The Breathtaker Read online

  “I don’t know what the fuck I think anymore,” Charlie said, prairie dust gritting between his teeth.

  10

  LATER THAT day, Charlie found himself standing in the front hallway of his father’s house and caught sight of his reflection in the marbled mirror. Charlie’s scars itched. His brain itched from too much exhausted speculation. He used to think that he looked like a freak and tried to convince himself that the “real” him lived somewhere underneath the deformity. Underneath the melted-cheese skin.

  The house was empty. His father was out working the back fields. Charlie opened the hallway closet and hunted through the coats and jackets, sliding the hangers from one end of the pole to the other. No peacoat. No lucky jacket.

  He closed the door and could hear the twittering of countless birds. The late afternoon threw a leafy pattern of sunlight across the far wall. He took the stairs to the second floor and ducked into his father’s room, a forbidden place. So still. His gaze slid over toiletries on the bureau top, slippers underneath the bed, a water glass on the bedside table for his father’s false teeth.

  False teeth. Replacement teeth.

  Charlie let it drop. They had their killer. Jonah Gustafson’s bail hearing was set for tomorrow. His bail would be high. He’d stay in jail. Charlie could relax. They had their man. Except that… he’d been trained never to lock in on a suspect. Turn over any rock, and you’ll find a whole network of squiggling, pulsating life underneath. Secret life… an underworld.

  He poked through his father’s closet—shirts, pants, a tie rack with a dozen dark-colored ties he never wore anymore. The leather belt with its metal buckle. He could taste the tang of his own panic; he hadn’t seen that belt in many years, but he could still feel its bite.

  No peacoat. No lucky jacket.

  He faced the room again and realized the peacoat was probably out in his father’s truck, which was parked in front of the barn, where the old man kept his woodworking tools. The muscles of Charlie’s back twitched. He should go out there and look around, but he was afraid. The thought of his father catching him made him feel seven years old again.

  He noticed the dusty steamer trunk at the foot of the bed, where all the winter clothes were stored. He opened the trunk and mauled through stacks of sweaters and mittens and scarves, eyes tearing from the scent of mothballs. Old army blankets. No peacoat.

  There was a rumpled paper bag at the bottom of the trunk. Curious, he opened it up. Inside were dozens of withered balloons—red, green, blue, yellow. That was odd. Why would his father keep a bag of withered balloons? It didn’t make any sense.

  He dropped the bag back and closed the lid, then heard a sound and cocked his head. Barely able to breathe.

  His father downstairs, walking around inside the house. The floorboards creaking under his feet. Charlie pinched his mouth shut. How would he explain his presence here?

  The refrigerator door opened and shut.

  The footsteps retreated.

  Ka-thunk. The back door slammed shut.

  Charlie caught his breath and headed for the stairs, heart thundering in his ears as he practically tripped over himself getting the hell out of there.

  11

  THE TWO corpses were down in the morgue, packed in dry ice. “We found high levels of ethyl alcohol in their blood and vitreous,” Duff said, “indicating that they were both drunk when they shot each other.”

  Charlie looked up. “You know this for a fact?”

  “Both victims’ fingerprints were on the gun. The nitric acid washings on their hands tested positive.” Duff examined the interior of Lester’s scalp, the exposed cranium fractured like an egg. “Lester shot Jake twice in the stomach while they struggled for the gun. Then Jake grabbed the gun away and shot Lester once in the head. The mouth is the most effective way to end it. Powder burns on the tongue. Gunshot residue is fan-shaped.”

  Trying not to picture it too vividly in his mind’s eye, Charlie leaned against the sink and folded his arms across his chest. Jake’s body was laid out on the autopsy table next to Lester’s, two round neat holes in his abdomen, a gray ring around each one. The ragged exit wounds were in back, where profuse bleeding had occurred. “What’s your TOD estimate?”

  “There’s greenish discoloration of the lower quadrants of the abdomen, swelling of the face, marbling. I’d guess he was three days dead when you found him. Same with the boy.”

