Cold Read online

  “Can you publish it now?” I asked. “Treat her interview with you as a dying declaration or something?”

  Whit looked pained, but shook her head again. “Look…I’m a reporter of the old school, okay? I know this new breed is cool with rushing to publish when they’ve got one anonymous source, but I came in the tradition where you get at least two sources, and on the record, if possible. I could have gone along with Emily being anonymous. She’d been through a lot in her life—hell, her life came apart before she even went through puberty, thanks to Ivan Warrington.” She shuddered. “But I needed someone to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, I was around it when it was going on, and here’s why I think this did happen.’” She put her head down in one hand. “This is why the old newspaper hounds drank hard. Because reporting is a hard job when you have to go out there and really fight to nail down your stories. Nowadays politics reporting is all going with whatever your ‘sources’—and I use that word loosely—hand you, all wrapped up and ready to print.”

  “Huh?” I asked.

  She looked up at me. “Nothing. Never mind. It’s a messy business, that’s all. But to answer your question—no, I can’t print the story now, even though she’s dead. Professional ethics still mean something to me. Without another source or some proof, this is still just a messy, illicit, disturbing ‘he-said, she-said.’”

  “Would Brianna Glover work as another source?” I asked, feeling a little flutter in my heart.

  Whit just stared at me. “Someone like Brianna Glover might be able to confirm it enough for me to run it, yeah.”

  Now it was my turn to nod. “Then that’s what I’m going to do. I have to chase down Brianna anyway. I’ll get her to go on the record, and you can blow this thing wide open. Take down Warrington—”

  Whit snorted. “I’m sorry. I just—you think one story will take down Ivan Warrington?”

  “It’s a dirty story,” I said. “Screwing your thirteen-year-old babysitter? While married and playing the good, upright family man?”

  “I’m not saying it won’t hurt him,” Whit said, “I just don’t think it’ll finish him. Warrington is strong, locally. Man won the governorship with 65% of the vote. If anything, he’s gotten more popular in the last couple years since he took office. His approval rating runs in the mid-seventies. A sex scandal, even one as tawdry as this, isn’t going to kill him.” She stroked her chin. “But it might hobble him some.”

  “You don’t think Warrington was a good and decent man until this lone thirteen-year-old crossed his path, do you?” I asked, a slithering feeling in my belly. “And then he just snapped and became a pedophile sex fiend?” I shook my head. “There have to be others.”

  “Not that I’ve found,” Whit said, shaking her head. “And believe me, I’ve looked. I haven’t even found any evidence of infidelity on his part. Nowhere except in the recollections of a junkie. That’s why this one is so hard to nail down. Usually a predator shows a pattern of behavior. But if he’s got a pattern, it’s well hidden.”

  “So was Harvey Weinstein’s,” I said, “until someone came along and put a crack in the wall. Then it all started flooding out. That’s what we need to do here—put a crack in the wall and see what comes out.”

  “All right, then,” Whit said, back to nodding. “How do I reach you?”

  I handed her my card. “Any time, day or night. Day is appreciated, though, because I love my sleep.”

  She looked it over, then slipped it into the pocket of her red blazer. “I’ll keep that in mind. One other question, though, unless you want to do that interview…?”

  I shook my head. “Not a chance. I’ll see if I can help you with this exclusive, but that’s as far as I’ll go.”

  “That ain’t bad, as far as consolation prizes go,” Whit said. “But…why do you think Michelle Cheong sent you my way?”

  “I don’t know. She’s a mystery in all this,” I said. “But…I’m going to figure it out, eventually. One way or another, I have this tendency to make sure that the truth comes out, and that everyone who deserves justice…” I set my jaw. “…gets justice. And it seems like, in this case…there is a lot of justice that needs to be passed around.”

  58.

  Olivia

  “This is it, right?” I asked, standing out in the gravel-laden front yard of a small house in Henderson, Nevada. The lack of a lawn felt disconcerting for someone raised in swampy greenery. There were quite a few yards like this in Vegas, I’d noted on our drive over here, a desert conservation effort of some sort of water saving program in effect. “This has to be it.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Veronika said, eyes hidden behind her sunglasses, which were over-sized and sort of reminded me of a bug’s compound eyes. Maybe a queen bee’s? “Little rule of investigating—it never has to be it. Especially when you think you’ve got it, it’s not it.”

