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The superintendent didn’t mince words: Tina had escaped with another girl. End of story. Shit. Where the hell could she be?
I felt a mix of relief, that Tina was no longer locked up, and fear about her roaming a dangerous world alone. If I found her, I’d have to turn her in. The thought made me sick. To defend her, I had to talk to her. First, I had to find her.
Little D had left a message for me while I was on the phone. I called back immediately.
“Tina’s escaped the Patuxent Detention Center,” I said. “Do you think she’ll go to her father’s?”
“Mmm,” he hummed. It sounded like low C on a pipe organ. “It’s possible.”
“Can you nose around Fisher’s? See if she shows up there? Or tell me if you hear anything on the street? I’m very worried.”
“Me, too. But try to stay calm. She’s pretty good at lookin’ after herself.”
Pretty good isn’t enough, I thought.
“I called to remind you about tomorrow,” he said. “Calvert Road Park. Half past noon.”
“How’d the Iverson meet go?”
He chuckled. “Jus’ fine. I got a pitcher of ole’ Blue Jumpsuit givin’ the package to Narsh. We followed the dude in the jumpsuit to Silver Hill Intermediate School. Found out later he’s a janitor there.”
“Tina’s school.”
“Yeah. So?”
“I don’t know. Just another odd coincidence.” The kind I don’t believe in.
“And there’s something else you ought to know.”
“What now?”
I must have sounded worse than I felt. Little D just laughed and said, “No, this is good. After we followed the janitor, I convinced Narsh to let me make a couple copies of the disc in the package.”
“Really? How’d you manage that?”
“I figured he wouldn’t want Fisher to know how I out bad-assed his bad ass. Wouldn’t want me to tell Fisher what we got and how we got it. He wasn’t too happy, but he went along.”
“So what’s on the disc?” I asked.
“Haven’t checked yet, but I’ll let you know. Apparently, it’s images, not data, on a DVD. You want to get together sometime, have a look?”
“How about you come over my place tomorrow, after the meet? Around five?”
I gave him directions before we hung up. Images. For computer games? Maybe the embezzlers were paying top dollar to steal a competitor’s game concepts. If so, how did the janitor get them?
If it hadn’t been for Little D, I wouldn’t have known any of this. I felt grateful for his help. And I saw what Duvall meant about D’s methods. They got results, but they were risky. It occurred to me that befriending a guy like Little D was like owning a pet scorpion.
* * * * *
Saturday was a light-traffic day on the B-W Parkway. I got to Riverdale with ease. Twenty minutes before the appointed time, I pulled into the lot of Calvert Road Park, barely a quarter mile from Kozmik’s offices. I backed into a space and flipped through last month’s Maryland Bar Journal.
The October weather had taken an abrupt turn toward winter. Clouds scudded across the sky, plunging the landscape into patches of shadow and light. I counted a few cars but saw no sign of life. I assumed people were out hiking or biking the trails. The breeze kicked up, causing dry brown leaves to spring to life and rattle across the lot. Cracking the window for air, I sneezed. Leaf mold and the smoke from burning firewood tickled my nostrils.
At 12:20, Narsh pulled into the lot in a beat-up maroon compact. If he saw me, he never let on. I slumped in the seat. He backed into a spot across and a couple of spaces down from me. Loud rap music thumped from the car.
Five minutes later, a late model Saturn, light-blue, crept up beside Narsh’s car, drivers’ sides facing each other like cop cars. I saw the Saturn’s window roll down and caught a glimpse of a doughy-faced guy with glasses. Narsh and he had a short, intense conversation, after which Narsh handed him a brown envelope. My view was somewhat obstructed, but I snapped a few pictures with my digital camera before the Saturn’s window closed.
Narsh left. As the Saturn backed out, I started my car. By the time the Saturn had turned onto Paint Branch, I was rolling. I followed the Saturn as he made a left at Kenilworth Avenue, reaching the intersection as the light turned yellow. Maintaining a distance of several car lengths between us, I followed the car up the ramp at the Greenbelt Road interchange and took a left, toward Beltway Plaza Mall.
The Saturn hung a right onto Cherrywood Lane and turned into a parking lot in the Spring Hill Lake apartment complex. I knew it well, having lived there as a student at the University of Maryland.
The car pulled into a spot. I kept an eye on it and cruised slowly past the lot’s entrance. Two guys got out—the driver, short and soft-looking, with long brown hair and black-rimmed glasses, and the passenger, tall and gaunt, with curly red hair and pale skin.
I pulled over, snapped a couple of shots and noted the building they entered. While waiting to see if anything else went down, I checked my office voice mail. Detective Willard had left a message. I called him.
“Yes, Ms. McRae,” he said, in his characteristic low rumble. “Detective Derry showed me that photo. I understand the man appears somewhere on the surveillance tape. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” I said. I told him what times Blondie had appeared on the tape. I also gave Willard a brief rundown on everything, including the hulk’s previous visits to Kozmik Games, the trip to Philadelphia to see Cooper and Cooper’s demise. As I spoke, I kept an eye on the building, in case one or both men decided to leave.
“Detective Derry mentioned to me that the man looked familiar,” I said. “Did he ever figure out who it was?”
“Yes, he did. Don Diezman. They called him ‘Diesel’ Don or just ‘Diesel’, when he played fullback for the Terps in the late ’80s. Was on the All-Met team in 1986. Had a shot at the pros, but he blew it by testing positive for steroids and getting busted for crack.”
