Текст книги "Flat Spin"

Автор книги: David Freed

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“Look it up, you don’t believe me.”

Savannah shook her head. “Someday,” she said, “you’ll tell me the truth. Maybe.”

Someday. Maybe. But not today.

I set my plate in the sink.

“I need a go or no-go on the car, Savannah.”

Savannah sighed. “The keys are on the desk in the study,” she said. “Just bring it back full.”

* * *

I eased the Jaguar to the end of the driveway and waited while the security gate swung slowly inward. I was thinking that the last thing I wanted to do was spend six hours driving across the desert to Phoenix to grill some woman I’d never met about whether her husband whom I barely knew did or didn’t kill himself. I had the FAA to do battle with, my pilot’s license to restore, a flight school to run into the ground. What did I care how Robbie Emerson died? I suppose the same could’ve been said about Arlo Echevarria. So what if I owed him my life? Had some dipstick in a Domino’s shirt lit me up like a Christmas tree instead of him, there’s no way that self-absorbed son of a bitch would’ve ever gone hunting my killer. Not after I stole his wife. I pondered the notion of giving Gil Carlisle back his money – what was left of it, anyway. But something stopped me. Not some lesson from the Buddha about fidelity to the memory of a friend – even if that friend turned out to be the opposite – and not some cheesy, ready-room pep talk about completing the mission regardless the cost. No, what kept me from putting the Jag in reverse and giving Savannah back her keys was the ill-formed notion that somehow, if I could just piece the puzzle together and deliver her some closure, that she would be there, waiting for me in the end, and that we could resume life together as if Arlo Echevarria never existed. Improbable, I realized, but there it was. Whatever I owed Arlo Echevarria, I decided, would be paid in full by my making the trek to Arizona. My conscience would be assuaged, the ledger balanced.

Immersed as I was in such thoughts, it took me a second to notice the black van with tinted windows that turned sharply into the driveway and skidded to a loud, screeching stop directly in front of Savannah’s car.

The driver was already out of the van and advancing toward me, reaching his right hand into a blue Dodger warm-up jacket like he was going for a weapon. He was about thirty and on the thin side, with a long loping stride, shaved head, milk chocolate skin, moon face, ballistic-shooter sunglasses. I drew my revolver, threw open the Jag’s passenger door and, shielding myself behind it, squared his chest in my gun sights.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” He slammed on the brakes like some cartoon character. “Ain’t no need for none of that, brother. C’mon now.”

“Get your hands up where I can see ’em.”

“No worries. Take it easy.” He reached for the clouds.

“Now turn around with your fingers interlocked on the back of your head.”

“Anything you want, brother. Be cool now. C’mon.”

I advanced on him in a two-handed combat crouch and ordered him to spread his legs shoulder-width. When I got close enough, I patted him down from behind with one hand, my gun trained on him with the other. He was unarmed.

“What’s under the jacket?”

“Legal papers.” He turned his head and eyeballed me, his hands still in the air. “Are you Mr. Cordell Logan?”

“Only if you’re from Publishers Clearing House.”

“Publisher’s what?” He realized I was messing with him. “No, man, I’m a—”

“Process server,” I said, finishing his sentence for him and stuffing my revolver back in my belt. “No balloons. That should’ve been my first clue.”

I apologized for nearly killing him. He professed no hard feelings.

“In my line of work, comes with the turf,” he said, handing me a temporary protective order with my name printed on it. “You’ve been duly served.”

“Duly noted.”

He backed his van up and sped off down the hill in search of his next litigant.

The protective order, signed by one Ronald Jablonsky, district court judge from Clark County, Nevada, accused me of harassing my former father-in-law, his assistant, Miles Zambelli, and Savannah. It ordered me to cease and desist in the matter of Arlo Echevarria, warning that I would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law if I failed to do so. I wondered how big a bribe Carlisle had slipped the judge. I crumpled the paper, tossed it in the backseat, and headed east, out of the city, the sun in my eyes.

Savannah called.

“My housekeeper just told me there was some big commotion down on the street.”

“Your father served me with a cease and desist. How’d he know I was at your house?”

“I told him.”

“Thanks a bunch.”

“Whatever you may think of him, Logan, he’s still my father.”

She’d called him after she’d gone to bed, she said, because she was confused about her feelings for me and needed to talk it through with someone. Her father, she said, had offered to buy her a first-class ticket and put her up at his flat in Paris for a month, all expenses paid – enough time for her to come to her senses and realize that she had no business ever giving me the time of day again.