  “There was an awful lot of ‘it’ in that sentence,” I said, trying to sort out what she’d said. “Enough for a whole clown horror movie.”

  “Did you see It?” Veronika asked, giving me a sideways look.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I don’t do horror films. I have enough nightmares as it is, thank you very much.”

  “What the hell are we wasting time talking about this for if you don’t have a proper frame of reference?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and headed up the walk like I’d somehow spurned her by not watching horror. “Seriously, though, you should get over that fear thing. There’s some great horror out there that’ll make you feel alive just watching it. Try It Follows, since we’re talking about movies with ‘it’ in the name. Arguably not as scary as actual It, but really gripping. I loved…well, it.” She depressed the doorbell button as we stood under the shadow of the house’s eave, then leaned back at me and whispered, meta-low, “What was the name on this one, again?”

  “Ricky Crumley,” I said, looking at the list Detective Norton had given us. “Not Richard, not Rick, actually ‘Ricky.’”

  “That’s a little odd, I guess.” Veronika shook her head, then turned back to the door just as it opened. There was a skinny, middle-aged woman standing there, smoking a cigarette. I immediately suppressed a cough, because it seemed to flare and sneak into my nose, like an unwelcome intruder. “Hi,” Veronika said brightly. “I’m Veronika Acheron and this is Olivia Brackett. We’re here about Ricky. Are you his mom?”

  The lady in the doorway didn’t look impressed. “I’m Sylvia Blanton. Ricky rents a room from me. Kid’s a bum. What’d he do?”

  Veronika blinked a couple times, taking in that veritable firehose blast of info. “Not sure he’s done anything, but we’re looking for a suspect responsible for the incident on Fremont Street last evening?”

  The lady took a long drag on her cigarette. “Yeah, he wasn’t around when that was going on. I watched it on the news. He’s in the room down the hall, and his door was open the whole time that was going on. It’s only open when he’s gone or in the kitchen. So, he must have been gone, cuz I didn’t see him in the kitchen.”

  Veronika looked at me, I looked back. She was inscrutable, but I didn’t know what to think. She turned back to Sylvia and asked, still so sweetly, “Mind if we come in and take a look at his room? If he’s not here?”

  “You can take a look at anything you want,” she said, stepping back from the door. “I’d evict the lowlife if I had half a reason, but he keeps paying his rent, so I keep taking his money.” She blew out a cloud of grey smoke and I nearly choked to death. “See if you can find you something to arrest him for; maybe that’ll get rid of him for me.”

  “What does he do that you don’t like?” I asked, stepping into the house. Every surface reeked of smoke, and again I had to suppress the instinct to gag.

  “He’s got judgy eyes,” she decided after a few seconds of thought. “Always faking coughing around me. Like he’s too good for me and my brand of cigarettes.” She took another smooth puff and I held in the urge to die, even t
hough my lungs were about to explode. “And he won’t watch Dancing with the Stars with me, either.”

  “Oh,” Veronika said, making room for me in the entry, then shutting the door behind us both. “Well, that certainly seems like—”

  “And he’s always mocking my Kardashians,” she said, and boy, did she seem to be building a full head of steam now. “He shakes his head when he sees me watching my Hallmark films—”

  “Hey, you know, if you could,” Veronika said, “maybe write all this down for us? So we can take a full listing with us after we check out his room. We like to gather witness statements, get a real feel for our suspects, and obviously this guy—” she nodded down the long, dark hallway to our right “—has got a lot of suspicious issues going.” She sounded perfectly serious, even empathetic, though I was pretty sure she was faking that. “The more you can give us to go on, the more we can fit it to a psychological profile the FBI has given us.”

  The lady stared at her for a second, and I was sure she was about to see through Veronika’s charade. “That makes sense,” she said at last, nodded, and headed into the small kitchen, which opened via passthrough into the living area just past the entry. Stuff was piled everywhere, on every surface, and I imagined she’d be looking for a pen and paper for a while.

