"You won't need one, miss," said the detective, who had taken his place in the passenger seat. "You're not being charged with anything. We'd just like to take you downtown and ask you what you know about your friend, Mr. Ransome."
"I know he couldn't kill someone under any circumstances."
The detective had sorrowful, cocker spaniel eyes. "Then maybe you don't know him quite as well as present circumstances would suggest."
Chapter 13
Church bells were ringing in the distance before anyone bothered with Tess at the police station. They had left her in a room, not under arrest as far as she could tell, but not free to go, either, judging by the officer posted outside her door. At last she was in the famed "box," as everyone in Baltimore knew to call it since Homicide had become the city's official religion. She had spent the balance of the night in a plastic chair, her body desperate to sleep, her mind refusing. Talk about a mind-body problem. These two were like some long-married couple-the resentful insomniac mind kept jabbing the body every time it drifted off, hissing: How can you sleep at a time like this? Body begged wearily for its due, arguing that they would both be better off if they got a little rest. And so it had gone, all night long.
She was almost crazed with exhaustion by the time a man entered the room, carrying a wax paper bag and two Styrofoam cups of coffee. It was the sad-eyed plainclothes cop from the night before, the one who had arrived late, then ridden downtown with her. She remembered he seemed angry or troubled, but that might have been the fragment of a not-quite dream.
"Detective Al Guzman," he said. "Homicide. And you're Theresa Monaghan, according to your various licenses."
She nodded, letting the full version of her name pass. She wasn't going to form words until strictly necessary. The coffee was black and bitter-she usually took hers with a generous portion of half-and-half-but she needed the caffeine, so she sipped at it. Awful. The bag held an elephant ear and she broke off several flaking layers and dropped them into her coffee to sweeten it. Guzman watched approvingly, as a mother might watch a finicky child.
"Sorry for last night," he said. "You were caught in an unavoidable confluence of events, I'm afraid. Wrong place, wrong time. Wrong guy."
She let a lift of her shoulders pass for a reply.
"You know Ed Ransome before you came to Texas, or was he just, uh, a new friend? You can tell me. There's no law here against getting involved with the wrong man. Couldn't build enough prisons to hold all the women guilty of that crime."
It was a cornball thing to say, but he smiled as if he knew it was a cornball thing to say, and she found herself thawing a little. Guzman was not a handsome man, and his body was shaped like a squash, with its narrow shoulders and paunchy midsection. But he had a kind face that invited confidences and confessions-those big brown eyes and a glossy mustache whose shape mirrored the gentle, downturned mouth beneath it. Perhaps if she told him everything she knew, she would be allowed to go home and sleep. She thought longingly of La Casita, then remembered that Esskay was there alone. Maybe they would let her call Mrs. Nguyen at least, so she could feed the dog, get one of the hookers to take her for a walk. It would be so good to crawl into bed next to her.
But what was best for Tess wasn't necessarily best for Crow.
"I'm a private detective, which you know, since you've obviously gone through my wallet. Crow-Ed Ransome to you-is an old friend. An old boyfriend." That wasn't revealing anything, given the way the police had found them. Coitus interruptus by SWAT team. At last a form of birth control that was one hundred percent reliable. "His parents asked me to find him and I did. End of story."
"I think it's just the beginning," Guzman said, then waited, with those big brown eyes and that so very sad smile. He was letting the silence do the work, hoping Tess would rush into it out of nervousness. Exhausted as she was, she couldn't help admiring the technique.
"This is really good," she said. "This elephant ear. It's the best I've ever had."
Guzman followed her little sidestep effortlessly, the Arthur Murray of the box. "It's from Mario's, in El Mercado. You been there yet?"
She shook her head.
"I keep forgetting, you're not just another tourist. El Mercado, the River Walk, the missions-those are the places the tourists go."
"And the Alamo."
"Claro que sí. Not that I have much use for the Alamo."
"Why?"
"Do I look like John Wayne?" he asked. "Or even Fess Parker?"
"Oh, yeah-your people were on the outside."
"Not my people. My people run a shoestore in Guadalajara. Besides, there were Mexicans inside, too, you know. No, it just doesn't mean anything to me. There's a lot of stuff in San Antonio like that. This stupid All Soul Festival, for example. Gus Sterne's brainchild."
"Gus Sterne?" Tess had heard of the festival, and heard of Gus Sterne, the cousin who had raised Emmie until their falling-out. She hadn't heard the two were connected.
"Yeah, Gus Sterne. I know he raises all this money for scholarships, but to me, it's a sacrilege, using Day of the Dead as some hook for another week of parties and parades that also happen to promote his barbecue restaurants. Yet the City Hall folks, the tourism gurus, say it's a big deal. They say it's going to be bigger than the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival one day. ‘As if,' my twelve-year-old daughter would say."
As if she would say as if. That locution was only a thousand years old in teen-speak. Under different circumstances, Tess might have smiled at the thought of this streetwise cop who couldn't keep up with his own daughter's vocabulary.
"Anyway, I don't care," Guzman said. "I'll make some overtime."
"Umph," Tess said, hoping it sounded like a polite, neutral agreement. Her lips were covered with pastry flakes and there was no napkin she could see. The back of the hand would have to do. But then her hand was covered with pastry, which made her giggle. God, she was so fatigued, it was like being stoned. Where had she read that British secret service agents had to undergo seventy-two hours of sleep deprivation as part of training?
"I remember when I used to make overtime working cases, not pulling parade duty. The bad ol' days. Now the homicide rate's at a twenty-year low."
"Really." Although Tess couldn't put much energy in her reaction, she was impressed. Baltimore had fallen back from its body-a-day high, but not by much. In fact, the stats indicated Baltimore's killers were simply getting more efficient: fewer shootings, but a higher fatality rate. Way to go, kids. If you can't bring up your reading scores, at least you're improving as marksmen.
"It gives us time to solve cases," Guzman said. "Old ones, as well as new ones. Today's technology can solve yesterday's murders. We cleared a twenty-five-year-old case last month. I was counting on Tom Darden to help me clear another one, one almost as old. You remember Tom Darden? You made his acquaintance up near Twin Sisters, as I recall. Stocky fellow?"
Not so stocky with his chest hollowed out by a gunshot blast, Tess thought. Somewhere in her body, a warning signal was going off, or trying to go off-it seemed almost as far away as the city's church bells. See? her body screamed at her mind. You should have let me sleep, then we could cope with this. The mind replied testily: Oh shut up and make some adrenaline.
"You know who Tom Darden is, Miss Monaghan?"
"He's the man I found."
Guzman smiled approvingly, a teacher with a slow student who had finally, after much prodding and many hints, come up with the right answer.