Night Eyes (The Detective Temeke Crime Series Book 2) (21 page)

Two secret service were standing at the lobby door to the hospital, speaking into their wrists. One stared at Malin as she squealed into a parking space, shooting up a spray of brown water as the front tire ploughed through a puddle. Temeke cringed as he clicked himself out of the seatbelt, glimpsed the dark stain on Agent Anderson’s pants. Malin always found a way of soaking important people.

He hated hospitals, especially the clinical smells and gurneys carrying people with faces locked in a grimace of pain. They took the lift to the third floor past the room he had visited every day when Lt. Luis Alvarez was sick. He’d seen Serena, what… twice? What a bloody circus that had been.

Two more secret service ushered them in, eyes scanning the corridor without giving them a second look. Mrs. Oliver waved a trembling hand through the window of the mayor’s room and smiled. Her hair was tied high on her head like a cottage loaf, eyes sultry and lips slightly pursed. Temeke knew they were in for a show.

“Mayor Oliver,” he said, extending his hand and looking down at a gaunt husk of a man, well into his sixties, head bald with tufts of white hair visible below the turban of a bandage around his head. There was also an empty carton of ice-cream on the table ‒ bacon and vanilla it said. “I’m glad to see you looking well.”

“Much better,” Mayor Oliver said with a smile, trying to lift his head from a plump pillow. His voice was gruff and his grip weak. “Weather forecast says no more rain or snow. About time for some sunshine, don’t you think?”

“Forecasts have been proved wrong before, Mr. Mayor.”

“Not in New Mexico, Detective.” He seemed to squint at the badge in Temeke’s belt and flicked a sideways look at his wife.

“Good to see you,” Mrs. Oliver said, settling in the chair next to the Mayor’s bed. There was a large vase of purple roses on the window sill, bathed in a shaft of sunlight.

Impeccably dressed, Temeke thought as he shook her hand. All in beige and black, a dress that screamed several hundred dollars. He held her gaze, forcing her to break away.

His mind began to race. This elderly white-haired man was Mrs. Oliver’s husband? He was much older close up, nothing like the round-faced individual he had come to know and admire on the TV. No, the man he saw now shivered under that thermal blanket, thin tube taped to his cheek and running into his left nostril. Another tube descended from a half empty IV bag, dripping fluids into a vein in his hand.

A nurse technician brought in two extra chairs, briefly checked the patient monitor and tapped an update into the computer. He was gone after that.

“Feeding you all right,” Temeke dared ask.

“I had oatmeal this morning and scrambled eggs.” The Mayor shuffled up the bed a little, bracing his arms against the side rail. “Do you think this has anything to do with the Ringmaster murders? Because if it has, this man will get lethal injection. And he better not think Governor Bendish will grant clemency.”

“We’ve no reason to assume it has, sir.”

“I expect you want to know what happened on Sunday night.” The Mayor’s eyes seemed to drift up to the ceiling and there was a crease in that dull gray brow. “I’d been reading a book on the couch… a couple of hours maybe. Adam was late getting back from a scout trip. I was annoyed if you must know. Wanted to go to bed. But he was excited to go. Texted me every hour, said the explosives were the best, real window rattlers. They went to the VLA, saw the antennas up close.”

Temeke remembered a time when he was headed east on 60 towards the Very Large Array, how startling those radio telescopes were, rising out of the flat yellow plain.

“I remember hearing the latch on the patio door,” the mayor said. “Saw a man coming toward me with a gun. Funny thing… I wasn’t afraid. Thought I knew him from somewhere. Just couldn’t place him. He said something about how well I’d done for myself. Asked me if I’d received his letters. I thought he was mistaken. Had the wrong house. I tried to talk to him… asked him to sit down. But he wouldn’t. It was the dog, you see. Military trained. Came charging in from the kitchen and nearly bowled the man over. That’s when the gun went off. I don’t think he meant to shoot me. I think he just wanted to talk.”

“About what, sir?”

“He wanted to tell me something…” The mayor screwed up his face as if shuddering from the memory. “The doctor warned us about memory loss. He said some things never come back. Apparently, the first thing I asked the doctor when I came round was who shot J.R.?”

