23. In His Cowboy Boots and Blue Jeans

When I leave the bathroom and walk back out into the main space, Walter Cornish in his cowboy boots and blue jeans is strutting through the front door. That stops me in place.

Cornish also jolts and points at me. He asks Tonya, “What the fuck is she doing here?” I guess he noticed me in the courtroom. One thing about the nail: People usually do.

“Same thing as me,” says Tonya. “Police business.”

“And what the fuck are you doing here?” I say to Cornish.

“I said he could come up,” says Tonya. “You’re the property manager, right?” she asks Walter.

“True. Got a voice message to come over here from one of the tenants.”

“That was like literally yesterday night,” Tonya says.

“It’s after hours, hon.”

Talk about being off-key. Calling Tonya ‘hon’ is like poking her with an ice pick, and I watch her take a beat or two. Walter can see the same thing and wants to justify himself.

“Tenants here, they have what I call a high bitch ratio. I don’t just come runnin when they call. I’d be here every day.”

“Any chance you were here yesterday?” Tonya asks.

“None. Haven’t been in the building all week.”

“Any idea what he”—she nods to the corpse—“was doing here?”

“Some. I leased him the apartment maybe two years ago. Well, ‘lease’ puts it nicely. It’s month to month in a building like this.”

“And why does Fabian Blanco, churchgoing dad of three, need a studio apartment in Shitsville?”

“Well, he didn’t tell me, but you ever hear of a stabbin cabin? I just assumed, you know.”

This time it’s a lightning flash: Here’s what the Ritz had on Blanco. Blanco was keeping a place—and a person—on the side. Yet again, the same lesson: With sex, you should never be surprised.

“Did he come to you to find the apartment?” Toy asks.

“Kinda. I was still on the job. We were working together and I was probably talking about my side hustle with Vojczek and he said, you know, the usual baloney, ‘A friend of mine needs a really cheap place.’ I think I brought him over here the same day. He didn’t want his name on anything. I let him slide on signing the rental agreement, because his ‘friend’ needed to keep this super-duper secret.” Cornish shows his teeth like a hungry wolf and rolls his eyes. “He never even said out loud to me that he’d be the one using it. But I mean, Jesus, talk about don’t bullshit a bullshitter. His ‘friend’ paid by money order every month.”

“Did he mail that in, or did you come by to collect it?”

“I haven’t set foot in here since he rented. No call to. The money order, with the address here typed in, showed up in my mail at the Vojczek office every month, and I was damn glad to get it that way. Collecting the rent here, man, I literally put on my Kevlar and bring backup.”

I mouth to Toy to ask if the rent was up-to-date, and Walter answers that the most recent money order arrived earlier this week. Scratch the idea Frito was moving out.

“Was anybody else using this place?” Tonya asks. “Maybe the neighbors mentioned something?”

“The only thing the neighbors ever said,” says Cornish, “is that they never saw anyone go in and out. Now and then, they’d hear noise from in here, but nobody seemed to be coming up or down the stairs or even slamming the front door. The old man across the hall, Mr. Johnson, he asked if I rented to a ghost.” Walter smirks. “I guess Frito and his lady were very discreet.” Walter’s eyes circle the room, and his predator’s grin returns briefly. “Must be she brought her own yoga mat, huh?” he asks, referring to the fact that there’s no bed. Once he’s enjoyed himself for a second, he changes subject. “No canvass yet?” Cornish asks Tonya.

“First thing tomorrow.” She means she’ll have a couple other detectives or patrol officers talk to everybody in the building. Twelve forty-five a.m. is not the time to start knocking on doors.

Tonya has been making notes on her tablet as they speak, and pays attention to it for a second so she can catch up. While she’s still poking at the thing, the tech who met me in the bathroom calls out to her. He’s crouching in front of the chair where poor Blanco still sits. The tech has his light on a spot on the thick edge of the wooden seat, right between Blanco’s legs.

“This lit up before,” he says. I bend behind Tonya to see a dime-sized spot that’s glowing blue. “But then the pathologist came in. I just took a couple of pictures and got out of his way. But I wanted to finish now. I moistened it just on the edge”—he holds up a clear squeeze tube of sterile water—“so I could get a speck on the transfer paper,” he says, lifting the little absorbent square between the fingers of his glove. “I hit this with a drop of reagent just now.”

“And?”

He shows her the paper where’s there a spreading blot of very bright purple.

“Phosphatase present?” Tonya asks.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says.

That’s presumptive for semen.