Serves me right for not following college football, I thought. “Well, I wouldn’t want to be on the defensive line when he came through.”
“You might want to avoid him off the football field, if he has anything to do with Ms. Jones’s murder.”
* * * * *
I waited around, but neither of the guys came out, and I didn’t recognize anyone going in. If one left, I could follow him home. For all I knew, they could be roommates. Surveillance sucks. After about an hour, I had to piss like a Pimlico contender. When it looked like they weren’t going anywhere, I threw in the towel.
On the way home, I stopped for a bathroom break and picked up groceries. It was nearly quarter of five by the time I arrived at my apartment. There was a note on my door from FedEx, telling me I’d missed a delivery I had to sign for.
“Shit!” I said, stamping my foot. In all the excitement over the surveillance, I’d forgotten about the package from Alex Kramer. The note said there would be an attempt to redeliver on Monday. I groaned. Now I had to wait two more days to learn what Cooper had kept in that box.
When I walked in, I didn’t see Oscar. Usually he waited for me at the door, begging for dinner. As I lugged the bags into the kitchen, I spotted him crouching atop one of the cabinets.
“What’re you doing up there?” I asked, setting the bags on the floor and my purse on the counter.
“Staying outta my way, chickie-poo.”
I whirled around. There stood Blondie—aka Diesel Don. He peered at me, his face devoid of emotion. He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, blocking the path to the front door like the Berlin Wall.
When I’d found my voice, I asked, “How . . . how did you get in here?”
“Locks in these apartments are a goddamned joke, you know.” His tone was matter-of-fact, as if he were talking about the weather. “You really should ask the management for something better.”
I nodded, feeling stupid. He just looked at me. “We need to have a little talk. See, you’ve been asking too many questions. My employers get nervous when people do that.”
“Who employs you? I’ll try to stay out of their way.”
The hand came out of nowhere and slapped my head sideways. Then two hands shoved me back against the stove.
“Now that makes two things I don’t like about you,” he said. “You ask too many questions and you got a smart mouth.”
“I have to ask questions,” I gasped. “It’s part of my job.”
“And it’s part of my job to take care of people who ask too many questions.” He got in my face and glared at me with eyes as steely and lifeless as ball bearings. “So where does that leave us, chickie-poo?”
“Not in a real warm, fuzzy place, huh?”
My attempt to lighten the mood failed miserably. He took another swing at my face, connecting harder this time. My cheek tingled with the shock of his blow. I tasted blood which tickled my chin as it dribbled from the corner of my mouth.
He pressed me against the stove. With his face an inch from mine, he whispered, “Cooper’s landlady told me you were in his room. Why don’t you save me the trouble of searching your little shithole apartment and tell me what you found there.”
“Just some papers,” I whispered.
“Nothing else? You’re sure?”
I nodded. I thought about the package I hadn’t received. Did it have what he was looking for?
“Wasn’t there a key with those papers?”
“What if there was?”
“Any idea what that key went to?”
“How would I know?”
He gritted his teeth in a menacing grin. “Anyone ever tell you you have an annoying habit of answering a question with another question?”
“Really?” I said, flinching when I realized I’d inadvertently done it again.
He grabbed my chin with one huge hand and squeezed, forcing me to look him in the eye.
“So you wouldn’t have any photographs or recordings from Cooper?”
“What would I be doing with those?”
He pressed harder. “Answer the goddamn question, counselor. Yes or no?”
“No.”
It was the truth, but his eyes narrowed and he said, “You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” I sputtered. “I really don’t have anything like that.” Though I might have, if I’d been here earlier to sign for the package . . . .
He stared at me for a long moment. “Maybe you do, maybe you don’t.”
He wrenched one of my arms behind my back, pinning it between me and the stove. The other, he held at the wrist. With his free hand, he flicked on a burner. “We’ll soon see how much you’ll tell.”
He started to push my hand toward the flame. I thrashed around, trying to free my legs enough to knee him in the balls, but he pressed me too tightly.
“Wait!” I cried in a desperate warble. “Okay, I know there was a key, but I don’t know what it unlocked. And I don’t have any photos or recordings. Don’t believe me? You can search this place and my office, but you won’t find them. Burning my hand won’t change that.”
He stopped, his gaze locked onto mine. “No, but it may teach you not to play with fire.”
I squirmed some more, mining every ounce of strength to keep my hand from the flame. As we struggled, someone knocked on the door.
Little D, perhaps. I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Whoever it was began pounding the door as if thrusting a battering ram against it. Between my screeching and the pounding, Oscar freaked out. He launched himself from the cabinet onto Diesel’s shoulder and dug his front claws into my attacker’s face. Diesel howled and stumbled, tripping on Oscar’s dish and flailing his arms. I leapt away from the stove and glimpsed Oscar streaking to safety as I fled the apartment. Passing Little D, who stood on the landing, cell phone pressed to his ear, I gasped, “He’s inside,” and ran downstairs.
Diesel barreled out of the apartment and hit Little D in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. I looked up the stairwell and glimpsed Little D, lying in a heap as the killer lunged for the stairs. I ducked down the steps leading to the basement apartments and cowered. After Diesel left the building, I exhaled and emerged from the stairwell to find Little D recovering. He limped down the stairs and joined me on the ground floor landing in time to watch a black compact burning rubber out of the lot.