57

“What a mess.” Hathaway’s face lit for an instant in a camera flash. The forensic photographer scrabbled around for another angle on Barnes. Hathaway took the gum out of his mouth and turned it between his thumb and fingers. The movement pulled his eyes away from the bloody lump Barnes had become, but he must have decided not to leave the gum at the scene. He popped it back into his mouth.

“You think it was Flip,” Tom said.

“’Course it was Flip.” Hathaway pointed at the victim’s mouth. A wad of paper was hanging out of it. Maybe three pages. It was tinted red and gray from blood and saliva.

Tom ran his tongue across the roof of his mouth where Flip had jammed the end of the tether after the beating two weeks ago. The tender skin there had healed enough that it only felt like he’d burned it with hot pizza.

“You’re right.” Tom called over to the detective. “Hey, Lance.”

Lance was talking to one of the bartenders in the hallway. His gray sport coat hung open and might not have fit well enough to button even if he wanted to. He was skinny apart from that gut. When he was done with the bartender, he came back to where Tom stood with Hathaway over Barnes. The photographer circled off to snap pictures of bloodstains.

Lance started putting on the latex gloves. “What?” He was staring down at what was left of Barnes.

“We’re pretty sure Flip Dunn did this. See the paper in the mouth?”

The second glove snapped at the wrist, and both hands were covered. He flexed his fingers. “What about it?”

“It’s what he does. Stuffs something in the mouth of his victims.”

“Oh, come on, Tom,” Hathaway said. “You have to fess up.” He told Lance, “Tom tried to put a tether on Flip and got beat up. When he woke up, the end of the tether was in his mouth. That right, Tom?”

“Yeah.”

Lance looked back down to the victim. “You got a picture of this Flip Dunn?”

Tom took it out of his pocket, but before he could show it to the detective, Lance crouched down to get a closer look at Barnes. He pinched an edge of the paper sticking out of Barnes’s mouth, folded the page back. It was one of the few white spaces left.

“Looks like names and phone numbers. Some notes. Plenty to follow up on here.” He straightened and stripped off the gloves. “Give me the description.”

Tom rattled off Flip’s stats. He handed the picture to Lance, and Lance got started on the radio. Another APB on Flip Dunn, this time for a 187.

“Can we talk to the other victims?” Tom asked.

“You know better than that. I’ll get over there and do a photo lineup when I’m done here. If you want, I’ll give you a call and let you know if I get a positive.”

“Fair enough. Thanks. And thanks for the heads-up on this.”

Lance waved them off and got another set of gloves going.

Tom took one last look at what Flip had done to Barnes. For the hundredth time, he wondered why Flip hadn’t turned him into roadkill too.

He caught up with Hathaway in the hallway. The uniforms had set up floodlights. Light glinted off the thousands of shards of glass that crunched under the soles of their shoes. Hathaway was looking up at a dark hole in the ceiling where the remnants of a shattered bulb were still threaded into the fixture.

“Took his time setting this up, didn’t he?”

“I guess,” Tom said. “Let’s get over to the brother’s. See if we get lucky.”

“Seems to me you’ve already been lucky.”

“Yeah. I get that.”

At this hour, Venice Boulevard was just a string of lit-up asphalt waiting for traffic. Tom slowed for the red lights but coasted through when he was sure no other cars were coming. In a couple of minutes they were off the main boulevard and prowling toward the banker’s place. The houses here sat toward the back of their lawns like mausoleums. Most of the windows were dark. A few glowed with the lonely blue flicker of late-night television.

Tom scanned the sidewalks. It was walking distance from the Ragtop to the brother’s house.

“You think he got clipped in that firefight?”

Hathaway had his elbow propped outside, his jacket sleeve ballooning in the wind. “Maybe. A lot of holes in that room. Couldn’t tell if the bloodstains in the hallway were from the victims or what.”

Tom wheeled the Explorer onto the banker’s street, cruised past his house, and parked three doors down. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s up.”

“They’re about to be.” Hathaway opened his door and stepped out.

Tom killed the engine and followed. Nobody was on the sidewalks. He checked his watch—2:35.

Hathaway reached the door before Tom and leaned into the doorbell. It took three rings before they heard a woman’s voice behind the door asking who was there.

Tom said, “It’s Tom Cole, Mrs. Dunn. We talked over the phone a few days ago.”

No response.

Tom tried again. “We need to talk to your husband.”

The porch light lit up, and door hardware started unbuckling. She opened the door about six inches. Tom held up his badge.

Mrs. Dunn’s bleary eye peeked back, scared out of sleep. “Jason’s not home.”

Tom looked at Hathaway, then back through the crack in the door. “Where is he?”

A flicker of something painful moved across her cheek before she said, “I don’t know.” She began to close the door.

Tom put his hand on the panel. “Have you heard from his brother?”

“Philip? No.”

“If you hear from him, you need to call me. It’s very important.” He pushed a business card through the gap.

She took it. “I haven’t talked to him in years.”

“I hope it stays that way. But if you see him, try to stay away from him. And call me right away.”

That eye looked from Tom to Hathaway and back. “I understand.”

Tom turned.

“My husband doesn’t have anything to do with his brother.” The door had opened a little wider.

“Good. But Philip’s in the area. The immediate area. It’s a little too coincidental for me.”

“They hate each other, Officer. They have for years.”

Tom approached the door. “Why is that?”

She stared out at him. Tom felt that she was performing some kind of assessment of him and Hathaway.

The gap widened another six inches. “Maybe you should come in after all.”