scarves and geese in bonnets.

Luella Butts opened the inner door as soon as they rang, watched them hold up their shields and heard them identify themselves. She unlocked the outer wire-mesh door finally and said, ‘Come in.' Her voice was guarded: not friendly, not quite combative either. Doing what I have to do as usual, her face said.

She confirmed that she was Luella Butts, so Sarah asked her, ‘Are you related to Zebulon Montgomery Butts?

‘He's my son. What about him? He doesn't live here any more.'

Ollie showed her the picture that Barney Gross had taken Monday from the car. ‘Is this him?'

Her face was firmly set, stoical, but as she looked at the picture a nerve jumped in her cheek. Then her mouth went slack and began to tremble, and her eyes, looking up at Ollie, shone with tears. ‘Why's he running?'

‘We don't know,' Ollie said.

‘Was somebody chasing him?'

‘No. He was running away from a crime scene that he may or may not have been involved in, and we want to talk to him.' He leaned a little toward her, let his voice go soft. ‘He's a person of interest, that's all. If you can tell us where to find him, we may be able to clear this right up.'

Sarah watched him anxiously, afraid he might disappear entirely into his good-cop persona and tell Luella Butts she had nothing to worry about. But he pulled back from the edge of that precipice, got out his notebook and stood waiting, pen in hand.

‘I don't know.' She started with the simple declarative, immediately felt it was inadequate, and said again, plaintively, ‘I don't
know
.'

She did a full parental meltdown in front of them then, within a three-foot-square space in her living room. Huffed and shrugged, turned, turned back, and said, ‘My son is . . .' Sighed gustily and threw her arms out with the palms up. ‘My son is having trouble finding himself.' She looked at Sarah, saw something in her face she evidently took to be understanding and said quickly, ‘So I put his things outside my door and told him to continue the search on his own.'