Evil to the Max (19 page)

Witt rounded the front and took her arm to lead her down the street. She snatched it away. “Would you quit with the touching all the time? I can walk by myself.”

He looked pointedly at the slight limp in her gait, then flashed her an amused glance. “Just being polite.”

Busted. Despite his words, he knew exactly why she hated him touching her. It was because she
didn’t
hate it. She swallowed. “I’m not ungrateful that you’re helping me out on this.”

“Find Snake, argue later. Much later. In my truck, just the two of us. All alone under the stars. Gonna be a full moon tonight. Much better time for arguing then.”

She laughed then. He was joking. Good. That she could handle. “You just enjoy pushing my buttons.”

“That, too.” He scratched his jaw. His eyes shone with humor. Damn. She liked the man.

She stepped up onto the curb in front of St. Vincent’s Mission. The odor of urine permeated the air and clung to her nostrils. She wrinkled her nose.

“Life on the streets. Guarantee Snake isn’t going to smell any better when we find him,” Witt said.

Through the glass doors of the mission, Max could see rows of tables, the seats filled with a myriad of individuals from spike-haired nineties rejects to dirty hippies left over from the sixties. They all had one thing in common—they were here for the free food. And as fast as the flock moved out, more moved in to take their places.

Dinner time. “I know I should feel sorry for them—”

“Politically correct thing to do.”

“But I don’t want to go in there.”

“You wanna stay out here while I take a look around?”

She wasn’t sure if he was serious. But if he was, she sure as hell didn’t want to admit she would have been afraid without him. “He’s not in there.”

“You had some sort of vision?”

No, just a really bad feeling born of living too long in middle class neighborhoods with a middle class mentality that said The Homeless were bums with a name change. And they were a damn scary lot.

God, Witt would think she was a stereotypical conservative Republican right-winger. Not to mention heartless and prejudiced.

“Yeah, a vision. He’s over ...” She turned on her heel, pointing, pointing, “there.”

Jesus H. Christ, he was.

“How the hell’d you do that?” Witt’s tone was filled with amazement and awe.

How the hell indeed? She had no flipping idea. “Magic.” She reached for her keys inside her blazer pocket, scraping her thumbnail along the serrated edge of the teeth.

Jesus, Cameron, tell me how we did that
. No answer from the Beyond.

Leaning against a chain link fence beneath a halogen street light, Snake sat across the street on what looked like a folded blanket. It was the arms revealed by the rolled up sleeves of his T-shirt that gave him away, his flesh covered completely in a mosaic of tattoos.

His tied hair was long, graying, and greasy, his chin stubbled, and his shirt and pants covered with what looked like paint stains or dried bird shit. A tin can sat in front of him. With his head tilted back on the fence and his eyes closed, he let his hands hang limply over his knees. He could have been meditating. He could have been begging. He could have been dead.

She stepped off the curb. Witt grabbed her arm as a car whizzed by. Her hair fluttered in the breeze the motion left behind.

“What’s your plan?” he asked.

He was way too tall with her standing in the gutter like this. “I’ll know when I get there.”

“Stay close. No sudden moves.” His features were impassive. Witt the Detective. She wasn’t sure she liked the stone face, but she felt safe with him.

This time, when he put his hand on her arm, she didn’t shake it off. He looked both ways, they crossed together, quickly, then slowed on the other side as they came abreast of her wino.

The snake on his arms lay dormant now. He stank of sweat, crotch rot, and bad teeth. Age? God, she couldn’t tell. In his condition, anywhere from thirty to seventy. His skin resembled dried-up apples, but that could have been prolonged exposure to the sun. His jowls hung as if he’d once weighed far more than this now-emaciated body he occupied.

His eyes popped open at the sound of their steps on the concrete, and his skeletal fingers reached toward his tin can. “Spare some change, lady?”

She wondered why he needed it when there was a soup kitchen right across the street.

Ah, the booze.

Then she saw it. The necklace, snug around his throat like a choker.

Her hand stilled in her pocket. Chills raced through her body, skittered across her scalp. This was what they meant when they said someone just walked over their grave. This feeling, where time stops, where you glimpse your own mortality, where you know God is speaking to you, and you damn well better pay attention.

