Which suited all of us who knew the real story just fine.
“Yeah, I know,” Russ said once the silence had gotten a little thick. “I wondered if you knew.”
“She did it. You and I might not know the reason why, but she killed him.”
I emphasized “she” but didn’t say who she was. And I knew why she’d done it, or I had a pretty good idea. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, just let it go, but I wondered what he would do with the comment. I also wanted to know how far this cop-PI link-up had gotten us.
He remained silent for over a minute. I could almost hear him over there, neurons grinding away. When he spoke, he didn’t sound nearly as drunk. “I know,” he said at last. “But how’d you get there? I gotta know if, you know, I’m gonna protect her.”
He still hadn’t said who “she” was, but I thought it was just as well to leave it like that.
“Timing. Ma found gas receipts in Fallon, Ely, Caliente, Ely again, then Austin. Left a trail from Reno to Caliente and back. Ma’s a bloodhound. Gas was purchased using Shanna’s father’s credit card—don’t ask me how Ma found that since I don’t know—but at that time, Buddie was following Shanna back to Reno, up 95 through Tonopah, different route, so Shanna wasn’t the one using her dad’s card. Buddie found out where she lives, then he came back and found Xenon already dead. Xenon had seen a private doctor in Vegas to get himself unglued, then he’d driven back to the diner, flown the helicopter up to his place in the hills. Shanna was nowhere around by then. But . . . gas receipts from Reno to Caliente and back right at that time. Perfect match. Who else could have used that credit card? Caliente isn’t very far from Xenon’s hideaway. Two and two, Russ. But it’s not proof.”
He thought about that for a while. “I think that’s not gonna be a problem. It’s too far out on the edge of it. I mean, Shanna’s father’s credit card? I guess he was letting her use it, her being in college and all. Danya’s got one of mine. I’m glad she was smart enough not to use it anywhere.”
“How’d you figure things out?” I asked him.
“Jesus, Mort. C’mon.”
“Hey, as long as we’re talkin’, Russ.”
He sighed, then dug out his wallet, handed me ten dollars. “What’s this for?” I said.
“I’m hiring you for another ten minutes. You get sixty an hour, right? Now what I say is privileged. And anyway, it’s not proof either.”
“Okay, no proof is good.”
“I’ve got a gun safe at home. She knows the combination. I was in there a few days ago getting a box of ammo, and I found a Ruger LCR .357 Magnum. Thing is, it used to be a Ruger LCR .38 special plus-P.”
“Specials don’t often morph into Magnums. Not even plus-P specials.”
“No they don’t. She didn’t know the difference. Guess she knew it was a Ruger LCR, barrel about two inches long, but that’s all. It took some doing, but two days ago I found that she bought it at Cabela’s. Got the gun registration documents and the background check. She’s got a clean record, so buying that gun took roughly an hour. I haven’t told her. Not sure what the point would be, so I won’t unless it becomes an issue.” He looked a question over at me.
“Not me, Russ. I don’t have a dog in that fight. It feels like a father-daughter thing. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Thanks. If the FBI finds that she bought a gun, it’ll be after this Xenon business, not before. So she bought it for protection and with my blessing. In fact, now that I think about it, maybe I oughta take her out to a gun range, get her qualified for a carry permit. That’d be good if the FBI comes sniffing around. My dad got that LCR special at a gun show about thirty years ago, when I was still in high school.”
“So, no record of you ever owning it.”
“Nope. Even if they find the gun somewhere it won’t come back to me. But I sure hope she got rid of it someplace where it will never be found.”
“She’s a cop’s daughter.”
“Uh-huh. Hope some of that rubbed off.” He fell silent, then said, “I still don’t know why she’d do something like that. Take out Xenon. Doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’ll have to ask her. I couldn’t tell you.” Which was true in a sense, but not the way he would take it.
After another minute of silence I said, “Sometimes it doesn’t go our way, Russ. Sometimes life is a bitch. We want it tied up in a neat bundle, good guys innocent, bad guys dead or in prison, and sometimes it isn’t like that. Xenon in her garage, it makes no sense that she would put him there, and she didn’t, so obviously she couldn’t have killed him, and then . . . turns out she did. So you end up with an elephant in the refrigerator, not sure what to do about it. Sometimes Occam’s Razor doesn’t work, which in this case is a good thing.”
“Occam’s Razor. That’s where the simplest explanation is the way it actually happened.”
“Yup. Simplest explanation is that Buddie killed Jo-X when he stole stuff from the guy’s place, took him up to Reno and hung him in that garage to throw the police off. That particular garage
