The Homecoming (45 page)

“We had Deitz on the staircase. It was dark, but there was enough to aim by. I was below him, and Coker was at the top. Deitz was in the bag. Only sensible thing for him to do was drop the shotgun and take his chances with a jury.”

“But he didn’t. He tried for a shot at Coker.”

“Yeah. But only after Coker goaded him into it. Coker said it was embarrassing to watch Deitz operate. Deitz lost his temper.”

“Deitz always had a bad temper. And Coker’s as cold as they come. He likes to kill bad guys.”

“Yeah. But it … bugs me. Sticks in my throat.”

“Byron Deitz was a racist misogynist sadistic son of a bitch, Nick. And greedy. And a bully to his wife and kids. Did I mention butt-ugly? And now he’s dead. The world’s a better place. Maybe Coker shouldn’t have goaded him, but Coker saved my life back there at Saint Innocent Orthodox. And he also saved the janitor, remember? He’s a stone-cold snake, Nick, but he’s
our
stone-cold snake. Keep tugging on hanging threads and one day your pants will fall off.”

Nick did a take, grinning in spite of his miserable mood.

“How, exactly, would that work?”

Mavis shrugged, grinned right back at him.

“I have no idea.”

“Okay. What have we got here?”

Mavis lost her smile, glanced over in the direction of a laundry cart, where an elderly black maid, her eyes red from crying, was sitting down on a wash bucket and talking to a policewoman Nick didn’t know.

“Two white males. Dead at the scene. I’ll let you figure out how. Lady over there found them when she came to do the room. We’ve already taken her prints and mapped out how far she got into the room before she saw the bodies, which was about a foot. You ready to take a look?”

This was a rhetorical question, so he just let Mavis lead the way. There was a patrol cop holding the door, and he nodded at Mavis as they came up.

“Tommy, this is Detective Kavanaugh, with the CID. Nick, this is Tommy Molto. He’s been guarding the scene. He was first officer here.”

Nick looked him over, a strong-featured Italian kid. He seemed to be having the time of his life.

“Crime scene secure, Officer Molto?”

“Sir yes sir! It’s as clean as my … it’s clean as a whistle, sir. I personally guarantee it.”

Nick thanked him, and Mavis gave him a scorching look as they went by him and stood on the threshold, Mavis a bit behind Nick, letting him see it for himself.

There were two bodies in the room, one a muscular young man with a goatee, naked, covered in blood, mutilated, bound at the wrists, ankles, and neck by a white cord. He had a gag in his mouth, a large bullet hole in his forehead, and a slightly smaller bullet hole in his left thigh. He was lying in his own mess. His blue eyes were open and the expression fixed on his face was a mixture of shock and terror.

The other body was lying in a tumbled heap on the floor in the middle of the room, a sallow-skinned big-boned older man in a black suit, a white shirt, a narrow black tie. He was lying on his back, splayed out, and had a star-shaped exit wound in the top of his skull.

As Nick came around to look down at him, he saw where the round had gone in, under the man’s chin, a bulging hole where the muzzle blast had billowed out and torn open the soft skin on the underside of his jaw. There was a spatter of black spots around the entrance wound. Powder stipple. Which meant the weapon was close to, if not in contact with, the man’s throat when the round was fired.

The guy also had a vivid three-inch gash on his forehead, done while he was still alive, because it had bled like crazy until the bullet took out
his brains. Nick looked up and saw the droplet spatter and brain bits stuck to the ceiling, in the middle of which was a large black hole where the round had gone into the plaster.

So the man was standing in the center of the room when he took the round.

Nick looked down and saw the Colt .45 pistol lying on the orange shag carpet a few feet away. The man’s right hand was stretched out in that direction, as if the Colt had flown loose after the round smacked home.

Nick knelt down and sniffed at the man’s hand. Mavis stood back and watched him work, saying nothing, although she had her own view of what had happened here.

After a while, Nick stepped away from the bodies and walked around the perimeter of the room once again, not touching anything, as he slipped on a pair of latex gloves.

Even with the door open and the breeze running, the smell of blood and bodily fluids was rank and choking. If Nick wasn’t going to complain, neither was Mavis. But she was breathing through her mouth and wishing for Vicks VapoRub all the same.

Nick came back and stood beside her.