The way she’d felt when the printer chewed up and spat out Bud Traynor’s name.

She took a deep breath. The moment passed, though it didn’t leave her unaffected. Hand still inside her pocket, Max dropped her keys, jingled some coins, pulled a few out, then plunked the measly offering into his can.

Snake smiled. He didn’t have teeth, just rotted out stumps.

Tiffany was going to roll over in her coffin, knowing that wino would help solve her murder.

“Thank you, pretty lady.”

“You’re welcome.” She grabbed Witt’s hand and pulled him away down the sidewalk.

“What the hell? Aren’t you gonna ask him anything?”

“I don’t need to.”

Witt tugged on her, but she didn’t stop walking. “What gives?”

“I’m going to make an anonymous call to the police.” At the corner, she crossed the street, holding tightly to Witt’s hand.

“And?”

“And I’m going to tell them that the wino sitting across from St. Vincent’s Mission is wearing Tiffany Lloyd’s gold locket.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Tiffany’s necklace is what he was supposed to have in locker 452?”

“I don’t know if it was ever
in
the locker. But that’s what we were looking for.” Max dropped her death grip on Witt’s hand the minute they turned down the block behind the mission, taking a circuitous route back to the truck. “Will they pick him up, do you think?”

“More like arrest him for her murder.”

She threw up her hands. “But he didn’t do it.” She tipped her head, looked at Witt slyly, pasting a suggestive smile on her lips. “I suppose over a beer at their local hang-out—what did you say the name of that place was?—you could gently lead them into thinking of him as a witness.”

“And thereby absolve you of guilt?” Witt looked at her, then shook his head. “Okay, so I convince ’em he’s just a witness. How’s that help find Tiffany Lloyd’s killer?”

“Snake knows the license number of that car.”

Max walked fast despite the ache in her feet. Witt stopped, then grabbed her arm as she would have sped past him. “Shit. Then why don’t
you
know it? Why didn’t you see it in
his
vision?”

She wished she could have said she knew it, and that it belonged to Bud Traynor. But she couldn’t. And Witt couldn’t possibly know how that galled her.

Max raised her hands, fingers spread in a how-the-hell-do-I-know gesture. “Do I look like I understand any of this? All I know is he saw it, and if they work on him long enough, he’ll remember it.”

“All they’re likely to do is work him over.”

Her mouth dropped open. “They don’t really do stuff like that. You’re just trying to scare me into not calling.”

He raised a brow. “You saw the Rodney King tape, right?”

That was
years
ago. Her foot tapped on the concrete. The man had something working in that cop brain of his. He was testing. He was ... she wasn’t sure what he was up to, but she didn’t trust him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Well, Max.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “You’re right. Doesn’t happen as often as the common citizen would like to think, and not by good cops, which the majority of cops are, despite the bad rap we get.”

She pulled back, hands on hips. “Are you sermonizing, Witt?”

“Just wanted to gauge your reaction.”

She could tell by that idiotic twinkle in his blue eyes that she’d passed his little test. Creep. She punched his arm. “You’re pushing your luck.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Now, where’s your cell phone?”

He splayed a hand across his chest. “
My
phone? Where the hell is the one I gave you?”

“It’s in my car. I’m using it for road emergencies.”

“You’re supposed to be carrying it.” Eyes narrowed and smile gone, dimples nowhere in sight. She was in big trouble.

She decided to tough it out. “I need to make that call before Snake slithers away.”

“Not with my phone. Snake is your gig. And nothing better be traced back to us.”

She sort of liked the way he used
us
, not
me
. As if they were a team. As if he actually cared what happened to
her
, too. And of course, he was irritatingly right. Anonymous meant no one was supposed to figure it out.

“All right. Give me the number of the cop in charge, and find me a payphone.”

“Did you dictate to your husband like this?”

“Yep. Still do.”

He gave a soft snort of a laugh, the meaning of which she couldn’t decipher. Either he thought she was a nutcase, was disgusted with himself, or fed up with the whole case in general.

