“You know what?” I said, stroking his mane. “You need a new name. Lear Jet-even if that’s what Hy called you-is undignified. How about King Lear? Now that’s strong, speaks of a horse with self-esteem.”
Also speaks of insanity, but it’s not likely he knows his Shakespeare.
The horse bobbed his head again.
“It’s settled, then. I’ll call you King for short.”
When we got back to the stables, King only stepped on my foot once while I was grooming him. And I was pretty sure that was an accident.
When Hy came out of the ranch house, King was in his fenced pasture and I was cleaning out his stall. Hy stared in astonishment, shook his head, and said, “Never thought I’d see you tending to Lear Jet-or any other horse.”
“His name,” I said, “is now King Lear. King for short. We’re almost friends. In fact, I think he likes me better than you. At least I come to the stable bearing carrots.”
“Fickle animal. Since the two of you are on your way to becoming buddies, I just may have to buy myself another nag.”
“King is not a nag.”
“Oh yeah, the two of you have bonded big-time. If I ever get to ride again, I’m definitely going to have to spring for a new nag-I mean, horse.”
“King could use some company.”
“Do we have onions?” Hy asked.
“Yes, in that wire basket.” I sat at the table, thumbing through a report Kristen Lark had faxed me.
“How fresh are these eggs?”
“Check the sell-by date.”
“Fresh enough. What’s Lark got to say?”
“Not much. Nothing on Boz Sheppard. The sleeping bag Tom Mathers was wrapped in belongs to him; his wife says he kept it in the truck. She’s got an alibi for the time of the killing: she slammed out of the wilderness supply a short while after I left; a customer saw her leave, and spent at least an hour afterwards with Tom, talking about a fishing trip he wanted to line up. T.C. went directly to Zelda’s, drank and danced for hours, then spent the night with a good old boy at the motel.”
“Canned mushrooms all right?”
“They’ll have to be; we don’t have fresh. The good old boy is Cullen Bradley. I interviewed him at the hardware store he owns in Bridgeport. Glad-handing small-town guy with a serious hangover. Those Bridgeport men really get around. I wonder if- What?”
“Oregano?”
“In an omelet? Are you insane?”
“Just trying to get your attention, McCone.”
“I’m paying attention.”
“No you’re not. And that’s a sign you’re getting better.”
Monday
I spent a good deal of Monday morning on the phone to the agency, going over the week’s schedule with Patrick Neilan. Two new clients had set initial appointments with him for the afternoon: one was a deadbeat-dad case, which he’d probably assign to Julia Rafael; the other concerned identity theft. In the past Patrick himself would have taken it on, or it would have ended up on the desk of Charlotte Keim, my chief financial investigator.
But Keim, once my nephew Mick’s live-in love, now worked for Hy; after the acrimonious breakup of their relationship, I’d asked Hy to hire her in order to preserve peace within the agency. Her replacement, Thelia Chen, a former analyst for Bank of America, was working out splendidly. She ought to be able to handle the case.
The agency was practically running itself in my absence. Patrick was working out well as a partial stand-in for me. Ted and his assistant, Kendra Williams, were a superefficient pair. Mick and Derek made short work of the increasing number of computer forensic jobs that came in, and weren’t averse to doing mundane searches when nothing complex was on the table. Julia Rafael was bilingual and could deal well with Latino clients with limited English; former FBI agent Craig Morland had wide-ranging contacts with government agencies. And for a good all-around operative I could always call on the freelance talents of Rae Kelleher, who was now writing novels with a strong crime element and welcomed keeping her hand in the detective business.
Once this state of affairs would have made me feel distanced, left out. Now I merely felt relieved. I’d created a great team and, if I accomplished nothing else in my career, it had been worth the effort.
Still I felt restless, the empty day ahead weighing heavily upon me. No leads, no new information. Unless…
I dialed Glenn Solomon, a high-powered San Francisco attorney for whom I’d done a great deal of work-and who was also a good friend.
“Glenn, d’you know a Las Vegas firm-Brower, Price and Coleman?”
“Sure. They handle the legal work for at least three major casinos.”
“What about Frank Brower?”
“Lousy golfer, but a nice guy.”
“So you know him well?”
“We get together down there two, three times a year.”
I explained what I needed to know and asked, “Can you get him to tell you who was footing the bill for Hayley Perez’s legal work?”
“If I go about it the right way.”
“Will you do it for me-as a favor?”
“Yes, my friend. But I thought you were taking a long vacation at that ranch you and Hy have.”
“I was. Severe case of burn-out.”
“And you’re over it now?”
“No, I’m just helping out some friends.”
I booted up my laptop and Googled Bud Smith. Good luck, with a name like that. I narrowed the search down to insurance brokers, Mono County, California. No Bud, but there was a Herbert in Vernon. His record was clean-no complaints to the state department of consumer affairs. I then searched for more information on Herbert Smith of Vernon, California. Nothing. Apparently he wasn’t important enough to the gods of Google. Finally I logged on to one of the search engines that the agency subscribes to-even though I’m averse to availing myself of company resources for personal reasons-and came up with some revealing information.
Herbert Smith of Vernon, California, was a registered sex offender.
To confirm the information I visited a site that posted the whereabouts of registered sex offenders. He was on it.
How, I wondered, had a community of not more than four hundred people failed to pick up on his status? How could Dana Ivins have arranged for him to mentor young men and women?
I dialed Ivins’s number. She picked up, sounding crisp and professional. I told her what I’d found out and asked, “How could you put your clients at risk like that?”
Calmly she replied, “Bud’s case was unusual. He never confirmed it to me, but even the prosecutor over in Mineral County thought he was covering for someone else.”
“So this happened in Nevada.”
“Yes, twenty-six years ago. A girl of thirteen was raped, sodomized, and abandoned in the countryside near the munitions storage site outside of Hawthorne. She managed to crawl to the road and flag down a passing car. There was evidence pointing to Bud-tire tracks from his truck in the sand, a piece of cloth she’d ripped from a shirt belonging to him. Unfortunately, the girl was extremely traumatized. She couldn’t even speak, much less identify her attacker.”
And over a quarter of a century ago, there wouldn’t have been any DNA evidence. DNA testing was in its infancy then.
“So why did the prosecutor think Smith was covering for someone?”
“Bud had a younger brother, Davey. He was sixteen, something of a child prodigy-math, I think-but considered strange by his teachers and peers. Bud raised him after their parents died and was overly protective of him. Originally the police focused on Davey because he’d been seen in town talking with the girl, but then Bud confessed. And stuck to it.”
“So Bud did his time and…?”
“And moved back here to Vernon, where he was born and raised till the family moved to Hawthorne during his teens.”