The Killing of Bobbi Lomax (2 page)

‘“Hold your tongue!” said the Queen, turning purple.

‘“I won’t!” said Alice.

‘“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

‘“Who cares for you?” said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”’

His head rested on her swollen stomach. It was a good place to be. She stroked his hair as he read. He loved being all the characters.

‘He kicked! Did you feel it, Clark?’

‘No.’ He looked up at her as she wriggled back up the bed toward the headrest. She almost blended in with the walls. Everything was beige and brown and tangerine. He followed her, until they were both leant against the headboard. At the foot of the room’s huge palatial bed, their toddler, Jack, played with colored wooden blocks, oblivious to Wonderland and the advent of a sibling. Edie put Clark’s hand on her stomach.

‘And again.’

‘Ssssh, let me feel.’

He waited. Nothing. ‘I told you he’d like it, didn’t I?’

‘You don’t know it’s a boy. It might be a girl.’

‘No, it’s a boy. And he’ll be a writer.’

‘A writer? Maybe a professor?’ said Edie.

‘Sure, better job security I guess.’

A knock on the door. The sitter. The usual instructions done, they were out and down the dark, narrow corridor, towards the elevator, Clark carrying his attaché case with him. Edie squeezed right up next to him. Edie had never been out of Canyon County before and he wanted to show her a good time. But first, business. And then they’d be able to splash on an upgraded room, a swanky restaurant and maybe even a show.

Downstairs, Edie stood amazed, soaking it all in. It was so noisy. So bright.

‘We’ll go on the slots later. After dinner.’

‘Do you think we should?’ Her teeth held onto her bottom lip.

‘When in Vegas.’

She smiled, then suddenly gripped his arm and sunk into his side as if trying to make herself invisible.

‘You OK?’

She peeked out around him. ‘I thought I saw Disciple Arbuthnot’s wife.’

‘Really? Well, if we see anyone from Mission, here of all places, as long as they keep our secret we’ll keep theirs. Anyway, it’s business,’ he rattled the attaché case. ‘Unavoidable – not my fault the dealer’s in Vegas.’

‘I got us a surprise, Clark.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Clark loathed surprises.

‘I called the concierge while you were sleeping.’

‘You did? What is it?’

‘That would be telling. You’ll see later. I almost forgot you had an appointment.’

‘See, you are having a good time despite the fact we’re in Sin City.’

She watched the room full of people, money being lost and won, and smiled, reluctant to admit he was right.

‘Just be sure, when we get back, you don’t let slip where we’ve been. Not to anyone, especially your sister, or your folks.’

‘I won’t.’

It was a short walk across the casino floor and through the casino complex to the dealer’s. He’d persuaded Edie to stop at a dress store en route, and left her there. He preferred to do business without an audience. A few minutes early, he wandered around the store. It was full to bursting with all kinds of original movie posters, sporting and music memorabilia, the usual slew of Elvis photos, most of which showed him in the Vegas years: overweight, clammy and in a clingy white spangled catsuit. Here, at the back of the store, was a whole different world. It was like he’d stepped into an Upper East Side old-school gentleman’s club, all mahogany panels and tan leather Chesterfields. The front of the store, the Elvis and friends section, was full of tourists, anxious to grab a bit of Vegas, a tacky slice of history to take home, something, anything, for twenty bucks. Back here there wasn’t anything less than two hundred. Clark gazed in through the mesh of an oversized bookcase. It was locked. Name after famous literary name crammed its shelves. Beside it, a small reading table. He rested his attaché case on it. Snapped it open. As he did so, Dougie Wild, the store owner, larded into view, puffing on a huge unlit stogie.

‘Hey, you must be Cliff.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Dougie Wild grabbed Clark’s hand and shook it. Hard. ‘Call me Dougie. You could have just sent these. I’ve a good courier, very reliable, the rest are all crooks. I’ll give you his details.’ Dougie looked Clark up and down. ‘Vegas is a long way across the desert.’

‘It’s good to get out of town, Dougie.’ Clark would have preferred to call him sir or Mr Wild.

‘Good to see who you’re dealing with, huh? I’m the same.’

