Racing the Devil Read online

  “Service with a smile,” she said, and held out a brimming wineglass. She slipped beneath the sheet and sipped her drink, holding it delicately, between two fingers and a thumb. “I know it’s not expensive, but I love sweet wine. Don’t you?”

  I tipped my head noncommittally.

  She brushed her fingers across my upper arm, where a thin white scar stood out against the skin. The pale hairs on my arms prickled.

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  “Vice squad. Undercover. Crackhead with a switchblade.”

  “And this one?” Her index finger traced a short jagged scar a few inches to the right of my navel. At her touch, the muscles of my stomach jumped.

  “Broken bottle.”

  Her hand swept upward, palm flat against the hard contours of my abs. Her fingers tugged gently at the blond hairs on my chest, slid across my pectoral muscles, and came to rest beside the small round scar halfway between my armpit and my heart.

  The one that had ended my marriage.

  “And this?” she said. Just before her finger touched the puckered skin, I closed my hand around hers and said, “That one, I don’t talk about.”

  “Ah.” After a moment, she cleared her throat, slipped her hand from beneath mine, and said, “So. What’s it like being a detective? It sounds exciting.”

  “Sometimes.” I brushed my lips across the butterfly on her shoulder. “Mostly, it’s a lot of waiting.”

  “Waiting?”

  “Waiting for a cheating spouse to come out of a motel room. Waiting for a guy defrauding his insurance company to sneak out of his wheelchair and go dancing. Waiting for interviews. We talk to a lot of people. That’s about it.”

  “You think about it being car chases and murder mysteries.”

  “P.I.’s don’t do murder,” I said. “Once in a blue moon, if we’re hired by an attorney. But mostly, it’s missing persons, insurance fraud, personal injury claims, spousal misconduct . . . that’s the kind of stuff we do. We leave the homicides for the cops.”

  She made a wry face. “Too bad. I think a murder would be interesting.”

  “I worked homicide for seven years,” I said. “And believe me, murder isn’t interesting. It’s nothing but a waste.”

  We moved on to other topics then. She told me about Ronnie, the soon-to-be ex-boyfriend.

  “He seemed so sweet.” She wrapped one arm around her knees and held her sangria glass with the other hand. “Guess you never know, huh?”

  “Guess not,” I said, though there had probably been signs.

  “Here, hold this.” She handed me her glass and headed off to the bathroom.

  When she came back, we had another glass of wine, made love again, and sometime after that I drifted into sleep, her body curled against mine like a Siamese cat’s. I woke up once, with my head spinning and my stomach roiling, realized it was still dark out, and sank back into a sleep too deep even for dreams.

  MORNING. A SLIVER of sunlight sliced through a gap in the curtains and seared through my eyelids, setting off a small nuclear explosion in my head. I scrabbled for the digital clock beside the bed and squinted at the readout: 10:45.

  Great. I had to pick up my son, Paulie, at noon. I lay with my palms over my eyelids long enough to realize that my bladder was also on the brink of implosion. What a dilemma. If I got up, my skull might blow apart. If I stayed put, my bladder might burst. God. I clenched my teeth, pressed the palms of my hands to my temples, and stumbled into the bathroom to take a leak and inspect my tongue, which was coated with a white scum that looked and felt like dryer lint.

  Heather was gone. She’d taken the wineglasses and the bottle of sangria. And on the table, she had left a note.

  I’m sorry, it said.

  Shit. How could I have been so stupid?

  I picked up my jeans. My belt hung from the loops, my cell phone still clipped to it. I checked my wallet. Everything was there. I felt for my keys. Still in the pocket.

  So, sorry for what? For not saying goodbye? She hadn’t left a number, so I guessed we’d had a one-night stand.

  Too bad. I wondered vaguely if she’d ever get away from Ronnie, and if she did, if I would ever know about it.

  Then I told myself there was nothing worse than a maudlin, thirty-something single guy with a hangover. I’d gotten laid, and if the worst that could be said was that the lady liked her sex with no strings attached, who was I to try and complicate things?