“So what did you tell him?”

“I told him I’d have to think about it.”

“Personally, I would’ve gone with the place in Paris.”

“Of course you would’ve,” Savannah said.

I promised I’d have her car back the next day, if not sooner.

TWENTY

As the objective observer motors across much of rural America, he is often struck by the thought, “How could anyone with half a brain ever live in a hell hole like this?” Certainly, the extreme eastern reaches of Southern California, where the desertscape turns more lunar-like with the passing of each bleak, interminable mile, embody the very definition of such godforsaken places. Places where the reception on one’s car radio becomes limited to Mexican border blaster mega-stations, gospel-thumping fearmongers, and twangy country-western tunes like, “There Ain’t Enough Room in My Fruit of the Looms to Hold All My Lovin’ for You.” Places better flown over than driven through.

I was listening to Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart,” pondering the profundity of the Man in Black’s lyrics, when Miles Zambelli telephoned. Much as I disliked Zambelli, I was happy to talk to him. Given that I still had another two hours of boring, featureless desert ahead of me, I would’ve been happy to talk to just about anybody.

He said he was speaking on behalf of Carlisle, who was concerned that my making “unfounded and inflammatory” inquiries in Echevarria’s death threatened to derail the oil deal with Tarasov in Kazakhstan.

“Neither Mr. Carlisle nor Mr. Tarasov appreciates you continuing to make these ridiculous inquiries,” Zambelli said, “and, quite frankly, neither do I. You will cease and desist, or Mr. Carlisle will have no choice but to demand reimbursement in full of the monies he paid you which, if you’ll recall, required you to do nothing more than very briefly apprise the police as to the nature of Mr. Echevarria’s employment history.”

“Please inform Mr. Carlisle I am in receipt of the court order issued by Judge Jablowme, and that I have filed it accordingly. Also please inform Mr. Carlisle that any and all monies paid me to date have already been expended on cheap wine and even cheaper women.”

“If you think this is a joking matter, Mr. Logan, I would advise you to think again. As you continue to cast outrageous aspersions on wholly innocent individuals in the death of Mr. Echevarria, including Mr. Carlisle and myself, you’re also interfering with an ongoing police investigation. And I can assure you, sir, we will not stand for it.”

“That is some mighty fine speechifying, Miles. Did you learn that at Harvard Law or watching Law and Order?”

I wasn’t sure if the connection was lost before or after he hung up on me.

* * *

Emma Emerson arrived twenty minutes late for our rendezvous in the mini-mart parking lot on Phoenix’s west side. She was driving her late husband’s red Silverado. Though it was still daylight, I flashed my headlights three times to let her know it was me she was looking for, then got out and walked over.

She was an anorexic, fifty-something brunette in jeans and a goose-down vest, even though it was eighty degrees outside, and bulging, slightly misaligned green eyes that never quite met mine.

“Got any ID on you?”

I dug the driver’s license out of my wallet and held it up for her inspection. Resting on her lap was a nine-millimeter Beretta. A vintage Winchester carbine rode in a gun rack mounted on the inside of the truck’s rear window behind her, along with a .223-caliber Ruger survival rifle with a plastic laminate stock.

“I don’t remember Robbie ever saying anything about serving with Cordell Logan, no middle name,” she said, peering at my license photo. “Sounds like one of them made-up Hollywood names to me.”

“The studios made me change it. My real name’s Norma Jean Baker.”

She eyed me suspiciously without so much as a rumor of a smile. Grabbing a pack of unfiltered Camels from the truck’s center console, she eased one between her lips, fired it up with a match, and said, “I’m gonna ask you two questions. Get either one wrong, we’re done. Got it?”

“I just hope they’re true or false. I don’t do well on multiple choice.”

Tendrils of smoke shot out of her nose. “True or false: The standard-issue weapon of Alpha tactical teams was the MP-5 submachine gun.”

“There was no standard-issue weapon. Every man carried whatever he qualified on, as long as it shot standard NATO ammunition.”

If she was impressed, she didn’t show it.

“Second question: What name did my Robbie use in the field?”

“Herman Munster.”

She exhaled, openly relieved, and nodded approvingly. “Can’t be too careful who you’re dealing with these days.” She glanced over at Savannah’s Jaguar. “That your car?”

“Ex-wife’s car.”

