“The car got rammed from behind, that’s for sure,” the officer continued, “but the blood’s on the ground, not in the vehicle.”
I told him about the three voices and the fight I thought I’d heard, then couldn’t keep from asking, “A lot of blood?”
“It was no nosebleed. We’ll have officers check the tow companies and emergency rooms. See if they’ve heard from him.”
“Will you have somebody stop by his house, too? His wife’s name is Emily.” She was listed as another driver on the policy. I hadn’t heard a woman’s voice on the call, but I wanted to make sure she was okay.
“An officer’s on his way there now.”
I alerted Denny, the shift supervisor, and he had me send a copy of our data to the Tucson PD. Maybe there was something in the taped conversation or the location information that would help them find Mr. Markson.
I kept replaying the sounds and my actions until, like water on hard-packed caliche, they’d worn a thin, deep rut in my mind. Was there anything else I should have done? Should I have called out “Stop! I’m calling the cops!” over the speaker phone when I heard the beating? Would that have mattered to them at all?
Another call came in; a remote door unlock, this time from Albuquerque.
“My baby’s in the car!”
She sounded like she’d been drinking, and I didn’t like the notion of helping her get back behind the wheel.
“How old is your little one?” Keep her calm. Keep her talking.
“Almost eleven.”
I’d have to tell Mad Cow. We may have another candidate in the Dumb Question competition.
“Are you talking about a dog?”
“A teacup poodle. Her name’s Lillet, like the drink, you know?”
I knew. And I bet Mrs. Teacup Poodle Owner had more than a passing acquaintance with the beverage as well. The locked car wouldn’t be a problem, but a drunk driver might be.
“Tell you what. I can get the door open right away, but it’s going to take a while to recode the car before you’ll be able to start it up again.” So it was a lie. Sue me. “Is there a coffee shop or a deli around there somewhere? By the time you’ve finished a big cup of coffee, the car will be all ready to go.”
I clicked the door open and heard the happy mother-and-dog reunion through the headset. She thanked me again, promising to wait at least the “required” thirty minutes before trying to start the car.
The call volume dropped off now that the bars were closed and Denny let me go home a few minutes early. I waved good-bye to Mad Cow, pantomimed “call me” so that we could make plans to get together the next day; then folded into my old pickup and cranked the windows down. Three forty-five in the morning, that shadowed netherworld between the freaks and the regulars. Too late to be out drinking, too early for normal folks to be going to work. I was alone on the road, the late summer warmth of the desert air lulling me to inattention. I coasted right through the stop sign near my house and had to circle back.
I’d signed up with Mind Your Manors house-sitting service not long after the trial ended, and this was the best house ever. A full acre of land between me and the neighbors and only five miles from the HandsOn office in Mesa; it was a fantasy-oasis of a house, with Saltillo tiles, a decent home gym, and a lap pool. Pickings were always better during the summer months: few of Arizona’s snowbirds wanted to stay through the Fourth Circle of Hell that Phoenix became in July. I only had the house for another few weeks. By the middle of October, I’d be vying for the privilege of house-sitting in one of the lousy two-bedroom condos downtown.
Mind Your Manors liked me. I looked good on the application: a former nun, a nondrinker, with an allergy to pet dander. The nun part always got me the best houses, but it was no more true than the rest of the description. Sure, they could have checked out my story, but I guess I looked trustworthy. Shows what they know.
At least I had correctly answered the question on the form about whether I’d ever been convicted of a felony.
I pulled halfway around the U-shaped driveway and was greeted by the hollow-bong welcome of the copper-pipe wind chimes on the front porch. Leaving my bag on the chair inside the front door, I kicked off my shoes to enjoy the momentary chill of the earthen tiles on bare feet.
The house belonged to a couple from Minneapolis. In their late fifties, they still headed the dot-com business they’d started fifteen years ago, but they now took off four months a year to kick back and hit a little ball around Phoenix’s two-hundred-plus golf courses. “We can play a different course every day we’re here!” the wife had said. I lied: I told her how much fun I thought that would be. Lazy, sleep-in mornings and then free weights and an incline bench were more my speed.
Today was supposed to be my cardio day, so I did forty minutes in the lap pool, then a quick hundred sit-ups. I’d go back to the real strength training tomorrow.
After I’d cleaned up, I made a combo plate of spinach, eggs, and ground beef and took the food and a beer out to the patio. Sunrise was still an hour away, but the sky was already fringed with pink behind the Superstition Mountains to the east. I finished the dinner-cum-breakfast, pushed the chair back, and stuck my legs out straight. Like a tough piece of gristle between the teeth, I couldn’t get Markson’s phone call out of my head.
I was no more than a bystander here, but I was taking it personally, as if someone I was talking to on the sidewalk had tripped as they turned away. Had I distracted Markson to the point where he didn’t see the danger of those other two men approaching? Hopefully the cops would find him on the road somewhere, nothing but his pride and his bumper damaged, looking to hitch a ride home.
I woke at noon to a ringing phone.
“I understand that you handled that call from Darren Markson last night,” Nancy Horowitz started.
Nancy supervised the day shift at HandsOn and I had interviewed with her when I first applied for the job. Her teeth had click-clacked with nervous energy while she filled out the paperwork, like a sleeping rabbit dreaming of carrots. Phoenicians are too city-centric to bother with news from Tucson, so neither my name nor my face had registered with her.
“Did the police find him yet?”
“No. They talked to his wife and she says he was supposed to be on his way to a business meeting in New Mexico.”
“Driving there? Does she know if he’s okay?”
“I don’t know.”
I waited through the silence and the clack-clack of rabbit teeth. So far I hadn’t heard a good enough reason for Nancy to call me on my day off.
“The Tucson PD asked if you could drive down to talk to them. Help explain what you saw on the screen when the call came in…go over the recorded conversation with them.” Clickety-click.
Did they know about my second—illegal—call to the car? How would they? I hadn’t recorded it. Nancy’s voice didn’t give anything away.
“When?”
“Today. I know it’s your day off…”
I thought I’d put Tucson behind me.
“You’re supposed to contact a Detective Deke Treadwell,” she continued.
Shit. Just hearing the name pulled me closer to the past than I wanted to be. He was my father’s old partner and they’d spent more time together than any two heterosexual guys ought to. After five eight-hour shifts a week, they fished Peña Blanca Lake together for stripers, smallies, and wahoo, and practiced their fire-extinguishing skills every weekend barbecuing ribs and beer-soaked chicken in the backyard. Treadwell knew every detail about what had happened. And probably where to lay the blame.
“I have a root canal scheduled.”
“Take Monday as a comp day,” she said, clicking for punctuation. “There’s one other thing.”
As if Treadwell wasn’t bad enough.
“Mrs. Markson wants to meet with you, too. She wants to hear the recording.”
Click click click.