The Odds (23 page)

She thought about what might have happened, had probably happened.

She called back to Ann Cello to ask if they could work on the other blood up there for DNA as soon as possible. Nick Kissel’s DNA was on record. Now she was virtually certain he had been wounded up there, had bled, had escaped. Images of him came to her—he kept smiling in the film running in her head the way he had smiled when working behind the counter—and she had to tell herself not to be stupid, not to be sentimental.

Potocki came up to her in her cubicle.

“I got news,” she said. “It was Nick Kissel up at the house.”

“I’m not surprised,” he murmured. “By the way, I found that quote you wanted.” He handed over a yellowed Penguin edition of
Hamlet
.

“When?”

“Last night. I couldn’t sleep, so I was unpacking books. Look at how old this is. I used to buy used. Can you believe they once sold books for sixty-five cents. It says I paid ten cents for it. Quite a bargain.”

“Well, thanks, I guess.” She opened it up to where he had bookmarked the quote with a Post-it. “The toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.” That was it! That was what she was trying to remember. Shakespeare had meant it as a class comment: The peasant is following so closely behind the courtier that he irritates his chilblains. Funny line, really. She looked up at Potocki and handed him his book back. “Thanks.”

“So the missing Nick Kissel, aka Banks, is our perp?”

“Probably.”

“You liked him.”

“Eh.”

“You fall for good looks. Anybody ever tell you that’s shallow?”

“They told me.”

“Hmf. What a world, huh?”

“Potocki,” she began. She knew she had to say it. “I know what you’ve—what we’ve both—been thinking. You’re a great guy. It isn’t that. Did you know, it’s a known fact, that a man getting a divorce needs to date for three years minimum before he knows who he is? There is so much junk to work out. Not to mention, you’re my partner.”

He closed his eyes briefly. All he said was, “Three years.”

She made various faces and shrugged to indicate that it was a sorry deal, she understood that. He made a strained little smile and left her cubicle, and she forced herself to get back to work.

So now she had answers to more of her questions. Still didn’t know who killed BZ. Still didn’t know exactly what Nick did in the drug business—and the fact that he was gone looked bad. She did know he’d been up at the house and possibly injured. She started calling the hospitals.

Ann Cello called back, interrupting her. “It’s getting very interesting,” she said. The team found a knife at the place. It was on the first floor, dropped through from the second floor. Kissel’s prints were on it, too. And the blood on Higgins’s pants wasn’t all his. It suggests—”

Good for Ann Cello, she was going to be good. Colleen let her say her piece.

“—that Nick Kissel was shot first and bled on Higgins and that the powder-burn pattern could mean the gun was still in Higgins’s hand. Until after. When it was removed. Could be.”

“You’re right.” Colleen felt a little glimmer of hope. Perhaps she was not completely crazy.

“And there was whiskey on the floor,” Ann Cello said. “And diluted blood—”

“Whose diluted blood?”

“Kissel’s, probably.”

“All I can say is, keep going, keep going. You are sharp. Just the stuff I need to know.”

“Thank you.”

She called the Coroner’s office to ask if there were any knife wounds on Higgins. There were not. Just the shot at point of contact and definite powder burns on the man’s right hand. Nobody walks up and sticks a gun in somebody’s chest without a struggle. If only she had the gun.

Potocki came back into her office. He’d found out where Nick Banks, as he’d signed on the lease, was living. “Should have a warrant by six,” he said.

Colleen was sure Potocki was going to say something about getting a bite to eat while they waited for the warrant, but he didn’t. A few minutes before six, she saw him eating takeout at his desk. Her stomach rumbled with gnawing hunger.

In the company refrigerator, she found a yogurt that was expired. She ate that and a granola bar to keep her going. But it hardly worked.

A few minutes after six, Potocki came by with the search warrant. “Let’s go,” he said.

They took a car over to Sherman Street where Nick Banks had rented a first-floor apartment. The landlord, Grant Bright, met them there and opened the door for them.

It was the most ordinary of places. Couch, wingback chair, old wooden tables of various sorts. There was some food mess in the kitchen. There were drawers open in the sitting room and the bedroom.