“She must still love the hell outta you if she let you borrow a vehicle like that. You still love her?”

“All depends on how horny I am at the moment.”

Emma Emerson grinned. She was missing an upper incisor.

“The last honest man on earth,” she said. “Get in.”

* * *

We merged from I-10 onto the Agua Fria Freeway, heading north past half-built subdivisions, tan stucco and faux-Spanish tile structures, most of them abandoned amid the nation’s Great Recession. Emma rocked back in her seat to check her side view mirrors, then leaned forward over the steering wheel, scanning the skies above and ahead of us like she was looking for enemy aircraft.

“Want a beer?”

“Wish I could.”

“Suit yourself.”

She reached behind her seat without taking her eyes off the road and fished a Bud Light out of a red and white Igloo cooler. “Everything’s over at the house,” she said, “all the evidence of who killed my Robbie.”

She popped open the can.

“Why do you think he was killed?”

“Cuz they wanted him killed.”

“Who’s they, Emma?”

She glanced over at me “Who do you think? The government.”

Robbie Emerson had gleaned volumes about Alpha’s tactics, techniques and procedures – much of which he’d appeared to have shared with his wife. Knowledge of even Alpha’s name was classified TS/SCI back when the group was operational. So sensitive were its activities that even the Buddha would’ve required a full background investigation to be briefed. But that hadn’t stopped Emma Emerson from apparently learning all about Alpha from her late husband. She droned on and on about all the many classified missions in which he’d participated, and what an outstanding covert operator he’d been.

I asked her if he’d ever talked about Arlo Echevarria.

“All the time. Robbie loved Arlo. The only one who ever stood up for him.”

“Then you heard what happened to Echevarria.”

Emma looked over at me. “What’re you talking about?”

“Echevarria was killed. About a month and a half ago. Shot to death.”

“Jesus.” She gulped down half her beer. “Robbie called Arlo to tell him some Russians were out to get him. He called to warn Arlo.”

“When was this?”

“The night before they found him out in the desert. Don’t you see? They murdered Arlo to cover their tracks, just like they did my Robbie, just like they’re gonna do you. They know you know.”

“Know what, Emma?”

She didn’t answer, scanning the skies and checking her mirrors. We were doing ninety in the slow lane, passing cars on the right.

“You said ‘some Russians.’”

“Fuck the Russians! They’re in on it, too! They all are! You know who it was!” She reached behind her, steering with her right hand, trying to wrestle the Winchester out of the gun rack and nearly sideswiping a big rig hauling a load of sheetrock. “Take the rifle. Take it!”

I grabbed the Winchester out of the rack before she shot herself with it. Or me. She was straining forward in her seat, peering intently upward, through the windshield.

“There!” she said, pointing, “Right there! You see it? There it is!”

I followed her sight line to a Bell Ranger cruising at our eleven o’clock position, about 1,500 feet AGL, paralleling the freeway. “Channel 11 Action News” was emblazoned on the side of the helicopter’s fuselage.

“You mean the news chopper?”

“News chopper. Yeah, right.”

She veered violently off the freeway, ignoring the red light at the bottom of the off-ramp, and fishtailing onto Union Hills Drive, racing eastward. I could see the TV helicopter through the truck’s rear window. It continued to parallel the freeway, flying on a perpendicular course, away from us.

“Lost him.” She lit another cigarette with trembling hands. “God, that was close.”

I soon realized that the news helicopter wasn’t the only thing Emma Emerson had lost.

* * *

She lived in a two-bedroom mobile home across the street from the clubhouse in a treeless, sun-blanched trailer park on Scottsdale’s north side. Three deadbolt locks secured the corrugated aluminum front door. Robbie Emerson’s widow quietly put her ear to the door and listened with the pistol in her right hand, hammer back. Satisfied we weren’t walking into an ambush, she undid the deadbolts. I followed her inside.

Dozens of banker boxes filled with papers were heaped haphazardly atop each other almost to the ceiling, creating wobbly cardboard walls through which narrow passageways had been constructed like some sort of indoor corn maze. Newspapers and magazines and clothes and cartons of ammunition were piled on the furniture. There was nowhere to sit. The trailer reeked of tobacco and garlic.

“In here,” Emma said, sidestepping between walls of boxes and into the trailer’s cramped galley kitchen. She put the pistol on top of the refrigerator, snatched a half-gallon bottle of off-brand bourbon from a cupboard next to the stove and poured herself a glass. The kitchen table, barely big enough for two people, was crammed with boxes, files, and an old CRT-type computer monitor.