  Still feeling muzzy-headed, I showered, dressed, and went down to the lobby, where a pot of stale coffee and a pile of day-old bread and pastries masqueraded as a continental breakfast. I passed on the pastry and choked down a cup of coffee and a piece of dry toast. They calmed my churning stomach. While I ate, I skimmed a couple of sections of The Tennessean, which someone had left on the corner of the table.

  There was an article on the legislation to remove the waiting period from handgun permits, a questionnaire for football fans, a story on the Society for Creative Anachronism, and a column on the RC and Moon Pie Festival in Bell Buckle, which was where I’d planned to take Paulie this afternoon.

  According to the article, the festival had been a great success. I shook my head and read the article again.

  Had been. As in, having already occurred. As in, something was terribly amiss.

  I glanced at the header at the top of the page, and a hollow feeling settled in the pit of my stomach.

  The header said Sunday. But I’d left the First Edition with Heather on Friday night. How the hell could it be Sunday?

  Numb and disoriented, I scooped up the paper, and a headline on the front page of the local section caught my eye: WOMAN SLAIN IN HOTEL ROOM. EX-POLICE OFFICER SOUGHT FOR QUESTIONING.

  Ex-police officer. I’d lost touch with most of the guys I used to work with, but I still felt connected to the force. Once a cop, always a cop, as Maria used to say. I’d skimmed most of the other stories, but I read this one word for word.

  The victim was Amanda Jean Hartwell, known to friends and family as Amy. The grainy photograph showed a smiling, bespectacled young woman. Her hair, a tumble of shoulder-length curls pulled back by two barrettes, was either light brown or dark blond. It was hard to tell from the black-and-white photo.

  Her body, which had been shot and mutilated (no details), had been found at the Cedar Valley Motel in Hermitage. Survived by a husband (Calvin J. Hartwell), two daughters (Katrina E. and Tara D. Hartwell), and a sister (Valerie C. Shepherd).

  Her lover was wanted “for questioning”—a euphemism for “we know you did it, son, we just can’t prove it yet”—and a description of the lover and his license number followed. NRL-549.

  A trickle of ice water seeped though my bloodstream and settled in my bones.

  NRL-549. That was the number on my license plate.

  And the name at the bottom of the article . . . Wanted for questioning: Jared McKean . . . that was mine too.

  I TUCKED THE NEWSPAPER under my arm and sauntered out to the parking lot, trying not to look like a man who was wanted for murder. Sun and humidity basted the asphalt and turned the outdoors into a sauna. Through ripples of heat, I could see my truck a few spaces to the right of where I’d left it. I’d been distracted at the time, but I was sure I’d parked closer to the streetlight. I peered inside and saw a key jutting from the ignition.

  On the floorboard, the handgrip of a Glock .40 caliber protruded from beneath the driver’s seat. Not mine, I told myself, as if wishing it might make it so. Mine was in the glove compartment, and I’d locked it with a combination that was not my son’s birth date (too obvious), but my horse’s.

  My stomach tumbled, and my mouth tasted suddenly of bile. For a moment, I struggled to hold down my meager breakfast. Then I pulled my key chain from my pocket and counted. House key, office key, keys to Maria’s place and my brother’s house.

  The key to the truck was gone.

  My temples throbbed dully.

  I’d missed picking up
Paulie yesterday, and it wasn’t looking good for today, either. It was already eleven-thirty, and if the police wanted me for questioning in a murder case, I’d be lucky if I managed to extricate myself by midnight.

  I tugged at the door handle. Unlocked. The Batman on the dashboard looked reproachful.

  I punched in the glove box combination and popped it open. Stared at the empty compartment as if I could will the gun into its accustomed place. For a long moment, I stood there, considering. I could take the Glock with me, wipe it down, pour acid down the barrel, and drop it in the Cumberland River. I could throw it down a manhole or bury it in some vacant field. It would be easy. My hand stretched toward the pistol . . .

  And pulled away. I shut the door and shoved my hands into my pockets. I’d made too many mistakes since Friday night. One more wouldn’t make things better.

