“Then that must be what I was seeing,” Shawn said. “The victim was an escapee from a chain gang. Which means he’d need an assumed identity to work for a lot that was licensed to the city.”
Gus looked from face to face, hoping to find any sign of warming. They stared back, just as icy.
“That’s a very good insight, Mr. Spencer,” Vick said. “It’s the kind of thing we might never have figured out without your unique talent.”
“Unless we happened to run the vic’s prints,” O’Hara said.
“Which we did,” Lassiter said.
“John Marichal was indeed an escapee from an Arizona chain gang,” Vick said. “A second-generation criminal who’d done time for armed robberies all over Florida, just like his daddy before him. He moved to Arizona and started a new life. Apparently the new life wasn’t much different from the old one, and he got himself arrested for what’s believed to be his second liquor store holdup. He got twenty years on the chain gang, escaped six months ago and fled to Santa Barbara.”
“Where he managed to snag a hot job right off the bat,” Shawn said. “Got to give props to our local economy.”
“He didn’t exactly apply for the job,” Vick said.
“The employee of record was one Albert Jones. Apparently Mr. Marichal killed Mr. Jones and simply started showing up in his place.”
“And nobody noticed?” Gus said.
“Who would?” Vick said.
“And even if they did, they’d assume that Jones had quit and Marichal was the new guy,” Lassiter said. “In some ways it was the perfect crime.”
“Perfect, yes,” Shawn said. “Except that instead of winning him a million dollars in cash and bonds, he ended up with a job so crummy even a dead guy could do it. So what’s the point?”
“We’re still trying to figure that out,” Vick said.
“If I get a vibe, I’ll let you know,” Shawn said. “So, anyway, glad we could help, and I guess we could use a ride back to our office.”
He started toward the door.
“Not so fast, Spencer,” Lassiter growled.
“That’s my normal walking pace,” Shawn said. “If you’re having trouble keeping up, you might want to look into a Lark. If you qualify, Medicare will make all your payments.”
“We didn’t bring you here to ask you about the impound lot murder,” Vick said. “Because we had no reason to connect you with it. Whoever killed Mr. Marichal wiped all the prints off that shotgun-including, apparently, Mr. Guster’s.”
Those were exactly the words Gus had been longing to hear. They were off the hook. They were free. So why was he still paralyzed by stress? There was something his subconscious had figured out that it wasn’t sharing with the rest of him.
“Tell me, Mr. Spencer. What do you think about pickles on a burger?”
Gus could practically hear his subconscious laughing at him. What was about to happen was so much worse than what he’d originally feared, and his conscious mind still had no idea what it could be.
“Are you ordering lunch? Because we just ate,” Shawn said.
“Answer the question, Spencer,” Lassiter growled.
“They’re an abomination,” Shawn said. “You unwrap the paper, and you get that first rich, meaty smell mingling with the yeasty goodness of the bun. Maybe just a hint of toasted sesame. Then you take a bite and the juices flow out onto your tongue, beef fat mingling with the sour-sweet attack of the secret sauce. It’s a perfect flavor combination-and then it’s ruined by the acid tang of decayed cucumber. But no matter how many times you ask, can you ever have your burger made without pickles? No. Because it’s just assumed that even if you beg for a dill-free experience, you couldn’t possibly mean it.”
“You sound pretty worked up about the issue,” O’Hara said.
“I’ve considered running for office on the platform,” Shawn said. “But aside from that, it’s not really something that takes up a lot of my time.”
Vick pulled a file off her desk and handed it to Gus. Inside was a photo of a young man in a white BurgerZone uniform. At least, it used to be white. Now great areas of it were stained red, and Gus was pretty sure it wasn’t with ketchup. His face was barely recognizable under the cuts and bruises.
“That happened at roughly twelve forty-two this afternoon,” Lassiter said.
Shawn peered over Gus’ shoulder at the picture. “He fall under a Zamboni?”
“Apparently he made one small mistake,” Lassiter said. “He was working the grill at the Oxnard BurgerZone and got a take-out order for three burgers with no pickles. Do you know what happened next?”
“I’m going to guess pickles,” Gus said.
“Oh, yes,” O’Hara said. “Pickles.”
“The customer wasn’t happy,” Lassiter said. “Harsh words were spoken. And then the customer asked the victim to step out back to discuss the issue.”
“Why would he agree?” Gus asked, ignoring the terrible feeling that he already knew the answer to his question.
“Turn the page, Mr. Guster,” Vick suggested.
The photo felt like lead in Gus’ hand as he struggled to flip it over, desperately not wanting to see what he knew was waiting for him on the next page.
“Imagine you were a twenty-three-year-old part-time student working a minimum-wage job in order to finish a degree in accounting so you can go on to live a long, boring, lower-middle-class existence in the Valley,” Lassiter said. “Is there anything you wouldn’t do if she asked you?”
Gus and Shawn stared down at a police artist’s sketch of a beautiful young woman in a tight T-shirt and tiny shorts. Even though the sketch was in pencil, Gus could practically feel the redness coming out of it.
“We didn’t bring you down here to discuss the murder at the impound lot,” Lassiter said.
“Although we do appreciate your belated honesty on the subject,” Vick said.
“We brought you here because we need to answer a very important question,” Lassiter continued.
“Is it about pickles?” Shawn said.
“In a way.”
“Any particular way?”
“We know you asked Tara Larison to bring you back lunch from BurgerZone. She mentioned your name several times at the pickup window. And we know that you specifically asked for your burger without pickles. Our question is, did you tell Ms. Larison to beat this man half to death if he got your order wrong, or did she just assume that you’d want her to?”
“Is there another way to put that?” Shawn said.
“Certainly, Mr. Spencer,” Vick said. “We need to know if you’re merely harboring a deranged psychopath, or if she’s acting under your direct orders.”
Chapter Eleven
Evidence. It was always about the evidence. Before he retired from the Santa Barbara Police Department, Henry Spencer would spend hours poring over every shred of paper, every scrap of fiber, every drop of ooze until he could piece them together to tell a story. Then he’d tear it all apart to see if he could put it together in another way that would tell a different story. If he could, then he knew he had to keep searching for other clues that could be added to the puzzle until there was only one possible solution.
But the stack of evidence piled in front of Henry now made those challenges pale by comparison. To start, there was far more here than he’d ever had on any case with the SBPD. An entire shoe box of photos going back sixty-seven years, and an additional eight carousels full of slides. Plane tickets. Wedding invitations-the subjects’ own, and dozens more for their scores of relatives and friends. A paper napkin with a lipstick kiss fading after many years. Swizzle sticks from restaurants long gone. A sequence of drivers’ licenses dating back to the days