“You need to see this,” she said, sitting down at the table and typing.

I stood over her shoulder and watched. Black and white video appeared on the computer screen: a broad V-formation of lights in the night sky. I remembered seeing the same footage on the news years earlier. The Air Force said the lights were nothing more than flares dropped by military aircraft on a training exercise outside Phoenix, but hundreds of eyewitnesses insisted otherwise. What they saw that night, they said, was an enormous UFO.

Emma lit a fresh Camel. “That’s the alien mother spaceship,” she said, gesturing with her chin to the computer screen. “Where everybody took all those pictures of it was right near where those utility workers found Robbie. Same location. That’s why Robbie was killed. That’s why Arlo was killed. To keep them quiet because they knew all about the arrangement.”

“What arrangement would that be, Emma?”

“The reverse engineering stuff they’re doing at Area 51! I thought you said you were with Alpha. Jesus.”

Her late husband’s top-secret security clearance, she said, had afforded him detailed knowledge of hush-hush research programs that allowed scientists working for the Defense Department to parlay technology gifted by ETs into the development of technological advances ranging from Stealth bombers to longer-lasting light bulbs.

“Robbie knew things he wasn’t supposed to know, so they made it look like he killed himself,” Emma said. “They’re gonna kill you and everybody else who was ever with Alpha, just like they did him and Arlo Echevarria because they know you all know the truth.”

“You’re saying the aliens killed your husband?”

“Christ, do I have to spell it out for you? Not the aliens. They’re too smart for that. They make these big defense contractors hire professional killers, Russians, because they don’t want the public to know they’re all in cahoots.” She gulped some bourbon. “The CEOs of these companies, they’re making trillions of dollars, cashing in on all the tech transfer! The police won’t do nothing because they’re afraid they’ll get killed, too, just like my Robbie. So nobody says a word.”

“Did Robbie tell you all this?”

“He didn’t want to put me at risk. Far as he was concerned, the less I knew, the safer I’d be. But I figured it all out, believe me, the whole story. Mailed Arlo a book that lays it all out, the whole coverup, to protect him, because I knew how much Robbie respected him. But Arlo must not have read it, cuz if he’d of had any sense at all, he would’ve run for the hills before they got him.”

I asked her about the suicide note her husband had allegedly left behind.

“That wasn’t him that wrote it. The grays forged his handwriting to make it look like he’d killed himself.” She removed a sheet of paper from a file. “The police would only give me a copy. Said the original was evidence.”

She handed me the copy of her husband’s suicide note. In steady block print it said, “I can’t do it. I’m sorry.”

“Robbie would’ve never shot himself, not in a million years,” Emma said. “Our daughter’s having a baby. She’s due any day. Robbie was gonna be a grandpa. You should’ve seen him. He was so excited. Them aliens, the grays, they was the ones who made him do it. The police can deny it all they want, but I got the proof.”

She handed me an envelope from the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division. Inside was Robbie Emerson’s driver’s license.

“This came in the mail the week after he died,” she said.

The photo on Emerson’s license made him look older than his fifty-seven years. He had thinning hair and a straggly beard flecked with gray and stared listlessly into the camera, like some shellshocked veteran resigned to his fate. He looked to me like a man who could’ve easily put a pistol to his skull and squeezed one off.

“Look at the date on the license,” Emma said. “He goes and renews his license two days before his birthday, then, five days later, you’re telling me he drives into the desert and shoots himself? Who in their right mind renews their driver’s license, then five days later does that?”

She showed me a prescription bottle with Emerson’s name on it – Prozac, the same anti-depressant Savannah dropped like candy toward the end of our marriage. Savannah always said she needed happy pills because her career wasn’t going well, but I always wondered if it was because of me.

“Look at the date on the bottle,” Emma said. “He refills the prescription and three days later, he kills himself? Gimme a break. It makes no sense. None of it.”

“I’m sorry, Emma.”

She stared at the photo on his driver’s license for a long time, caressing it with her thumb. Then she got up from the table and hurried unsteadily into the bathroom, slamming a hollow core door behind her that did little to mask the sounds of her retching into the toilet.