He pointed over her shoulder. “Over there.”

She turned and yes, it was there, but the line to use the one measly payphone was three deep. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to touch it after they were all done.

Oops, another of those politically incorrect thoughts.

Witt waited and watched. Another test? She’d be damned if she’d fail this one, either. She walked to the end of that line, shoulders straight, step firm, turned and beamed at him.

A tasty morsel up close, Witt had a devastating impact at a distance. Tall, well over six feet, broad shoulders, nice biceps, and exceptional pecs. And jeez, would you look at those thighs? With that blond hair and impressive height and breadth, the guy was a Norse god. No wonder Tiffany wanted in his pants so badly.

It was then she smelled her line-mates, just when she was getting into a semi-interesting fantasy ...

Which was a damn good thing because she neither needed nor wanted Tiffany’s sexual fantasy, semi-interesting or not.

The scent of unwashed bodies squashed any trace of sexual desire. Shoulders stooped, his coat stained and threadbare, the man in front of her gave off the aroma of old cigar smoke and several weeks without soap contact. Max swallowed her distaste.

In profile, he was ageless, lines fanning out from the corner of his eye, grizzled cheeks, and flesh weathered to the texture of lizard skin. His eyes were gray or blue, the tint almost too light to make out, as if the sun had bleached the color from them long ago.

She looked away then, in case he caught her staring.

Number One hung up. They all shuffled forward. Max stayed where she was. Witt still watched with a half-smile on his face. She had the strangest urge to slug it off.

Number Two talked forever. She must have dialed collect. Snake would be long gone before Max got to make her phone call. By the time Number Two was done, her sense of smell had given up, and the odors seemed normal.

The guy in front of her limped forward, plucked the receiver from its cradle, tucked it between his shoulder and ear, then began searching his fatigue jacket. The stitches were loose at the bottom of his right pocket. His finger nudged through a small hole. He looked down at the dirty nail poking through the rip, stared as if he couldn’t believe it.

Max jingled the change in her pocket.

A tear oozed from the corner of the man’s colorless eye. He gently put the receiver back, and for a brief moment, closed his lids. Yet, he didn’t turn to her, didn’t hold out his hand and beg.

“You need some change?” Max’s voice broke on the second word. She held out her hand. “I’ve got extra.”

He didn’t quite smile, but his nostrils widened a fraction, and his gaze misted. He spoke, a soft melodious southern quality to his voice. “I won’t be able to pay you back.”

“I only have to make one call, so I won’t need the money back. You can have it.”

“Thank you.” He reached out, gingerly taking the exact amount of shiny silver he needed without touching her. She couldn’t smell him at all.

The man made his call. She looked up to find Witt’s gaze on her. He nodded, just a tilting of his chin.

Maybe she wasn’t heartless and soulless after all. Too bad Witt noticed, too.

* * * *

In the end, she’d left a message on the detective’s voicemail. She detailed the particulars about Snake, the who-what-when-where-and-how of it all, and hoped the detective didn’t waste any time getting his messages. It was the best she could do without leaving her name and embroiling herself in messy explanations.

Witt dropped her off at her car outside the salon. It was a little before eight-thirty, but the shop windows were lit. She could see Ariel still working on a client. Eight-thirty on a Friday night was not late in the hair business.

Parting was such sweet sorrow. She couldn’t figure out how the hell to get rid of the man.

“I’ll follow you home,” Witt insisted.

“I’m a big girl.” She climbed out of his truck and strode to her car with Witt hot on her heels.

“A killer’s loose.”

“He’s not after
me
.”

“Might have figured you’re close to a collar.”

“
I
don’t make the collar. You cops do. I think you just want an excuse to follow me.”

He smiled the annoying sexy smile that set her insides trembling. “You trying to get rid of me, Max?”

Max did not have time to fight him. She didn’t have time to fight Tiffany either. The newspaper article said Bud Traynor’s gala started at nine. She had to change, get to Traynor’s, find a way in, search his house, and get out of there before he came home. She couldn’t allow more than two hours just in case he returned earlier than she expected.