Sugar and Spite (5 page)

The answer to that question was given the moment she pulled into the spot she had vacated hours before, behind Polly’s Lexus. Harry Biddle came bouncing out of his trailer with an energy she hadn’t seen him demonstrate before. He was minus the undershirt, but the baggy boxer shorts and surgically attached beer can were still in place.

“I called the cops on your boyfriend, there,” he said.

“Yeah, you’re a real credit to your community… asshole,” she muttered as she hurried past him.

“I told them he was shooting off fireworks, and those hills as dry as kindling.” He waved a flabby arm toward the foothills, where wild chaparral was waist high and thirsty from lack of rainfall.

“Is that what you told the cops on the phone,” she asked. “That somebody was lighting firecrackers?”

“Yeah, but I said it sounded more like cherry bombs to me. And I told them about him running around out here naked.”

“Naked?”

“As a jaybird.”

Savannah didn’t know what to say to that. The mental picture nearly overloaded her brain circuits. She left Harry Biddle, his boxers and beer behind, and hurried up to Dirk’s trailer. The door was ajar a couple of inches. A dim gold light came through the opening and cut a line across the dark porch.

Carefully, hand on her Beretta, which was in a shoulder holster beneath her jacket, she climbed the three wooden steps to the door.

“Dirk? It’s me, Van. I’m coming in.”

No point in charging into a crime scene unannounced. No point in spooking a guy who had sounded pretty shook on the phone less than ten minutes ago.

When she didn’t hear an answer, she pulled the Beretta from its holster with her right hand and held it, pointed down-ward, beside her thigh. She eased the door open a few inches with her left hand.

“Hey, buddy. I’m here. Where are you?”

She didn’t see him at first. She saw Polly.

The body was lying sprawled on the floor in front of the sofa. The copious amount of blood puddled on the linoleum and the vacant stare in her glassy eyes told Savannah immediately that Dirk was right. Polly Coulter wasn’t hurt; she was very dead.

When Savannah opened the door the rest of the way and stepped inside, she saw Dirk. And the sight made her knees grow weak.

He was sitting on the floor about six feet from Polly’s body. As Mr. Biddle had said, Dirk was naked, his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. His head was down, and she couldn’t see his face, but his hair was wet and plastered to his scalp in dark strands. He was shivering violently.

As Savannah reholstered her gun and took a few steps toward him, he looked up, as though realizing for the first time she was there. His eyes were red and puffy, and they had a lost, frightened look. Savannah recognized the look. It was the one human beings wore when visited by sudden tragedy.

She hurried across the room and dropped to her knees beside him. When she placed her hands on his shoulders, she was shocked to feel how cold and clammy his skin was. And slick… as though he had some kind of soap on him.

“Th-thanks for… coming,” he said through chattering teeth. “I didn’t know who else to…”

“Don’t be silly. Of course you should call me. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

He seemed surprised at her question, as though it hadn’t occurred to him to check. Unwrapping his arms, he looked down at his bare chest. So did she.

It was covered with blood. His arms and hands were smeared with the dark red gore as well.

“Are you shot?” Savannah said, as she quickly checked his skin for anything resembling an entrance wound. But she found nothing.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think so.” He glanced over at Polly and shuddered. “It’s hers. I… I was holding her, you know, when she…”

“When she was shot?”

“When she died.”

“Oh, okay.”

With her hands on his shoulders, she could feel his cold, damp gooseflesh, and his shaking seemed to vibrate through her own body. She was afraid he might go into shock if he didn’t get warm.

“Wait right there,” she said. “I’ll be back in a second. Okay?”

He nodded.

She jumped up from the floor and made her way through the tiny kitchen to the equally tiny bedroom in the back of the trailer.

As she grabbed his ancient, tattered bathrobe off its hook on the wall beside his bed, she was aware of a sound… the spraying of the shower, going full blast.

She stepped into the bathroom and reached for the handle, intending to turn it off. Then she reconsidered and left it running.

Don’t disturb anything
, a quiet, logical voice told her, even as she mentally registered the explanation for Dirk’s wet hair and soap-slick, nude body.
This isn’t Dirk’s trailer anymore
, the former-cop voice cautioned.
It’s a crime scene. Worse, a homicide scene.

She took the robe into the living room and draped it over his shoulders. “Can you stand up, darlin’?” she said, in the same tone she would have used with an injured, frightened child.

Again, he nodded, and she supported him under the elbow as he rose from the floor and stood on trembling legs. “Here,” she said, easing his arms into the robe. “Let’s get you wrapped up, kiddo. You’re colder than a mackerel.” She pulled the terry cloth tight around him and tied the belt in front. “There ya go. Now, come over here and set yourself down.

Next to a fold-down table was a molded plastic lawn chair… Dirk’s idea of practical dining equipment. She pushed him into it and dragged its mate next to his and sat down. “Tell me what happened,” she said, “but make it snappy. Your favorite neighbor has already ratted you out to 911. The cops are on their way, and you’ve gotta get a call in before they arrive.”

“Harry called it in?”

“He told them you were shooting off cherry bombs, so they probably aren’t exactly burning the wind to get here. We’ve got a minute or two. How did that happen?” She nodded toward Polly’s still figure without looking in her direction. Long ago, she had discovered that corpses you know are always harder to view than those of total strangers. Even after years of seeing things that made her old for her age, Savannah had never gotten over the shocking difference between a live body and a dead one. In moments… such an astonishing transformation. It always made her feel her own mortality.