  “And he’s just down the hall here?” Veronika asked, pointing into the shadowy corridor.

  “First door on the left,” the lady said, and I could hear her rummaging. I had a feeling her “statement” was going to very, very complete and detailed. “You don’t even have to knock; just go on in. He sleeps like the dead. I go in there all the time while he’s out. Never even stirs.”

  “Great, thanks,” Veronika said, and beckoned me forward. “You go first, since you can bounce our suspect if he tries anything.”

  “Wait,” I said, “you’re using me as a human shield?”

  “Duh,” Veronika said, gesturing to me to go. “We’re playing to strengths here, Brackett. Get with the program. I’ll cover you from back here.”

  “Oh-kay,” I said, lurching into motion. I walked down the hallway slowly, almost robotically, the world bobbing from side to side as I forced myself forward. I half expected the door to come bursting open any second, the black-clothed speedster ready to do battle with me—

  But it didn’t happen. I made it down the quiet, dark hallway to the door, and not a sound could be heard save for the homeowner scratching furiously with a pencil as she aired her grievances to the pad in the kitchen. I heard her tear off a sheet and keep going.

  “Let’s do this,” Veronika said, a couple steps behind me, as her hands burned to life, casting the hall in a blue glow. “Lay on, McDuff.”

  I looked back at her, befuddled. “McWho?”

  “Just go,” she said, and gave me a gentle shove. I felt a little surge of pride that I didn’t send her hand ricocheting back at her face. Yay for small victories.

  Then I opened the door, pushing it wide. It squeaked a little, and I entered the darkened room.

  If Sylvia’s part of the house had been a disaster of mess just short of an episode of Hoarders, Ricky’s was the opposite. Nothing sat on any surface I could see, either dresser or end table. The room looked immaculate save for the lump on the bed beneath twisted bedding.

  Veronika lifted her plasma hand up over my head, radiating heat down the back of my collar. I tugged at my shirt, wishing I could get a little more airflow in there, because it was warm before she’d done that, but now that her hand was burning, it was positively stifling. The light it cast was helpful, though, because the room was shrouded in darkness held in place by blackout curtains tacked into the wall at the bottoms and clipped tightly by clothespins at the middle. Black plastic trash bags were also draped at the top of the curtains, blotting out that little extra bit of light that seeped in up there.

  “Someone is very serious about their beauty sleep,” Veronika breathed behind me. “And their neatly organized gothness.”

  There was a shadowed lump on the bed, clad in absolute black clothing. There was a black mask sitting on the bedside table, too, and it looked remarkably like what I imagined the speedster’s mask looked like, had it been slowed down. A prescription bottle sat next to the mask, the only bright spot on the table its white cap.

  “Hey,” Veronika said, gently pushing me again. “See if he’s really out.”

  I almost made a meeping noise, but managed to keep it in. I took a long breath instead, and then a long step that nearly made me stumble. I caught myself just in time, tripping into the room but ending up on my feet after a brief moment of stomach-dropping fear that I’d land on the gently snoring figure on the bed.

  Veronika made a meta-low sound of pained disapproval, and I flashed her a thumbs-up, hoping she couldn’t see the flush of my cheeks in the darkness. I didn’t dwell long in that hope, though, because nothing much seemed to get by Veronika.

  I took a couple more steps toward the bed, looking down at the sleeping figure on it. He was snoring very quietly, a gentle in-and-out of breath that wouldn’t have been audible as anything other than breath to a normal person, but was loudly obvious to me, especially in this quiet. Another step and I was right beside him, looking down at the man in black, and here I noticed something a little funny.

  He was covered in grains of dirt. Fine grains, like he’d been playing in a sandbox or something.

  I pointed at one of the heavier concentrations, which stained his black shirt slightly brown, the dust having sunk in.

  Veronika nodded and whispered: “From the landing. In the desert.” She reached down to her belt and pulled something out of a leather case hanging on there. It glinted in the light of her plasma hand, and she stretched it out to me.

