The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(21)

“Silver?”

“Silver. Looks like it came from a vehicle manufactured by Ford between 1992 and 1998.”

“Any idea on the model?”

“Taurus, Crown Vic, Mustang, Explorer. Take your pick.” The printer on his desk whirred as the report came out. He handed it to me. “They used it all over the place.”

“I thought you said I was in luck.”

“Could be worse.”

I didn’t see how. The day before, I’d asked Sergeant Vasco for a recanvass, but he said he couldn’t spare any deputies at the moment. This isn’t Metro P.D., he said, we don’t have the same resources here. It was like he was testing me, trying to see if I could close this case without help from his uniforms, and the strange thing is that the hurdles he put up made me even more committed. I didn’t have to prove myself to someone like him, not with my record at Metro, and yet that’s exactly what I found myself doing.

“You sure you don’t want coffee?” Murphy asked. “I just got a new batch of Ethiopian.”

“Is this your family?” I said, raising my chin toward the framed photo of a blonde woman and a blue-eyed kid with their arms around each other. I was trying to shame Murphy a little bit, point out that a sixty-some-year-old married guy shouldn’t be acting like this.

“Yes, that’s my son. And that’s my sister,” he said. “My ex moved to Seattle four years ago, so my sister is helping me raise him.”

Well. I stuffed my hands in my pocket, did a little math in my head. “He looks about the same age as my son,” I said, careful to leave the surprise out of my voice.

“How old is yours?”

“He just turned thirteen. He’s in the seventh grade.”

“What school?”

“La Contenta. Yours?”

“Same.” He looked me in the eye for the first time, and smiled. He had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, a bit on the long side, but combed back neatly behind his ears. “Maybe they know each other,” he said.

“I doubt it.” Miles hadn’t made any friends; that was part of why he resented us for moving out here. “It’s a big school.”

“That it is,” he said. “Does your son like baseball? We have a standing game on Saturdays in the community park. He’d be welcome anytime.”

“Oh,” I said, a little taken aback. I had tried to strike up a conversation with the moms at Miles’s school, and they’d seemed friendly enough, but their interest had cooled when they found out I couldn’t chaperone the seventh-grade field trip or volunteer at the spring book fair or cover a table at the fundraising picnic. Several of them were stay-at-home moms and the rest had nine-to-five jobs, so they could arrange these activities around their schedules. But I couldn’t, not with my line of work. When I suggested Ray could take my place, they looked baffled. Why would a man want to do the bake sale? Of course, they didn’t come out and say it like that; they just went ahead and did the bake sale without telling him about it. “Thanks, Murphy. I’ll tell Miles about the game.”

“Okay. And I’ll let you know if we find anything more on that paint. Sometimes it takes them a few days to narrow it down to a specific model.”

Leaving Murphy’s office that morning, I took the long way back to my desk. I didn’t want to run into the sergeant and have him ask me for an update unless I had something solid to give him. All I had were three paint chips, one of which the forensics lab in San Bernardino had already dissolved into gas. Nothing more than thin air.





Jeremy




It was a pretty little house with two Adirondack chairs out front, a wind chime hanging from the eaves, and a wooden rail fence surrounding the yard. Fierro used to call it The Ranch. Time to go back to The Ranch, he’d say when we went bowling. He’d make it sound like he was sorry to have to go so soon, even though his eyes smiled with anticipation at being with his new wife, in their new house. In the driveway now was a silver Mustang coupe, every inch of it smashed, dented, or scratched. A side mirror sat in a pool of shattered glass, reflecting the moonlight. The name FIERRO had been recently peeled off the mailbox, leaving its ghost outlined in gray tracks. I walked up the little concrete path and knocked on the front door.

From the other side came the sound of someone flipping up the peephole, looking, hesitating. Finally, the door opened. “What’re you doing here?” Mary asked. Under her red hair, her eyes were red. She was in a white tank top that showed the tattoo on her upper arm. Death before dishonor. She’d gotten it as a welcome-home surprise for Fierro, a celebration of his Bronze Star, but he’d hated it. Asked her why she’d ruin her beautiful skin like that.

“You okay?”

“No, I’m not okay.” Her voice cut like glass.

“Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”

“He scared the shit out of me, trashed my car, and the whole time he was laughing about it. He couldn’t even let me have this one thing, this one little thing. Fucking asshole.”

I’d never heard her curse. She was one of those girls who said fudge and shoot and darnit, and whenever anyone around her cussed, she’d blush for them. Fierro had been so charmed by this, he’d proposed to her on the last day of his second R&R. Wait until you get back, Sergeant Fletcher told him when he heard about it, don’t make the same mistake I did. But Fierro wouldn’t listen, he was crazy about her. She was nineteen, enrolled in cosmetology school, dreaming of working on a Hollywood set someday. This is the girl I’m gonna marry, he said. And he did.