He listened with his hand on his forehead. Grunted a few times. Hung up. Turned to me.
“Cade Barlow was found in his garage this morning. He shut the door, cut the gas line to his water heater in the garage. Then he sat on his shiny Harley and rode into the sunset. Or wherever.”
I slammed my fist on my thigh. “He leave a suicide note?”
“Nothing but a body on a bike, the asshole.”
I thought for a few moments.
“He was already dead, Harry.”
“What do you mean?”
“Arn Norlin said Barlow was a decent cop until four years back. That’s when he got odd. Arn described it as Barlow seeming like he’d lost someone he loved. Maybe he traded his integrity for thirty pieces of silver. Or chrome, in this case.”
“Barlow lost himself when he sold his honor? That’s what you’re saying?”
I shrugged. “It fits.”
Harry leaned back in his chair with his mouth open and tapped a yellow pencil against his cheek. It made a hollow sound.
“Wonder who bought it?” he said. “Barlow’s honor.”
CHAPTER 33
Rather than second-hand Clair’s take on the Kincannons, I wanted Harry to hear it from her own lips. I had a growing sense that our complicated journey was about to take us into the realm of the Furies.
She didn’t sit behind her desk, but in a wingback chair in the corner of her office. Harry and I sat close. Clair wore a cream pantsuit tailored to the millimeter, a bright silk blouse, lavender. She crossed her long legs and leaned forward, aiming the big blue headlights at Harry and me.
“Here’s the condensed story, Harry: Money is power. The only restraint on power is personal morality. That’s not innate, it’s learned. Trouble is, the Kincannons never had that on their lesson plan. If they had a coat of arms, it would say Me First. If you had to characterize the family as a single entity, it would be a devious child.”
Harry said, “Why do people bend at the waist when they hear the name?”
“The Kincannons spend vast sums to appear like benevolent royalty, to be adored by the public. It doesn’t hurt that the boys look like movie stars.”
Harry said, “Carson told me about the one hand giving, the other taking. It sounds like if they had a third hand, it’d carry a knife.”
“Don’t gamble that it doesn’t, Harry. Do you actually think they, or one of them, have something to do with your case?”
“There’s no hard evidence,” Harry said. “But the circumstantial pile is growing.”
“There’s nothing to go after them with?”
Harry rubbed his temples and shook his head.
“We’ve discovered some things from a reporter, but we need personal insights. Not how may lawyers or PR people they have, not how many millions they keep in the Caymans. Something about them as people. History. Personalities. We need to know if they have any ghosts in the machinery we can leverage.”
Clair stood, brow creased in thought. She walked to her window and tapped her nail against its surface as she gazed into the day, her graceful form backlit by filtered sunlight. I felt my breath catch and turned away.
“Ory Aubusson,” she said, turning.
“Roy Orbison?” Harry said.
“Ory Aubusson,” Clair corrected, going to her desk. She picked up her BlackBerry, tapped the keys. “Ory was Buck Kincannon Senior’s best friend years back. Ory’s got money, but nothing like the Kincannons. Ory married a woman who made him slow down. Buck Senior married one who pushed him into hyperdrive.”
“How do you know Aubusson?” I asked.
“He was part of a crowd I hung with when dating Zane. Ory’s a piece of work, in his seventies now, bawdy, cantankerous. Smarter than he looks, one thing to keep in mind.”
“You think he’ll talk to us?”
Clair picked up her phone, a slim finger poised over the keypad. “If I ask him to see you, he will. If he decides to kick you off his property two minutes later, he’ll do that, too.”
The call got through. Clair chirped, purred, told a couple of stories. Then slid us in the door. She hung up.
“He’ll see you tomorrow in the early afternoon. I’ll get you the address.”
We headed for the door. Clair got there ahead of us, pushed it shut. She leaned against the door, her eyes tense.
“If you’re wrong, if you screw up, the Kincannons will tear you to pieces, hound you with lawyers, get you kicked off the force. Even if you’re right, it could happen. And you don’t even know if you’re right.”
“We’re right,” Harry said. “Still doesn’t negate any of the other possibilities, though.”
Clair stepped aside. Harry started down the hall, pulling out his cell to check for messages. She turned to me, her voice low.
“Are you all right, Ryder? With your personal upheaval?”
“Keeping busy. I think it’s the answer.”
“Too busy to get together and talk? That was tomorrow night, you know.”
“Sevenish, if I recall.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. Gave it a gentle squeeze. Said, “Stay safe, Carson.”
The door reopened and I followed after my partner, a bell-like ringing in my ears.
Harry had to go to the prosecutor’s office to straighten out a time line on an upcoming trial, and I envied him a few moments thinking about something else, even if it was another murder. I dug out our mass of paper and started at the beginning, the Wookiee jumping from the Mazda and running into the truck’s headlamps. The knife in the rainy gutter. The oddities with the extra water in Taneesha’s car.
After a half hour I dropped my head to my hands and rubbed my eyes.
“I know that look,” said a voice at my back, Tyree Shuttles. “Frustration, pure and simple.”
“This isn’t simple frustration, Tyree,” I said. “This is the new and improved frustration-a hundred percent more for no added charge.”
“Grab a bowl of gumbo at Flanagan’s?” he suggested.
“Anything to get out of here.”
Like the last time we’d spoken, Shuttles had silent lapses where he’d seemed far away, making a decision, or mulling his own set of problems. After just a few spoonfuls of crawfish gumbo, he pushed his bowl away, stared into my eyes, seemed to make the choice.
“You were one of the last guys in the department to make detective, Carson. You remember how it was to be new, right?”
“It’s a whole ’nother world. Something not fitting right yet?”
He looked down at his hands. “It’s Pace and me. There’s something not working in our chemistry. It’s keeping me awake at night. Maybe I’m not up to his…expectations or something.”
“Expectations? Pace Logan?”
Shuttles rubbed his face. “Not me personally, I hope, but more like new school versus old school. I’m college, he’s not. I had criminology courses, profiling, tactics, strategies, psychology, sociology, you name it, I took it.”
“Damn,” I said, impressed.
“I had a scholarship, made it easy. But Pace, well…he’s just got the street experience. The hard-fought smarts, doing things in ways I don’t quite get. I respect his years of experience, and want to learn from it. You know, Pace, he’s a doggone good guy and, uh, he knows people and, uh…”
“He’s great with children and loves his mother dearly,” I said.
“What?”
