AFTER A LONG, RESTLESS NIGHT, Gunner started the next day with a 7 a.m. phone call to Harbor UCLA to check on Zina Curry. He was due to pick up the girl’s grandparents from the airport in a little over two hours and was praying he could greet them with the news she was still alive.
The nurse who answered the phone put him on hold for several minutes, a stretch of deadly silence he used to brace himself for the worst, but the word he ultimately received was all good. Zina had indeed survived the night. She had yet to regain consciousness but had suffered no setbacks, and her vital signs—for now, at least—were stable.
Encouraged, Gunner next placed a call to Jeff Luckman, seeking status of the LAPD’s investigation into the murder-suicide his cousin had allegedly committed. This time, precisely what he thought might happen did: he was forced to leave Luckman a message when his call went straight through to voicemail. He knew Daniel Curry wouldn’t like it, his having nothing new to report from the police, but Gunner figured that was soon to be Luckman’s problem, not his.
He grabbed an egg sandwich and tall coffee at a burger stand near the house and headed out to Lilly Tennell’s crib above the Deuce to pick up her car. Befitting a woman of her girth and general lack of humility, Lilly’s ride was a late-model Chevy Tahoe that resembled a rolling battleship painted black, and as much as Gunner detested such monstrosities, it was far better suited to the duties of an airport taxi than his trunkless, two-seater Cobra. Kelly DeCharme couldn’t drive a stick, ruling out swapping cars with her, so he’d asked to borrow Lilly’s SUV last night, knowing full well he wouldn’t like her conditions.
“Don’t bring it back ’less it’s got a full tank,” she told him as he was pulling the car out of the Deuce’s back lot. Still dressed for bed, head festooned with orange curlers, she was wearing the biggest terrycloth bathrobe Gunner had ever seen.
“But it’s only got a half-tank now.”
“I want it washed and waxed, too,” Lilly said, as deaf to his complaints as a potted plant.
He drove off in disgust before she could up the ante any further.
Del’s parents insisted on being driven directly to the hospital. They both looked like they hadn’t slept in days, and Gunner suggested it might be more wise for Corinne Curry to get some rest at their Inglewood hotel while he drove her husband out to Harbor UCLA alone, but neither of them would hear of it. When their granddaughter regained consciousness—as they were determined God in all his mercy would see to it she did—they were both going to be there for the girl, right at her bedside. If they had to eat and sleep on the floor of her room for the next thirty days, that’s what they were going to do.
“You can take me to the hotel later,” Daniel Curry said. “I’ll get us checked in, then go back to the hospital after I’ve rented a car.”
He was doing most of the talking; Del’s mother, Corinne, had very little to say to Gunner that a dull-eyed scowl could not convey. A tall, arch-backed woman who almost matched her husband pound for pound, she sat in the Tahoe’s passenger seat and stared at the road ahead like something that had done her wrong. Daniel Curry sat in the back, using the car’s rearview mirror as a cudgel to demand Gunner’s undivided attention.
“I’d like to have the names and phone numbers of the policemen you’ve been talking to,” he said. His square jaw was set such that his lips barely moved when he spoke.
Gunner was only surprised that the directive had been this long in coming. He had no sooner found his uncle and Corinne Curry in the airport baggage area than Daniel Curry had asked him what he’d heard so far from the police. Answering the question with what essentially boiled down to one word—nothing—had achieved the seemingly impossible in making the Currys even more irate with Gunner than they already were.
“Of course. And I’ll be happy to let you deal with them from here, if that’s what you want. Just know I’m not the problem. They aren’t likely to be any more responsive to you than they have been to me.”
“We’ll see.”
“Yes, sir.”
They arrived at the hospital to find Zina Curry trapped in time, teetering on the same precipice between life and death she had been on for almost twenty-four hours now. Her head wrapped in layers of white gauze, she lay in her bed in the ICU as still as a photograph, the focal point of an array of machines watching over her like a grieving mother. The nurse at the desk said she was doing well, the standard euphemism for “not dead yet,” and put in a call to the doctor on duty with little delay. The doctor only taxed the Currys’ patience ten minutes before showing herself, a pretty young Asian woman in a white frock who could have passed through a cracked door without turning to one side.