  Charlie put down the death certificates. “So Lester shot Jake first, then Jake shot and killed Lester… and then Jake died of his own injuries shortly afterwards?”

  “Due to rapid blood loss, yes.” After removing the rubbery brain, Duff stripped the dura away from the cranial cavity and examined the fractured interior of the skull, tracking the bullet’s trajectory. “Skull is shattered where the bullet entered here,” he said, pointing with his scalpel, “creating projectiles of bone fragments which caused additional tissue destruction. The exit wound is large and ragged at the back of the head, where all this impacted tissue pushed its way through. How many bullet casings did you find?”

  “Four.”

  “All from Lester’s service weapon?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “Two shots to the stomach, one to the head and one misfire.” Duff smoothed Lester’s face back up. “Defense wounds to the body. Bite marks on the arm. The shots came from very close range. There’s blood and tissue spatter on Jake’s hands.” Duff paused to rub his neck. “There’s no doubt in my mind, Charlie. These two fools killed one another.”

  “We found over fifteen hundred dollars scattered nearby, along with the pot and cocaine in Lester’s truck.” Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose. “Am I blind? One of my officers is dealing drugs right underneath my nose, and I don’t see it?”

  “Relax.” Duff peeled off his gloves and snapped them into the trash. “Nobody has that much power, Charlie.”

  An old-time band, Jimmy Dorsey, was playing on the radio. If you bumped into Duff outside the morgue, you’d notice right away that he reeked of formaldehyde, the sour smell of death clinging to him like cheap cigar smoke.

  “Jenna Pepper was involved. And Boone Pritchett. I’ve been trying to locate him all morning.” He had warned Sophie repeatedly to stay away from Boone, and it worried him now that he hadn’t stated it clearly enough.

  Duff slipped a sheet over Lester’s body and started to carefully stack his pathologist’s tools. “Looks like you’ve solved two big cases within the last forty-eight hours, Charlie. Congratulations.”

  His indignation rose at Duff’s missing the whole point. He should’ve known about Lester. He should’ve been able to prevent this fiasco. Lester had wanted to talk to him, but all Charlie could think about was proper procedure—lawyers, polygraphs, alibis. Stroking his jaw, he gazed off into some middle distance.

  “Charlie?”

  “Hm?”

  “Jonah Gustafson. The Debris Killer.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  Duff crossed his arms. “What’s eating you?”

  He shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

  “C’mon. Spill it.”

  “We couldn’t find the gloves anywhere. Gustafson claims he lost them months ago.”

  “Is he credible?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Some of these guys have been lying their whole lives. It’s hard to tell.”

  Yellow dots, blue-black fibers, black rabbit fur, a single green carpet fiber, size ten to eleven shoe. Bits and pieces of evidence lay on top of one another in his mind, forming a confusing grid. He sucked in his next breath. “I dunno, Duff. Maybe I’m just tired.”

  The older man tapped the table lightly with his knuckles. “Follow your nose, Charlie.”

  “My nose? My nose tells me we have an overabundance of trace. Yellow dots, blue-black wool fibers, rabbit fur, unknown hairs, a single green carpet fiber…”

  Duff nodded. “And?”

  “And it doesn’t add up. The perp knows enough about crime scene
procedure to realize we’d find those microscopic yellow dots, right? His methodology is meticulous. If Gustafson’s guilty, then why the slipup?”

  “The perp does seem awfully careful not to leave any trace behind. He wears gloves, mops up his own footprints…”

  “So I’m thinking… what if he stole Gustafson’s gloves in order to implicate him and confuse us? I mean, how hard would it be to steal from a storm-chaser? There are plenty of places these guys hang out… truck stops, diners, motels. How hard would it be to swipe a pair of yellow work gloves? He steals the incriminating evidence and plants it later on at the scene. What if Gustafson’s telling us the truth, Duff? What if he’s innocent?”

  In the silence of the morgue, Charlie could hear Duff’s breath whistling through his nose like the wind through the witchgrass. “Remember Locard’s principle?” Duff said.

