“Beating up and raping his ex-wife.”
“No. Knock her around a little, deliver a message to lay off trying to find him. The other thing… she asked for it, I told you that-”
“Shut up,” Fallon said. “No more lies.”
A long way off, a coyote bayed; the sudden sound made Bobby J. twitch and shiver again.
“How much did Spicer pay you?”
“A thousand. He said ask her for another two K, she’d bring it. You want it back? I still got most of it stashed away-”
“He knew he’d been traced to Vegas. How?”
“Private cop she hired asking questions. Some musician he knows told him about it.”
“Did he know the private cop? Have any contact with him?”
“Didn’t say nothing about that. Just deliver the message, that’s all.”
“After you delivered it-then what? You see him again?”
“No. Talked on the phone a couple of times.”
“After I showed up using his name?”
“Yeah. He thought you must be another private cop.”
“Make you a proposition to take care of me too?”
“No. That thing Sunday night… my idea. Just a talk, like I said. Find out who you were, convince you to lay off.”
“Beat me up. Dump me somewhere. Then hit Spicer up for more money.”
“No! I told you-”
Fallon said, “Back up a few more paces.”
“Why? What happens now?”
“Back up.”
Jablonsky obeyed haltingly. Fallon moved forward into the light, bent to scoop up the pile of clothing and boots.
“You gonna let me get dressed?”
“No.”
“Come on, man, I told you everything I know. I got to get to a doctor…”
“No.”
“Hey, come
Fallon retreated to the trunk, threw the armload inside. Before he slammed the lid, he removed the dirty blanket. He went around to the driver’s side, tossed the blanket onto the sandy ground. Then he opened the driver’s door.
“Hey,” Jablonsky said, “hey, you ain’t gonna just leave me here with a busted nose and a lousy blanket? I’ll freeze to death out here!”
No, he wouldn’t. The blanket and the long walk would keep him warm enough. Once he got to the highway, a police patrol or Good Samaritan would come along and he could make up a story about being robbed and stripped and beaten up and his car stolen at gunpoint.
Fallon got into the Mustang, fired it up. Over the engine roar he heard Bobby J. yell, “Motherfucker! I’ll get you for this!”
Like hell he would.
He backed up until he came to a hardpan area at the foot of the sandhill where he could turn around. The last he saw of Bobby J., the last he ever wanted to see of him, Jablonsky had picked up the blanket and was swirling it around himself like a wounded albino bat with dirty gray wings.
FIVE
FRUSTRATION CHEWED ON FALLON again as he drove back into Vegas. Bobby Jablonsky was a liar, a pimp, a rapist, an all-around sleaze-bag, and there wasn’t much doubt that he had the capacity for cold-blooded murder under the right circumstances, but he hadn’t shot Court Spicer. Or taken Kevin. Or been responsible for Casey’s disappearance. He wasn’t bright enough to fake his surprise. He hadn’t been scared enough for a coward guilty of homicide. And he wouldn’t have thrown out all those alibi names so readily if he hadn’t been where he claimed he was last night. Another girlfriend might lie for him, but not a Texas Hold ’Em dealer or a roomful of poker players at a Henderson casino.
Fallon retraced Bobby J.’s route back to Sandstone Street, nosed the Mustang to the curb around the corner behind where he’d parked the Jeep. Left it unlocked, with the keyring dangling from the ignition, Candy’s cell phone on the seat, and the Saturday night special cartridges strewn on the floor. As he drove away, he had an image of Jablonsky, wrapped in that blanket, hoofing it alone out there in the cold desert night. The image gave him no satisfaction. Bad night for Bobby J., but it was a lot less punishment than he deserved.
Well, that could be remedied. Maybe there was nothing Fallon could do about David Rossi’s hit-and-run felony, but Jablonsky was a different story. When he found Casey and her son, and he was his own free man again, he’d put an anonymous flea in the ear of the Vegas cops: Bobby J., Max Arbogast, the teenage drug parties at the Rest- a-While. That way, his conscience wouldn’t bother him so much and he’d sleep better at night.
By the time he reached his motel, he’d decided something else, too. There were no answers in Vegas. Wherever Casey and the boy were, it wasn’t here, any more than it was in Laughlin or Bullhead City.
One other place to look.
And one other possibility for the shooter. It had come to him out in the desert while he was questioning Bobby J.-a name he’d have considered before if he hadn’t been so focused on Jablonsky and the Rossis.
The private detective, Sam Ulbrich.
PART V. SAN DIEGO
ONE
FALLON WENT OVER IT and over it on the five-hour, three-hundred-and-fifty-mile drive to San Diego, and Sam Ulbrich was the only way he could make it all fit together. Ulbrich had traced Spicer to Las Vegas; he could have traced him to Laughlin and Bullhead City, too, using his own resources and making his own luck. If his one brush with the state board of licenses was any indication, the man didn’t have a lot of scruples. So he might’ve gone to Spicer’s rented house to try a shakedown of his own- blackmail the blackmailer. Only something had gone wrong and Spicer had ended up dead, with the boy as a witness.
Casey might have been another witness, but that explanation still didn’t ring true. There was a more likely answer: Ulbrich had contacted her on her cell phone right after the shooting, told her he had her son and offered her a deal, Kevin in exchange for some kind of guarantee of the boy’s silence and hers. She’d have jumped at it. Agreed to any terms to get her son back safely.
Best-case scenario, and logical enough as far as it went. But there was a flaw in it. If that kind of deal had been made, she and Kevin should be home by now. And nobody had picked up when Fallon called the Avila Court number again before leaving Vegas.
Near dawn he stopped in Quartzsite, halfway down Highway 95, for gas and a packaged sandwich, and tried her number once more. Nobody picked up this time either.
Where were they, then?
One possibility: part of the deal between Ulbrich and Casey was that she didn’t return to San Diego, that she