I leafed through one of the file jackets piled on the table. The folder was crammed with newspaper clippings detailing alien abductions. Other similar file jackets held clippings about cattle mutilations, crop circles, and, inexplicably, singer Wayne Newton. There were files for insurance claim forms, warranties and receipts, and annual tax returns. There was also a file thick with copies of cashier’s checks made out to Emma Emerson, each in the $1,000–$5,000 range and dating as far back as 2003—the same year Robbie Emerson joined Alpha. All of the checks had been issued by Massio Trust, Ltd. – the same Massio Trust whose banking clients included members of the Russian mafia and the father of Eugen Dragomir, my one and only student pilot.

It’s a small world, I thought, but not that small.

Emma emerged from the bathroom wiping her mouth with a washcloth. She looked wan.

“Who was Robbie working for when he died, Emma?”

“Home Depot. Part-time. Why do you wanna know that?”

I held up one of the cashier’s checks. She tried to snatch it away.

“You got no right looking in my personal files! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“He parlayed his security clearance into a little income on the side, selling innocent tips here and there to certain interested foreign parties. What kinds of weapons we used. Basic tactics. He figured, ‘Where’s the harm in it? It’s information they probably know already.’ Only he couldn’t deposit dirty money under his real name, so he had the checks made out to you. That way, if anybody ever asked him during a polygraph, ‘Have you ever accepted illicit funds from any foreign parties?’ he could say no and the needles wouldn’t budge.”

“My Robbie served his country. He was a hero. He would never do something like that. Ever.” Her carotids were pounding like jackhammers.

“You’re lying, Emma. I can see it in your neck.”

She covered her throat with her hand to cloak her throbbing arteries. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

“All I want is the truth, Emma. Same as you.”

She winced almost imperceptibly and licked her lips. The truth, Emma conceded, was that she didn’t know where all the money came from. Her husband never said. Checks would arrive every month or so – a thousand bucks here, two thousand there – and she would dutifully deposit them. She had her suspicions that perhaps he was involved in some peripheral way with the alien technology transfer cover-up, she said, but she was never certain.

“He came home very upset the day before he died. I asked him if something had happened at work. He said he’d got in an argument with somebody, but he wouldn’t tell me who, or what it was about.”

“You mentioned Russians.”

Emma sat back down at the table and stared mournfully at her hands.

“Is that who came to see Robbie that day, Emma? A Russian?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Robbie called Echevarria, to warn him about ‘some Russians.’ Isn’t that what you said?”

“I don’t know. I think so. I was cooking bacon. The TV was on. Robbie was on the phone.”

“Did you tell the police this?”

“They said he was already depressed, taking pills, whatever. Robbie was never like that, arguing with people. He was never the same after they made him retire – all that crap about him being in that bar with that European woman and supposedly telling her things – but I know he didn’t kill himself. And not you or anybody else on this earth can ever tell me otherwise.”

She sat down once more at the table and keened mournfully.

You seem to have this effect on a lot of women, Logan, I thought to myself.

I rested my hand on her shoulder. “For the sake of the entire human race,” I said, trying to make her feel better, “I only hope the grays were not involved.”

Emma looked up at me appreciatively, her eyes glistening.

“I’m not off my rocker.”

“No one said you were, Emma.”

* * *

After Robbie Emerson’s widow dropped me back at Savannah’s car, I drove to the Home Depot where he’d worked. The manager looked like Babe Ruth in an orange apron. He was at the service desk, on the phone, trying to placate an irate woman who’d accidentally dropped a ninety-pound bag of dry cement mix on her foot and was now threatening to sue. I waited until he hung up.

“Hell hath no fury,” the manager said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

I told him my name, said I was looking into Emerson’s death, and asked whether it might be possible to see store surveillance tape taken the day before Emerson died.

“You guys already went through all the tape. I thought you said there was nothing there.”

“I’m not a detective. I just play one on TV.”

The manager looked at me funny. “Come again?”

“Mr. Emerson and I served together in the same unit. I’m just trying to find out what happened to him.”

“Look,” the manager said, “I’m ex-infantry myself. Desert Storm. But unless you’ve got a court order, or you’re the police, I can’t help you. Corporate policy. I’m sorry.”

“Desert Storm? I was over myself.”

“Is that right? Who were you with?”

“Air Force. I flew A-10s.”

“Hog driver, huh?”

“Shake and bake, baby.”

“You guys saved our bacon more than once, that’s for sure.”

“Good times,” I said.