Clark smiled, nodded.

‘It’s good to look ’em in the eye.’

Dougie took a drag on his huge cigar, seemingly unaware it was unlit. ‘What you got for me, then, son?’ He looked down at the writing desk where Clark had laid out the books, now unwrapped from their protective covers. Silently puffing, Dougie picked each one up and scrutinized it: spine, binding, inside, back cover, frontispiece, random pages. All of it. Clark knew better than to speak. ‘Not bad, not bad at all. Do you ever get any signed copies? Dedicated?’

‘Novels?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Not really. They’re not really big on fiction . . . it’s not really encouraged.’

‘Oh yeah, I forgot. What’s the Faith big on then, besides Bibles?’

‘Religious documents, manuscripts, hymn books, prayer books – all that kind of stuff.’

‘Sounds kinda dull.’

‘Hence, I’m selling here not there.’

‘Sure, I understand. I remember reading that guy – their Supreme Leader – has a secret vault stuffed full of documents no one’s ever seen. Doesn’t let anyone in. More secrets than the Vatican.’

‘So I hear.’

‘Makes you wonder what they’re hiding, doesn’t it?’

Clark spotted Edie pacing up and down outside. ‘How much, Dougie, for the books?’

‘Four fifty.’

‘Like you said, Dougie, we’re a long way across the desert.’

Dougie followed Clark’s gaze out the window to Edie. She waved at them, smiling, friendly. Dougie waved back. Winked at Clark. ‘Having fun, ain’t ya, son?’

‘Seven hundred. They’re all first editions, Dougie. They’re worth a good eighteen hundred dollars retail.’

‘You wanna get retail on ’em, son, then you need to go buy yourself a store.’ Dougie took out a wad of cash, and with a dramatic flourish slowly and loudly counted $450 on top of the books.

Clark didn’t touch it. Instead, he turned back to the bookcase. ‘Let’s say five hundred — to mark our new relationship — and I’ll take that Poe. First edition, I’m assuming.’

Dougie balked, emitting a strange grunting sound through the cigar. ‘That’s worth five hundred.’

‘Retail.’

Dougie smiled. Touché. ‘Rob a man, why don’t you?’ He took a bunch of keys from his pants pocket and moved toward the cabinet.

As Edie and Clark moved away from the store, hand in hand, the Poe stashed safely in the attaché case and the five hundred, in fifties, buried in his wallet, a voice called out behind them. Clark turned. Dougie was standing at the door rejigging a display case. ‘Hey Cliff, this is Vegas – don’t forget, everything that glitters isn’t gold!’

Clark looked back, nodded, smiled. ‘See you again, Dougie.’

Edie looked up at him. ‘Why’s he calling you Cliff?’

Clark shrugged. ‘Who knows what he’s got in that cigar.’

Inside the auditorium, the curtain still down, the sound of a happy holiday crowd eager to have even more fun. Clark looked at the sign at the side of the stage:
The Strange Cabinet of Dr Marvin Mesmer
. He turned to Edie. ‘Some surprise. A magician?’

‘I thought it looked like fun. You like magic don’t you, Clark?’

Clark raised his eyebrows at her. He had been doing magic tricks since he was about three. Watching someone else doing them, probably badly, was not his idea of fun. ‘OK, but if it’s no good we’re leaving in the break.’

‘There isn’t a break,’ said Edie. ‘It’s eighty minutes straight through.’

Clark rolled his eyes, burrowed down into his seat. At least he might be able to catch up on his sleep. It had been a real long drive. The sound of barking woke him up. Human barking. Up on the stage a group of volunteers were being activated by Dr Mesmer. Not so much a magician, but a hypnotist. Judging by the raucous reaction from the crowd, these were their friends up on stage. Clark stared open-mouthed at the spectacle. He watched Mesmer as he touched each volunteer to activate them, connecting with them as he stared into their eyes, enforcing ideas and suggestions with his gentle but authoritative tone which Clark assumed must be peppered with control words. Watched him until two grown men were waltzing beautifully together, joining the woman on all fours, barking, scurrying, snarling as another man and woman swam furiously away from an imaginary shark while the theme tune from
Jaws
played loudly in the background. Clark leaned in towards Edie. Hopefully she was enjoying it. She didn’t answer him. Or move when he touched her. Clark shook his head, bemused. Edie was under Mesmer’s spell. Whatever that spell was, Clark was amazed that it wasn’t a sham. Edie was suggestible. An easier mark. At least he wasn’t under. Or was he?

