The Fallen

Автор: Паркер Т. Джефферсон
Год: 2006
Язык: английский
Год: William Morrow
ISBN: 978-0-06-056238-0
Жанр: Криминальные детективы

Электронная книга - «The Fallen». Краткое содержание книги:

My life was ordinary until three years ago when I was thrown out of a downtown hotel window. My name is Robbie Brownlaw, and I am a homicide detective for the city of San Diego. I am twenty-nine years old. I now have synesthesia, a neurological condition where your senses get mixed up. Sometimes when people talk to me, I see their voices as colored shapes provoked by the emotions of the speakers, not by the words themselves. I have what amounts to a primitive lie detector. After three years, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the colors and shapes of other people’s feelings, unless they don’t match up with their words. When Garrett Asplundh’s body is found under a San Diego bridge, Robbie Brownlaw and his partner, McKenzie Cortez, are called on to the case. After the tragic death of his child and the dissolution of his marriage, Garrett — regarded as an honest, straight-arrow officer — left the SDPD to become an ethics investigator, looking into the activities of his former colleagues. At first his death, which takes place on the eve of a reconciliation with his ex, looks like suicide, but the clues Brownlaw and Cortez find just don’t add up. With pressure mounting from the police and the city’s politicians, Brownlaw fights to find the truth, all the while trying to hold on to his own crumbling marriage. Was Garrett’s death an “execution” or a crime of passion, a personal vendetta or the final step in an elaborate cover-up? Amid rampant corruption and tightening city purse strings, whatever conclusion Brownlaw comes to, the city of San Diego — and Brownlaw’s life — hangs in the balance.

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About halfway between here and the Ethics Authority Enforcement building, I thought.

“What time did it happen?” I asked.

“Let’s see. I’d been here three hours when Donovan came in and told me about it. So the spill must have been, oh, seven o’clock or so.”

I put that into Garrett’s timeline on the night he died. It was well after he’d left Hollis Harris at HTA, “preoccupied” and “distracted.” It was one and a half hours after he met Carrie Ann Martier at the Imperial Beach Pier and received another sex video. It was one hour before he left his not-quite-secret National City apartment, wearing the blue necktie he’d changed into. And two full hours before he was going to meet Stella in Rancho Santa Fe for a date that was supposed to be a new beginning for them.

I made a note to check with our Traffic Division and get the exact time for the accident. I was certain that because of the downtown location, the marble spill would have been reported to us.

What it looked like was that Garrett’s vehicle had picked up a spilled marble a half block from where he worked at the Ethics Authority Enforcement office sometime after seven that night.

And sometime soon after that, Garrett Asplundh’s plans for the evening had taken a turn drastic enough to make him miss a date with the ex-wife he still loved and was trying to reconcile with.

“Did you see Garrett that night?” I asked.

“No. No Garrett that night. The week before.”

Which tallied up with a blood-alcohol level of zero.

I ate the shepherd’s pie, ordered another beer and took it back to the dartboards. I played a long time, though I don’t remember my opponents or any bull’s-eyes I might have thrown.

Later I sat at the bar again and considered the green marbles. I took a handful of them and put them in my coat pocket. A pocketful of Ginas and lucky shamrocks. I got one more of Garrett Asplundh’s doubles and drank it quickly. I felt suddenly horrible, like I was a big-screen TV with the vertical hold slipping over and over. Mike had one of the busboys take me home and I fell onto the bed sometime around midnight after checking the machine for messages, but nobody had called.

An hour later the light blasted on and Gina stood in the bedroom doorway. She was wearing her faux fox jacket and dangling her purse straps in both hands, like she was trying to decide whether she was staying or going.

“I missed you,” I said. “Are you okay?”

Her face collapsed and tears like diamonds fell from her lovely green eyes. “I missed you so much, Robbie. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

“Here.”

I threw back the covers and wavered across the floor and took her in my arms. My world was still swirling but somehow my world was right.

It was the most longing and needful love we ever made.

