R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning (9 page)

“Fucking hated it.”

I hated
that
. Manny wasn’t much of a curser when I met him. He’d picked up on my favoring of the F-word. Kids did the same thing with their parents. I personally didn’t think a word was anything but an emphasizer or a punctuation mark but a lot of folks take umbrage with profanity and I knew I was the one who instilled that in him.

I also knew, like kids, he’d have picked it up anyway. Every cop I knew cussed like a made Mafioso, man and woman. It was a matter of time; I just didn’t relish being his mentor in that regard.

“Grab the ages of our victims and I am going to do a small but significant math trick for you,” I said.

Manny grabbed the file and I got up and cleaned a space on our whiteboard.

“Read the victim ages, in order,” I told him.

“16, 22, 19, 20, 19, 20, 19, 17, 19.”

“Remember the terms mean, median, and mode?”

“From math,” he said.

“From math.”

“Vaguely.”

“Well you’re not alone. Don’t feel bad, it was a hunch but I had to look them up on the Internet last night to make sure I had them right.”

Manny’s face de-scrunched and the slight frown that had formed went flat. The competition in that kid—

“Mean is simple. It’s the average; average and mean, same thing.”

“So you total and divide by the number of numbers,” Manny said proudly.

“Yep.”

“Let me guess, nineteen is the avera—I mean, mean. Shit, that’s a double untundra or something.”

“Uh, double entendre, and no, it isn’t—that would take you into English class.”

“Oh, I hated English more than Math. You gringos have the most fucked up language I know.”

 “Fair enough, but you got it right, nineteen is the mean.”

“What’re the other two?” Manny was literally like a kid in school now.

“Median is the number in the middle. So if you look at the listing of the ages of our victims…”

“Nineteen, smack in the middle.”

“Yes, again, grasshopper.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Young Jedi?”

“Ahh, right. Okay, still don’t know what a grasshopper has to do with any of this, but gotcha.”

“Mode,” I said, “is the number in the sequence used most often.”

“Nine-fucking-teen,” he said.

“Watch the language. Yoda would shove his walking stick up your ass, young Rican Jedi.”

“I like that—call Lucas; the next Jedi needs to be a fucking ‘Rican.”

“So are you with me on this nineteen thing or do I have to sell it to the lieutenant on my own?”

Manny scowled again.

“What’s up,” I asked.

“I got your back no matter what.”

I’d have this young man ready in less than a year. Hell, maybe six months. In less than a year the love of my life could have her old job back. I had no idea what the fuck
I
was going to do.

“Hey, Jedi,” I said.

“Yeah, boss?”

“We’ll work the angle of his daughter being next. But we’ll watch for more victims. Keep the undercover women out on the streets. No reduction in force. We’re covering every base on this one.”

It was
after
we were seated in Lieutenant Elias Shackleford’s office that I realized I’d not yet sprung the “Spencer Grant” appearance on him either, as I had promised to do with all bravado in front of my partner. Well, might as well put my young partner’s “got your back” creed to the test.

“What do you have?” Shackleford asked and began moving things around on his desk. The lieutenant was easily the neatest man I’d ever known and the few objects on his desk—a picture of his wife and children, a golf bag pen-holder, a Post-it container, and an obsidian paperweight—had never changed position or moved at all as long as he’d been my boss. But he moved them out of position and back like a three card monte dealer with OCD. Still, any lack of eye contact with Elias Shackleford was a small blessing.

“I have a theory, L-T,” I said. “Actually, I received a rather, uh, let’s refer to it as strange and fortuitous phone call the other day.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Shackleford mumbled.

“The caller was Spencer Grant.”

The lieutenant froze. He peered up. He didn’t seem pleased (although I am not sure what ‘pleased’ looked like on my boss). “You’re telling me the caller
claimed
to be Grant?”

 “I am telling you it was him. I know his voice.”

“Trace on the phone that called you?”

“A burner. In fact, we were
at
7-11 getting tape—I mean capture—from the security camera there because we were lucky to track down the purchase location of the cell that called our pizza delivery guy to the Hailey Carpenter scene.”

“So he was following you. Or knew you’d trace the phone—or both,” Shackleford said.

“Likely a yes to all,” I said. “Manny was able to put a pretty good match in build to Grant entering the 7-11, buying a batch of phones, and leaving. He had a hoodie hiding his face, but I know it was him.”

“How so?” Shackleford said.

“He waved at the closest camera as he walked by,” Manny said.

“Probably doesn’t want to give away his disguise,” I said.

“Any of the other burners been used?”

“No,” Manny said.

“What else. You said ‘theory’, Mac, not perp identification.”

Oh, boy. This was where the road split and I was afraid of the path less-traveled.

“Were you a big math guy, sir?”

“Come again?”

“Look, I am going to cut to the chase. You will or won’t like it: the mean average, median, and mode of our victims’ ages is nineteen.”

“Interesting,” Shackleford said, intertwining his long fingers and looking speculative. “Mean and average are repetitive, though. Same thing.”

“Yes, sir. I’m aware.”

Then, out of left field, from the cheap seats, a hundred mile an hour spit ball:

“Good detective work, Mac. This is the kind of strange shit that solves cases.”

For the moment, I was stunned into silence.

“There’s more,” I said, glancing at Manny, a bit confused.

“September twentieth is Melissa Grant’s nineteenth birthday,” said the boss.

“Yes,” I said.

“Which means his daughter
is
with him in Denver and it’s likely we have a month to find this psychotic bastard.”

“That’s the best—our best—theory, Lieutenant.” I said.

“I concur. But stay alert, men. There are still a lot of days for this turd to chalk up another nine killed and make his own daughter number nineteen.”

“Agreed,” I said.

Manny nodded, and we left.

“There’s more,” I whispered as we returned to our freshly installed, seven-foot cubicle walls. Manny waited until we were seated and gave me his undivided attention. “This story I need to tell you should be done somewhere other than here.”

“What about
Deb’s
?”

“Too many cops. We need to talk openly. You’re also probably going to need a drink or two for this and we’re on duty.”

“I know a ‘Rican spot that’s perfect. Well, I wouldn’t send you down there alone, but with me, you are
en buenas manos
. Safe in my hands, partner.”

I let Manny drive and he took us into a neighborhood I’d never been in before. Clearly Puerto Rican. Once we got there, Manny’s body stance and language shifted slightly. The homeboy had gotten out, but was still a homeboy nonetheless. I had never felt before that my life was in my partner’s hands as much as that moment. Alone, I’d have never made it back to familiar streets unharmed, of that I was sure. But I trusted Manny.

He slipped into an alleyway and then quickly pulled the Charger left and into a gravel spot with no markings and the smell of sweet cooking pork in the air.

“Back entrance,” Manny said, swaggering.

‘Rican.

I nodded, feeling that white-and-way-the-hell-outta-place thing. Almost like my whole body had swelled and made me look gargantuan and on display.

We entered a dark room, made significantly worse by our sun blindness. As my eyes adjusted I realized the place was maybe half the size of our small squad room.

Manny went straight for a booth and lifted his head to the brown-skinned, waifish girl behind the bar who returned the gesture. She appeared at our table with two sweating bottles of
Dos Equis
ambers.

“Gracias, mija,” Manny said, showing those
love ya
teeth.

“De nada, Manolo. Hola, Mac.”

My surprise was evident.

“Manny, he talk about you. Good stuff. Good man. You’re welcome here any time, sexissimo.” And the gorgeously plain bartender spun and disappeared to a room behind the bar.

“She likes you,” Manny said.