He gave her the name and location, and she recognized it. “I can be there in fifteen minutes. How will I know you?”
“Last booth on the left as you walk in. I'll order for us.”
“That sounds delightful. See you then, Detective.”
“James… call me Jim,” he lied. Returning the phone to the wall, he cursed his situation. But then again, Detective Jim might be a great deal more relaxed and in control than would be comp-nerd Randy, so maybe he had made the right choice after all. Besides, she could turn out to be anything but what he imagined.
Play it out. Play out the game. But this was no ordinary game. This was real life, with real consequences. A part of him didn't feel comfortable playing with people's feelings and emotions. It was anathema to all that was positive on the Internet, where such things didn't routinely exist. Sure, you heard of the occasional Net partners making a random date, falling in love in the real world and getting married, but you never heard of the statistics on the divorce rate for such Net surfers.
Still, he had committed to the game in this world now.
“Play it out,” he told himself again. Risk it all, he added as he found his way back to his booth, called the waiter back, asked the other man to deep-six the sandwich in favor of two veal scallopini lunches and a dark cabernet, or Chianti, perhaps.
This was going to set him back some, but it was what Detective James “Bond” Pardee would do, right? he asked himself.
The waiter only shrugged, lifted the sandwich plate, and made a beeline for the kitchen. Meanwhile, Randy awaited Darlene's appearance.
SEVENTEEN
“Now it's your turn,” Lucas said to Meredyth. “How come we know so much already about the victim in Oregon, his name, his line of business? How did you first hear of him?”
“Randy.”
“Really?”
“He saw something come in over the computer on it.”
“So, what else do we know about the victim?”
“We don't know enough about Little. We need to know a great deal more about him,” she suggested. “I understand he's originally from Texas-not far from Houston, in fact, a town called Sealy, where he grew up. He owns- owned-a mansion estate there, but he also maintains a house in Malibu, California. He was a man building a fortune, obsessed by work, was the way his wife put it.”
“Who supplied all the details? You didn't get all that from a birthmark or from Randy.”
“A sheriff's deputy found his wallet at the crime scene.”
“Really? An oversight on the killer's part, perhaps? Especially if this has anything to do with Mootry, which I rather doubt…”
She frowned in response, asking, “Do you always have to be so damned negative, Stonecoat?”
He shrugged this away. “So… what'd they do, notify next of kin, put out an APB for information on the guy, what?”
“Seems everyone in Oregon, or at least this area of the state, knew the victim well, at least by reputation. So they contacted his wife. She and their children are all torn up about it, they say. She had to be hospitalized after they told her. Still haven't officially identified the body beyond what was found at the scene.”
“They found his wallet? But he wasn't wearing any clothes?”
“It must've fallen. Got kicked up underneath the car, where an alert deputy found it.”
A signal bell overhead pinged and lit up, telling them to fasten their seat belts for landing. The military jet touched down in Oregon with the ease of a glider, the expert pilot making it look easy. There wasn't much here, a small terminal and two strips of asphalt for an airport with a handful of the big carriers coming and going. The highway murder had occurred somewhere between Medford and Rogue River.
They were immediately met by the local deputy, Harold Lempel, who had been sent to greet them, to take them first to the morgue and then out to the crime scene on Interstate 5 just outside Rogue River, Oregon. Harold was big at six feet three, his shoulders wide and thick as cinder blocks, his face about the same, with an affable smile and how-kin-I-hep-y'all-folks attitude.
In the squad car, Lucas asked, “Are you the deputy who found the wallet?” Harold beamed. “Yes, sir, that'd be me. Was there anything else found at the scene?”
“Just the worst nightmare I ever witnessed, and I've seen some road kills that involved power lines and bodies up trees, sir.”
At the morgue, they were ushered into a deathly silent room where the victim-or rather what little remained of the victim-had been placed beneath a sheet, the arrow still protruding from the chest, creating a small teepee effect over the torso. The man who led them in was the local pathologist working for the Rogue River hospital. The nearest medical examiner was in Eugene, Oregon, and so far, no one from his office had come down. It was quite possibly a stroke of good luck for Dr. Sanger and Lucas that no official coroner had yet examined the body, since everything had been carefully preserved intact for the man or woman coming from Eugene.
“FBI may be coming in this afternoon to have a look-see also,” said the doe-eyed, middle-aged pathologist. “Damnedest bit of grief I ever come across in all my years, I can tell you.”
Thus far, there seemed little interest in the death of Timothy Little in any place other than Rogue River. Speculation about the killing ran high there. Little was killed by renegade union men who got wind that he was going to sell the local plant. Word had it that some of the meanest of the homeboys just got together, got liquored up for courage, dug out their hunting bows, and went after Mr. Little, literally cutting him off at the pass.
Meredyth instinctively pulled back when the sheet was pulled away. She and Lucas were treated to a Judge Mootry look-alike murder victim, a hacked-up torso-no head, no limbs, and no private parts. A thick titanium metal shaft, looking like a sleek metal post, with a stylized, aluminum-feathered end, protruded straight up and out from the heart, a direct hit.
“Whoever this guy is, he sure as hell shoots straight,” said Lucas, more to hear his own voice than anything else.
Harold, from a dark corner, said, 'They say the car had to be moving at between sixty-five and seventy when it left the road, and that the arrows-two of them-came straight through the windshield.”
Meredyth was gasping for air, wanting to get out, and she did so. Lucas nodded to the little pathologist and said thanks before allowing Meredyth out. The place reeked from the indescribable fleshy items put up in formaldehyde-filled jars.
“Seen enough to convince you there's something very bizarre going on?” she asked.
“I have, but we're going to need pictures to convince Lawrence and the others back in Houston.”
“Don't worry. I intend to get a copy of every photo they've taken here.” Harold had stayed back long enough for his third look at the body.
He went past them now in search of a Pepsi-Cola machine down the hall, where he inhaled what was in the can in his bear like claw.
Meredyth said to Harold, 'Take us to the scene, where it happened.”
“Well, maybe first you'll want to see the car.”
“You impounded it?” asked Lucas.
“Had to get it outta there.”
“You moved it.”
“Don't worry,” he assured them. “We marked where it was, where it left the road, all that.”
“Did you drive all over the surrounding area? Park your squad cars over vital evidence?” pressed Stonecoat.
“We obscured some tire prints, but there wasn't much in the way of evidence found out there.”
“Where's the sheriff? Why isn't he talking to us?”
“Lowell… Sheriff Barnette's a busy man,” replied Deputy Harold Lempel. “He's up at the courthouse right