On top of the bedroom dresser was a stack of clean shirts and pants and underwear. There were other clothes in the closet. A suitcase.

The mattress was off kilter. Someone had clearly searched the place. Maybe waited here for Nick to return? She and Potocki caught each other’s eyes.

Potocki started on Grant Bright. “You’ve been back here lately?”

“No, not at all.”

“Where do you live?”

“Over on Buena Vista.”

“You rent this place and the one above?”

“I bought the place thinking to turn it back to one house, but I never have enough money to do the renovations, so I’ve been renting it out.”

“What kind of tenant was Nick Banks?”

“Never saw him. He was only here, what, two months, not even. No, just over a month. He paid his rent is all I knew. He used a money order.”

“You have a tenant upstairs?”

“Single woman. Older.”

“I wonder if you could come with us to the upstairs. We need to talk to her, find out if anyone was hanging around here.”

They started up the stairs.

Bright said, “When I pulled up to let you guys in, there was a guy sitting in his car. He was just sitting. He drove away. Could that be anything?”

“Could, could. Tell us anything about the car?”

“I didn’t notice. White. American, I think. Like Chevy or something.”

The old woman who rented the second floor supported herself on a walker. She said she’d heard some noises downstairs a couple of days ago but not lately. “He’d bring my mail up for me. Missed Saturday and today, though.”

“Did you talk to him much when he came up?”

“Just that kind of quick hello.”

They quizzed her this way and that. She hadn’t seen any strangers around. She’d never had any trouble with Nick Banks. She liked him.

It was almost eight o’clock. Potocki said he was going to knock on a few neighboring doors and see what he could find out. Colleen told him she’d return for him. She took the car and drove the couple of blocks to the Dona Ana.

The woman working the ovens and the counter was a ready talker.

“You’re new here,” Colleen said. “Just start?”

“I don’t know about all these hours he wants me to put in. I got kids,” she said, frazzled.

“Did you know the guy who worked here before you?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Nick Banks?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Who hired you—not Banks, then?”

“Some guy named Jim is all I know.”

“He’s the owner?”

“Had the keys, had the recipes. I guess so. You want anything?”

“Can you make a stromboli with some vegetables?”

“I think so.”

Colleen looked at her watch, thinking, sooner or later she would have to reveal to Hrznak and Nellins what she had learned about Nick.

   NELLINS HAD GONE BACK TO the house with the little girl and the little boy who was taking care of her. Philips.

This time there were two more girls there.

“Please sit down,” the oldest one said to him. He recognized her as the one who’d dashed through the park earlier. “Sit, sit,” she said to the other kids.

They had books with them. They sat on the couch, lined up, and let him have the armchair.

“Would you like something to drink?” the girl asked before he sat.

“No thanks. Okay, yeah, water, actually.”

She went to the kitchen for it. He was tired, crazy-hungry again (some kind of rebound reaction to the calzone he’d had for lunch from the pizza shop up the street), and he had at least fifteen more places to get to.

“Thank you,” he called into the kitchen.

“You’re welcome.”

“Your parents? Where are they?”

“Our mother,” the girl said, returning, handing him water, sitting, “is still at work. Our dad is at rehab. He had a running injury. If you can leave a card, they’ll call you when they get home.”

Nellins flipped the page of the legal pad. He had quite a list of people he still needed to hear from. The list wound down and around a page, both sides. “Their names?”

“Charles and Alison Philips.”

“Okay,” he said, writing. He considered their ages and decided the girl seemed pretty capable. “I’m going to ask you to look at this picture.” He showed her the close-up of the man, crumpled upper body, pasty face, and watched her expression. Her breath caught. “I know,” he said. “It’s not a pretty sight. All I’m asking is, did you ever see the man before?”

“No,” she said, shaking off a shiver.

Then he flashed the picture of the house at her. “This is a house. You know any kids messed around in this house?”

“No,” the girl said. “Where is it?”

“Up the hill.”

She shook her head.

He took the second photo over to the other kids. “Do either of you know this house?”

