Clean Slate

Chapter 40

Homicide? Earl's flat expression changed not one whit. "Pursuing?" he echoed, with his flat smile, directing the comment at Erkfitz only. "Am I a suspect?"

"Oh no," Erkfitz said, "not at all."

"What substation are you out of?"

"Bryant."

Earl could not place it. "Who's your commander?"

"Iocovangello," Love replied.

Earl did not know him. Still he was unperturbed. He was pretty sure that Dogtown was covered by the Water Works substation. "How can I assist?" he asked.

"Do you drive a red Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray, sir?" Love asked.

"Of course I do. You probably tripped over it on your way inside the door. What does that have to do with a homicide?"

"In a street canvass in the proximity of the murder scene," Love said, "we picked up repeated references to a man in a red Corvette Sting Ray visiting the address where the murder took place."

Now Earl was getting just the slightest feeling of uneasiness. They weren't talking Fant or Dogtown at all; they were talking. . . . "Who's the victim?" he asked, with professional casualness.

"Zamarripa, Medardo," Love said, "aged twenty-two, of 2181 Central Avenue." He eyed Earl. "Are you familiar with that address, sir?"

"No, I am not," Earl answered readily. "And I've not heard that name before. An asshole, I take it?"

"Doesn't come back that way," Love replied. "Citizen. Full time employed, went to school nights. Took a knife in the thigh last Thursday night. Bled out on his kitchen floor within minutes. After," Love added, "a struggle."

"With party or parties unknown," Erkfitz supplied.

Earl felt the four cop eyes studying him. After a moment of dismay he was starting to feel confident. If they really had something – and Earl could not imagine what that might be – they would have hit him with it by now. "And. . .you connect me with this incident. . .how again? Missed that part."

"We're running down all the bright red Sting Rays in the county," Love replied. "You're number 17 of 22."

Earl snorted and looked at Erkfitz. "Don't you guys have the fun duty!"

"So you've not been there," Love pressed. "Not ever."

"Not ever."

"We're sorry to bother you," Erkfitz said.

"Well," Earl said, "I never thought of my car as probable cause. But I'm happy to help you men out."

"We appreciate it," Love said.

"My pleasure."

"We're not doing this to bust your chops, you understand," Erkfitz put in.

"Like I said," Earl repeated expansively, "I'm glad to help. Any time, any way."

"So," Love said, "you won't mind giving us a hair sample then."

Silence. Earl squinted at him. "Hair sample? Why?"

"To rule you out," Love said.

"How can you rule me out, if you've already said I'm not in?"

"Don't believe I said that," Love answered.

"Well, am I in or not?" Earl asked Erkfitz.

"You know how it is," Love said. "We have to cover all the bases." When Earl did not respond, Love added, "Our lieutenant insists on complete reports."

"Fussy that way," Erkfitz added, with hand gestures: "Cross the I's, dot the T's, what the fuck."

Earl glanced at the older detective, who was still, impassive, studying him through his glasses. He almost said aren't you going a little bit overboard – but drew up short. As a copper himself he knew that one more protest, no matter how mild, would make them think he had something to hide. He thought about making a couple of calls. But that could have the same effect. Could he have left hair behind in the struggle with Medardo? Unlikely. "Not that I have much," he told them, "but you're welcome to whatever hair I've got."

"Thank you." From his inside coat pocket Love retrieved thin vinyl gloves and a collection envelope. Meanwhile Erkfitz was unfolding a blank form. "Your ID, sir?"

"You're doing this here?" Earl asked.

"Why not?" Love asked impassively. "We're here, you're here, what the hell."

Earl could not resist making an impatient huff. "All right, fine." Getting out his wallet, he slid his laminated County of St. Marys ID card onto the table. Erkfitz began copying the number onto the form – which Earl realized was an evidence chain of custody form – while Love snapped on the vinyl gloves, took a small scissors and swab out of the envelope, and ripped the clear wrapper off the swab. "You see I'm sanitizing the scissors," he told Earl as he wiped the blades with the moistened swab.

"Acknowledged."

"Lean this way if you would, sir. Turn your head far as you can." Earl did so. He felt Love very carefully and deftly snip hair samples from several sites low on the back of his head. "Its from underneath," Love informed him. "Won't hardly notice a thing."

"Whatever," Earl said. He was starting to seethe. They were treating him like. . .like some sort of perp, a fucking scumbag, a jerk-off. With deep breaths into his barrel chest he forced back the corrosive rumblings, displaying nothing aside from a slightly elevated redness in his neck.

"You're one shitty barber, David," Erkfitz snorted.

"That's it. Thank you, sir," Love said. Earl turned and leaned back in the booth as the detective foil-wrapped the hair samples and put them into the collection envelope. Meanwhile Erkfitz slid the chain of custody form, and a pen, to Earl. "Just put your X by the X."