“Was it an accident?” she asked, giving him the benefit of the doubt, afraid of what she was about to hear.

“No, I don’t think so. Somebody broke in while I was in the shower.”

“Broke in?” Savannah glanced around. No open windows and the door didn’t appear to have been forced or the lock jimmied. Maybe from the outside.

“Yeah, or she let them in. I don’t know.” His teeth had stopped chattering, and his eyes were losing their glazed look. She looked down at his feet and hands; they were turning from grayish blue to a normal flesh color.

“You were in the shower.”

“Yeah. We’d had an argument, and I told her I was going to hose down and go to bed… that she’d better be gone by the time I got outta the shower.”

“What did you fight about?”

He shrugged and shook his head. “What did we always fight about. Stupid shit. Her bummin’ money off me all the time, giving me some sob story about how broke she is.”

“So, you went into the shower and…?”

“I was in there a couple of minutes, soaping up, washing my hair, when I heard a bang.”

“The gun?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t sure that was what it was, with the shower running on my head, you know. Anyway, I ran out here to see what was goin’ on, and I ran right into the guy.”

“What guy?”

“Some dude standing about right there…” He pointed to a spot on the floor about four feet from where Polly’s body lay. “He had my weapon in his hand and was pointing it at Polly. She was… she was down there, where she’s at now.”

Savannah nodded. “Did you recognize him? Anybody you know?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t get that good a look at him, before I jumped him.”

“You tackled him?”

“Yeah. He smacked me on the head with the gun, but I got it away from him.”

“But you couldn’t hold him with it?”

Dirk shook his head. “Naw, my hand was wet and soapy and I dropped the damned thing. He bolted out the door. By the time I picked it up again and chased him, he was gone.”

“You chased him outside?”

“Yeah, but he was gone. I didn’t even see which way he went.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Your old geezer neighbor said you were running around in the altogether. Come to think of it, he told the cops that, too. You’d better call this in, buddy, before they get here.”

Dirk glanced over at Polly, at the pool of blood around her, and he shuddered. “It looks bad, huh, Van?”

His eyes looked directly into hers. She saw and felt his fear. She wanted to say something to allay his concerns. But she and Dirk had always shot straight with each other in times of trouble. This wasn’t the time to start lying to him, no matter how altruistic her reasons.

“It looks bad, buddy. She’s shot with your gun, in your trailer. You’ve got her blood all over you. You say you were arguing right before, and you’ve got nosy neighbors only a few feet away who probably heard you. You’re in deep, pal. Right up to your gills.” She reached for the cell phone, sitting on top of the television, and handed it to him. “You’d better make that call.”

Dirk and Savannah sat across from each other at the no-frills table in the no-frills interrogation room in the San Carmelita Police Station. The cubicle-sized enclosure had been designed to give the invited “guests” of the SCPD that claustrophobic, we-got-you-now-sucker feeling. And it was most effective. With nothing to look at but the gray paint on the walls, nothing to sit on but the gray aluminum folding chairs, and the temperature raised to at least eighty-five degrees, the occupants had that snug, cozy feeling usually associated with being inside a pressure cooker.

Dirk was looking a bit better, Savannah noted with a sense of relief. At least he had some color in his face, his hair was dry, and he was dressed in his usual past-its-prime polo shirt, jeans, and sneakers. He seemed less vulnerable… though, from the haunted look in his eyes, she suspected that wasn’t altogether true.

“I can’t believe they put you in the sweat tank,” she said, drumming her fingertips on the gouged surface of the table. “I mean, I’m persona non grata around this place, but you… you’re still family, for cryin’ out loud.”

Dirk reached beneath the table and yanked the wire off the tiny microphone installed there. “Yeah, you’d think we could talk this over at Joe’s Bar. At least I could get bombed there. Boy, do I feel like it.”

“We’ll… ah… raise your spirits later, buddy. Just give them what they want and we’ll get outta here. Be careful though. Don’t let ‘em hang you out to dry.”

Dirk cleared his throat and stood, trying to see out the tiny window in the door. “What do you suppose they’re doing out there?”

“Fighting, like a pack of jackals, over who gets to pick your bones.”

He turned back to her, one eyebrow quirked. “Thanks. I knew there was some reason why I made them let you in here.”

“I meant to ask—how did you do that?”

“I told them I wanted either you or a lawyer.”

“I’m flattered… I guess.”

“Don’t be. I like lawyers even less than I like doctors.”

He sighed and dropped back onto his chair, which complained with a rusty, grinding sound.

“If that chair breaks and dumps you on your rear, you could sue the city for a wrenched heinie,” Savannah said brightly. Too brightly.

Again he gave her a rueful not-quite grin. “Stop trying to cheer me up, okay? It ain’t cuttin’ it.”

She nodded. “Gotcha.” Instantly, she turned serious. “What are you going to tell them when they ask you what—”

The door swung open and Lieutenant Quince Jeffries marched into the “tank.” Jeffries was a company man all the way. Three-piece charcoal suit, thick, prematurely silver hair slicked back in a GQ do, and ramrod posture that would make a Marine look like a slouch.

Savannah had always suspected that a three-feet-long steel ramrod had been surgically implanted in his colon, forever stiffening his posture and detrimentally affecting his personality. Spending time with Lieutenant Jeffries was no afternoon in the park playing Frisbee and barbecuing ribs.