“Okay. This is what we’re supposed to see here. Some kind of twisted sex thing. We have the vic on the bed, bound and gagged. Been shot in the upper thigh with what looks like a nine-mill. Another, much larger round in his forehead. Typical star-shaped entry wound there, with lots of powder stipple, so another close-contact shot. Somebody went at him with a small power drill. Knees and ankles and elbows and hips and jaw. Into the bone wherever it could reach. Would have hurt like holy hell. BTK is what we’re supposed to see here. Bind. Torture. Kill. Motive? Sadistic sexual thrills.”

Mavis said nothing, but she smiled.

Nick went on.

“We’re given the older guy in the suit as the perpetrator, and the handsome young kid as the vic. The old guy gets his … has enough. He puts a round into the kid’s forehead, and then, in a sudden fit of remorse, he puts that big Colt over there under his chin and stuccos the ceiling. Flops to the ground, the pistol flies loose, and there we are.”

“A tableau of bitter remorse?”

Nick gave her a sideways smile.

“Exactly. There is the smell of cordite on his gun hand, so it’s possible
that the gun was in his hand when the round went off. How’m I doing, Mavis?”

“Work of art,” she said, waiting for it.

“Yeah. Except the dead kid is Lyle Preston Crowder, who came to fame last spring when he rolled a flatbed loaded with rebar on Interstate 50, killing a bunch of church ladies and tying up every available patrol unit for miles around.”

“And forty-four minutes later, the First Third Bank in Gracie gets hit,” said Mavis.

Mavis had gotten the kid’s ID from the hotel clerk, but Nick had simply remembered the kid’s face. She was impressed.

“I don’t know about you, but I was convinced at the time that the kid had something to do with it.”

“So was I,” said Mavis. “But Boonie never bought that, and it was a federal case.”

“Well,
somebody
agreed with us, I think. Looks to me like he was asking Lyle about that robbery, and emphasizing the importance of the question with a power drill. So far the money’s never been recovered, not even partially, has it?”

“I don’t have it, I know that, and I checked my undie drawer and my laundry bin and everything.”

“So it’s still out there,” said Nick, “and somebody figured Lyle might know where. And of course we both know this other guy.”

“Edgar Luckinbaugh,” said Mavis, happy to contribute.

“I guess we have to toss this place, don’t we?”

“What you mean
we
, white man? I’m just a humble patrol person.”

“Can you do chain of evidence anyway?”

“How about I just take pictures?”

Which she did, starting at the edges of the room and working her way in, finally getting several detailed close-ups of the bodies and the wounds. Then she stepped back and bowed to him, waving him forward.

“The duty ME been called?” Nick asked, as he bent down to go through Edgar Luckinbaugh’s pockets.

“She has,” said Mavis. “She’s finishing up something called a fractured supraorbital process.”

“Cracked eye socket.”

“My goodness. Those are real big words for a young fellow like you.”

Nick tapped the bruise on his forehead.

“I got one when the marshals’ van rolled over.”

“Jeez,” said Mavis, “I’d forgotten about that. Been a full week, hasn’t it? Remember when nothing at all ever happened in Niceville?”

“No,” said Nick, extracting the man’s wallet from his breast pocket while trying to avoid the bloody bits on his shirtfront.

“Neither do I,” said Mavis.

Nick stood up and flipped through the wallet. Driver’s license, Social Security card, a memorial Mass card for a Francis Louise Luckinbaugh, born Gillis, died in 2006. A Capital One credit card, a prepaid cell phone card, a magnetic employee card for the Marriott Hotel, receipts for Krispy Kreme donuts—several of these—a receipt for Wendy’s dated today, from the Wendy’s just across the street, as a matter of fact.

Nick went to the window, looked out across North Gwinnett.

“Anybody ID a ride for Mr. Luckinbaugh yet?”

“No. All the cars in the lot are accounted for. Nothing in the name of Luckinbaugh.”

“Work with me here, Mavis. He has a cuff key in a slot on the big fat cuff case on his belt, but I see no cuffs anywhere in this room. He has a huge premortem gash on his forehead, quite fresh, that must have smarted a bit. Unlike most of the Western world, he does not seem to have a cell phone. Yet he has a prepaid cell phone calling card in his wallet. He has a shoulder rig fitted for that big old Colt, which I’ll bet was his duty gun when he was on the job. He’s been stuffing his face with Krispy Kreme donuts, which, according to the receipts, he’s been buying all over town, and all in the last forty-eight hours. And he’s saved all of his gas and food receipts too, like he was going to hand in an accounting of expenses to somebody else. Does it feel to you like it feels to me, that Edgar was still on the job this afternoon?”