As the next of kin who had signed all of Zina’s paperwork, Gunner greeted her first. Her name was Carol Low. Gunner introduced her to Daniel and Corinne Curry and then stepped to one side, smart enough to know he had just served his uncle’s purpose and his assistance would no longer be required. The Currys proceeded to pepper Low with questions as Gunner followed their conversation in silence, tuning out everything but the most salient information Low had to offer.
Aside from the brighter outlook Low and Zina’s surgeon now had for the girl’s survival, he didn’t learn a whole lot that was new. It would still be another day or two before the cerebral edema—the swelling in Zina’s brain—receded enough for her to regain consciousness, and only then would it be possible to ascertain how critical her injuries truly were. Paralysis, loss of memory, limited motor function and speech—or a total and complete recovery—all were possibilities for Zina that could not yet be ruled out.
His wife sobbing effusively by his side, Daniel Curry absorbed it all with the stone-faced civility of a monk, liking not a word of what he was hearing but showing Low the courtesy of accepting it. The Currys thanked the doctor for her time and set her free, but only after she’d been made to understand that they were in charge of their granddaughter’s care now, not Gunner, and that they intended to be within arm’s reach of Zina Curry from this point forward, hospital regulations be damned.
Low turned to Gunner for counsel: should she insist these people adhere to the restrictions of the ICU or let them do as they pleased? By way of an answer, Gunner threw up his hands, palms out, reminding Low he’d been stripped of any rights here beyond those of a shadow on the wall.
Low bid them all a good morning and hurried off.
Just as he’d told Kelly DeCharme he would, Gunner made his first order of official business Tuesday another visit with Eric Woods.
Unlike Tyrecee Abbott and Samuel Evans, Woods had never forced Gunner to ask twice for an interview. Allegedly Stowe’s closest friend, the twenty-five-year-old had known Kelly DeCharme’s client since elementary school, and today he agreed to speak with Gunner between serving customers at Empire Auto Parts, where he and Stowe had only weeks ago worked side by side.
The parking lot of the shop on Central and 18th was the usual open-air garage for amateur mechanics such places always were. Gunner made his appearance there just before noon. Men in T-shirts and greasy overalls were folded over the grilles and front fenders of pickup trucks and beaters, lowriders and cargo vans, performing whatever surgeries were required beneath the raised hoods of their vehicles. Gunner pulled Lilly’s Tahoe into a space alongside a tricked-out tangerine-colored Honda Civic SI, its owner and a uniformed store employee testing an air filter for fit in the car’s engine bay. The nametag on the uniformed man’s shirt was out of his view, but Gunner took a shot anyway: “Eric?”
Woods turned. He was diminutive at five-foot-five in his stockinged feet, his pale brown face dotted with freckles.
“Aaron Gunner. We spoke earlier this morning?”
“Oh, yeah. Harp’s investigator. Gimme a sec.”
He offered his customer a few more instructions, wiped his hands on a rag in his pocket, then greeted Gunner officially. “Okay if we talk out here? I could use a smoke.”
“No problem.”
Woods went around to the side of the building and Gunner followed. He watched as the younger man produced a pack of unfiltered Camels from his shirt pocket and lit one up, taking a hard draw and blowing the smoke to one side before speaking again.
“So how can I help you today?”
“I spoke to Tyrecee Abbott yesterday. Harper’s girl?”
Woods nodded.
“She said a few things that seem to conflict with what you’ve testified to earlier and I thought you might be able to explain the discrepancies.”
“I might. What’d she say?”
“She said Harper was a lot more interested in killing the bus driver who threw him off the bus the day he was fired than he was your boss Darlene. Yet you seem to believe just the opposite.”
“I do?” He blew more smoke into the air, as unruffled as a newly pressed suit.
“Well, the statement you gave to the police, and the conversation we had earlier made it sound like Harper’s only focus that day was on harming Darlene. In fact, I don’t think you even mentioned the bus driver.”
“I just answered the questions I was asked, and all the questions were about Harp and Darlene. If somebody had asked me about the bus driver, I would have told them Harp was pissed at her, too. Why not?”
“So how pissed was he?”
“Plenty. But the only one he talked about killin’, around me anyways, was Darlene.”
