Webster sauntered over to them, wearing a set of earphones. He removed them, stowed them in his pocket.
“What are you listening to?” Martinez asked.
“Selections from Saint-Saëns. Specifically, Danse Macabre. Eerily apropos.” He kicked a clod of broken asphalt with his shoe. “Not much in the way of trash, Loo-tenant. Y’all want me to search again, I reckon I have the time. Still got a Samson and Delilah CD to listen to.”
“Got another assignment for you two,” Decker said. “I’m sending you both out to New Chris to interview the staff there.”
Martinez said, “You want us to talk to everyone or just the people who Sparks worked with on a regular basis?”
Decker said, “Talk to everyone.”
“I see you don’t b’lieve in sleep,” Webster said.
“I’m not sleeping, buddy, you’re not sleeping.” Decker’s brain was buzzing. Too much coffee. “We have a gruesome murder and so far the only remote motive we’ve pulled out was an academic tiff between Sparks and one of his colleagues. That’s not much.”
Webster said, “It’s a start.”
“It ain’t enough,” Decker said emphatically. “I’m not saying we’ve got to solve this within the twenty-four-hour cutoff. But we got to do better than this. Sparks was known as a rich man. Could be some hospital worker intended to tail him and rob him. Find out who called in absent today.”
“Anybody know what he was doing here?” Martinez asked. “In back of Tracadero’s specifically.”
“No,” Decker said. “Call me in an hour to brief me on your progress.”
Tom nodded. “You want to drive, Bert?”
“No problem. You want some coffee?”
“You got coffee?”
“A whole jug of Mexican stuff-strong and spicy. I also got some pasteles and fried tortillas with powdered sugar. Wife’s a good cook.” Martinez patted his gut. “Too good.”
“Y’all don’t have to eat it.”
“If it’s in front of me, I eat it.”
Decker watched them disappear in a swirling snowstorm of street-lit mist. Decker folded his arms over his chest, let out a fog-visible sigh. Farrell Gaynor was still poking around the scene. Decker walked over to the Buick.
“Impound should be here momentarily, Loo.” Gaynor was half in, half out of the car, legs dangling from the interior. Finally, he began to push his body out. It looked like the Buick was giving birth to a breech baby. He straightened his spine, handed some paper to Decker. “Couple of gas credit slips. He kept his car real neat. Not surprising considering what he does.”
“Yeah, think you would want your heart surgeon to be the compulsive type.”
“Now, this is more interesting, Loo.” Gaynor offered Decker a white business card.
“Wait, let me put my gloves on.” He slipped on latex, then took the piece of paper.
The background was imprinted with the Harley-Davidson logo-wings attached to a big H. Bold Gothic letters were overlaid across the center of the card.
Everyone needs an Ace In The Hole.
Because Sparks fly hard and hot.
Born to be Wild.
No address, no phone number on the front. Decker flipped the card over. Nothing on the back, either.
Gaynor said, “What do you make of it?”
“Where’d you find it?”
“In the glove compartment,” Gaynor answered. “Stuck between the pages of a Thomas guide. Only other thing in the compartment was the owner’s manual.”
“Ace In The Hole? Sparks fly…?” Decker laughed. “Azor Sparks. Ace Sparks?”
“Maybe the good doctor is a secret Hell’s Angel.”
“Yeah, he’s really a kingpin crank supplier who’s been manufacturing meth out of his hospital lab,” Decker said.
“Can’t you see it in the headlines?” Gaynor said. “Head doctor is secret head.” Suddenly, he grew pensive. “You know, Loo, the case does have the look of a drug retaliation hit.”
Decker laughed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Lots of brutality. You yourself said it looks like a gang hit. I know it sounds lunatic. But maybe it’s worth checking out.”
“It’s absurd.”
“So is finding that card in Sparks’s car.”
“Unless it isn’t his. Could belong to one of his kids.”
“Ace sounds like Azor to me.”
Decker rolled his tongue in his mouth. As of this moment, he didn’t have squat. What would it hurt to look at this through every possible lens. He pocketed the business card. “I’ll look into it.”
“It’s stupid, but what the hey.” Gaynor rubbed his shoulders, massaged his neck. “Cold out here.”
“Call it a night, Farrell.” Decker took off the gloves and blew on his hands. “I’ll wait for impound. You go back to the station house and finish up the paperwork. Tomorrow, start the paper trail on Sparks. His bank accounts, his credit cards, brokerage accounts if he has any. And I’m sure he does because his kid is a stockbroker.”
“That doesn’t mean he invested with him.”
“Find out. If he didn’t, that says something. Tomorrow, you also begin a paper trail on his children, starting with son Paul. He owed his dad some bucks. And so did Sparks’s daughter, Eva Shapiro. Those are the only two who fessed up to being in arrears with Dad. But I want you to check all of them out.”
“You going home after impound, Loo?”
“No, I’m going by Myron Berger’s house. Something’s way off with that.”
“Be careful.”
“Always am.”
“See you, Loo.”
“See you.” Decker rubbed his hands, then his arms, watching Gaynor totter back to his car. The man had two more years before he’d be forced to hang up his shield. Forty-five years of police service: thirty-five of them as a detective third grade, fifteen of those as a Homicide detective in brutal gang territory. And yet the guy was always neat, clean, punctual. As dependable as Big Ben and still had a bounce in his step at twelve-thirty in the morning.
Way to go, Farrell.
8
Something Marge could never understand: why someone would buy a house abutting the foothills. A bad month of rain and, lo and behold, a thousand-pound avalanche of mud occupied space that once was the living room. Yet, Pete’s house sat at the edge of the mountain. So did the home belonging to Dr. Elizabeth Fulton. For her domicile, she had chosen a sprawling one-story ranch thing made out of wood siding. A big piece of property. At least a couple of acres separated her from her nearest neighbor.
Unlatching the metal gate, Oliver said, “Guess the doctor isn’t a bug on landscaping.”
Marge nodded. The lot was fenced with chain-link, the lawn a scratch pad of scrub grass. No flowers, no shrubs, no bushes, no plants that hadn’t come from airborne seeds. In the background, behind the house, Marge could see several rows of tall citrus. She could smell them too, blossoms giving off a tart, sweet scent. They walked up to the front entrance. The doctor answered the door before they knocked, her complexion mottled gray and dappled with perspiration.
No wonder, Marge thought. The doctor was wearing sweats and a sweater. Internal chill. Her face appeared childlike, probably because of her eyes. The size of beach balls, they seemed to take up half her face. Big, brown irises, red-rimmed at the moment. Between the orbs sat a button nose spangled with freckles. Her mouth was wide with lush lips. Woolly henna hair was pulled back into a ponytail. At a quick glance, she looked to be barely twenty. But with smile lines apparent and ripples in her neck, Marge figured her age closer to forty.
“Dr. Fulton.” Oliver took out his badge and ID. Fulton gave it a cursory glance, then motioned them across the doorway. “Please, come in.”
The living room had been decorated pseudo-country. Cheerful floral prints covered a traditional sofa and two matching chairs. A wall-sized bay window was topped with a pleated valance and the tiebacks were sewn from the same flowered fabric. The actual window curtains were drawn, made from lace that allowed light to pass through. At one in the morning, the outside view was a screen of still shadows. In the middle of the bay stood a polished pine rocker resting on bleached oak flooring that had been pegged and grooved. The fireplace was going full blast. It was hot, and Marge could feel wet circles under her armpits. The hearth was masoned from bouquet canyon stone, the plaster mantel hosted a half-dozen photographs of a chubby toddler boy.