Mrs. Oliver tucked the blanket tighter around her husband’s legs, took a newspaper off the overbed table and began patting it into three neat folds. The Mayor waved a hand, told her to stop fussing, told her to sit down.

She put a glass of water to her mouth, likely to hide a flurry of embarrassment, Temeke thought. He continued to watch her, the downturned head, two hands clutching that glass where only one would do. He suddenly felt a twinge of empathy.

“I think he must have climbed over the wall from the road… from Coors,” Mayor Oliver said. “He could have been drunk. Could have been a liberal democrat.”

Temeke felt a shudder of disgust at the flippant comment. He decided to plough ahead. “You’re the first republican Mayor we’ve had in over thirty years. Bound to get a few boo’s now and then. So, someone had a grudge. And that someone’s taken your son. When Adam got home that night, did he mention anything about an unfamiliar truck in the neighborhood?”

The Mayor shook his head and took a spoonful of ice cream. “I never got to speak to him. Wish I had. Wish I’d had one last chance‒”

“I think that’s enough,” Mrs. Oliver broke in with a voice that would have sliced through tempered steel. “My husband needs to rest.”

“You always say that. Remember, I’ve been sleeping for an entire week!” Mayor Oliver lifted the carton of ice cream and offered it to Temeke. “Dickies. Homemade.”

Temeke declined on account of a piece of bacon which looked like it was doing backstroke in a pool of cream. “Adam got a compass?”

“He always carries one in his backpack. Troop requirements.”

“Ever had occasion to beat him?”

“Of course not.”

“Ever argued in front of him, shouted―”

“You make it sound like discipline is a capital crime, Detective.”

“It depends on the circumstances.”

“I’ve done all the things a father should. Shaped him, rewarded him, encouraged him.” The mayor shared a nod with his wife and blew his nose into a laundered handkerchief. “I want to send out a press release… draft a bill. Where’s my notepad?”

“Not now, my love,” Mrs. Oliver said. “You don’t want your blood pressure going up again.”

“A few more questions if I may,” Temeke said. “Any strange calls?” He waited. No response. “Blocked numbers, death threats, that kind of thing?”

The mayor shook his head. “We often get calls from telemarketers. We don’t answer them.”

Temeke sent a smile from the mayor to Mrs. Oliver. “Yet, we taped the voicemail the kidnapper left. Monday I think it was. Mentioned something about midsummer’s day and how he should have been there. Any idea what he meant?”

Mrs. Oliver frowned as if she found the question bizarre. “I’ve no idea.”

“Mr. Mayor, the intruder asked you about some letters. What letters was he referring to?”

“We get letters from all kinds of people. I encourage it on my website.”

“Any personal letters?” Temeke was hoping to jog the mayor’s memory about that charred letter they had found in the fireplace.

“No one outside the family knows our home address.”

“Yet the intruder knew exactly how to find you. No forced entry. Odd, don’t you think?”

“You think he was in collusion with someone? A member of staff?”

“If that’s the case, it’s a question of finding a link between the intruder and this second person. You said you thought you’d seen him before?”

“He looked familiar. A teacher, off duty firefighter, journalist… No, scruffier than that.”

“Hair color?”

“Brown. To here.” The Mayor patted his shoulder.

“Eyes?”

“It was too dark. I couldn’t possibly see his eyes.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A black shirt, khaki pants. No, wait… jeans. Yes, I think they were jeans.”

“Well, he certainly covered his tracks, sir. No shell casings. No fingerprints. Not a hair in sight. See, that’s what I don’t understand. How a casual intruder didn’t leave a stitch of DNA, especially with hair as long as it was. Either he was covered from head to foot in cling film, or he knew how to scope a joint. And I’m inclined towards the latter, seeing as you did mention his clothes.”

Mayor Oliver grimaced. “Is my wife safe in the house? Should she stay in a hotel?”

“We have around-the-clock surveillance, sir. If Madam Mayor needs someone in the house, detective Santiago here would be glad to oblige.”

