Coven. Part 6

"Don't walk in it!" Lydia yelled. "Look, Peerce, this place is too small for both of us. Do me a favor and-"

Peerce didn't need to be told. He sputtered and went back to the office, bitterly chewing a wad of tobacco.

Now we're in business. She aimed the SL back on the blood. It went about fifteen feet to the stable charge's office. The phone hung off the hook. A larger splash had coagulated on the floor. Lydia crouched down, thinking. She closed her eyes and tried to see the victim. Despite the wound, he'd made it back here.

Why? To use the phone.

What then? He hadn't died here. Not enough blood.

So he left. He'd dressed his wound and he'd left.

Now where? Where would I go if I'd just been severely cut by an ax wielding maniac near the stable entrance?

The stable exit, dumb a.s.s.

But what about the attacker, the axman? He'd still be in the aisle. Cut this bad, did the victim actually have the b.a.l.l.s to go back out and fight?

Weapons.

Maybe he was strapped. If the victim was Sladder, maybe he had a gun. Some guards carried them, some didn't. The security office would know; they had sign out sheets. The suspicion needled her.

She went back out, imagining herself in great pain. She fixed her SL beam, and there they were, like gold ingots at the baseboard. Bingo! she thought. There were six of them. .25s, maybe .32s. He popped six caps at the axman. Okay, okay. What then?

Escape.

She followed away from the empty cartridges. Where did he go now? She pictured a frantic, bleeding man stumbling along. Come on, come on. Show me.

The last swing door before the exit. Bingo! she thought again, but it was a pale thought. She'd been rooting for the bleeding man, for nothing. This was as far as he'd gotten.

Her SL beam frozen down, Lydia stared quietly. Jesus. The bloodstain lay wall to wall. Footprints led out of it like stick on dance steps. It was obvious. The victim had been butchered.

The blood was here, all over the place. So where was the body?

"How could you miss bloodstains on the f.u.c.king floor?" White was bellowing at Peerce when Lydia came back in.

"It's dark in there, Chief. Without no lights, it's hard to-"

"s.h.i.+t, Peerce! She's makin' us look like fools!"

"Well, sir, I-"

"Shut up! What else that stuck up priss find that you missed?"

"Plenty," Lydia said at the door. Stuck up priss? "The weapon was probably an ax with an unusually long, flat blade. I got several impactations that look the same. The back fence was cut with it, and so was the entrance door and the phone lines. One thing I'm sure of, though. Someone died in there."

"How do you know someone died?" White protested.

"I followed the bloodfall. No one could lose as much blood as I found at the exit and live. Only problem is there's no body."

White conjectured this and scoffed. "I don't believe someone was murdered."

"You just don't want to believe that someone was murdered in your juris."

White glared. "You got a lot of nerve, girl."

"Just being honest, Chief. Question. Was Sladder packing?"

"No," White said. "Only supervisors carry guns. Why?"

"I also found six spent casings. Remington .25s."

"s.h.i.+t!" White's fist slammed the desk. "What the f.u.c.k's my campus turned into?"

A slaughterhouse, Lydia thought, almost with a smile. But the smile drained when she remembered the blood. She wished for her daily Marlboro. "I can stand here and speculate all day, Chief. But it'd just be a waste of time."

White's voice lost its edge. An unsolved murder could make the papers, smear the school, get him fired. "I can't stall this, Prentiss. This s.h.i.+t's gotta be solved, and I mean by us, not some outside agency. We'll be closed out once the state gets here."

"State? The agro site's part of the campus. It's ours."

"No, it ain't, not really. All them animals are licensed through the state department of agriculture. Health inspectors will be wantin' to know if some disease killed the animals. We'll be up to our b.u.t.ts in state by late afternoon."

Late afternoon? "That's no time for me to do a workup," Lydia complained. "I'll have to get started right now. I need you to get the power back on, I need lights to sweep for prints. And I'll need cold storage, I'll need lab s.p.a.ce, I'll need-"

"I'll get you everything you need," White interrupted. "You say you can do this kind of s.h.i.+t, then get to it. I'm puttin' my trust in you, Prentiss, but hear this. If you f.u.c.k up and make me look like a d.a.m.n fool, I'll make sure you're checkin' parking meters for the next twenty years. You got that?"

"I'm touched by your confidence," Lydia said.

CHAPTER 7.

Jervis knew he'd fooled no one last night at the inn. Pretending to have put Sarah behind him was an act he'd never pull off, like a corpse pretending not to be dead. Wade had seen right through him; Tom too, probably.

The bar was called Andre's, a redneck hole in the wall ten miles off campus. A Deep South chant played softly from the juke, swamp guitar and a tale of broken promises and broken hearts. A mob of bikers stood around a pool table throwing back shots and making frequent use of scatological verbs.

Jervis waited in a darkened booth. The equal darkness of his mind sedated him. Like a corpse pretending not to be dead, he thought again. But what would summon such an image? He ordered three Heinekens from a chubby, lank haired blonde whose frayed cutoffs showed the bottoms of her cheeks. "You drinkin' these all by yourself, cutie?" she asked.

"Just two of them. I'm expecting someone."

Her belly b.u.t.ton peeked from a fleshy gap. "You all right?"

"I'm fine," he lied. He tipped her a fin.

