21

After dropping Piper off, Lazarus called a few contacts he had around the city. Men who worked in the right bars and casinos and escort agencies who had their ears to the ground. None of them knew anything about the murder of the Grace family other than what they had heard on the news.

Paul Grace was about what he had expected, though he had some insight. He was right that Lazarus had nothing. He had already investigated Paul. He had been drinking at a hunting lodge the night his wife and son were murdered, and both the bartender and a couple of regulars confirmed he was there until closing time.

The saloon’s parking lot was scorching and covered in desert dust, with the sun beginning its gradual descent behind the mountains. Lazarus kicked the dust off his boots before entering the bar.

Midnight Porter wasn’t a common beer, and there were only a few places that served it regularly. The saloon kept it stocked for him.

He went to his booth near the back. The view out the window was of the parking lot, and he liked watching the people coming and going. He played a game when he didn’t feel like going home. He would watch people leave the bar and guess how much they’d had to drink just by the way they walked and talked.

He’d confirmed it with Bass several times and found himself to be accurate. Eventually he grew bored and stopped asking about it.

Bass came over and set his two beers down, his large frame making the wooden floors creak.

“This seat taken, brother?”

“It is not,” Lazarus said, leaning back and popping open one of the beers.

Bass took a pill wrapped in cellophane out of his pocket and swallowed it down with a swig of Lazarus’s beer. “Don’t know why you drink this piss.”

“I don’t like sleeping. But here’s the question, did I really choose the beer? Since before I was born, since the moment the universe came into being, I was always gonna sit right here at this time and drink these beers. Did I ever really have a choice in it?”

“You usually talk like this when you got something pissing you off.”

Lazarus smirked and took a long drink of his beer. “The past. Just when you think you’ve put it behind you, it shows up again.”

“Nothin’ ever leaves, brother. I know.”

Lazarus gave a nod. “How’s Stacey doin’?”

“Some days better than others. She got rid of most of the clothes, but kept some. A blanket and some shirts. I caught her smelling them one day a while back.”

Lazarus tapped the top of the beer slowly with his finger. “I’m a find who did it one day, Bass. I promise you that.”

“What’s it matter now?”

Someone called for him behind the bar.

Lazarus said, “Before you go, lemme ask you somethin’. When you were with the club and doing dirt, you know anybody that did a lot of B and Es? Maybe business burglaries? Good with alarms?”

He thought a moment. “Yeah, but he’s still with the club.”

“It’s cool. I need some advice. I don’t need to know his name.”

Bass exhaled. “I must really trust you, brother, ’cause he’s not the type of dude you send a cop to.”

Bass made the call, and they agreed to meet near a taco truck in an old Sears parking lot that was vacant now.

Lazarus went out to the lot before the meeting and parked down the block. He took some binoculars out of a black case in the trunk of his car. Then he sat in the driver’s seat and surveyed the parking lot.

He scanned from left to right and then went around the perimeter of the lot and then up on the roof. No one there.

The taco truck had a line of people. Lazarus lowered the binoculars and then surveyed the land in front of him with his bare eyes. Across the street was a porno shop, advertising half off all DVDs.

Two men on Harleys sat in front of the shop smoking. Suntanned skin, greasy hair, and some homemade tats.

“There you are,” Lazarus whispered.

Another biker came up the street on a black chopper with flames on the side. He had long gray hair pulled back into a ponytail and thick black sunglasses. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, and he flicked it away when he pulled into the lot. He stopped near the taco truck and got in line.

Lazarus drove over and got out. The biker eyed him as he approached, and Lazarus said, “Manny?”

He looked him up and down. “Bass said to look for a good-looking white dude that don’t know how to dress. He’s right.”

“Bass should talk. All he wears is his vest, and he’s not even in the club anymore.”

“You a one percenter once, you a one percenter for life. Ain’t no retirement plan.”

“Is that going to be you? Dead or in prison before retirement?”

“Road takes you where it takes you.”

Lazarus noticed the man’s boots. They were black and went up to his knees. Mud was caked along the tips.

“So what you wanna know?” Manny said.

“I got a friend whose house was broken into. Cops can’t figure it out, ’cause she’s got top-of-the-line security and no one was in the house except her family.”

Manny turned to face him, his sunglasses so dark that his eyes remained hidden. “Only people that would come up here askin’ me all this and sayin’ it that way is a cop.”

Lazarus glanced in the direction of the two men across the street. They weren’t talking to each other anymore but now staring fixedly at the two of them.

“I told Bass not to mention it.”

“Man,” he said with a click of his tongue against his cheek, “you think I don’t know how a cop talks?”

“I need advice and I’m willin’ to trade for it.”

“Trade what?”

“I’m a detective with the Metro PD. Wouldn’t be a bad thing to have me owe you a favor.”

“Don’t let your mouth write checks your ass can’t cash.”

“When I owe a favor, I pay it back. Bass’ll vouch for me.”

“How you know him?”

“I was the detective assigned to his boy’s case.”

Manny looked squarely at him now. “I never wanted no kids and got six. Bass and his old lady only wanted kids and they got none. Life got a shit sense a’ humor, don’t it?”

“Sure as hell does.”

A few people left the line with their food, and Manny and Lazarus stepped closer to the registers and waited.

“What type a’ system?”

“Cybershield. Fortress model. The newest one.”

“That’s some serious gear.”

“She was scared of someone.” He glanced back to the two men across the street, who were eyeing him quietly. “How could you get past somethin’ like that?”

“If it’s workin’ right, you can’t.”

“You ever heard of a POD?”

“Yeah, but only time I seen ’em is back in the army. Too hard for civilians to get.”

He shook his head. “There’s gotta be a way to get past it.”

“Guess you could dig.”

“Dig where?”

“House have a crawl space?”

“Yeah.”

“Might be able to get in from there. Cut a hole out on the bottom of the floor from the crawl space and get in.”

He shook his head. “Forensics went into the crawl space and searched. They would’ve seen a hole.”

“Man, there wouldn’t be no hole left. This is why the cops can’t catch nobody. You put it back on and fill in the edges with epoxy resin. No way anyone in a crawl space with a flashlight’d be able to tell.”

Lazarus hadn’t thought to go into the crawl space himself. He knew the forensic techs and criminalists in the way a mechanic would know his tools. Forced himself to get to know them, to learn if they were the type of person to make a mistake and take responsibility or cover it up. The type to get on hands and knees in a dirty, damp crawl space or skip it because the victims were already dead.

The forensics team at the Grace home had been decent, but he could never really be sure unless he checked himself.

“So I go into the crawl space and look for repairs for a hole big enough to fit someone through.”

“If this dude knows that much about breakin’ into a house, bet he hid the cut real smooth.”

“I gotta try ... I got nothing else.”