Malin didn’t exactly look pleased. He caught the twitch of a frown and her pulse was likely up about now.

“One last thing,” Temeke saw the nod and raced on. “Madam Mayor did mention recently that you rarely speak to your neighbors. In the fact I believe the word she used was
never
. Yet Mr. Eli Sandoval insists you both fish occasionally. I just wanted to be sure I understood that correctly.”

“My wife doesn’t fish, Detective. Too boring. Rather go shopping with Suzie Bendish.” The mayor looked over at Malin as if she was hard of hearing and said, “Governor’s wife. ” 

Temeke couldn’t help feeling he was in the middle of an uncomfortable family affair. He cleared his throat and said, “Who you would say you trusted the most?”

“My Press Secretary. Art has been called upon to deal with some very private matters. He’s never let me down. We’d be lost without him.”

“On a lighter note,” Temeke said, turning to leave. “Remember that article in the Journal? The one about cutting the size of local government. Had a brief bio at the end. Said something about you being sworn into office on November 1st, 2009. I thought it was October.”

A scowling Mayor looked up. “It was December 1st. I called the Journal. Gave them a piece of my mind.”

“Very good, sir.” Temeke bobbed his head, wished them both a good evening.

The corridor was bustling with dark suits, nurses tapping keyboards and staring blankly into their monitors. It wasn’t until they were outside and Temeke had struck a match down the side of the wall and lit up a cigarette that Malin spoke.

“That newspaper article was in the Sunday newspaper, wasn’t it?” she said, waving a trail of smoke out of her face. “You asked him to see how good his memory was, to see if he was lying.”

“If his memory’s shot, which I doubt, he wouldn’t have remembered detail, wouldn’t have remembered dates.”

“Like he didn’t remember the intruder?”

“Or what the man was wearing.” Temeke blew out a small smoke ring, poked his finger through it and watched it wriggle away in the cold air. He could have stayed there all afternoon, anything to delay his return to the flapping of Fowler’s mouth. “Interesting how he didn’t include his wife in those he trusted.”

“You said there was no evidence in the house,” Malin said, grabbing his arm. “We haven’t even had the report back from Forensics.”

“We’ve got nothing. Not even a sodding life insurance on Adam.”

“You think it’s her, don’t you? You think she’s gone and done something.”

He looked down at those flashing eyes, chin thrust forward, couldn’t keep it in any longer. “No, I don’t, Marl. I don’t think it’s her at all.”

Malin yawned at a recent memo Sargent Moran had sent out. It was headed
Albuquerque West Side Road Traffic Accidents
, including the running totals of car crashes and fatalities as compared to the previous year.

They were no further in their investigation of the Ringmaster murders and it was probably time to pull in a few volunteers. Fresh eyes and all that. Her eyes were heavy and after a while the screen became a blur. If it wasn’t for a paper airplane that nosedived with a thud on her desk, she would have been out cold.

Temeke was bored, fingers molding a squadron of them from a note pad. He stood with his back against the filing cabinet, sending one after another towards his new dart board on the wall. 

“Go home,” he said. “You look bloody awful.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Not sleeping?”

Not a wink, Malin wanted to say, but shook her head instead. How to explain an unnatural interest with a chat room stalker was beyond her. And Temeke would only worry and spoil it. She looked at the clock. It was three forty-five in the afternoon. “I need something to eat.”

Temeke nodded, finger tapping his lips. “Where would you hide a couple of journals?”

Malin tidied away the files on her desk and grabbed her coat. She knew he was lonely. Trying to keep her there as long as he could. “Garden shed. Floor boards. Burn them. Give them to a friend.”

“Give them to a friend…” Temeke repeated. He turned around and began drumming his fingers on the top of the filing cabinet. “But which friend?”

“A close friend, someone you trusted. Someone close enough to visit, but far enough where snoopy detectives wouldn’t find it.”

“Ah, now that’s why they hired you, Marl. Cause you’re a bleeding marvel.”

With a loud sniff, he tapped the spines of several large binders on top of that cabinet, pulled one out labeled Arrest Warrants which concealed a small bottle of Johnnie Walker Double Black and two plastic cups.