Marty watched as the ambulance, siren on, edged its way out through the hastily abandoned cruisers and fire trucks and past the gathering news crews. Al was always better with victims than he was. Hell, Al was better with everyone than he was. Probably why he was still married to wife number one despite the onslaught of four kids and the recent arrival of a high-maintenance mother-in-law from Puerto Rico.

‘Hey, Detective, you need this?’ Whittaker from the crime lab was a few feet away from him holding out a bunch of evidence bags and a pair of oversized tweezers in the familiar sealed baggie.

‘I know beauticians get through less tweezers than this,’ said Marty.

‘Yeah, and they make more money.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Marty looked around. The whole street was buzzing now with cops, fire guys. And there were at least ten times as many gawkers. And hacks. Bad news travels fast. Through the noise of all the engines and fire-truck pumps he could hear the hacks calling his name. He ignored them.

Whittaker handed him the kit. ‘Me and the boys were still over at the Gudsen site when we got the call. We’re gonna be there ’til at least tomorrow. That thing sure did its job alright.’

‘The nail bomb?’

Whittaker nodded slowly. ‘Yep.’ He didn’t have to explain its horrors. Marty had been the first detective on the scene yesterday. Al was late in. He’d gone to the dentist. Lucky him. The bomb had gone off in the corridor, right at the entrance to Gudsen’s new office, blown him from one side of it to the other. The Forsythe Building was old. Practically ancient for this town. Mid-Victorian. Its strong thick walls had ensured the explosion’s shockwaves and shrapnel had nowhere to go but back in on itself and whatever poor fucker was in the vicinity. In that space it was like the bomb was a boomerang, it exploded out and then came right back in again. Gudsen didn’t stand a chance. And whoever planted the bomb didn’t want him to. Nails in a bomb aren’t decoration. They’re there to kill. Like switchblades traveling at 900 mph. He remembered Big Tex from the bomb squad telling him that yesterday. Tex loved bombs, talked about them as if they were living breathing things. He could wax lyrical on their beauty for hours. Tex’s guys had swept the rest of the building a couple of times before giving it the all-clear. That was before they had got the Bobbi Lomax call and had to take off over there.

One of the nails had gone right through Gudsen’s eye, the explosion forcing it into his brain. The ME said he’d died within seconds. Not quick enough, thought Marty, the pain would have been unbearable. Like Bobbi Lomax, Peter Gudsen must have unwittingly tucked the white shoe-box bomb, all tied up with red gift ribbon, into his chest. A fatal move. There’d been no nails in the Bobbi Lomax bomb, close proximity had been enough to kill her. No nails in Houseman’s either by the looks of it. The guy was lucky to survive this, thought Marty, particularly if he’d been in the car with it when it exploded. A nail bomb inside a car? Instant death. If that’s even Houseman. Guy’s got nine lives, if so. When they’d moved him onto the stretcher, Marty had noticed them check for the victim’s wallet, for ID. There wasn’t one. Maybe it was in his car.

The nails told Marty one thing. Someone hated Peter Gudsen more than they hated Bobbi Lomax and Houseman. Lomax had a husband. Things in the Lomax household had been strained. Financial meltdown, disintegrating business, maybe even bankruptcy on the cards. And his business partner, ex-business partner, was Gudsen. Marty smiled. Too neat, too easy, too obvious. Especially if you add in Houseman and his claims about Hartman. Marty had spoken to Arnold Lomax yesterday, wasn’t your typical wife killer, all crocodile tears and blubbed regrets. His tears seemed genuine. But, even so, Marty told him not to leave town. Just to stay somewhere a bomber might not find him, with a random cousin or something. He’d also warned him that with Gudsen and Bobbi Lomax both dead it was probably a wise idea to tell his family, friends and colleagues to get out of town, change their patterns of behavior and generally use extreme caution. So, was this Houseman guy another friend or associate of Lomax? If he was, he obviously didn’t get the get-out-of-town-now memo.

