I’d have seen dawn through the east-facing kitchen window if it weren’t sheathed with several layers of cloudy plastic. The only reason my stomach didn’t feel empty was that the sidewalls were touching each other. Coffee was going to take too long to brew. I poured a glass of chilled tomato juice, tasted it, then fetched a bottle and tipped some whiskey into the juice. A “Hail Mary,” they used to call it at the station house: tomato juice and anything you had handy. It went down smooth and warm as a zephyr. I wrapped the shotgun back in its towel and took it back down to the cellar. In my present state I was more likely to get caught with it than use it. As I unlocked my car, the corn moon was fading into the first pink glow of day, as pale as a ball of melting ice. Phoebe and I had missed it.
At the carnival site there were people up and about. They had unhooked the trailers from several of the tractors, which were running, the diesels burbling throatily in the cool air. I went to Pop’s camper, tapped on the little porthole window, and went in. He was awake now, sunk in the chair, looking disheveled. No sign of Nicole. Moses said, “I had to tell him.”
“What’re you doing here?” Pop rasped. “Thought you were quits.”
“What’s going on out there?” I asked.
“Some of the crew found out about Nicole, too,” said Moses. “It’s the last straw for them. It’s personal now. They figure to go into town for a confrontation.”
“When?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I tried to talk sense to ’em,” Pop said. “I ain’t got the energy to fight it.”
“And there’s this, too.” Maxwell handed over the morning’s Herald. “Page ten, I think.”
It was page ten, but it wasn’t a report about my discharging my weapon, or being rousted last night, or someone burglarizing my place; hardly big city news. Young Scoop Piazza had filed his story, which appeared under the headline “Sleuth at Odds With Cops in Carny Slay.”
Great, that would stoke the fires. But my biggest concern at the moment was for Nicole. I put the paper aside. I motioned to Maxwell, and he and I walked outside together. The sun was fully up now, Friday morning traffic beginning to stream along both sides of the river, which reflected pink cotton-candy clouds. I said, “Can you talk to Pop again? Get him to delay signing the show over to Rag Tyme?”
“I don’t know as I’ve got any bite. Seems like common sense doesn’t matter no more. I tried it with them and got nowhere.” He nodded at the dozen or so carnies gathered around the trucks.
“Tell you what—if you work on Pop, I’ll give them a try.”
He plucked at his little soul patch. “All right, let’s give it a go.”
Which I did, starting with my firsthand knowledge that the cops weren’t in a jolly mood and that a clash with the locals wouldn’t do Pop or any of them any good. It might result in jail or the hospital—or even, I thought but didn’t say, the morgue. “If someone has taken Nicole, I’m going to try to get her back safely. But touching off a war isn’t going to help her. It might put her deeper in hurt.”
“Why?” Tito Alvarez said. “You know who’s took her?”
“I can’t say just yet, but I’ve got some ideas. It’d be a help if you could give me a few hours.”
Alvarez and Red Fogarty exchanged a look, and Fogarty signed
something to him. “Okay, man,” Alvarez said, “we’ll give it till three o’clock. After that, shit, if Nicole ain’t here, I don’t think we gonna be able to hold anyone back.”
“And maybe we won’t want to,” I said.
Fogarty signed something else with his big, quick-moving hands. I looked at Alvarez for a translation, and he mustered a grin. “He says you said ‘we.’”
I didn’t have a lawyer’s coattails to go in under, so I just gave my name to the woman who answered the phone at the courthouse. There was a delay, and the longer it went on, the less I believed it likely that I’d get to speak with the judge. Then a calm voice came on the line. “Yes, Mr. Rasmussen, this is Martin Travani. How can I help you?”
I explained that I wanted to speak with him and would have gone through proper channels, but Fred Meecham had left the case. “Yes, I know,” he said. “Mr. Meecham informed me of his decision last evening. As for the rest, I’m pretty busy here today. You say this is important?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“All right. Then perhaps sooner is better than later.” He mentioned the name of a gentleman’s club downtown and said that he was going to be there for a lunch meeting at noon. “Could we get together beforehand? Say eleven-thirty?”
I told him I’d be there. “And Mr. Rasmussen—it probably goes without saying”—he gave a small, apologetic-sounding laugh—“but the River Club requires a jacket and tie.”
So what did I know? A key question still had to do with Paul Duross. And what about the other officers Danielle Frampton had said sometimes stopped by Viva! off duty? Were there links there? I couldn’t very well go ask anyone at police headquarters. Or could I?
I called there and asked for Jill Loftis. All calls were recorded, so when she came on the line, I said, “Are you going to be away from your desk anytime soon?”
“What do—” She got it. “I have to go down to the motor pool to see if I left my gym bag in a cruiser. Figure I’ll do that now, before I forget.”
She was standing by the entrance to the motor pool garage when I arrived. “Thank you for calling Ed St. Onge last night,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
“It seemed to be in order.”
Her gaze remained inquisitive, so I cut to the chase. “Do you think it’s possible that a police officer, or officers, could be involved with the Flora Nuñez murder? Paul Duross, for instance?”
“You’re still chewing on that?” She sent a quick look around, perhaps warning me that there were other people nearby. In a quiet voice, she asked, “Involved how?”
“I’m not sure. Covering up, possibly; suppressing evidence. Last night someone broke into my house when I wasn’t there. They might’ve been looking for evidence they think I have.”
She glanced around again. From inside the motor pool came the whir of a lug-nut drill. “You better be careful with this,” she said. “People are already angry with you. Duross thinks you’re harassing him.”
“Or maybe he’s nervous because I’m getting close to finding him out.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’ll have to see.”
“Do you have evidence?”
I hesitated. “No. I have to admit that so far, everything is circumstantial.”
She didn’t look happy with any of this. I debated telling her that I was going to Judge Travani with my suspicions, but it would put her in the awkward position of having advance knowledge. She’d already stuck her neck out for me a lot farther than I had any right to expect. She turned toward police headquarters and stopped. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry. All I can say is be damned careful where you go with this.”
I said I would. “Do one more thing for me? And then I promise not to bug you again.”
“What is it?”
“This conversation never happened.”
She looked relieved. She even managed a faint smile. “Are you kidding?”