“On little or no sleep?”
He put a shrug in his voice. “It’s what I do. Red Bull’s a lifesaver. One time I stayed up for seventy-five hours. Had to. Just have to ignore the more lurid hallucinations. After one of those, I crashed for twenty-two hours, which is a little disorienting when you finally wake up. So, who’s the girl with you?”
“About her—keep your distance or I’ll put you in the hospital. I can almost believe you and I might end up friends, but mess with her and you’ll spend a month in traction.”
“Okay, then. Forget I asked.”
“Where’d the expression ‘duck soup’ come from?”
“I Googled it a few years ago. Turns out, no one knows.”
“You Googled it?”
“Sure. You can find out anything on the Internet.”
“Except where ‘duck soup’ came from.”
“Yeah. Except that. If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SUNRISE WAS AT 4:58 a.m. It started as a bright orange spark of light in a notch in the eastern hills. The Lexus was still gone—as I’d expected. The backhoe-loader was back on its trailer behind the diner. All was quiet. Ignacio’s Cruze was still in front of the motel. No sign of the Rat.
By five fifteen, Lucy and I were back on the road, headed north. It was eighty miles to Caliente, and I wanted to catch the girls by surprise. The temperature was still in the sixties. I had the top up on the Mustang and the heater on low since Lucy was in jogging shorts and that crochet top, which was about as warm as wearing nothing at all.
We got to the Pahranagai Inn at six thirty. I knocked on the door to room nine. A minute later the peephole went dark, then the door was opened by a sleepy-eyed Danya.
“This better be awful goddamn good,” she said with a growl in her voice, possibly because she was in panties and no top, but maybe that was just who she was in the wee hours.
“It is.” I bulled my way past her. She followed me and Lucy followed her. Shanna was in bed with the covers up to her chin.
“What I’m wondering,” I said to her while Danya worked a T-shirt on over her head, “is why you lied about Jo-X flying you back to that motel and diner the next morning.”
“Who says I lied?”
“I have sources. And you lied.”
“What sources?”
“They shall remain nameless, but you lied, Shanna.” In fact, she might not have lied. The girl last night, Melanie, could’ve been mistaken, but I didn’t think so, so I was putting on the pressure.
And, as expected, Shanna caved.
“Okay. So Jo-X didn’t fly me back. So what?”
“So I’m wondering why you lied.”
A moment of hesitation, then: “Because I roofied the rotten son of a bitch, that’s why. Which is none of your business and I didn’t want to advertise it, especially since he turned up dead.”
I stared at her. “You roofied him?”
“Uh-huh. Probably the last thing that asshole ever expected, it happening to him. I asked around and got it from some loser guy at one of Jo-X’s parties, just in case, hoping I would get a chance to use it, which didn’t seem likely. But then Jo-X invited me to his hideout, so that was perfect.”
“No one else around? Just you two?”
“Just us. He doesn’t have anyone up there on a regular basis, like maids or cooks or anything. I think he gets fuel delivered, and maintenance guys probably come up to do stuff on occasion, but he’s got the place looking like it’s sort of a drug rehab facility so delivery people and workers don’t ask questions.”
“Drug rehab. Perfect.”
“Thing is,” Shanna said, “if it ever got out that I roofied him up there, people might think I killed him when he was out cold, so if you want to know why I lied, that’s why.”
“So you didn’t kill him?” I knew she hadn’t, since Jo-X had flown back later that day, according to Melanie, but it’s never a good idea to give out too much information.
“No, I did not. What I did, if you must know, I super-glued his cock to his belly.”
I gaped at her. “You did what?”
“Put a big glob of superglue on his dick and stuck it to his belly, aimed up. The fucker. Glue takes like two seconds to bond flesh to flesh. Then I left him a note explaining why, told him to think twice before he raped girls. It was sort of like he got raped, but not nearly as bad as what he did to Josie. Until he got his dick unstuck, he’d be pissing himself. He’s lucky I didn’t glue his dick shut, ’cause I thought about it. Then I found the keys to his SUV and drove out. Only one road into the place, so that was easy. Anyway, he was fine when I left him, except for the glue. But obviously someone killed him. A guy like that’s got to have a ton of enemies, so it looks like someone finally got to him.”
“And strung him up in your garage.”
“Which is so bizarre I don’t know what to think about it.”
Bizarre, yes. She’d been standing behind me when