  “Every contact leaves a trace. Nobody, no matter how clever he thinks he is, can eliminate every last bit of trace from his person.”

  “So the criminal will always leave something of himself behind at a crime scene, and take something with him. It’s up to you to discover which trace is significant.”

  “The trace that was left behind by accident?” Charlie said.

  “Exactly.”

  White hair. Blue-black wool fibers. His father?

  The medical examiner’s face softened imperceptibly. “You know what, Charlie? You should lighten up,” he said. “Go home and hug your daughter.”

  He swallowed his bitter confusion.

  “Go on.” Duff turned out the overhead light. “Don’t argue with me.”

  Charlie swiped his jacket off the back of the chair. “What about you, Duff? Where’re you going?”

  “Home to blow bubbles for my cat.”

  12

  SOPHIE WAS upstairs in her room, doing her homework. She sat cross-legged on her neatly made bed and chewed on the nub of a pencil.

  “Hey, honey,” Charlie said from the doorway.

  “Hi,” she answered without looking up. Her face was serious and intent, and he could tell by the set of her mouth that she was carrying a long-term grudge against him.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Studying.”

  “Studying what?”

  “I have a history test.”

  “How’d you do on that English paper?”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I got an A.”

  “Great. Good for you.” He tried to see what she was reading. “So you’ve got a test tomorrow?”

  “Mm.”

  Her socks were thick and ugly pink, the same color as her sweatshirt. He glanced around the room. A clutch of teddy bears conspired together in a forgotten corner, their fur rubbed off in places from a child’s possessive fondling. Computer, TV, CD player. Kids never had to leave their rooms nowadays.

  “Everything else okay?” he asked.

  She wiggled her foot impatiently. “What do you want?”

  “Gee, I dunno. Do you want to stop being mad at me?”

  She shot him a withering glance. So like her mother. Down to the molecules.

  “It’s okay to forgive people, you know,” he said.

  “Willa called three times. I let the machine pick up. Is your cell phone broken?”

  He patted his pockets. “Forgot where I left it.”

  An indignant energy animated her limbs, her arms flopping lightly with exasperation. “Don’t you ever check your messages? You’re worse than Grandpa, for Pete’s sake.”

  “I’ve been busting my butt lately, in case you hadn’t noticed. What’d she say?”

  “What am I, your phone maid now?”

  “I thought you had forgiven me.”

  She stared at him with unforgiving eyes. “Don’t you see how mature I’m being? I’m supporting your choices, even though you’re not supporting mine.”

  “Listen.” He softened his tone. “Promise me you won’t see Boone anymore.”

  “Dad! That is so unfair!”

  “This isn’t about fairness, okay? I can’t be fair when it comes to you.”

  “Boone had nothing to do with any of that stuff.”

  “You have to trust me, Sophie.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Awesome vote of confidence, Dad.”

  “I have all the confidence in the world in you.”

  She looked at him obstinately. “Are you going to let Willa drift out of your life, too? Go call her back.” She picked up her book, anger simmering in the corners of her face.

  He lingered in the doorway, thinking he’d blown it again. That he’d only escalated the hurt between them.

  “Stop lurking,” she said.

  “Open or closed?”

  “Closed.”

  He shut her bedroom door and went downstairs to listen to Willa’s three messages.

  Half an hour later, Charlie foolishly blew a stop sign, then drummed his hands on the wheel through every traffic light, mentally urging the reds to turn green. The deep night sky loomed overhead like a sheet of black ice, with just the glint of a moon wrapped in mist. He shot through the heart of town, then took a left down an unlit country road, where scattered fireflies winked in the darkness.

  He pulled into the circular driveway at the end of the street, then hesitated a moment while the pale moon slipped behind a thin cloud layer. He got out, loosened his tie and stared at the peach-colored house with the mint-green trim, at the flower beds brimming with color. Pansies, tulips, wild iris.

  “Hello,” she said, opening the screen door. She wore a front-button Hanes undershirt, sweatpants and two-dollar shower shoes. There was a sneaky strength to the set of her mouth. “You’re an expert in avoidance, you know.”

