I passed.
“Hear you’re bucking for a spot on
I stepped into his office.
“Word is you wanted to do an orifice search on Tyree. Slidell had to restrain you.”
“Slidell was in no shape to restrain anybody. I thought I’d have to do CPR on him.”
“Tyree tell you anything useful?”
“He’s innocent as the Little Flower.”
“That the kid saw the Virgin at Lourdes?”
I nodded.
“Cute analogy.”
“I was taught by nuns.”
“Hard to break the habit.”
Eye roll.
“Now what?” Larabee asked.
“Once they’ve completed intake, Rinaldi and Slidell are going to grill Tyree, play him off against Sonny Pounder. One or the other will roll over.”
“My money’s on Pounder.”
“Good bet. The question is, how much does Sonny know?”
Larabee’s face got the look of a kid bursting with a secret.
“Guess who’s in storage?”
Larabee’s way of referring to a decedent’s sojourn to the morgue. Temporary storage.
“Ricky Don Dorton.”
“Old news.”
“Osama bin Laden.”
“Better than that.”
I gave him a come-on gesture with my fingers.
The name was the last I expected to hear.
30
“BRIAN AIKER.”
I felt a plunging sensation like you get just before screaming downward toward terra firma on a roller coaster. One of my toothpick towers was collapsing.
“Are you sure?”
“Body was found in Aiker’s car. Lots of ID on the body. A perfect match on the dentals.”
“But the skull, the Lancaster bones…,” I sputtered.
“Not your boy. You already knew the skull wasn’t his. Turns out the bones aren’t either.”
“How? Where?” I was too taken aback to ask meaningful questions.
“Hauled his car out of a small lake at Crowder’s Mountain State Park.”
“What was Aiker doing at Crowder’s Mountain?”
“Not paying attention at the wheel.”
“It took five years to find him?”
“Apparently it’s not a popular lake.”
“Why now?”
“The region’s experiencing drought conditions, water levels are down. Kid slid down the embankment or fell off the jetty or some damn thing. Car was a couple yards off a boat landing, roof twenty inches below the surface.”
It happens all the time. A couple leaves a restaurant, vanishes. Two years later their Acura is found at the bottom of their neighborhood pond. Grandpa drops the kids off, heads home. Next Christmas the old man’s Honda is spotted in a culvert under the highway. Mama releases the brake and steers the family SUV into a reservoir, boys and all. Four months later a propeller hits metal, and vehicle and victims are hauled from the muck.
Thousands drive, golf, pedal, or walk by accident scenes every year. No one spots anything. Then someone does.
“Windows were up, car was sealed well enough to keep the crabs and fish out,” Larabee continued. “Aiker doesn’t look that bad, considering how long he was in the drink.”
