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Temeke relit an old cigarette butt he had found in his top pocket and dribbled the smoke from his nose. Two more drags and the rest of it was posted through a gap in the car window.
He was proud of Malin and the way she handled the interviews, and he was proud of her profiling skills. She could match the best of them and in keeping with being a truthful lawman, he would state it to her personally.
He also had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach and tried to fight the impulse to pull over and throw up. His stomach was rebelling against the absence of food and a sudden hike of adrenalin that threatened to put his mind on overload.
Something was wrong the minute he turned into his driveway. The rain was coming down harder now against his windshield and in the moonlight he could see an ornamental tree stooping in the wind. There were tracks across his lawn, a kidney-shaped piece of artificial grass which the New Mexico water service wholeheartedly supported. He was too lazy to walk around it to get to his mailbox and his feet had worn a path down the middle.
It struck him that the screen over Serena’s old quilting room window was lying against the exterior wall. Either the hardware had rusted and caused it to pop out, or someone had removed it. And if someone had removed it, they might still be in the house.
Turning off the ignition, he reached inside his jacket and drew his weapon. Over the patter of rain he could hear the sound of breathing as if he was sharing the same space with someone else. Not someone, something. He wasn’t imagining it.
He turned and scanned the driveway, cloudy from jeep exhaust. It was full of shadows. Nothing between the trees, no movement, no signs of life.
It could have been Fats Riley’s dog chuffing in the long grass. But that was unlikely since the old wooden kennel was saturated with rainwater and there would have been a few loud barks as Temeke drove in.
He frowned, eyes weaving in and out of the stand of cottonwoods. Back and forth, back and forth, and returning to the tree closest to the gate. There was something about it and he looked toward the ground first and then up into the branches. Still nothing.
He tried to take in what might be lurking behind the undulating stems of buffalo grass and a slouching desert willow. Then his heart did a wheelie because something had moved from behind the tree and without making a sound. And that something had been real close.
His senses told him it was gone even though his instincts screamed at him to go after it. Too fast for a human, more intuitive like a scavenging coyote.
Wind gusted across a sea of green, swirling leaves and tumbleweeds not yet flattened by the rain. Steadying the weapon in front of him, he eased his way through the front door where two wings of the house fanned out from a large hallway and the kitchen beyond. He checked the patio door, windows, kitchen, closets and living room. All in order, just as he had left them.
He checked the quilting room, heard his own breath, harsh and dry in his throat, and a stillness in the air he was used to. The flip lock on the vertical window was broken, possibly someone using a flat tip screwdriver and a few hard taps with a mallet. Possibly years of opening and closing until the hardware gave out. What would anyone want in Sparta? The name he fondly called his house now most of the furniture and valuables were gone.
The screen had been removed. Fact. The intruder was on foot. Fact. Ergo there would be some muddy footprints around here, on the tile, the carpet...
Nada. Yet he couldn’t help feeling the essence of a second person who puffed out a breath of air every time he did. He looked over his shoulder before leaping up the stairs two steps at a time and was met with an angry meow on the landing. It gave him a start.
Dodger. The next time he caught the bugger crapping in the laundry basket the gun in his hand might accidentally go off.
He checked all the places an intruder would hide, stood for a while listening to the soughing of the heater and the scratch of a tree branch against the bathroom window. All familiar sounds.
The vague footprint when he found it was a boot sole, half on the carpet and half on the tile floor of the bathroom. Serena never wore boots. But he did.
He called himself a few choice names, re-holstered his gun and sat down on the end of his bed. The stink that came off his body was more important than chasing ghosts, or even food right now. If there had been anyone in the house they were long gone.
Laying out a fresh set of clothes, he peeled off his harness and hooked it behind the bathroom door. He liked to watch that gun from the shower, inseparable as if it was part of his skin. And he liked the door half open so he could see the bedroom and the hall beyond.
Hot water stabbed at his back and legs and he allowed his mind to swim with images of an open grave, a pale skinned girl, the brutality of it all. This case wasn’t a family massacre but it sure felt like one. Temeke had been exposed to sexual homicide many times and although there was no evidence of sexual assault, the use of a knife could be construed as a substitute for penetration. Worst of all, he sensed the perp reveled in the excitement of the killing and there was no doubt in Temeke’s mind the man was still executing his mission.
There were signs he was unraveling and didn’t seem to care about the chaos of each violent attack. Signs he wanted to escape the terror of his existence, signs he might have wanted to give himself up. Yet, after the field investigators had sifted through every inch of the crime scene it had been curiously clean of trace evidence.