“You mean, was he doing a private detective thing? Yes, it does. Else why the cuff case and the Colt?”

“Cuff case, but no cuffs. So where’d they go?”

“Excellent question, Nick. He forgot them?”

“Or he was in the process of cuffing someone when things went terribly wrong. He got overpowered—maybe he was trying to cuff the guy and the guy used the cuffs to rake him across the forehead there—hence the laceration premortem. Guy comes in close, grabs the weapon by the muzzle, turns it upwards, which is what you do when you’re fighting for control of a gun. Pistol goes off under Edgar’s chin and Edgar’s brain bits stucco the ceiling.”

“He wasn’t shot by Lyle over there.”

“Nope. By a Third Party, is my bet, a Third Party with a nine-mill that he used on Lyle’s upper thigh. My guess is he shot Lyle with Edgar’s .45. He then takes Edgar’s cuffs with him. And his cell phone. But not the cuff key, and not his Colt.”

“You know what this scene really plays like, Nick? It plays like Edgar followed Mr. Third Party to this location, that he was being paid to follow Mr. Third Party around by Mr. Unknown Client, and that he decided to do a solo kick-in, and got himself killed for it.”

“Like he thought a crime was in progress? And the cop in him decides to do something about it?”

“Along those lines, yes.”

“Does this hotel have a security system that covers the staircase?”

“Yes, it does. I’ve got the hard drive for you downstairs. I looked at the video. You see people coming and going. Clerk says they were all regular tenants or service workers. One guy the clerk didn’t know, tall thin guy, he kept his face away from the camera. He was well dressed, elegant, even. Gray suit and really nice shoes—the clerk’s a shoe guy. He went up the staircase to the second floor at 14:56 hours by the time clock. He was carrying a leather bag. Camera doesn’t pan, so there was no telling where he went, or where he came from, but the clerk’s sure the guy wasn’t a tenant.”

“Can we get a still?”

“Being done right now. More people come and go, and then, at 15:29 hours we see Lyle coming up the stairs with a pizza and a sack with groceries in it.”

“That’s the beer and junk dumped into the bathtub?”

“Yes. Next there’s a long period where nothing much happens—a couple of maids pass by—and then, at 15:52 hours we see Edgar going past the camera lickety-split, with his war face on. Thirty minutes later, Mr. Third Party comes down the stairs with his leather case. He keeps his face averted from the camera and steps out of the frame.”

“I’ll want stills of that too.”

“You’ll have them.”

Nick was studying the cars in the Wendy’s lot.

“Does Wendy’s have security cameras?”

“I haven’t asked, but I’d be surprised if they didn’t. Cameras are everywhere now.”

“Makes our lives easier, anyway. So we’ve confirmed our various players, at least in a general way. We need to ID Mr. Third Party and we need to figure who the Unknown Client was. One more thing. We figure he
took Edgar’s cell with him. Why do that? If he’s caught with it, it’s evidence that links him to a murder.”

“He took it because he doesn’t want anyone else—say the cops—finding out who Edgar was calling on it because he was probably calling the Unknown Client, and Mr. Third Party doesn’t want us to know who that person is.”

“Yes. Very nice, Mavis. Tell me, what do private dicks usually do?”

“They get hired by worried spouses to follow people to cheap motels just like this one and take pictures of sexual degenerates doing naughty stuff to each other’s nobbly bits with whips and feather dusters and goldfish and such like.”

“So a typical Saturday night at your house?”

“In your dreams, Nick.”

“See that piece of shit Windstar over there?”

“I do.”

“Do you notice, Mavis, that it’s so blinking dull and boring and awful that it’s actually impossible to keep looking at it without falling asleep?”

“Therefore a perfect vehicle for surveillance.”

“And in a perfect position to watch this very room. I propose we go over there and toss it. What do you say?”

“Whither thou goest.”

Lemon parked his ancient pickup a few houses away from the Teague mansion on Cemetery Hill and shut the engine down. From where he sat the house looked closed up and empty, but that didn’t mean that Rainey wasn’t in there. He figured Kate and Beth were ten minutes away, and he wanted Kate to be the first face Rainey saw, if Rainey was there at all. But the kid was really troubling Lemon.