The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (27)

Letty spent no time worrying about the Mexican boy: he was dead. She heard a burst of shots, one at a time but fast, from the stairs to the housekeeper’s apartment above the garage, and she went that way, running lightly, quietly down the stairs, turning the corner, through the living room and the kitchen, to the bottom of the housekeeper’s stairs, and then up.

Martinez had gone into the kitchen expecting a close-up shoot-out with Lucas Davenport, but the kitchen was empty. At the same time, she heard somebody running in the back, and she followed the noise, pushing the pistol out ahead of her, as she’d been trained, found a door going into the garage and, to one side, a carpeted stairway going up.

She heard a door slam at the top of the stairs, but took just a second to pop the garage door and look inside the garage. There were two cars, but no sign of life. She ran up the stairs, heard a heavy thump behind the door, and fired five shots through it, fast as she could, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam.

She heard a woman scream something and she kicked at the door, but it didn’t budge, and she fired five shots at the doorknob and lock, and then kicked at it, but unlike the usual Hollywood movie sequence, the door remained closed.

Frustrated, she emptied the gun at the door, dropped the empty magazine, took another magazine from her jacket pocket.

A woman’s voice, from the stairs below her: “Hey.”

Letty was halfway up the stairs when she saw Martinez empty the gun at the door and drop the magazine. She said, “Hey.”

Martinez turned, jerking her head around, saw Letty there with the big .45 in her hand. Tres, she barely had time to think, must have failed. She blurted, “I have no gun. I am empty.”

She dropped the pistol and the magazine.

Letty said, “Bullshit. You tried to kill my mom and my little sister.”

She shot Martinez in the heart. Martinez didn’t go down, but staggered backward, a shocked look on her face. She lifted a hand, and Letty shot her again, in the heart, and Martinez sagged but still brought the hand up, as if to fend off the bullets. There were now only six feet apart, and Letty shot her a third time, in the face, and then Martinez slid down the wall, leaving behind a smear of blood . . .



* * *





Tanner was there: “You okay?”

“Just remembering something,” Letty said. She sighed, smiled at him.

He nodded and gestured for her to lead, and he followed her through the house to the guest bedroom. He got on his knees, looked under the beds, and said, “Yeah. Okay. Let’s get out of here. This is for the crime scene guys now.”

Outside, they found Dick Grimes walking up the driveway, accompanied by a uniformed cop. Kaiser got out of the truck to meet him and Tanner nodded at Grimes and said, “Mr. Grimes. We’ve spoken a time or two—you had those pipe thefts a couple of years ago.”

Grimes nodded and said, “How are you, Dan? It’s Dan, right? Are they both dead?”

“We found two bodies inside. Since you knew them well, we’ll ask you to identify them, but that won’t be for a while. Our crime scene folks have to work through here.”

“Ah, jeez, this is terrible.” Grimes produced a paper towel from his pocket and turned away and used it to wipe his face; he was sweating profusely, Letty thought, but then, no: he was wiping away tears. He was crying and trying to hide it.

Tanner patted him on the back and said, “Why don’t you go sit in your car . . .” Now he was looking past them down the street. “Here come da chief.”



* * *





The chief of police walked up the driveway, a heavyset, square-shouldered man with a crew cut and a red face like a canned ham. He eye-checked Letty, Kaiser, and Grimes, took Tanner by the elbow and led him out of earshot, saying, “Excuse us for a minute.”

They spoke for two minutes, Tanner gesturing toward the house, then he and the chief walked back over to Letty, Kaiser, and Grimes. The chief said, “I’m Randall Short, I’m the chief here. I’m terribly sorry about this. I can promise you that we’ll be all over it. We will find the people who did it.”

He must have caught a shadow on Letty’s face, and he cocked his head and said, “You don’t believe me, young lady?”

“I think it’s unlikely,” Letty said. “They were killed by professionals, or at least semi-pros. Professional enough that they turned the air-conditioning down to sixty degrees to delay decomposition of the bodies, so nobody would notice an odor, at least, not right away. How many amateurs or impulse killers would think of that? And the way they were killed and the fact that both cars are gone . . . The killings were carefully planned and carried out, and both of the Blackburns’ cars were taken so that a routine check would lead the police to think they’d left voluntarily. With both cars gone, that would mean three killers, if they arrived in one car. I wouldn’t be surprised if the two stolen cars are now down in Mexico, where you’ll never find them.”

He stared at her, nonplussed, then said, “Do tell.”

“Yes. I do.”

“You think Mexicans did it?”

Letty shrugged. “I don’t know who did it. You could get American professionals to do it, and I’m sure they have competent killers across the border. It’s the cars I was thinking about. Getting rid of them permanently, and maybe at a profit, outside normal American police communications systems. If they were in Albuquerque, you’d find them in an hour. In Juárez, not so much. Besides, Americans, Mexicans, everybody likes money.”