Oh, no, not the whisky, Malin thought. She hated the stuff, didn’t dare tell him how much.

“This is what you need,” he said, giving the cups a quick blow inside to shift the sand.

He put them on the desk between them, poured a generous measure. “It’s Friday and there’s luck in a glass of whisky. Course, you don’t believe in luck. You don’t believe in coincidences either. It’s all blessings and miracles to you, isn’t it? Bloody miracle Fowler hasn’t found it yet.”

“What exactly are we celebrating, sir? Let me guess, Fowler’s promotion? My promotion. Your promotion.”

“Mrs. Oliver doesn’t appear to have a best friend. Doesn’t use the computer much either. There are a few regular numbers she calls. Suzie Bendish, Alie Meyer, restaurants, boutiques, spas. You’ve called them all. Then there’s Ron King of Ron’s Garage. What a name for a bloody hairdresser.”

Malin took the tablet from her desk drawer and wiped the screen with her sleeve. “A journal’s personal, sir, special. She probably wouldn’t leave them with the Governor’s wife. Wouldn’t want her implicated in any way. She wouldn’t leave them with Alie Meyer either, not now the District Attorney has been in the papers for having affairs. It has to be someone you could talk to about anything, but not someone close. Hairdresser’s my guess.”

“Drink up, Marl. All of a sudden, you need a haircut.”

Malin felt the laugh in the back of her throat. She briefly glanced at Temeke’s eyes. They were sparkling now as if he’d just seen a vision on Mount Sinai.

Mrs. Oliver had a small circle of friends and large circle of acquaintances; agents, models, actors, hairdressers, photographers. It kept her up with the in-crowd, kept her fashionably elite. If Malin was jealous of anyone, Raine Oliver would be it. 

Better get the whisky over with, she thought, swished it around the cup before swallowing the lot. It crawled down her throat like syrup and then came the explosion, the stomach punch, the stars. Made her face red, made her cough, made Temeke laugh.

“Blimey, Marl, it’s not bleeding tequila. Hope nobody breathalyzes you on the road.”

“I’ll blame you if they do.” She covered the cup before he could pour a second shot. “You know I don’t drink.”

Then she stood up, giving the room a chance to steady itself. A warm wind was waiting for her outside as she edged the car out of the parking lot. She called Ron’s Garage and got an appointment for tomorrow at nine o’clock. 

She was becoming a little light-headed, even on a few sips of whisky, and took Alameda all the way to Corrales Café. Hooking that small tablet under one arm, she ordered a plate of fish and a cup of coffee from the bar. Went outside to the patio because nobody else would be mad enough to sit in the freezing cold. It was warm beneath a canvas shade where slits of sunlight shone through onto the flagstones below, melting the last of the snow. Her body was stiff and a pain shot through her shoulders. Rolling her neck from side to side, she listened to the breeze in the cottonwoods before studying the tiny buffering circle on the screen as she logged into Heartfree.

WingMan was on line. It suddenly occurred to her that he had a routine. Every afternoon between four and four-thirty, he was in the chat room. It was a small window of time, but time he clearly found important. Then again from eleven-thirty at night to one o’clock in the morning. It was possible he worked shifts, she thought, probably the hotel industry where people slept in the afternoons and checked email before the evening shift. It wasn’t like she stumbled on that idea. It was something he’d said, something he’d intimated. 

She watched that screen, watched the clock. Four-fifteen. Nothing. And then…

Well, well, little bird. Fancy seeing you here. It’s our fourth date, isn’t it? Only one more. That’s all you get.

Malin began to prepare a speech, started typing accusatory sentences which she hastily deleted. It wouldn’t do to make him angry. Whoever he was. She wanted information not a relationship.

The waiter brought her order, apologized for the lateness. She took a sip of coffee and then typed,
What do you want?
I
t must have been nerves or lack of sleep, but the curtness of the words even surprised her.

He was self-assured, calm in his response.
I want a lot of things, don’t you? The warmth of a body next to mine. A heartbeat. Love.

Two words rolled out of her vocabulary.
So what
.