  Besides, I’d rather be jammed up for doing the right thing than for doing the wrong one. At least if things went badly, I’d have the consolation of feeling self-righteous about it later.

  I moved into the shade, away from temptation, and called Maria from my cell phone. She picked up on the second ring, sounding breathless, harried.

  “It’s me.”

  “Jared.” There was a tremor in her voice, and I could see her in my mind, her round dark eyes like the pictures of those big-eyed kids so popular back in the sixties. “Where are you?”

  “I’m sorry about yesterday. Missing Paul. I didn’t—”

  “I know. Just . . . are you all right?”

  “You’ve seen today’s paper.”

  “Yes. And the police were here. They said you hadn’t made it home last night or the night before. They said you killed some woman.”

  I took a long, deep breath, pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, and told myself not to panic.

  This was easier said than done. If the police were actually saying that I’d killed a woman, it meant they had more than a license plate number. “Who’d they send out? Anybody I know?”

  “Frank Campanella. Harry Kominski. Where are you?”

  “Parking lot. Did they tell you what they have?”

  “They said they had your fingerprints. A lot of other things.”

  “They couldn’t have my fingerprints. I wasn’t there.”

  I could hear the tears in her voice and wanted to rush over there and take her in my arms. But that wasn’t my job anymore, and I heard D.W.’s voice somewhere behind her, comforting and reassuring.

  “I know you didn’t do it,” she said, finally. “I’m sure Frank knows it too.”

  D.W. took the phone. “Look, buddy,” he said, “none of us think you did this. But you’ve got to go and talk to them, get this thing straightened out.”

  “I will,” I said. “Put Paulie on. I’ve got to tell him I can’t come today.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “I’d rather.”

  I could almost hear him shrug. “Okay. Just a minute . . . Here he is.”

  “Hi, Daddy. Mama crying.” The gravelly little voice made my heart twist. I could see him perched there, maybe on Maria’s lap, his stubby fingers curled around the receiver, his slanted eyes crinkling. A little Buddha with Down syndrome, happy to hear from me, worried about his mama.

  “I know, Sport. You give Mom a hug for me, okay?”

  “You come get me?”

  “Not today, Sport. Something came up. I’m sorry, buddy.”

  “Moon pie, Daddy. You said Moon Pie.”

  “Next time, Paulie.” The festival would be long over, but he wouldn’t care. I had promised him Moon Pies; it didn’t matter where they came from. I was proud of him for remembering.

  “You come get me,” he said again. “Today.”

  “I’m sorry, Sport. Another day. I love you.”

  “I love you. Come today.”

  There was a long pause as the phone switched hands. D.W. again. “He’ll be all right. You just get this business taken care of. And call Jay, if you haven’t already. He’s frantic.”

  JAY WAS CHRISTENED with three first names. Theodore Jay Ambrosius Renfield. If names are destiny, Jay was destined to be an entrepreneur, an actor, a brigadier general, or gay. His parents, I think, had visions of a wealthy southern gentleman in a white linen suit. Pert blond trophy wife; three perfect, berry-brown children; sprawling estate with a pillared mansion and rolling green hills dotted with walking horses.

  When we were in preschool and he preferred paper dolls to matchbox cars, his mother called him “sensitive.” When he wore her eye shadow to school in the fifth grade, she called it a phase and took comfort in his manlier pastime of assembling models of plastic horror movie monsters. By the time he reached junior high school, it was obvious to everyone that the trophy wife was out, and that Theodore was, in his own words, a flaming fag. He went by ‘Ted’ then, and the guys in P.E. called him ‘Ted Red.’ “Hey, Ted,” they’d call. “You on the rag?”

  He began to call himself by his second first name (Ambrosius being out of the question). This resulted in a brand new nickname—‘Gay Jay.’ Since, objectionable as that was, it was preferable to being named after a woman’s monthly inconvenience, he decided to keep it.