"Gee, thanks, cutie."

"Don't mention it." Just leave me alone.

Eventually his guest arrived, a sleazy shadow sliding into the booth. Slim fingers gripped a clean manila envelope.

"Good evening, Mr. Czanek," Jervis said.

"Good evening, Mr. Smith. Or is it Jones?"

Jervis slid him a beer. "It's Tull. Jethro Tull."

"Of course. My apologies." Czanek grinned through a con man's visage, a constant easy smile and long hair pushed greasily off his brow. It was the smile, Jervis realized, that told the genuineness of the man. Czanek was a happy go lucky denizen. He lived with the sleaze and despair that hid behind the world, yet smiled, somehow, in honest happiness.

"Got a lot of p.o.o.p on your man," he said. "It's amazing what you can learn from a tag number."

Jervis cringed to damp a sudden excitement. This was either fast work or sloppy. "At a hundred fifty a day I figured you'd milk me for a week at least. That's what private d.i.c.ks do, isn't it?"

"Only on divorce jobs where the woman's a looker," Czanek said. "I don't take clients for a ride. It's bad for business."

Some business. Jervis lit a Carlton. "Speaking of business..."

Czanek's voice was soft yet rough, perhaps by design. "Your man's full name is Wilhelm Karl von Heinrich. His father's a developer from West Germany, very, very rich. The Germans are investing tons of cash in the south coast, like the j.a.panese in California."

"Wilhelm Karl von Heinrich," Jervis muttered.

"The kid's twenty six years old. Got a degree from University of Bamberg, business. He's an instant in for his pop."

"You got a picture?"

Czanek lay out a stockholder's brochure. Dozens of neat faces smiled up from a glossy sheet of corporate members. One face was circled in red marker, and read "Wilhelm Karl von Heinrich," like letters on a gravestone. This man is my epitaph, Jervis thought.

He'd glimpsed Wilhelm only once, at a distance, getting out of his white custom van. Now, though, Wilhelm's face smiled up in beyond belief handsomeness. Jervis felt very sick all of a sudden. The face looked like something on a GQ cover: square jaw, bright blue eyes, short blond, very Aryan hair, perfect teeth.

"Pretty boy, huh, Mr. Tull?"

"Don't rub it in, Mr. Czanek."

"Sorry. Here's a Polaroid I snapped this morning when he left for the gym."

This was worse. Lover boy in the parking lot. Blazing white shorts and sleeveless T s.h.i.+rt with the words "Deutschland uber Alles." His legs looked like sh.e.l.lacked oak pillars. Muscles gleamed in too perfect symmetry. Lots of muscles.

"He's six-two, according to his license, a hundred eighty five pounds, and I don't see any fat. In real life, he looks bigger."

Jervis groaned.

"He's renting a place just out of town, to be close to the girl." Jervis appreciated Czanek's courtesy. He never referred to Sarah by name. It was always "the girl." Jervis supposed it was a trait of Czanek's profession to depersonify a lost love. It made it less embarra.s.sing.

"The address is here. It's about fifteen minutes off campus, a fourth floor apartment, nice place. Lease expires September first."

Jervis cleared his throat. "You got a schedule on the guy?"

"He works out regular at Brawley's Gym, ten until three every day. I got a look at the sign in sheet."

"What else? I need more."

Czanek had more, plenty more. "He picks the girl up at six every night. They eat out, go shopping, like that. Then he brings her back to his place, or they go to hers."

Jervis lit another Carlton, finished the first beer, and started the second. Czanek's three day surveillance was exemplary-it drove Jervis' despair to new heights. He'd asked for it, though. He'd asked for all of it.

"He's been in the States two years, got his citizens.h.i.+p right away. Two vehicles in his name, a Porsche 911 and the white van. He buys a lot of stuff for the girl. There're some Xeroxes of his credit card invoices. He's a big spender, and..."

"What, Mr. Czanek?"

"There's one more thing I don't think you want to know."

"What?" Jervis repeated. "I'm not paying you to be my shrink."

Czanek removed some papers from his sports jacket. "These are some additional credit card invoices. Lots of jewelry purchases and restaurant tabs from the same places on the invoices there."

Jervis looked at the invoices in the folder. They all had recent dates. "What's the difference between these and the invoices in your hand?"

Czanek hesitated. "The invoices in my hand go back six months."

Jervis stared.

"Six months, Mr. Tull. I'm sorry to have to tell you that."

Jervis wanted to die. She'd been dating Wilhelm six months before she even broke up with Jervis. Behind his back for six months. Jervis felt minuscule in his seat, blackened by a shadow more vast than all the broken hearts in the world. He must seem pitiful.

He took out his wallet. "A hundred fifty per day, right?"

"That's right, plus ex-"

Jervis gave him six hundred. "And keep the retainer for expenses."

The money disappeared into Czanek's jacket like magic. He left the folder and invoices on the table. "Thank you very much, Mr. Tull. You have my number in case there's anything else I can do."

Anything else. Jervis was staring. "What else do you do?"

Czanek leaned forward. "Let's just say that my services are not exclusively limited to the parameters of the law."

Jervis didn't quite know what to say. What am I thinking?

"I don't kill people," Czanek said.

Had that been what Jervis was thinking?