It’s no good pretending you don’t care, Malin. I know you want to hear what I have to say.

I prefer not to.

You’ve been an excellent friend. My senses tell me you’ll be a friend forever. Perhaps you think I’m a little forward. I don’t like to waste time. After all, there’s so little of it. Now, where were we?

She kept thinking of the poem, wondered what it had to do with anything.
The Ancient Mariner. The poem.

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

Ships, no wind… what was he trying to tell her? Before she could ask, he had already typed three more sentences.

And a dead bird. Don’t forget the bird. Lovely word picture, don’t you think?

Do you know the perp personally?

Images began to appear in Malin’s head as she waited for a response. A man in an out-of-the-way gas station with oil-stained fingers. A man in a lab coat with latex covered hands. A self-satisfied businessman, a sure winner of a stalker. A man in a black hoodie who tugged at his belt as if a gun hung there. WingMan was off again. With a paragraph this time.

It’s amazing how word gets out. Could have done with a Budweiser. What a victory that would have been. He didn’t have the stamina or the commitment. So he made a stand. Chose to fail. The girl was his undoing. He could have been great. Instead, he was mediocre. He paid the price. And so did she.

Her back went rigid, pulse rising with each word. She was trying to have an intelligent conversation with him and all he wanted was a beer. It was the same feeling she’d had out jogging one night. When she heard the crunch of gravel behind her, saw a man in a black hoodie and sweat pants cruising along at an unnaturally slow pace. It made her muscles ache, brain battling fear before she turned. Saw him breeze past without a word. Nothing to be afraid of. Not really, not now she was in the gardens of a local café, tables inside filling with the dinner crowd. Life in process. It was both comforting and strange at the same time. As if the man in the tablet was no threat at all.

Are you there?
he said.

Yes, I’m here.

I know you think of death sometimes. All good detectives do. They see it firsthand. I’ve seen it firsthand. Remember the Bassinger case? Yes, I thought you did. 

How did he know? She tried to spear a bite of fish on the end of her fork and felt suddenly sick. There was a heaviness in her chest, as if she was trying hard not to breathe in a room full of gas in a confined space. Like her grandmother once had as a child. In the concentration camps.

Malin clutched the edge of the table and thought, this is how it is to be stalked, to be observed through a cage as if you were a lab rat. Something stirred in her subconscious. A young man’s face behind a windshield, wipers swishing away the evening rain. He was pale. Dead. Now came a distant memory. A suicide in Camden, a seventeen-year-old whose life came to an end when he found out his father was having an affair. Took the jag for a joyride. Drove it into a river. When they pulled the car out they found a bloated body and fingernails torn down to the quick.

It was the doctor’s voice wheezing between clenched teeth that had haunted her for years.
He must have panicked in those last moments. Tried to get out. It was all a mistake.

You’re crying, aren’t you?

Yes,
she typed, seeing darkness now as if a cloud has just passed before the sun. Bassinger was her monument of grief.

No hit of cocaine could ever blot out that memory. Isn’t it true detectives get sick to the stomach from the horror? The type of sick when you get home and realize you forgot to lock the gun safe. It leaves you feeling empty, fixated on the moment as if time had suddenly stood still. You can’t tell anyone, can you? Because they’d never understand. Never see it through your eyes. 

Malin winced at that, felt like she’d already been slipped a drug without knowing. Worst of all, she had no idea what all this had to do with the case. With an even stranger suspicion, she knew he was procrastinating, drawing the fantasy out as long as he could. She was fed up with the hints, the never ending barrage of games.

How about just telling me who this man is?

You’re obsessed with names, Malin. You know that? And here I was thinking you wanted mine.

She tried to think of some witty comeback, something to confuse him. But her patience was wearing thin.
So what’s the connection to the Oliver case?

Now you’re fishing and that doesn’t serve any purpose.

Your purpose or mine?
She was beginning to feel the icy claws of panic. It was four twenty-seven.

There was a 19th century landowner who died in 1854. Something to do with trains. Close to your heart. Last name only.

He logged off then. Left her to the wind in the cottonwoods.