  Handcuffs.

  I took them, my eyes feeling like they were as big as monster truck hubcaps. I stared at them, then at Veronika, as she nodded to the figure on the bed. “Mask. Desert dirt. Black outfit.” She was waving her now-empty hand at the sleeping man. “That spells ‘probable cause.’ Cuff him. This is your chance to go from one half of an arrest to one and a half.”

  Looking from the cuffs in my hand to the figure on the bed, I realized that yes, she meant for me to do this, and no, there probably wasn’t a way I could get out of this, much as my stomach was writhing at the job in front of me. I gulped, swallowing down those fears, because I didn’t want to look like a complete loser in front of her. Summoning my courage, I reached down and clicked the cuff around one of the man’s hands. He didn’t even stir.

  “This is our guy,” Veronika said. I looked back to find her with a wallet in her hands. It was covered in desert dirt, and she waved it at me. “No driver’s license, and the credit card says ‘Ricky Crumley.’” She flashed me a thumbs-up, and suddenly I didn’t feel quite so stupid for having done the same to her moments before.

  I looked down, trying to figure out where in the shadowy murk on the bed Ricky Crumley’s other hand was. I mean, presumably this was Ricky Crumley. I stooped down some, searching for his other hand, and caught a glimpse of the prescription bottle. It had his name on it, too, which was strike two against this guy. It was possible, I theorized, a little wildly, that Ricky Crumley had put another person in his bed and left his ID strewn around just to throw us off, but…

  There was the hand. He was sleeping with it clutched under his body. Acutely aware of how much damage a speedster could do at this distance, and how fast they could escape, I realized I needed to hurry this up. He was still snoring, but the landlady’s encouragements that he was a sound sleeper didn’t assuage my many and varied fears at this point. I imagined him exploding awake, doing ungodly amounts of damage that we’d be responsible for, and it made me gulp. Again.

  I needed to finish this quickly. Using great care, I controlled myself as I reached out to him again. Rolling him onto his belly, I held my breath. He grunted, shifted position, and suddenly his free hand popped loose on the other side of his body.

&n
bsp; Snapping the cuffs on behind his back, I breathed half a sigh of relief. I still had his feet to deal with, after all.

  “I’m going to hogtie him,” I said, gesturing at the sheets that were all lumped up at the foot of his bed.

  Veronika was still sifting through the surface of his dresser by glowing blue plasma light. “You know how to hogtie someone with sheets?” She gave me a nod that seemed to be admiration. “Good for you, Brackett.”

  “We had actual hogs back at the camp where I grew up,” I said, trying to take the ugh out of what she was thinking. “And cows, at times. We raised our own food.”

  “Should have kept that part to yourself.” Veronika just shook her head. “It ruins the mystique you almost had going there.”

  I sighed, and pulled the wad of sandy sheets out of their pile at the foot of the bed. I twisted them up and snugged them around Ricky’s ankles over and over until I could bind them into a tight knot, one I felt fairly confident he wasn’t going to be able to just rip out of.

  “Now this,” Veronika said, and I turned to see her holding out a syringe. Another pouch was open on her belt, and I wondered what the hell was in the rest of them.

  I took the syringe from her carefully, staring at the liquid moving around inside. “Suppressant?” I asked.

  “No, it’s liquid cocaine with a little methamphetamine mixed in,” she said. “Because I want to see what happens when a hopped-up speedster launches off of you. I’m guessing it’ll be hilarious.”

  I blinked, calculating whether she was joking or not. She put me out of my misery a few seconds later. “Yes, it’s suppressant.” Which was fortunate, because I really was struggling with whether I should ask for clarification on whether she was trying to make that particular crazy reaction happen. I was about 90/10 on it, figuring she probably wouldn’t do that, but who knew for sure?

  Taking another deep breath, I eased up to Ricky Crumley’s butt, which was now facing up, thanks to my rolling maneuver. After a moment of positioning him, I slowly lowered the needle to his rear. I hesitated a little just before I reached the back of his shirt, and lifted it so I could angle the needle into his buttock.