“Blanco, you kinky little devil,” I say. Tonya again shoots me a look that is purely lethal, but I don’t have her attention for long. She takes a full step toward Walter Cornish, who’s just opened the window over the fire escape at the back of the room.

“Jesus Christ, Walter!” One a.m. or not, she’s raised her voice. “You forget everything you ever knew? This is a crime scene. Keep your goddamned hands to yourself.”

“Fuck,” he says, “it stinks in here.” He’s waving around a handkerchief. “I gotta rent this place again, you know.” He shakes his head but closes the window and then runs his hand along the sill, like he’s cleaning up the dust. The fact that he went ahead and touched something right after she asked him not to is clearly over the limit for Toy.

“Okay,” Tonya says. “Time for our visitors to leave.”

On my way out, I stop to take a closer look at the front windows for one second, then follow Tonya and Cornish out. Across the landing, there is a dark eye peering through a skinny crack beside the door.

Cornish is already on the first stair down.

“Walter, I need your cell,” Tonya says. “Someone’s gonna stop by to visit with you tomorrow. You too, Mr. Johnson,” she says, shooting a finger toward the eyeball across the hall. The door slams immediately.

“No worries,” Cornish answers. He hands up a business card from his back pocket, then makes a loud departure as he hops down the stairs in his boots.

Tonya has grabbed my arm to hold me here.

“Thinking?” she asks.

“Like anything? Even something off the hook?”

“Who’m I talking to?”

“I got a little feeling Frito’s other interest wasn’t girls.”

“Because?”

“Something,” I answer.

“Well, there you go.”

“Impossible?” I ask.

“How would I know? He was pretty buttoned up. That could mean anything.”

“Somebody tied him to a chair. And had him dribbling spunk. Sometimes those Catholic boys want to be punished.” I remember, as soon as I’ve said it, that she’s been going to church, but she doesn’t seem to take it one way or the other.

“Lots of boys deserve to be punished,” Tonya says, but she smiles a little. It’s interesting how different she is, more like her regular self, just one step out the door and away from the body. “We’ll know a lot more after Potter gets a better look at him.”

I hop one stair down, then point at her as I recall what I wanted to tell her.

“Oh,” I add. “And there’s no screen on that window over the fire escape, which is different from the front windows. I noticed that when Cornish pulled it open. I bet you find the screen stored in one of the closets.”

“Meaning what?”

“I don’t know. But why leave off the screens in the summer?”

“Never got around to putting them back on?”

“Make sure the techs take a good look at that area, too.”

I get a very appreciative nod. “Good thinkin, Detective.”

I wave and head down.

“Thanks for letting me pull you away from your boyfriend,” she calls out.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say. I haven’t thought of Koob since I got here, which I’m happy to realize, but then a bunch of confused feelings knot up again in the middle of my chest. “I was by myself, looking at Instagram and finding out that everybody else has a much cooler life than me.”

She laughs.

“Peace out,” I say.

“Peace,” she answers. “Please go talk to the Chief.”

“On my way.”

  

I call Rik from the front seat of the Cadillac before I have even pulled away. It’s another hot night, but I keep the windows up while the AC’s kicking in, so the coppers who have showed up—there’s six cars now—can’t hear me. That many cops means a reporter will know all about this in a couple hours, no matter what Tonya’s orders are. So if the Chief is going to be the person to bring in the Bureau, we’ve got to move.

Rik’s phone rings for a while. It’s past one. He doesn’t sleep a lot, but he must have turned in. His voice is groggy when he finally says, “Pinky.”

“Early night?”

“Asleep in my La-Z-Boy,” he answers. “I was watching the Trappers get pummeled on the West Coast. I hate when I do this. My feet swell up and I can’t get my shoes off.”

“Well, Boss, I’m glad you’re sitting down.” I tell him what there is to tell. About every ten seconds he says, “Aw, fuck.” When I’m done, he just says, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Do you want me to go talk to the Chief myself?”

“I’ll meet you at her house in forty-five minutes. Wait for me in the driveway.”

The Chief is in a housecoat and definitely looking the worse for it without her makeup. It’s like seeing a mollusk that’s crawled out of its shell somehow. Her pretty face is always painted so perfectly. Now she’s pale, with a decided heaviness to her jawline that the cosmetics help obscure, and all the wrinkles around her eyes are out from under cover. We’re seeing the Chief as she is beneath it all, and it’s someone considerably less upbeat. It’s like her smile came off with the makeup. I realize that Lucy seldom sees those dimples when she’s looking in the mirror late at night, alone.

She puts on coffee, while Rik and I sit down in her kitchen, which has one of those corner nooks, with benches on two sides built around a table. You can see it must have been great when there were four of them here.

