Page 15 of Race With The Devil

CHAPTER SIX

Unity

“How do you know so much about cutting?” I asked Tanner as I took off my “dome of obedience.” “Prison?”

We’d reached José Cepeda’s house in Flagstaff’s suburbs. It was a fifties burg that had fallen on hard times. Where kids had jumped rope, they now plotted to steal their dad’s handguns. Where kids had roller skated without kneepads, they now sold fentanyl for dealers. You could tell all the homes were rentals. That or Section 8, the “low-cost” subsidized housing. People barbecued in their front yards. Even in my Cottonwood hood, people would do that in their backyard. Here, no one parked in their garage. They played pool in there and parked haphazardly on the dead lawns. Everyone was at home at noon on a weekday.

“Animals.”

I grinned. “And do animals cut themselves?”

Today Tanner didn’t wear the threadbare Paws-n-Gauze T-shirt. He was clad in a short-sleeved blue button-down and 501s so worn they must’ve kept the shape of his body when he took them off. Yes, I had ogled his ass when picking him up at the Days Inn in P and E. That butt was so firm you could bounce a quarter off it.

“Stallions and octopuses will self-mutilate in ways that look like our ‘cutting.’ Wild chimps get depressed and die.”

I remembered something. “Lavinia has a parrot that picks its own feathers.”

Tanner pointed at me. “Right. Like the horses that obsessively bite themselves. Yeah, no shit. It appears to be related to grief. Animals stop eating, refuse food and water.” Then he grinned, too, and it was a sight to see. Under the dusk of his permanent five o’clock shadow, he may have even had dimples, or at least smile crinkles, like his eye crinkles. I felt I was getting to know Tanner Principato, and for once it didn’t scare me. “Or the inmates in prison who burn themselves with cigarettes.”

“See?” I crowed, following him to the peeling lime green house. Now I could look at his ass again. Was I a shallow ogler? Dear God. “You never talk about prison, yet you spent ten years there. Slushy helped get you out. You must’ve really been innocent, or the Innocence Project wouldn’t have helped you. So, what was the charge?”

Tanner strode right ahead, kicking aside battered kid’s toys, never looking back. “I don’t see any car with California plates.”

I snorted hot air. This man was frustrating as hell. I almost slipped on a used condom because I was paying too much attention to his body. What was wrong with me? Like the animals, maybe I was coming into heat. Maybe Tanner prefers animals because he can’t relate to people. Just like me.

José Cepeda was already at the door by the time I jogged up the front walkway. It was agreed Tanner would take point on this, being a hell of a lot scarier than me. But from the first split second the door opened, I could tell from Tanner’s back he was already a little uncertain. There were two toddlers in the front room, one of them bawling like I hadn’t bawled since that age.

Tanner introduced himself and shook the guy’s hand, explaining I was a friend of Lavinia, who hadn’t been seen in a few days.

“She repairs your cars?” Tanner inquired.

José shrugged. “Yeah, sometimes.” He had a very thick accent—straight from Sinaloa. I was surprised he’d even answered the door if he was illegal.

“When’s the last time you saw her?” Tanner asked. “When did she last repair one of your cars?”

José shrugged again. He was shirtless, and I could smell baby puke on him. “Maybe two months ago. She replaced the thermostat on my Mustang. Hey, what do they think happened to her? I heard there was some bad news at the sideshow the other night.”

“That’s for sure,” I said heatedly. “Three people went into comas and died, muerte, after taking some of Tutti Morgan’s fentanyl.”

José frowned. “Who da fuck is Tutti Morgan? Listen, ah, I gotta go.”

He was looking back at the sobbing toddler, but Tanner was ruthless. “Do you own any cars with California plates?”

“No! I have two cars, that Mustang and that Camaro you see, and the Camaro hasn’t been on the road in six months. I wasn’t even at the sideshow the other night. Tuesday my wife was in the hospital having another baby. I got shit to do, man.”

I reached out my hands. “Wait, José. One more question, please? Do you know anyone named José with a dark car with California plates? We’ve asked all her friends at the sideshow and no one knows anyone like that.”

“No. I am not hiding anything, Tanner and lady with tattoos. I was in the maternity ward with my wife Carla at Flagstaff Medical Center. That is where she is now, and where I have to go with these two little niñas. Please. If you want, go check at Flagstaff Medical. You will see that Carla Cepeda is checked in. Please. Mi mujer parió el jueves en la noche.” As though we’d understand it in Spanish better.

The poor guy was begging by now, and some bedraggled woman who definitely had spit-up on her shirt came to console the wailing baby, so we waved a thank you to José and walked back to my bike. I even felt rather bad at having taken up so much of his valuable time when he was so clearly stressed—about his kids and wife, that is. Not about covering up a murder.

At my bike, I held up a finger for Tanner to wait. I called Maddy, Ford’s wife. She was at work at her cardiology office in P and E. I asked her to see if there was a patient at Flagstaff Medical named Carla Cepeda. It was as easy as that. Maddy had been our contact who’d told us about the three deaths at P and E General. It still wasn’t in the papers while the pigs hustled around, confused as to who to charge, if anyone. The girl and two men had taken drugs voluntarily. Usually, it was their own fault, although a batch this venal should be investigated. Pigs were milling about in their usual bewilderment getting nothing done. I hated pigs, if you couldn’t tell. They were always arresting the wrong person. Or in the process of investigating a complaint, they saw an ounce of weed on the complainer’s coffee table, that person would be arrested. They always did the laziest possible thing, which included not taking fingerprints and not charging their friends. Like Gary Gregario. And yeah. I’d been arrested once while trying to charge Gary with molestation because I’d forgotten about an ounce of Young Man Blue sitting on my bureau.

When I hung up on Maddy, Tanner was on a new call. “Uh-huh. Sounds good. Well, we’re in Flagstaff right now, so it’ll be an hour before we can get down there. You live at the Leaves of Grass plantation, don’t you? That’s up on Mormon Mountain. Okay. Good. Sounds like a plan.”

Tanner explained while he strapped on his dome of obedience. “Wolf found some interesting items on Lavinia’s phone. Says he wants to discuss them in person.”

I had a plan. “I think we can discuss them much better on a full stomach. You didn’t eat breakfast. Neither did I. I know a great place for ribs. It doesn’t say St. Louis style, but there’s plenty of sauce.”