Page 19 of Making His Bones

Elektra

“Did DeFreeze have his DNA taken ten years ago? And Pitchfork?”

We wound down the quiet, almost luxurious drive from our house to Bargain Boulevard. We were going to meet Tiago at The Bum Steer, which after all was a smokehouse open to the public, if they dared enter. I supposed I dared. I’d been doing a lot of brave stuff lately. Although I had politely said no to riding “bitch” or “one up” on Gray’s “pussy pad.” No thanks. We drove in my sedate rental car.

I said, “Oh, of course. I mean, he better put his money where his mouth is, right? He even passed a polygraph. And Pitchfork. No match either. Passed polygraph. He’s pastor of the church where Delilah was last seen leaving.”

“Some fucking pastor,” said Gray.

“I couldn’t agree more.” Pitchfork and his family had been ideal suspects. But, of course, no matches. “Are you going back to LA?” I hadn’t even realized I was about to ask Gray that question. What did I care? It made me wonder if I cared very much. Or, at least, sort of cared.

“Ah, not at the moment,” Gray said vaguely. “I mean, I’m patching into the Bare Bones. I’m not going to let them down. I’ll go back to LA for visits, and maybe to make cameos in films. When are you going back to Illinois? You’ve been gone a week.”

I white-knuckled the steering wheel. All I had back there was my job. I didn’t even own a cat. I’d been thinking, actually, about opening a branch of DNAnon in Flagstaff. We could work with the Flagstaff branch of the FBI. We could have lunch with them in person. We could go to conferences together, discuss the latest in bloodstain pattern analysis, crime scene cleanup, and DNA profiling. We had nothing down here in the Southwest—just an office in San Francisco.

“Maybe never. Not until I figure out who killed my baby. There was a twisted deviant who raped a ten year old with an inanimate object, and I’m finding him.”

Gray inhaled with a rasp. He was so damned sultry and glamorous, and not in the way LA probably saw him. I knew him more intimately than they did. He was here helping out a complete stranger, and even getting his club to assist. I don’t know what they did at the casino, but it was a breakthrough. The fucking sheriff admitted that Pitchfork ran the kiddie porn op. We could get the Pure and Easy sheriff to shut it down or maybe a journalist to run a breaking story—that is, once we found our killer. Until then, we’d have to leave it alone.

“You’re welcome to stay with me as long as you like. I like having someone around. I’m not so lonely.” Gray had a sweet heart, too. For such a drop-dead handsome guy, he sure hadn’t been ruined by fame.

I pshawed. “You? Lonely? I’ve seen your Twitter account. You, with your one point two million followers.”

He was modest. “That’s not that many. Look at Liam Hemsworth.” I guess he did, on his phone, because he soon said, “Well, two point one.”

“And some of those are bots,” I said. “I’ll bet you don’t have any bots.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, because I’m not that famous. Hey, I’m serious. Stay in my house.”

“I’d have to give you rent.”

“All right, if that makes you feel better. Two hundred a month.”

“What? No, that’s crazy. What’s the going rate for such a gorgeous home? And the bedroom is huge and has an amazing view.”

“Okay, three hundred. Turn here.”

I sighed, pretending to agree to three hundred. I knew the rest of the way to the Bum Steer, having visited Galileo at his Doggie Style Grooming. Entering the bar and grill, we passed by the few bold customers daring to eat. They all looked like “old ladies” or “hang-arounds” of the club, anyway, the women cradling Chihuahuas. Overhead fans were the only thing cooling the room, but we met in a stuffy back area. A drop of sweat trickled between my breasts.

I noticed that Gray didn’t drink a beer, unlike his brothers who were constantly being served fresh brews by a bartender, another Prospect named Fosdick. Galileo was the only other attendee who didn’t drink. Knoxie and Lytton pounded them back. I’d also noticed the Red Stripes in the fridge at home hadn’t been depleted. I wondered how much I wanted Gray to alter his lifestyle for me. I loathed it when men drank, but . . . was that a reasonable thing to ask of someone I barely knew? I had not asked it aloud, but Gray seemed to pick up my drift.

Tiago was a surprisingly well-versed kid. His Mötley Crüe T-shirt was supplied by the club so as to Americanize him. I don’t know what I expected. I mean, the kid had been on his own for a couple of years, going back and forth across the border as a drug mule. I’d heard that since he was an underage unaccompanied teen, he was always sent back to Mexico, an ideal situation for the smugglers who would then equip him with more stuff. The consequences were few to the kid. But there were some new twists that Tiago explained in his English.

“I was with my friend Mateo crossing the line at Agua Prieta.” I remembered that border town. The Arizona side was Douglas. “We used . . . cinturónes de seguridad?” He looked to Galileo for help.

Galileo’s hands described breaking something on the table in front of him. “Seat belt.”

“Seat belt,” said Tiago studiously. “We used seat belts to get over the fence. Took them out of cars. Then the men threw bags of heroína over the fence. A car was waiting to take us to Seeker.”

“¿Conocias al hombre que conducía?” asked Galileo. I had no idea what he asked. I knew hombre was “man,” that was about it.

Tiago shook his head. “I did not know the man driving the car. Some agentes fronterizos shouted at us through horns. Mateo was still climbing, but I had the heroína. The driver shouted, too.” He spoke dry-mouthed, and nobody had any water, so Knoxie slid his beer to the kid. I was sure worse things had happened to Tiago. He guzzled the refreshment, then added, “The agentes ran toward Mateo. Mateo yelled at me to leave. The agentes pointed guns at him.”

“What sort of guns did they have?” Galileo asked. I thought it an odd question until the kid answered.

He spoke with self-assuredness. “They had pistolas H&K P2000 .40 caliber double-action.”

Lytton and Knoxie looked at Galileo. Galileo nodded soberly. I guess there were a lot of H&K P2000s around the rez where he’d herded sheep.