  When we were in grade school, we hung out together—Jay and Jared, two tow-headed boys that people often mistook for fraternal twins. But I was no more comfortable with his burgeoning homosexuality than the rest of the guys in our class, and by our junior year, we had pretty much drifted apart. Then one afternoon, I walked into the locker room and found the captain of the football team pushing Jay’s head into the toilet.

  I didn’t think.

  I charged.

  Two cracked knuckles (mine) and half a dozen stitches (the football captain’s) later, I found myself with a seven-day suspension and Jay’s undying gratitude.

  We lost touch not long after high school. I went to the police academy, got married, got a Criminal Justice degree with a minor in Psych, and had a son. Jay got a scholarship to Vanderbilt and moved in with a leather-clad, B&D biker boy with bleached blond hair and a Marilyn Monroe tattoo. His parents disowned him. He made a small fortune designing computer games and graphics.

  I was lucky to get the bills paid.

  Needless to say, we moved in different circles.

  I hadn’t seen Jay in ten years when he called me up out of the blue and told me that the biker boy, to whom Jay had always been utterly faithful, had left him high and dry and HIV positive. A lingering cold had been the impetus for him to get the test, and it had shown him to be on the brink of full-blown AIDS. He hadn’t even known his lover was infected. When they’d been tested years before, they’d both been clean.

  Months after my divorce, when I’d lost my job on the force and was trying to set myself up in the private detective business, it seemed only natural for me to move in with Jay.

  All right, maybe not natural, but right. It was a good trade. I got cheap room and board, a place to board my horses—a palomino quarter horse named Tex and a black Tennessee Walker called Crockett—and unlimited use of Jay’s swimming pool. He got someone to take care of him.

  The boyfriends came and went, but I was his family.

  I flipped open my phone again. The battery was low, so I dug through my pockets for a couple of coins, went back inside the motel, and called home.

  Jay picked up on the first ring.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  He let out an audible breath. “Thank God. Where have you been? I didn’t worry when you didn’t come home, but then the police were here, and . . . They went through your room. I couldn’t help it. They had a warrant.”

  Worse and worse. If they had enough on me for a judge to issue a search warrant, it was looking very bad indeed.

  “What did they take? Do you know?”

  “Hair samples. From your comb. They looked through all your clothes. Something about fibers and bloodstains. And they dusted for fingerprints. What a mess.” He was quiet
for a moment. “They seemed especially interested in your theatrical makeup.”

  It had been years since I’d done any community theatre, but I’d found that a little facial hair could change a man’s entire appearance. Back when I worked undercover in vice, it came in handy. It still did.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll call Frank and see what’s going on. If they’ve got DNA, this’ll be over with in no time.”

  “God, I hope so.” I could hear the mixture of anxiety and relief in his heavy sigh. “How can they even think you’d be involved in a thing like this?”

  “Somebody stole my truck last night. No, night before last.” I still wasn’t clear on the timing. I’d lost a day at least, but I wasn’t sure how. Had the cloying sweetness of the wine concealed something more sinister than fruit? “I’m sure this’ll all be cleared up soon.”

  But something niggled at the back of my mind. I hadn’t been in Hermitage on Friday night. I didn’t know the murdered woman, and I’d never visited the Cedar Valley Motel.

  So why did the police have my fingerprints?

  MY NEXT CALL went to Frank Campanella, Metro Homicide. For seven years, he was my partner. Now he was dusting my room for prints. It was his job, but the thought left a hollow feeling in my belly just the same.

  He answered on the third ring. “Campanella here.”

  “It’s me.”

  “Jared. Where the hell are you?”

  “Everybody wants to know where I am. Frank, you know I didn’t do this.”

  There was a long pause. When he spoke, there was a tinge of anger in his voice. “You want to hear what we’ve got so far?”

  “You know I do.”

  “We’ve got hair and semen. It’ll be a few weeks before we get a sure DNA match, but serology results show it’s your blood type. AB negative. I don’t have to tell you how rare that is.”

  He didn’t. It was a trait my brother, Randall, and I had both inherited from our father. “Okay. So it’s rare. There’s still plenty of guys in Nashville with AB negative blood.”