A continual hum followed by a clacking sound pulled him back to the present. His phone was buzzing on the countertop, dangerously close to the sink. He could tell by the tone in Luis’ voice there had been a development of some kind.
“Bad news. Cornwell’s team still haven’t found Adel Martinez and someone leaked her picture to the press. Good news. Manager called in an abandoned van outside the Dollar store on Southern an hour ago. Gay. 1972 Chevy. Back tire was flat and there was oil all over the road. Looks like someone’s been living in it for a while. Security footage picked up a man last night, sometime around nine o’clock. He was wearing a black beanie, dark hair. Got out of the truck and walked into the store. And then ten minutes later he was walking with a bag toward Unser. The manager’s off this week, but she said she’d come in if you could make it in half an hour. I’ll tell Mrs. Delgado you’ll be late.”
Temeke dressed hurriedly, shrugged on his harness and coat and made for the refrigerator. The soup would have to wait, but there was a half-eaten bean burrito and a can of Coke he could wolf down on the way.
Pushing his foot down on the gas, he shot past the Delgado turnoff and roared up the hill on 528 to Southern. He chugged down the Coke and took a few bites of the burrito, made a face. It was older than he thought.
He couldn’t reach the store fast enough. A positive ID was gold dust and someone living in a van had to yield all kinds of DNA.
“Your manager,” Temeke said, showing his badge to the store clerk.
He didn’t have to wait. A thin woman with blonde hair and dark roots wobbled toward him on four inch heels. Didn’t look like an old slapper. Didn’t look a bullshitter either.
“Graciella Fish,” she said, escorting him to the greeting card aisle. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Staff get antsy when they see guns.”
Temeke cleared his throat. “Tell me about the man you saw.”
“Looked real pale and sickly. Up from the grave he rose, know what I mean? You look like you ain’t feeling too good either,” she said, getting a little closer to make sure he wasn’t some crazy person. “What’chu detectives eat these days?”
“Tall? Short?” Temeke asked, not in the slightest bit interested in food and wondering why the bloody hell she had to remind him he hadn’t eaten a decent meal in six hours.
“Eyes like this, know what I’m’ saying?” She stretched her index and third finger out wide in front of her face. “Thought he’d had a few but his voice weren’t slurred.”
“Accent?”
“Talked normal. You get all sorts in here. But this one I’d remember. About my height, five ten,” she grinned.
Realistically more like five six, he thought, peering at a pair of metallic leather platform pumps.
“Thin-ish, white skin, black hair. Didn’t look like he were staying at the Holiday Inn. Looked more like he were sleeping rough.”
“You’ve him before?”
“Nuh-uh. But he did remind me of a picture I once saw in a spirit store.”
“How did he pay? Debit, credit?”
“Cash.”
Temeke’s mind was racing. What did white-skin-black-hair buy? What did he touch? There would be prints around here somewhere. And prints didn’t take long to run. “What food did he get?”
Graciella was sharper than he gave her credit for. “Bought some popcorn and a few Cokes. Wore black leather gloves, hon. Packing light I should say. But if he bought popcorn, he had to have a microwave to pop it in.”
“See which way he went?”
“Went that way,” she said, pointing in a vaguely northerly direction.
White-skin-black-hair was a canny drunk if he hiked out on Unser toward Northern. There was nothing much out there except sand and tumbleweeds, and row upon row of new houses, empty now after the 2008 downturn.
And model homes equipped with electricity. The thought gave him a shiver of anticipation. Anyone could break in and make themselves comfortable for a night or two.
He thanked her quickly, gave her his card and asked if she wouldn’t mind working with the composite sketch artist.
“A guy like that... slinging dope,” she said, giving him the down-turned mouth and the sorry eyes. “Might already be dead. Might have been taken up in the sky.”
Temeke made for the door, knew instinctively what was coming next. But she was right behind him in two teetering strides.
“Got Jesus?” she whispered. “He’s coming soon, and you don’t want to be giving someone a ticket and finding there’s no one in the driver’s seat ’cause they’ve been Raptured. No one knows when it’ll happen. Two men working in a field, and then one of them disappears. Two women in the hairdressers, and one of them is gone. You better hope you ain’t still pulling people over and arresting them, ’cause if you are, that means you’ve been left behind.”
Temeke made a dive for the front seat of his car, couldn’t shake her off fast enough. He was conscious of a brisk wind through the open window as he clocked fifty down 528 toward Bazan Loop.