  He slipped his arms around her waist and kissed her. He held on tight, glad to be back to the complicated reality of her. “I missed you,” he said.

  Two cats sprang over the railing and made braiding turns around her ankles.

  “My fan club,” she said. “All two of them.”

  Moths fluttered into the porch bulb, and the cats begged for attention.

  “I’m the world’s biggest jerk,” he said.

  “You want something? Beer? Iced tea?” She squeezed his hand and laughed. “I don’t know what cops like.”

  “I like you.”

  She grinned. “Let’s sit outside. Too many books in there.”

  “Books?”

  “A whole lotta books and no place to put them.”

  They sat in the creaking love seat on the back porch and listened to the bullfrogs fluting down by the water—a stream or a creek. The sky momentarily cleared, and whole constellations of stars opened up like flowers above their heads. Charlie inhaled the haunting smell of the earth and the grass, then stared at the flexible pink curves of her mouth. She smelled faintly of crushed sage rose. Her hands were a delicate mystery.

  “Does this hurt?” she whispered, touching his scarred arm.

  “No.”

  She ran her finger up the left side of his neck. “How many surgeries have you had?”

  “I don’t remember. Lots.”

  She gave a sympathetic shiver.

  “They threw in a chin implant.”

  Her laughter was lovely, her mouth so soft and sweet that he just had to kiss it. With desperate longing, he sank to his knees and wrapped his arms around her thighs and buried his head in her lap. Forgiven.

  13

  THE FOLLOWING day, Charlie shuffled his feet restlessly over the carpet and stared at the photograph on his desktop—a picture of his father’s gray Loadmaster pickup truck speeding past the damage site. It was one of those humid, overcast days where your hair kept sticking to the back of your neck and you had a rubbery grip on things. He felt hunched. Tense. This was the question: After the old man quit drinking thirty years ago, where had he placed all his pent-up rage?

  Mike came to the doorway. “About the evidence we collected from Lester’s house,” he said. �
��Cocaine residue, an unregistered gun. We’re tracking his whereabouts this past month, reviewing phone records and ATM withdrawals… Before April fifteenth, he made numerous calls to Jenna Pepper. After April fifteenth, he called Jake Wheaton and Boone Pritchett on several occasions.”

  Charlie tugged on his lower lip. “We’ve gotta find Pritchett.”

  Mike nodded. “So I’m assuming Lester got his drugs from local dealers in exchange for his silence. Then Jake and Boone distributed it throughout the high school.” He shifted uncomfortably in the doorway. “I would’ve trusted Lester with my life. Shows you just how much I know.”

  Charlie nodded miserably. “What d’you got there?”

  Mike tapped the folder in his hand. “They found some unaccounted-for tire impressions in the Lakes’ driveway and sent them to the state lab for analysis. Sheriff Dorsey just sent us the results. They’ve narrowed it down to a full-size pickup truck riding on a set of brand-new Michelin tires.”

  Charlie took a careful breath. His father drove a full-size pickup truck. He was a Michelin kind of guy. He’d just purchased a brand-new set of tires. A pixel of anxiety formed in the pit of his stomach. “That would eliminate Gustafson,” he said.

  Mike glanced up.

  “Gustafson drives a van… riding on a set of Goodyear tires.” A cold certainty rose in his gut. “What if he’s telling the truth, Mike? What if the Debris Killer stole Gustafson’s gloves and planted the evidence just to throw us off?”

  Mike paused a beat, then said, “Anything’s possible.”

  His shoulders sagged. He rubbed his tired eyes. “My father owns a full-size pickup truck,” he said, holding up the blurred shot. “He just bought a set of Michelin tires.”

  Mike’s nostrils quivered. “Yeah? So?”

  “We were poor as dirt when I was growing up. Mama was a real pack rat. Our house was so knee-deep in garbage even the social workers were afraid to come in. The fire marshal figured that the fire started down in the basement, where all the rags and newspapers and kerosene lanterns were…”