They looked up from their books and shook their heads. “Looks like a lot of houses,” the boy said.

Nellins’s phone rang. It was Hrznak, asking, “What gives?”

“Nothing,” said Nellins.

“Lot of nothing. Higgins was a career criminal. Got his just deserts as far as I’m concerned. I’m done for the day.”

“We still don’t know who did him,” Nellins grumbled in a low voice, but too late, he saw the kids were listening.

“No, but I’m for going into the guy’s history. Not pounding the pavement. That Greer was at me all day. Morgue says there were powder burns on his hand and his shirt. The blood up there was definitely not all his. Greer is pushing to find out about the other guy.”

Hrznak was old and crabby. Nellins was old and whimsical. Nellins had just hung up when he decided he needed a soft drink to fizz its way down his gullet. He told the kids to have the parents call him and he took his leave.

He headed up to Dona Ana Pizzeria, where he’d gotten the calzone earlier that was still living with him. Through the window of the shop, he saw, of all people—speaking of his current devil—Greer quizzing the woman who had been learning the business. Nellins was about to turn on his heel and find a soda somewhere else when she spied him. She didn’t look too thrilled about running into him either. It made him curious. He went in.

She was talking about some guy.

“He was really nice. I thought he was going to come join me and my friends to hear some jazz.”

The woman shook her head. “Guys never do what they say.”

“Oh, every once in a while, they do,” Colleen said. “I thought we connected, you know.”

The woman’s tight features broke into a smile. She shook her head. “I’ve had that experience.”

“Who’s the guy you work for again?”

“Jim. He didn’t give me his last name. You want my opinion, he won’t tell you a thing. He’s a sourpuss. And he is definitely not hot.”

Nellins took a can of Sprite out of the cooler. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this conversation. He was grateful when his phone rang.

“I need a drink,” Hrznak said. “
Before
we go back to sign out. By that time we’ll have thirteen, fourteen hours. We’re racking up some mighty good time today.”

Nellins said, “Right, right. The usual place. In half an hour. For our conference. I just ran into Greer, and we need a few minutes first.” He was miserably hungry, but he would wait to eat at Peanutz while Hrznak had a few. The clock above the counter said it was eight o’clock.

   BY TUESDAY EVENING MAC and Zero had met K three times. “Always be cool,” Mac told his friend. “Make him want us.”

“I got the creeps, you know, the way he was driving behind us. I thought it was, you know, one of them, wanting my butt or something.”

Mac laughed. “Just be cool.” The night before he had thought the same thing when he saw K beckoning to them. He wasn’t afraid of dealing with a perv, though. He went up to the car.

“I know you’re Carl’s friends. You want to hop in for a sec?” K had said.

Zero hesitated, even Mac did, but then he opened the door and climbed into the back. Zero followed.

“Some people over on Federal told me you were his friends. They said you were asking about him, and I wondered if maybe you might want to take over his work for a while.”

Elation filled Mac—that feeling of wanting and getting what you’d wanted. “Yep, can do,” he said. He hit Zero in the thigh.

They drove up the block, talking. K was saying things like, “It’s not hard work, but it takes a really smart person to do it. You have to be able to read a street corner, make a snap decision. Carl has a regular business, a good business. I don’t know why he isn’t around, but there’s good money to be made if you need money.”

“Okay.”

“You guys have any money on you?”

“Nah,” said Mac. Don’t give. Get.

“Five bucks,” said Zero before Mac could stop him.

“You don’t know where Carl is hanging these days, do you?”

“Nope,” Mac said, “don’t know.”

K gave him a good hard look. He took a bundle out of his pocket and passed it before them. “You ever see one of these before?”

“Ten stamp bags,” Mac said. “Called a bundle.”

“What if I advance you one bundle each, see what you can do? Fifteen bucks a bag. You bring me back the money and we go from there—”

“Territory?” Mac asked.

“You go over to Federal, lean against that little grocery store over there. You have caps, wear them to the left. You have belts on, let them hang way off your pants to the left, strap hanging down. It’s a real easy territory. If they ask you what brand—” He held the bundle closer to them. “What are you going to say?”