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:
The Dream Wheels manager was a short, thick man named Reuben. His assistant was a striking, fortyish woman who introduced herself as Cass. They eyed me warily as I slid my detective shield back into my pocket. Cass excused herself and walked outside.
When I asked about a white Hummer, Reuben sighed. He tapped sharply on his computer keyboard, then nodded. Yes, he said, they had rented out a white Hummer at five-fifteen on the afternoon of March 8, the day of the murder. Oddly enough, it was returned that night after they had closed.
Odd indeed, I thought.
“Charles Hudson Black,” he said. “He lives in Rancho Santa Fe. Go ask Cass about him. She did the rent. And tell you what — I’ll print you a copy of this rental agreement if you can get patrol to drive past this place a little more often. People climb in here all the time. They touch my cars. Once they climbed over, hot-wired a Land Rover and tried to drive it through the fence and out of here.”
“You’ve got a deal,” I said.
I found Cass outside, smoking a cigarette and flicking the ashes down beside a Shelby Cobra. The rental cars shone brilliantly in the overhead lights.
“That’s my dream wheel,” I said. “If I could have any car ever made.”
“I’d get a Maybach,” she said. “The expensive one comes with a driver for a year. I’d boot him out of the car, do my own driving, and make him clean my house.”
“Describe the guy who rented the white Hummer on March eighth. That was two Tuesdays ago, the last time it rained.”
“Mid-forties,” she said. “Chargers cap and shades. Cap looked new. Heavy plaid shirt — brown. A bushy mustache. Sunglasses. The kind of guy you’d see at a tailgate party at Qualcomm.”
I saw the shape of a man move between the vehicles.
“What color hair?”
“The hat was pulled down tight but the mustache was brown with gray in it.”
“How tall?”
“Six feet, maybe two-ten,” said Cass. “My ex is six feet, two-ten, and this guy was about the same. Not fat. He had kind of a ‘screw you’ attitude.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing unusual. It was just the way he stood and looked at me.”
I thought of Ron Mincher. The description could have been him, except he was almost twenty years younger than the man Cass had described and his mustache had no gray in it. I wondered if the brown plaid shirt and sunglasses could have hidden his youth. I wondered if he might have added some gray to his mustache. I wondered if the three brown wool fibers found in Garrett’s Explorer had come from that heavy plaid shirt.
“What kind of pants and shoes?” I asked.
“Jeans, I think. Don’t remember the shoes at all,” said Cass.
“Did he say anything that you remember? Anything unusual or different?”
“I said it looks like rain tonight and he said he liked the rain but hated the humidity.”
I thought of Mincher again. He’d said something like that when I talked to him outside headquarters that afternoon.
“How did he get here?”
“I’m not sure, come to think of it. I assumed a taxi. From the airport, I figured, or maybe one of the businesses around here. But I never saw the taxi.”
“Luggage, briefcase, duffel, anything with him?”
“No. None that I remember.”
I thought for a moment. I saw the surveillance camera tucked up under the eave of the building above us. “Is that a tape or closed circuit?”
“It’s closed circuit until we close up for the day,” said Cass. “Then we flip to digital record from the keypad inside.”
“Fancy.”
“You need fancy, with two million dollars’ worth of cars here. You wouldn’t believe the things people try to pull. Or maybe you would. But if you want the guy who returned the Hummer, forget it. The gate was locked. He couldn’t have gotten in if he’d wanted to. So he parked it out on the street. The camera only picks up what’s inside the lot, plus just a little.”
“Was the Hummer muddy?”
“Yeah. He’d been offroading the damned thing.”
“It’s been washed several times since then?”
“Washed and rented several times,” said Cass. “The Hummer is a real popular rental here, believe it or not. Talk about a pretentious, uncomfortable, overpriced, gas-guzzling piece of junk. You drive over a speed bump and things fall off. I mean, you may as well pay someone to drive behind you to pick up the pieces. I’ll open up this black one if you want to see what they look like inside. I’ll rent it to you, for that matter. Preferred rate.”
Reuben came outside and gave me a printout of the rental agreement.
Cass opened the door to the black Hummer and I stood there for a long beat, admiring the quasi-military design of the interior. Reuben started back inside, then stopped and watched me.
“You didn’t happen to find a Higher Grounds coffee shop bag in the white one, did you?” I asked. “When you cleaned it out that morning?”
Cass smiled and nodded. “Oh, a psychic cop. If you’re so smart, tell me what was in that bag?”
“A stir stick and a wadded-up napkin.”
She laughed. “And guess what was on the napkin?”
“Coffee?” I asked.
“Blood.”
“A lot?”
“A little.”
“You threw it away.”
“What else would I do with a bloody napkin?”
I shook my head and smiled. I marveled at how a hopeless detour to see my wife had led me to evidence in the murder of Garrett Asplundh. I know a cop who had taken his daughter to Disneyland and recognized a rape suspect from a drawing done by our fine sketch artist, Kathy Iles. The guy was standing in line with his own daughter for Small World. He was arrested right on the spot.
“Will you give your description to a police artist?” I asked. “It could be a huge help.”
Cass looked at me for a beat. “Okay. Send her down here, though. I’ve got a living to make. I can’t be running all over town.”
“I’ll call you. And thanks for your help,” I said.
“Get those patrol guys out here once in a while,” said Reuben.
“Why don’t you come back and check in on us?” said Cass with a smile.
“I’ll do that.”
I realized there was an outside chance I’d get something useful from the security tape. “Would you mind showing me the surveillance tape from that night?” I asked her.
“I told you, it only shows what’s on the lot,” said Cass. “He left the Hummer on the street outside the lot, on the other side of the fence, right there.”
She nodded toward the street, then shrugged.
“But if the Hummer was left just outside that fence,” I said. “Maybe... please, can we just take a quick look, fast-forward right up to that part of it?”
“There’s not going to be a ‘that part of it,’ is what I’m saying,” said Cass. “But come on, we’ll try.”
Cass was almost right. Back in the main office, she sat down at a computer and brought out her archived surveillance files for Tuesday, March 8. We found nothing on the disc until 10:20 P.M., when we saw the tires and about eight inches of lower body slide to a stop along the curb.
“That’s it,” said Cass. “That’s the Hummer. Look, there’s the mud on the bottom of the body panel, see?”
We watched the bottom of the door open and saw someone step out. All we saw were legs, from about the thigh down. Although the surveillance video was shot at night, it looked to me like the legs belonged to a man, and he was wearing jeans. His shoes shone in the light from the streetlamps. He was visible only for about three steps, as he headed west on the sidewalk, away from Dream Wheels.