“You said you were with Harper most of that night, right? The Tuesday he was fired?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Gunner began consulting some notes he’d written in a small pocket notebook, knowing full well he had to look to Woods like a caveman pondering cryptograms on a stone tablet, Millennial that the kid was. “He showed up at your place around six and you left him at Tyrecee’s mother’s apartment around eleven. Correct?”
“Sounds right.”
“What time did you arrive at the apartment?”
“Ty’s? I dunno. Ten, maybe? I only stayed about an hour.”
“So what did you guys do in between? From the time he arrived at your crib to the time you arrived at Tyrecee’s?”
“Not a whole lot. Played a little C.O.D. Went out for some grub. Came back and watched a movie. That was about it.”
“C.O.D.?”
“Call of Duty. Black Ops Two. It’s a video game.”
Gunner wasn’t sure, but he thought he detected a hint of condescension toward the end of Woods’s reply. He made a note of the game’s title in his book.
“And the movie? You remember what it was?”
Woods took a final drag off his cigarette, crushed it under his boot, giving Gunner’s question some thought. “Something on Netflix. It sucked, so we didn’t even finish it. Transporter Three, or Two, something like that.”
Gunner made another note in his book. “Anybody join you?”
“Nope. It was just me and Harp.”
“Did he have a gun with him?”
“A gun? Hell, no.”
“Have you ever known him to carry a gun?”
“No. Never.”
“What about Darlene? Did she keep a gun in the office?”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. Not that I ever saw.”
“But it’s possible.”
“Sure. I guess so. I don’t go in the office much.”
“What about Harper?”
“What about him?”
“How often was he in the office? If Darlene had kept a gun in there, might Harper have come across it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Woods’s face lit up, the clouds suddenly parting. “Oh, I get it. You’re thinking she got shot with her own gun. And if Harp had touched it before—”
“That would explain how the police found his fingerprints on it.”
“Smart. But”—he shook his head—“I don’t know if he did or he didn’t. I don’t know anything about a gun in the office. There might have been one, and there might not. Man you should talk to about that is Johnny.”
“Johnny Rivera?”
Rivera was the shop’s manager and the man who’d discovered Evans’s body. Gunner hadn’t yet interviewed him and hadn’t been sure up to now that he should.
“Is he here?”
“Now? No. He’s on a parts run.”
“Any idea when he’ll be back?”
“About an hour. Maybe two. Look, Mr.—Gunner, right?” He waited for Gunner to nod. “Like I told you the other day, Harp’s my boy. Nobody wants to help him more than me. But I don’t know what I can tell you that’s gonna do him any good. I wish I could say—hell, man, I wish I could prove—that he was with me when Darlene got shot, but I can’t. He wasn’t. Last time I seen Harp was the night before it happened, when I dropped him at Ty’s crib. I don’t know where he went or what he did after that, I swear.”
“Okay. Let’s just go on talking about what you do know. Like whether or not Ty was alone when you and Harper showed up, and how long you hung around after.”
“I didn’t hang around. I told you, I dropped Harp and bounced.”
“And Ty was the only one there?”
“Naw. She had a girlfriend with her. A fat girl.” Woods caught the look of surprise on Gunner’s face and said, “And before you ask her name, don’t bother, ’cause I don’t remember it. Ty introduced us but I forgot her name soon as I heard it. Girlfriend was fat for real, and that ain’t how I roll.”
He checked his phone for the time. “Sorry, but I gotta go.”
“Of course. The new boss in today?”
“The new boss? You mean Sam?”
“I understand he’s taken over the business since Darlene’s death. Is he in?”
Gunner was hoping he could kill two birds with one stone with this visit, but Woods shook his head and said, “He hasn’t come in today, and he probably won’t. He’s pretty much been letting Johnny run things around here.”
Woods’s head swung to one side as he finished the thought, his gaze drawn to a car racing into the lot: an emerald green, late-model Camaro that its owner had been treating like a drum that needed a daily beating. The driver slammed it into a space and stepped out, giving both Woods and Gunner a good look at a swarthy white man in his early twenties, as unshaven as a castaway and twice as resentful of his lot in life. He stormed inside the shop without so much as a sideways glance.
“I gotta be getting back,” Woods said, addressing Gunner without actually facing him.
“Sure. I appreciate your giving me the time. And I’m sure your boy Harp will appreciate it, too.”
Woods nodded, appearing to teeter on the brink of adding a final word, before leaving Gunner to go back to work.