‘About what?’
‘I never found out.’
The alley was filling up with press-fighting uniformed officers bent on keeping them away from the car where Waters had been killed. Fincher glanced at the struggle and frowned. The press was not necessarily beloved where he worked.
‘So you wouldn’t have any idea why he was killed tonight?’
‘None. I really didn’t know him.’
He glanced at the surging reporters again. ‘They’d destroy the crime scene if you gave them half a chance.’ Then: ‘Where’re you headed now?’
I could’ve told him that he had no right to ask me that question but I was in a hurry. I wanted to check out Waters’ apartment before the police did. I wanted to take away anything that might embarrass the campaign. Drugs, S amp;M gear, unexplained stacks of money. You just never knew what you’d find. And cops talk. Anything salacious they found would be on TV within hours of the police searching Waters’ place.
‘Believe it or not, I’m going back to my hotel room to get some sleep.’
‘We’ll want to ask you more questions, I’m sure. You got a card?’
I extracted one from my billfold and gave it to him. ‘I’m staying at the Royale.’
He didn’t even look at it, just tucked it between the pages of his notebook. ‘Somebody from the station will be contacting you.’
I nodded and started off in the direction of my rental. I had to restrain myself from breaking into a run. I needed to go through Waters’ apartment and I didn’t have much time.
The Carlton Arms had been new probably sometime in the early sixties. The tan color and texture of the brick facing dated back to that era. But neither time nor its residents had been kind to it. The asphalt parking lot had ridges where heat and cold had split it. A number of the windows on the west side had been smashed and were covered with cardboard and tape. Music ranging from rap to country-western boomed and screeched from various apartments.
I didn’t see any police vehicles, marked or not, so I pulled in and walked up to the glass door with SECTION B neatly painted above it. It wouldn’t be long before the officials arrived.
I knocked on the door marked Manager. Pierce Rollins. Except for Pierce Brosnan I’d never heard of a man with that first name.
The guy who opened the door was not my idea of a ‘Pierce.’ He was probably in his mid-twenties. He had a wicked devil-style beard and arms that had been covered with a tattoo artist’s fiercest supernatural creatures.
‘It’s a little late, buddy.’ Behind him was a somewhat overweight but attractive woman in a black chemise smoking a cigarette. I guess she hadn’t read the No Smoking sign that greeted folks when they came through the front door.
‘Jim Waters called me — he wants me to pick up something for him.’
He was suddenly interested enough to look at me seriously. The TV set went crazy with laughter. The woman laughed, too. ‘You’re missing this, babe.’
‘You’d be who?’
I showed him my identification. ‘I work with the campaign. I’m just here for a couple of days. We’re out at a rally on the edge of town. Jim wanted to call you but we’re in a valley out there and his cell won’t work.’
The woman laughed again and said, ‘C’mon, babe. You’d love this.’
‘Why bother me with this shit? He must’ve given you a key. He’s on the second floor in Apartment D. Handle it yourself.’
‘Just thought I’d touch base.’
‘Yeah. Touch base. Shit.’
The way he slammed the door, he must have awakened more than half his tenants.
The smells of various dinners collided just the way the disparate music had. Spaghetti, some kind of fish, burgers. The hall carpeting had cuts and holes in it. On the tan walls you could see where dirty words had almost been scrubbed out. I’d checked in with the manager in case he got a complaint that I was seen unlocking Jim Waters’ door. I didn’t have a key; I had the three burglar picks I’d kept from my days as an army investigator.
Captain America was going to kick my ass. That was the sense I had anyway as soon as I flipped on the living-room light of this one-bedroom apartment. The poster covered half the wall facing me. He looked very, very pissed and as you well know, nobody fucks with the Captain.
There were other posters, too. Two quite comely and mostly naked starlets whose names I didn’t know. Then a small gallery, on another wall, of terrifying comic book figures. Creatures that resembled humans but were in fact ghouls of some kind carrying axes, enormous knives, bludgeons, and severed heads. All of them dripped blood and all of them walked over bloody arms and legs and faces.
Real life hadn’t been kind to Jim and so he’d retreated into fantasy life here where he was not only safe but accepted. I heard echoes of Lucy Cummings crying and felt some of her sadness. He’d been aggrieved by so many things.
No idea what I was looking for, I tried to log on to his computer but it was password protected, and the small table he used for a desk in the corner held nothing more than a Brother printer and blank paper.
In his bedroom I found more posters plus five long cardboard boxes jammed tight with comic books. They’d been sorted and catalogued. The drawers of his dresser were sparsely filled with socks with holes and underwear that had outlived its shelf life. Under one small pile of undershirts I found three bullets for a. 38. I wondered where the gun was. I went through the three-shelf bookcase next to his mussed bed. Robert Jordan and R.A. Salvatore and Star Wars tie-ins outnumbered all the other authors represented.
The closet was filled with clothes that must have dated back to his college days; maybe high school, some of them. He’d never been stylish.
Coats often held interesting items so I started on them. A cheap blue trench coat didn’t produce anything, nor did a Fighting Illini jacket or any of the other clothing.
‘I’ll bring the key back when I’m done, Pierce.’
Voice. Young. Female. Shouting down the steps.
A key rasped in the lock.
I was standing in the center of the room when the door opened and she appeared.
The style is called Goth. This young woman was in a fitted black dress with black tights, dyed black hair, and black lipstick. She was no more than twenty years old and hard as she tried she couldn’t disguise the fact that she was quite pretty in a somewhat waifish way.
‘Who the hell are you, mister?’
‘I could ask you the same thing.’
‘I’m Jimmy’s collaborator.’
‘On what?’
‘On none of your fucking business.’
I couldn’t help it. I smiled.
‘What’s so funny, smart ass?’
‘Nothing’s funny, believe me. You’re just so damn belligerent and for no reason. You’d better come in. We need to talk.’
‘You still haven’t told me who you are.’
‘My name’s Dev Conrad.’
She walked past me with great disdain. She pitched her purse on the couch then opened it up to rescue her cigarettes and lighter. After she sat down she said, ‘Where’s Jimmy?’
‘Jimmy’s dead. Somebody murdered him a couple of hours ago.’
She took at least half a minute to respond. There was no gasping, no sobbing, no clasping her hand to her breast. The only evidence that she’d been stunned by what I said was the tremor in the fingers that held the cigarette.
‘Oh, my God. So Rachel was right.’
‘What?’
Her grave blue eyes met mine. ‘Rachel McClure. She’s a friend of mine. She can see the future.’
‘I see.’
