“Maybe she’s the killer.”
Russ shrugged. “We thought of that. Cell phone she used was a burner, untraceable, so we’ve got nothing. I mean, nothing useful. A lawyer named Leland Bye was down in that mineshaft, too, north of Gerlach, and a young hooker, both shot dead, but that’s the end of the trail. After that, it’s nothing but vapor.”
“Well, shit. I sure wish you’d get the guy. I would tap-dance on his grave.”
“Me, too. He’s still out there. Unless, of course, someone got to him, took care of him. Someone who’s kept it real quiet.”
“Batman’s got the Riddler, I’ve got you.”
We strolled another hundred yards without speaking. I didn’t know how Russ had come up with that zinger, but I wasn’t going to say another word about it. Might mention it to Ma, though, see what she thought about it, especially since she was the “older woman” who’d made the 911 call.
“No idea what Danya wanted a PI for, huh?” he said at last. “I mean, she didn’t say anything about this Jo-X asshole? Man, I hate sayin’ Jo-X, like I’m some sort of fuckin’ groupie.”
“Not a word. I don’t think she had any idea Xenon was in that garage.”
Another sigh. “This is gonna be a sonofabitch, Angel. No way it’s not gonna be a lousy rotten sonofabitch. It’s my kid, so they’ll take me off the case, which sucks.”
“Or it might free you up.”
He looked at me. “That’s the way you think, huh?”
“It works for me. Anyway, Danya seems like a nice girl.”
“She is. She . . . well, her mother and I never got married. I was pretty young, twenty-three. Danya’s mother—Denisha—was twenty-one. Denisha Fuller. I’ve been paying child support for a long time. I would’ve made a good father. What I mean is, I am a good father. I’ve got a daughter, Josie, seventeen, by my wife. But Denisha . . .” He sighed, kicked a pebble off the path. “She left Reno before she had Danya. She raised Danya in Alabama, south side of Tuscaloosa. Denisha was a real looker when she was younger, but . . . she had that hard edge, even then. Got married twice, divorced twice. She and Danya have had their problems. Danya’s been here in Reno since a month after she turned eighteen. She’s twenty-two now. Finally wanted her own place, so last year I put my name on the lease for that house she’s in. She and Shanna met two years ago. They were roommates for a year, students up at UNR. Danya’s a psychology major, taking it kinda slow, eight, ten credits a semester. Not in a big hurry. Shanna’s paying a quarter of the rent, Danya’s paying a quarter. I’m paying half. Now you tell me they’re married.”
“It probably just slipped her mind. You know how kids are—they get busy, forget to mention things.”
He snorted an unhappy laugh.
“Anyway, that was a lot of background information, Russ.”
He stopped and faced me. “Don’t laugh or I’ll shoot you right here and dump you in the river, but . . . hell . . . I’m thinking I want to hire you.”
I stared at him. Finally, I said, “You’ve got an entire police force at your disposal, Russ.”
“Yeah, but there’s all those fuckin’ rules that get in the way, which is sort of what you mentioned a few minutes ago. I oughta know. This is a goddamn awful situation. I’ll be able to keep tabs on the investigation, but Don Kreuger’s taking lead. Guy’s a square shooter, but a stickler. All I’ll be able to do is sit back and watch it roll over her—Danya. And Shanna. So I’m wondering if a maverick isn’t what we need, all three of us. And luck. You stumble along, but you’re the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.” He headed east again.
I caught up to him, thinking about luck. Luck came in all sizes and shapes. My kind of luck was different. I hadn’t put Ma on a train that morning thinking I’d run into a wet, stacked, naked girl before noon, but there you go—Lady Luck, following me around like a hungry dog. And, of course, there was Jo-X, stinking up a garage, waiting for Nevada’s luckiest gumshoe to find him and cause another uproar.
We walked awhile in silence, me thinking about how weird this deal with Fairchild was, or could be, not sure I wanted him involved like this, not sure I didn’t, either. In the interrogation room I realized I wasn’t going to abandon the investigation, such as it was, since Danya and I had kind of a handshake deal going, but . . .
“Maverick, huh?” I said to get Russ talking again.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But two things I’m sure of—you’re completely unprofessional, and you’ve got a way of digging in and finding stuff out. Weird stuff.”
I smiled. “It’s probably because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Guess that pisses you off, too. I still remember you giving me the finger in the hospital last summer.”
He stopped and jabbed a different finger into my chest. “What I’m thinking is—you can do things I can’t. We can’t.”
“You mean the police?”
“Right. I’m thinking you could be something of a parallel, off-the-record investigation—coloring outside the lines so to speak, ’cause that’s who you are, the way you do things.”
I looked out at the slow-moving river, thinking about it. This might be a mistake, but it might not. It had possibilities.
“I sure as hell wouldn’t want anyone to know about this,” he went on. “I mean, anyone. It could mean my career.”
I thought a moment longer, then said, “If I do this, what are you hiring me to do, exactly? Locate Danya since she took off, or find out who killed Xenon?”
“Well . . . both. Either. I
