"Was there any mud in the garage yesterday when you cleaned up?"
"No, I'm sure. And it hasn't rained. But behind the garage, to the side… I hosed down a shovel and rake back by the faucet, tools I'd used at the last minute, at the jobsite to set some stakes. It was muddy back there."
They looked up as Officer Bonner came around the side of the garage carrying a black handgun by a stick through the trigger guard. The clean-shaven, neat young man did not look at Ryan, only at the detective.
"Found it in a trash bag, along with some wet, stained rags and stained bedsheets. Dark stains that could be blood."
Ryan studied the gun. "It appears to be mine. If it's mine, you'll find the trigger guard is worn, the bluing worn off." She began to shiver. Dallas didn't touch the stick or the weapon. He looked at Bonner. "Has it been fired?"
Bonner's shiny black shoes and the pant cuffs of his uniform were muddy. He sniffed the barrel briefly, as if he had already made a determination. "It smells of burnt gunpowder. I'd say it's been recently fired. The trigger-guard bluing is worn off."
"Bag it," Garza said, and turned to Ryan, his face unreadable, that reined-in cop's expression bearing no discernible message of love or familial closeness, offering her no support or encouragement.
Ryan looked back at him, very white. "How did this happen? That gun was locked up! You yourself unlocked the cab door after you collected evidence about the boy. Just now, you unlocked the glove compartment. How could-?"
Neither mentioned that such storage of a gun was not legal, that in California one had to have a special lockbox that could be removed from the car, a law that had never, to Joe Grey and Dulcie, made any sense. What good was a lockbox if it could be removed by a thief?
"Who else has keys to your truck?" Dallas asked.
"Scotty has a set because we used it on the job, but he's family. I've only had this truck three weeks-I bought it in San Andreas." She looked hard at Dallas. "Could someone in the truck sales, someone…?"
"Not likely, but we'll check. Has anyone else driven it, besides your uncle Scott?"
"Dan Hall, once or twice. He used Scotty's keys or mine. There was no one else up there but Dan and Scotty."
"No one?"
"No one to drive the truck. Some kids were hanging around, the Farger boy and his friends, but they weren't… they couldn't…" She looked at him, shaken. "They had no chance, they couldn't have taken my keys."
"The kids were in the house trailer where you were staying?"
"A couple of times, but I was with them. They were never alone. I let them make sandwiches one day, while we were eating. They… well… there was one time," she said faintly. "They… when I was surveying one day, they wanted to use the bathroom. I was right there, down the hill," she said lamely.
"And your keys?"
"Either in my purse or on the table. I kept my purse in the bedroom closet." She stared at Dallas. "That boy… why would he take my keys? Anyone," she said more forcefully, "anyone could have gotten into the truck with a door tool, then used a lock pick on the glove compartment."
"Could have," Dallas agreed. He hesitated, glancing at the tape recorder. Then: "That boy very likely set a bomb, Ryan. Set it or helped someone set it. You think that was innocent, that bomb?"
She said nothing.
"Did you use the truck every day?"
"No, sometimes not for several days if we could get a lumber delivery in good time. But if he did take my keys," she said softly, "what was the connection? Between the boy and Rupert?"
The two cats looked at each other. You are, Joe Grey thought. At the moment, Ryan, it looks like you're the connection. The tomcat shivered. If someone wanted to harm the Molena Point police, first with the bombing that, lucky for everyone, hadn't come off as planned, maybe they'd meant to ruin reputations, too, as a backup move.
So they chose Ryan, Detective Garza's niece, as the patsy. Pin a murder on Ryan, they'd put Garza in an embarrassing position.
And, the tomcat thought with a soft growl, this scenario was far too much like the vicious attack earlier in the year when Police Captain Harper was set up as a killer.
Were Rupert Dannizer's death and yesterday's bombing connected to that other murder? Were all three crimes part of some planned vendetta against Molena Point PD? The possibilities rattled around in Joe Grey's head as wildly as those little plastic balls in some diabolical pinball machine. He felt he was racing back and forth across the glass top swatting uselessly at unrelated facts, the little bright spheres forming, as yet, no logical configuration.
10
The images of death remained with Ryan long after Dallas and his officers left the crime scene. Rupert's torn face, the coroner working over him, the strobe lights reflecting shatters of raw color across his body from the broken windows. The coroner wrapping Rupert in a body bag as if he were trussing up a side of beef, the emergency van hauling Rupert away through the village with no final ceremony, no tenderness, no one in attendance.
So what did she want, banks of roses strewn in his path embellishing his journey to the county morgue? Roses scattered by his former lovers? She imagined the coroner sliding Rupert into a cold gray storage locker, to remain forever alone. But the vision that clung most vividly was Rupert's shattered face, his bloody broken face. That picture would remain with her for all time, generating a distressing internal response to every hurtful thought she'd ever entertained about Rupert Dannizer, to every angry wish she'd ever made about Rupert's ultimate fate.
When all the vehicles had gone, she stood in the empty drive feeling small and scared. Wishing Dallas could have stayed with her, feeling like a child in need of strong male support and assurance.
But Dallas had been shaken too. He would never show it, but he was upset and worried for her.
He would do everything possible, he wouldn't give up until he had unraveled the facts and put them in their proper order. Even if he had to step off the case, and surely he would, he'd remain in the background making certain that everything was done right, seeing that no clue was ignored, no investigative procedure disregarded.
She stood thinking about death, wondering if Rupert, as he lay in her garage gazing blindly up toward the rafters, might have experienced some final metamorphosis of the spirit, wondering if he'd perhaps undergone some sudden change of view. If Rupert, transformed into the eternal state, had awakened to face the error of his ways.
She was not a churchgoer. But she'd never doubted that there was more to the spirit than this one life.
However, given Rupert's earthly performance, she really didn't imagine that in some great toting-up he would be a candidate for a medal in exemplary behavior. More likely Rupert had, in his final moments, felt the searing heat and witnessed his first glimpse of the eternal flames. And that was all right with her.
Turning to go upstairs, she looked across the street at the neighbors' blank windows imagining people peering out from behind their curtains wondering what kind of woman had moved into their neighborhood bringing murder, neighbors already certain that she had killed the victim, neighbors wondering who he was and what kind of stormy relationship had led to this particular act of violence.
Well, they'd know soon enough. The papers would have it all, every dirty aspect of hers and Rupert's marriage. Some reporter would dredge up every harlot and married woman Rupert had ever bedded, every incident that would throw suspicion on her, his estranged and bitter wife.
Heading for the stairs, she stopped to inspect the truck again, and to brush some of the mud from its sleek red paint. Even her nice new truck, this solid and reliable symbol of her new and independent start in life, had become a part of the mess. Dallas and Officer Bonner had dusted it inside and out for fingerprints, a thorough job that had taken them the better part of an hour. Now, moving to the cab, she looked in at the red leather upholstery that puffed luxuriously over the two bucket seats. No hint of mud there. The day she bought the truck she had promised herself that the soft seats and pristine red carpet were going to stay as clean as her kitchen sink. No sawdust, no candy wrappers or greasy hamburgers or leaking Coke cans dripping their long sticky trails. No open tubes of caulking, no getting in the cab with wet paint or plaster on your jeans.