She brings a pint of cream from the fridge, as she takes a seat across the table with a weary weight.

“Okay,” she says. “Two o’clock in the morning and both of you here, so it isn’t good news.”

I suppose if you’re a big-time bad guy like a murderer you’ve got to be a decent actor, but if this woman had anything to do with Blanco’s death, then Meryl Streep should just pack it in and send Lucy referrals. As I tell the Chief where I was and what I saw, her mouth parts slowly and everything else seems to fall out of her face, both blood and sense, while her black eyes deepen in mystification.

It takes her a couple minutes to process, but the Chief immediately agrees to Tonya’s request to remove herself from the case. Lucy’s less convinced about calling the Bureau, who treat everybody else in law enforcement like they’re the dumb baby brother.

“It’s the way they take over,” she says. “It’s their case and everybody else is the butler.”

“I think Tonya’s got control of the crime scene,” I say. “She’s already sent stuff to the lab—the pathologist is doing the post right now. So the Bureau will have to play nice with her if they want her to share information. They pretty much have to treat her like a partner. There’s joint jurisdiction. You can’t tell the locals to ‘go fish’ on a murder.”

“And another thing,” says Rik. “I’d much rather deal with Moses than the local PA. A lot of strange stuff can go down with an elected prosecutor in a year when people are headed to the polls. I don’t know what kind of ties Steven has to Jonetta Dunphy,” he says, referring to the Greenwood County prosecuting attorney, “but their dads were both in office at the same time. Steven is gonna do everything but straight up accuse you of murder, and God only knows what Jonetta would do to humor him. Moses is completely straight. Pinky even knows him a little.”

I called Moses a couple months back to introduce Rik, right after our first meeting with the Chief, and I was downright thrilled when the mighty US Attorney called me back so quickly. He wanted to ask me about Pops, but he was very nice to me, too. Usually, if you’re not another lawyer, you’re an absolute waste of time.

It’s near three when I get home. Since Koob is often roaming around at this hour, I graze my knuckles on his door. It’s another night where I’d be happy for company. Even with that tiny little knock, the lock gives way and the door swings open. I stand on the threshold, trying to figure what to do next.

“Hey, Koob,” I call. “It’s Clarice.” I take a step inside, and my butt kind of puckers with the feeling of taboo: I’m finally within the inner sanctum, where Koob keeps all his secrets. “Koob,” I say again. The next time, I’m loud, and then I’m really loud, immediately regretting the last shout because of our neighbors. He must be out working again.

Koob’s apartment, which I saw empty when I was scouting out places, has a much more upscale look than mine now, well furnished in contemporary industrial style. Koob said his client is paying the rent, so they must have leased this furniture, too. In the living room, there’s a long angular black leather sofa with round leather bolsters at either end, and a huge TV, but no sign of headphones. I’m still debating whether I should walk in further, since I know he won’t like it, but hey, what kind of superspy leaves the door open? I can say I was worried about him.

His kitchen is big enough for a sort of Danish Modern table, and in his bedroom, the queen-size bed with a square wooden headboard has been made, the geometric spread and matching pillows arranged evenly. It’s no surprise he’s tidy. But what I gather from the made bed is that he hasn’t been to sleep yet. Overall, the air here is weirdly reminiscent of Blanco’s apartment, that empty solemn feel like it’s not really a home.

I don’t begin to worry until I look back at the living room. There’s a desk there that matches the kitchen table, but nothing on it, not even a computer. Koob has to have a tricked-out machine to monitor the kind of surveillance equipment I saw him install behind Vojczek’s, which means he took his powerhouse laptop with him for tonight’s spying. But I see no sign of the Stingray that I’ve always assumed was here to pick up the signal from the NoDirt.

I retrace my path through every room, opening each drawer, in which I find nothing but a little paper dust. I’m beginning to get a very weird feeling. In Koob’s bedroom, the closet is empty except for bare hangers, one or two of which have ended up on the floor. On my knees, I find a single black sock underneath the dresser. In the bathroom, there’s a bluish squiggle of toothpaste in the sink and a used bar of soap in the shower, but nothing else. Walking into the kitchen, I recognize a scent I’ve been smelling since I walked in here, a disinfectant spray, meaning he was cleaning recently. Then I finally notice two keys on the breakfast bar.

I sit down at Koob’s table. In my chest, a lot of different feelings are banging into each other, and my thoughts aren’t any clearer, circling one way then the other. But one conclusion is solid.

Every fucking time, I think. It happens every time.

He’s gone.