Marty followed a trail of what looked like confetti, right up to the trunk of the car, the lid blown clean off. He peered in. A bunch of papers, charred and burned, floated in enough water for a child’s paddling pool. Documents dealer? Wasn’t that what Al had said? Strange place to put your documents, particularly if they were valuable. And surely they would be if you were a documents dealer. People were dumb. What if someone rear-ended you? ‘Hey Whittaker, get some pictures of this for me, would ya?’

‘Sure.’

Whittaker moved slowly, cautiously, over from where he was picking up short lengths of wire and other bomb fragments strewn across the pavement. Just as Marty had, he instinctively followed the main paper trail from the centre of the street to the trunk. Shot off a few of the interior. ‘I can’t get much in there, Mart, not with all that water. Don’t take anything out of there, will you? Marty shot him his how-dumb-do-you-think-I-look glare. Whittaker smiled, raised his eyebrows: ‘I’ll have the car taken to the Shed as quick as I can. I’ll have to drain the water all out of there, see what we got. I don’t want to destroy anything the water hasn’t already.’

‘Thanks.’ Marty bent down, tweezered up a piece of the confetti, no bigger than a thumbnail. He looked at it. Charred around the edges, and on it, handwriting in a sepia-colored ink. ‘What do you think this is?’ He pushed it towards Whittaker’s nose.

Whittaker peered at it. ‘Old letter or something. See how brown the ink is, rusty-looking?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That fancy writing looks like it’s a good century old, at least. Might even be older than the city.’ He laughed and shook his head at the thought.

Paper older than a city, stored in the trunk of a sports car. Now, that was asking for trouble. Water and paper, never a good mix past the pulping stage. ‘Shit,’ Marty mumbled to himself as the water reminded him of something. He shouted over to a uniformed cop standing guard near the crime guys’ truck. ‘Hey! Get on the radio, right now. Get someone from the City on the line. I need to shut down the block, the sewer. Shut off everyone’s water.’ The kid looked confused. ‘This block. The sewer, go through dispatch. Quick! Before our evidence gets washed the other side of the canyon.’

Right then, before Marty had time to dodge it, a news camera was pushed in his face and a microphone shoved towards his mouth and the familiar female voice said urgently, ‘With a third victim, the city in fear, its people need answers. Do you have any answers, Detective?’ And, before he could even think of answering her, ‘Are you losing control of this case, Detective Sinclair?’

‘Get off my crime scene, Patricia. If you want answers, justice, it’s best you don’t destroy the evidence.’

The microphone seemed to be almost in his mouth now and then it was gone. And just as quickly as she’d appeared, Patricia Kent also disappeared, followed by her cameraman, to where, right at the edge of the cordon, the Sheriff had materialized. Marty caught it, just a sleight of hand as a man in a black suit pressed a sheet of paper into the Sheriff’s pocket as, around them, a clutch of advisors and City Hall hangers-on pushed forward. Fast approaching them a swarm of hacks, cameras and pens ready, desperate for any broadcastable or printable clue. Marty didn’t fully see the face, just enough of the retreating shoulder and slack jawline to recognise the man in the black suit as Duncan Hemslow, the Faith’s press officer.

Marty went back to work. A few minutes later he noticed the Sheriff, flanked by the Captain, hold aloft the thick computer printout with the names of all the investors in Lomax’s soon-to-be defunct property company. All three thousand of them. When Marty had left the precinct, less than thirty minutes ago, that very same printout was sat on top of his desk. Jesus. On the wind he heard the Sheriff say that these would be their first suspects. Marty wondered if that was what Hemslow’s note had said, or if the Sheriff had come to that conclusion all on his own. If the latter, it was a good thing the Sheriff got voted in, because if he’d been relying on his detective skills he wouldn’t be running security in a mall. And, thought Marty, relieved, if you get voted in, at least you can get voted out.

Marty’s pager beeped, damn thing. He popped it out of his belt so he could read it better. He scrolled across the screen two slow words at a time.