Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(92)

DeMarco chuckled.

“What’s so damn funny?”

“Sorry, I just thought of this line from Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. ‘I test very high on insubordination.’ Not that it has any application here, you understand.”

“We’re talking about a multiple homicide, Ryan.”

“Which I’ve been beating out my brains over ever since day one. Look, I’m not attempting to subvert your understanding in any way, shape, or form. I’m just feeling a little giddy, I guess, because it’s over. At long fucking last, this ugly, horrendous episode is finally over. And yes, I am also more than a little bit testy about how it went down. It cost us a good man. A very good man.”

Several moments passed. “All right,” Bowen said. “You can’t make a call because your cell phone’s dead. You continue in pursuit. Where did you catch up with them?”

“I never really caught up. I would see a pair of taillights every now and then, enough that I could stay with them. Where I really lost some time was after Inman abandoned the car in the clearing.”

“Right,” Bowen said. “It’s what, maybe six in the morning by then? Still fairly dark. Yet somehow you managed to track them to a campsite you didn’t even know existed.”

“I followed my ears. After the first gunshot, it wasn’t all that difficult.”

“And what you saw there strikes me as very bizarre indeed.”

“Indeed,” DeMarco said.

“Why would Inman use birdshot?”

DeMarco shrugged. “He’s a sadist. If anything should be clear by now, it’s that.”

“He shot Huston three times with birdshot just to make him suffer?”

“That’s all I can figure.”

“Then he finishes him off with three .22 longs to the chest. Using a fifty-year-old revolver.”

“The word weird doesn’t even scratch the surface of a guy like him.”

“I would say not. Because then he apparently wades into the water and starts cutting himself. Why would he do that?”

“You’re asking me to explain irrational actions.”

“I’m asking you to speculate.”

“He’s a sadist and a masochist. He was seriously insane.”

Bowen scowled and shook his head. “So you arrive on scene. You check on Huston. See it’s too late for him. And you order Inman out of the water.”

“At which point he comes at me with that long mofo of a knife.”

“End of story.”

“End of his anyway.”

“He falls back into the water; you wade in and drag the body out.”

“And that water was cold.”

“But wait, now it’s time for a miracle. Suddenly your cell phone works!”

“I went back to the clearing, plugged in the charger in my car, and made the call. I guess I forgot to put that part in my report.”

“Still groggy?” Bowen said.

“Nope. Right now I feel as clear as this beautiful autumn day. A little tired though. Hungry and tired.”

“Let’s talk about the crime scene for just a minute. Apparently there’s some evidence of rope burns around Inman’s wrists and ankles. But you didn’t find any rope?”

“At the campsite? Nothing but rocks.”

“Any idea then where those rope burns might have come from?”

“Maybe he and Bonnie had a little rough sex before coming to my place.”

“Culminating, apparently, in the slitting of her throat.”

“Let me refresh your memory, Kyle. Carl Inman? Insane.”

Bowen blew out another heavy breath. “And while you waited for the units to arrive, you built yourself a nice big fire. Kind of a signal fire, was that your intent?”

“My intent was to keep my cold, frozen balls from falling off.”

“You know, you’ve always been a bit of a loose cannon, but this time… There are a hell of a lot of holes in your story this time.”

“So I’m not a natural storyteller. Just another one of the many deficits I’m learning to live with.”

“There are no suspicions whatsoever on your part that maybe, being so groggy and all, you got a few things wrong?”

“For instance?” DeMarco said.

“Like maybe it was Huston doing the cutting on Inman? That would explain the rope burns at least.”

“Seems quite a stretch to me,” DeMarco said.

“You’re not even willing to consider the possibility?”

“That scenario would require that Huston somehow overpowered Inman, tied him up…with rope he found where? There was no rope in my car, I can tell you that. He then somehow was able to convince Inman to stand chest deep in freezing water so that Huston could slice away at him? And then what? Knowing that Inman would freeze and or bleed to death before he could get back to civilization, he then handed him an unregistered weapon, loaded with birdshot, for fuck’s sake, then sat on the shore and said, ‘Okay, your turn, shoot me.’ You think that’s the more plausible story?”

“What I think is that it’s not outside the realm of possibility that you might be hoping to rewrite a bit of history. For Huston’s sake.”