I woke early but Gina was already up. I listened for the sounds of her making coffee or perhaps the early-morning TV she sometimes liked to watch. Gina is not a quiet person in the kitchen and the silence pulled me from the bed to the living room, then the kitchen. The note she left on our breakfast table said:

Dear Robbie,

I want you to remember me like I was last night.

Good-bye.

Gina

The card she wrote it on had a picture of a fish on it. We didn’t have such cards in the house so I knew she’d bought and probably even written it before coming over.

I could deny one good-bye, but two were inarguable.

She really was gone. I felt my face get hot and a quick spike of malice in my heart. I was glad there was nobody else in the house to see my foolishness and my anger.

I didn’t have the spirit to do much more than read the Union-Tribune that day. My hangover was tremendous. It took me an hour to read the front page, an hour for sports, an hour for business.

On the front page of the business section was a picture of Jance Purdew Investments rating analyst Trey Vinson. I remembered his name from Garrett Asplundh’s notes. Garrett had written something about the city cooking the books and things were now up to Vinson. Mr. Vinson had been photographed the day before as he asked questions of the Budget Oversight Committee. He was a young man with a sharp, piercing expression. He almost looked angry.

The caption read:

“Trey Vinson of Jance Purdew Investments grills the Budget Oversight Committee yesterday at City Hall regarding San Diego’s financial-disclosure statements. A lower rating from Jance Purdew could cost San Diegans millions of dollars.”

I not only remembered Vinson’s name from Garrett’s notes. I recognized his face from Garrett’s video. He was the dark-haired, anxious little man with the shiny wedding ring whose dog tag dangled into Carrie Ann Martier’s face.

Ed Placer lived with his mother in Logan Heights, south of downtown. It was a decent neighborhood. The house looked pugnacious compared to those around it, with wrought iron over the windows and a private security sign stabbed into a lawn of tan crabgrass.

“Cozy,” said McKenzie as I pulled up and parked. It was Monday morning.

Ed Placer answered the door and immediately recognized us for what we were. I badged him, said we were working Burglary, and watched his hands. McKenzie introduced herself while his dark eyes roamed her, then locked on to mine. He was surprisingly tall. Jeans, cowboy boots, and a faded short-sleeved shirt worn untucked, which always makes me uneasy. His hair was short now, and he had a mustache and a smirk.

“We’ve got some questions about the loot from the annex,” I said.

“I told everything in court.”

“We can keep this friendly and short,” I said.

“Short’s good.”

“Then pretend you’re a gentleman and invite us in,” said McKenzie.

We had decided on the drive over that even though this was just a knock and talk, we’d do it inside the house. Because Ed had been violent with law enforcement. Because he was large. Because, if he’d used Carl Herbert’s stolen Model 39 to murder Garrett Asplundh, he could try something similar on us. And because we wanted to see the rare reptiles.

“Invite you in?” his eyes roamed McKenzie again. “You, sure. But maybe Junior here can stay outside, play in the street or something.”

When I’m challenged in the way that Ed Placer had just challenged me, I feel a quick jolt of fury crack through my body. It’s like lightning. If I wait just a second or two, it almost always fades.

So I took a deep breath and stared at him.

“Raise your hands, Ed,” I said. “I’m going to pat you for weapons.”

“Oh, hell, let’s go inside.”

“Good boy,” said McKenzie, and we were in.

I patted the sides and front of his waistband, spun him around and checked his back. I cuffed him, then turned him back to face me.

“That’s probably a good idea,” he said. “I was feeling a strong desire to kick your ass.”

“Lost your big op,” I said. I felt that flicker of anger again, but that was one of the reasons you cuff creeps.

“My partner only looks like a nice guy,” said McKenzie. “That’s all I’m going to say. Where are the rare lizards anyway?”

“I’ve got all sorts of specimens. Want to see them?”

“Sure.”

“Where’s your mother?” I asked.

He smiled. “Sleeping. Want to see her, too?”

“Critters first,” I said.

“Ever held a cobra in your bare hands?” asked McKenzie.

Ed smiled. “It can thrill you. I’ve got a more-or-less tame one back here if you’d like to try.”

“Maybe,” she said, with an odd glance at me.

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