The Investigator (Letty Davenport, #1) (34)

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That’s what they did. The Midland police station was a tan cube with a high set of stairs out front and a couple of long-haired kids sitting on them, like they were waiting for either a ride or their dealer. Inside, they were told that Tanner was at the Blackburn house and would have to be present when they signed. Letty told the uniformed sergeant they spoke to that they were going to Lubbock, and asked her to tell Tanner that they’d be back in the afternoon.

On the road out of town, Kaiser behind the wheel again, he fished around on the satellite radio until he found the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing “Scar Tissue” and he said, “Ah . . .”

“One of my favorite old-timey bands,” Letty said.

“Old-timey? Watch your mouth. I grew up with them,” Kaiser said. “?‘Californication.’ ‘Scar Tissue.’ ‘Snow.’ ‘Give It Away.’ Any band that can do ‘Give It Away’ and cover ‘Brandy’ . . . that’s a knockout band.”

“They covered ‘Brandy’? The Looking Glass’s ‘Brandy’?”

“That exact song,” Kaiser said. “In concert. You can see it on YouTube. Flea is awesome.”

And a while later, Letty said, “I love driving through these mountains, the curvy road, the views.”

Kaiser glanced at her as though she were having a stroke. Then: “Oh. You were being funny. I’m cracking up over here.”

Letty looked out across the hot flat plain, at the distant, circular horizon that wrapped around them like the edge of an old LP record, at the billiard-table highway that dwindled to a pinpoint ahead of them.

“At least you don’t have to worry about not seeing the oncoming eighteen-wheeler,” Kaiser said. “You can see it fifteen miles out.”



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Two hours into Lubbock, talking occasionally, listening to music, Letty reading snatches out of the FBI’s file on Brody (Stony) Rivers. Rivers had testified against Rand Low at Low’s car theft trial. Rivers had been charged with conspiracy in the thefts, but was cut loose in return for his testimony. There were a few interesting details—Low’s public defender protested at his sentence of two years for a first-time offense, but the file also noted that Low had been caught driving a stolen Mercedes that happened to belong to a district court judge.

That note made Letty smile, which Kaiser caught, and he asked, “What?”

When she told him, he said, “Not exactly a criminal mastermind, huh?”



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Letty plugged Rivers’s FBI-file address into her cell phone, which took them to Bois d’Arc Village on the west side of Lubbock, a downscale mobile home park. The homes were numbered, but in no particularly rational way, as if home number 1 had simply been the first to show up and park, with 2 and 3 in other parts of the place.

As they rolled through the park, Letty said, “You notice anything . . . weird?”

“All trailer parks are weird,” Kaiser said. “I should know—I lived in one for a year.”

“Count the pickup trucks,” Letty said.

A minute later, Kaiser said, “Okay, that’s weird. There aren’t any. Or maybe I saw one back by the gate.”

“One or two or three, but . . . everywhere else out here, they’re the default vehicle.”

“Maybe people who live here can’t afford them. Average car here is what? Ten years old? Fifteen?” He pointed through the windshield at a car parked in front of a mobile home. “When was the last time you saw a landau roof?”

“I didn’t know what a landau roof was, until you pointed it out,” Letty said.

All of the homes were set behind a continuous, waist-high chain-link fence, and the place was absolutely still, no walkers, no loungers, not even a dog behind the fences. The Brody Rivers home was ill-kept, even for the trailer park, and, unlike the others, seemed to be partially constructed of wooden planks, now peeling and warped. A variety of plastic children’s toys were scattered around a cramped lot of compacted gray dirt.

“Tough place,” Kaiser said, as they pulled off the street and parked. “The question now is, should you knock, because you look like a small, harmless orphan girl who is no threat to anyone? Or should I knock, because I’m a large threatening presence who might rip your heart out if you don’t talk?”

“I was thinking that if you knocked, and they shot you, you’re so thick that they wouldn’t get complete penetration,” Letty said. “I could use your body as a shield while I returned fire. If I knock and they shoot me, they would get complete penetration, and probably smack you down, too. We’d both be dead, instead of just one of us.”

“We’re well matched in catastrophic thinking,” Kaiser said. “I just flipped a mental coin. You get to knock.”

“Fair is fair,” Letty said. “Let’s go.”



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Letty led the way through the chain-link gate, across a yard that smelled of weeds, dust, and a hint of garbage, up to the trailer’s front door, and knocked; the door had a vinyl outer shell that flexed, muffling every knock, and Kaiser said, “Gotta bang on it harder.” She did. A curtain moved in a window next to the door and then the slit window scraped left and a woman’s voice asked, “What do you want?”