The manager looked away wistfully as the trace of some distant memory crossed his face. He was quiet for a long moment. “You know,” he said finally, “I never really got a chance to thank you guys properly.” He stuck out his hand. “My name’s Ted, by the way.”

* * *

The surveillance tape, shot by a video camera hanging from the corrugated aluminum ceiling, was grainy and without audio. Still, Robbie Emerson’s likeness was unmistakable. No wonder he went by “Herman Munster” during field operations. Anybody that grodylooking, you can spot with a satellite. He was wearing his Home Depot apron, arguing animatedly in the plumbing department with a lanky customer who stood with his back to the camera. The customer wore jeans, a plain green T-shirt, a black or possibly blue baseball cap, and sunglasses. He carried in his right hand a red plastic case about two-and-a-half feet long. The word, “Milwaukee,” was printed on the side of the case.

“Looks like a Sawzall,” I said.

“Fifteen amp Super Sawzall,” Ted said. “One of our better sellers. You can cut through a two-by-six like butter with one of those bad boys.”

“Or cut off somebody’s hands.”

“You are one strange dude,” the manager said.

“It’s been said of me before.”

Inside the Home Depot’s darkened security office, the store’s security director¸ a squat, bespectacled retired postal inspector named Skaggs, reclined in a well-worn swivel chair while monitoring a wall of eleven camera monitors, each of which shifted its view automatically every ten seconds, covering every aisle as well as the store’s parking lot and loading docks.

The heated discussion between Emerson and the faceless customer played out silently on a twelfth monitor. Ten seconds of video on a repetitive loop. I moved in closer for a better look.

“Play it again.”

Skaggs replayed the clip. And again. The man carrying the Sawzall case never showed his face to the camera.

“Nobody heard what they were arguing about?” I asked.

“None of our associates,” Ted said. “We talked to everybody who was on-shift at the time.”

“What about any customers?”

“Nobody heard anything so far as we were able to determine,” Skaggs said.

“What about when the guy goes to pay for the saw?” I said. “You must’ve gotten a better shot of his face then.”

Skaggs spooled up another video clip. “The camera covering those registers, unfortunately, was down that afternoon for maintenance. This was as good a picture as we could get.”

The second clip, also shot from on high, captured the man with the Sawzall swiping a credit card at a self-service check-out stand, but the on-screen resolution was no better than the first clip. With his baseball cap pulled low and wraparound sunglasses, the man’s face was impossible to make out.

“He paid with plastic,” I said. “You can ID him that way.”

Ted looked chagrined. “Yeah, well, unfortunately, we had a problem with that, too. American Express reported the card stolen out of California about an hour after we processed the transaction.”

Scottsdale police, he said, had reviewed the videotape and concluded that the faceless crook who bought the Sawzall probably had little, if anything, to do with Emerson’s decision to kill himself the following day.

“That guy might’ve set Robbie off for whatever reason,” Ted said, “but Robbie was always wound up pretty tight anyway, always about two seconds from going off on somebody for something. I mean, if anybody was unhappy with his life and was gonna, you know, do himself in, it was him. The cops said that’s what all the evidence pointed to and that’s good enough for me. I don’t want to sound cruel or anything but, really, the only reason I hired him was because he’d been a grunt, like me. I probably was gonna have to let him go anyway given his attitude.”

“Mighty considerate, him saving you the trouble.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. Robbie Emerson was far from perfect. He made his share of mistakes. But the man did earn a Silver Star defending his country. He deserved better than a six-word goodbye note and a bullet in his brain.”

I stalked out of the security office, which was in the back of the store, and through the paint department, making for the main entrance. Ted hustled to catch up.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I know he was your friend.”

“Forget it.”

“That crack you made,” he said, “about cutting somebody’s hands off. I’m just curious. What was that all about?”

“Me flapping my gums.”

The image of Gennady Bondarenko’s charred carcass flashed through my head. According to the coroner, Bondarenko’s hands appeared to have been removed by a power tool equipped with a reciprocating blade. Like a Sawzall. Robbie Emerson had shot himself soon after arguing with a man who’d purchased such a saw. According to his widow, Emerson had called Arlo Echevarria the night before he died to warn him that someone was out to get him. Echevarria and Bondarenko had been murdered with the same handgun. I was never a whiz at higher math, but I needed no algebraic equation to figure a possible common denominator in the deaths of all three men:

The guy who bought the Sawzall.

All I needed to do was find him.