Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(89)

“So tell me about it," Schaeffer said.

I’m not sure when, the night before, I’d decided to come clean with Schaeffer. Somewhere around 3 A.M., I guess, when I’d finished picking the gravel out of my face and had been staring at the ceiling so long I started seeing dead faces in the crystalline plaster. Maybe they’d started looking a little too familiar. Or Carlon’s newspaper deadlines had started looking too close. Or maybe I just needed to make Larry Drapiewski and Carl Kelley proud of me. Whatever it was, I told Schaeffer what I knew.

When I was done he nodded. "Is that all?"

"You wanted more?"

“I want to make sure your bullshit filter is operating today, kid. Is that all?"

"Yeah."

“Okay. Let me think about it."

I nodded. Schaeffer took out his napkin again.

“Maybe when I calm down I’ll decide not to kick your ass for being so stupid."

"Take a number, " I said.

I don’t know how Schaeffer drove with one hand and a napkin larger than his face pressed against his nose, but he managed to navigate us through the turns without slowing under thirty and without hitting any of the residents. We pulled up next to a couple of squad cars outside a two-story turquoise house on Salvador. Sure enough, everybody was waiting outside. You could tell the ones who had been inside recently. Their faces were bright yellow. A group of neighbors, mostly old men still in bathrobes, had begun to gather on the neighbor’s porch.

"Someday," Schaeffer snuffled, "I want to know what it is about 11 A.M. that makes everybody want to turn up dead. It’s a corpse rush hour, for God’s sake."

“You got cotton balls or something?" I asked.

"In the glove compartment with the Old Spice."

I made a face. “I’d rather smell the deceased."

"No you wouldn’t. One good thing about sinuses, Navarre. I can’t smell a damn thing. You should be so lucky."

I opted for the Old Spice. I doused two cotton balls and put one in each nostril. When we got into the house I was glad I had.

The victim was an old widow, Mrs. Gutierrez. Nobody had seen her for a few days, according to the neighbors, until the guy next door had gotten worried enough to check on her. The minute he opened the front door he closed it and called the police. I’d seen dead bodies, but usually not after they’d been floating in bloody upstairs bathtubs in one-hundred-degree heat for several days. Mrs. Gutierrez wasn’t easy to look at. I must’ve needed to prove something to Schaeffer. I stayed with him while he went over the scene.

“Suicide my ass," he told the beat cop. He pointed at the slit wrist on Mrs. Gutierrez’s bloated forearm. “You see any nicks on either side of the main cut?"

Just before he left to throw up, the beat cop admitted that he did not. Schaeffer put the dead hand down long enough to blow his nose, then continued his conversation with me.

“No hesitation marks," he said. “It takes two or three tries to get over the pain when you do it yourself. Somebody did this job for her."

He looked at me, for applause, I guess.

“Is this your idea of getting even with me?" I mumbled through the cotton balls.

The idea seemed to amuse him. "Come on, kid. I’ll show you why I drink Red Zinger."

I followed Schaeffer downstairs. He started a pan of coffee grounds burning on the stove to help with the smell of the corpse. If I hadn’t been breathing Old Spice already, it would’ve almost been enough to make me swear off the java too. Then we looked for the window the intruder had forced open. Schaeffer didn’t believe in waiting for the evidence tech. He used a spray bottle of diluted super glue to get the impression of a dried boot print on the carpet by the front door, a hand print on the wall.

“Lesson for the day, kid. The scene doesn’t lie. Went right out the front, probably in broad daylight.

Probably raped the old lady too. I’d bet money."

I didn’t offer any. When Schaeffer decided to go outside for a break, I was only too glad to follow. We sat on the hood of his car and waited for the coroner while Schaeffer adjusted his pants back over his belly. I thought about the way a corpse would look after a week and a half. A corpse I knew.

“So what was the favor?" Schaeffer asked.

"I want the Cambridge case done right," I said. He squinted at the sun coming down through the pecan trees. He said: “That’s not a favor. That just happens."

"But I want some leeway."

Schaeffer stared at me. “Now it’s starting to sound like a favor. What kind of leeway?"

"I want to know what you’ve found out, and I want until Friday."

"Until Friday for what?"

"I don’t want the FBI knocking down Rivas’s investigation just yet. Making people nervous. If Lillian is still alive, I need a few more days to look."

"And if she gets not alive between now and Friday?"

"She’s been gone for a week already. You’re the expert. If she’s not dead yet, what are the chances?"

Schaeffer didn’t like conceding the point.

"Still no deal," he said.

“Then you look," I said. “I’ve tied it to homicide. Take it to the CID chief that way."