Earl glanced over the form. Under the "reason for collection" section the "reasonable suspicion" option was not checked. But the "other" option was, and in the blank beside it was hand-written, cryptically enough, "clearance." He initialed the form by the X. Love proffered the envelope, which he had sealed, and Earl initialed that too where indicated. "Anything else?"

"I think that'll do it," Love replied.

"Sure you don't want any other samples? Blood? Semen?" He smiled through his teeth at them. "Spit?"

"Not today," Erkfitz replied, and the detectives slid out of the booth. "Enjoy your day, Superintendent."

Earl Bucaro watched the detectives leave Tastee Town. The other patrons seemed oblivious, but several of the counter employees – who of course knew Earl well – were gaping at him. He stared back at them for a long moment, then snapped: "What the fuck are you staring at? Huh?"

---

It was pushing 7:00 by the time Libby whistled her silver Spyder into Mac's driveway and reined it to a halt with a hiss of grinding gravel behind his Suburban. Mac, who had put the raw steaks back in the refrigerator – he'd originally planned on dinner first and then the tour, but her lateness caused him to call an audible – walked out to the front yard as Libby emerged from the sportster in a production that began with the sight of long elegant legs. "I got lost," she said, an edge to her voice, slamming her door as if to punctuate. "Ended up in some little blink-and-you'll-miss-it burglet."

"Lock Two? Or Wild Rose?" Mac asked as he approached.

"How'm I supposed to know. This whole area, this is a hundred miles from anywhere." She waved a bare arm vaguely to the southwest. "Back up this road, and then a jog over and then sort of left a piece."

"Wild Rose," Mac confirmed, and took her hands and kissed her. "Glad you're here anyway."

She was looking around at the yard: the tall white oaks and monumental maples casting sheltering arms and shadows over the white clapboard two-story Victorian era farm house. To the east, at the opposite end of an acre of lawn, was the old hay barn. To the west, nestled in trees, was the much more modern shop building. Fields, meadows, hills, and patches of woods stretched out to the north. "This really is a farm," she said to him. "I thought you were kidding."

"Retired farm," Mac said easily. "How'd you find your way here from Wild Rose?"

"There's that gas station there? Some old guy sitting in front of it. Real country character, bibs and all."

"Harold Holsopple," Mac said.

"You just automatically know everybody around here?"

"Know, related to, or both." Mac reflected with a grin that with old Harold on the case, and the Wild Rose New Ethyl gas station being the area's Rumor Central, word of the visit of the vividly sexy Libby Lewis and her hot little two-seater to "old Martin McGladrey's place" would be the talk of the township by dark. "How about we do the grand tour, and then eat."

"Tour what?"

"The place here. Want to?"

"Oh!" she said, as if the thought had not occurred to her. "Okay, sure."

Taking her hand, Mac started them toward the big shop building. Libby's attire was suitable for many things, but hiking was not one of them. She wore a white halter top held in place by a simple tie round her neck, crocheted in little fan designs that ended just above the fashionably frayed waistline of the blue denim hip-hugger jeans. These ran snugly from two inches beneath her visible navel all the way to frayed hems high up her ankles. Beneath that she wore dark flat sandals to show off the dainty feet and painted toes that had no business, Mac knew, rambling the brambly trails and rutted two-tracks of the farm. "We'll take the tractor," he said, guiding her to the Minneapolis-Moline parked beneath the car port roof of the shop building.

She gazed at the machine: squarish, yellow and red and greasy, with giant black deeply treaded rear wheels and a loader bucket big enough to gobble up her car. "It's a monster!"

"Not really, not by today's standards," Mac said, climbing nimbly upward and seating himself behind the wheel. "It was my grandpa's last new tractor. First vehicle I ever drove." He extended a hand. "Come on."

"Where's my seat?"

"Just come on up here." He helped her up to the platform and showed her how to stand on the tool box, leaning against the left fender, her jeaned knee pressed warmly against his shoulder. "Hold on to that handhold there," he directed, and then, popping the choke, fired the tractor up.

As the engine roared, Libby flinched and clung to the machine, looking so pale her freckles practically glowed. "I don't know about this," she shouted over the motor.

"Just hang on," he shouted back. "You'll love it." Innocently certain of this – every woman of his experience, even Suzanne, loved a tractor ride – he backed the Minny out of her berth and headed for the western two-track.

---

Dinner went better than the tour, though it did have its difficult moments, especially at the end.

Not that the tour was so bad. Mac had enjoyed it tremendously. He loved nothing better than getting out into the trails and woods and meadows of the farm. (My farm, he reminded himself; his name was on the deed now, the sixth McGladrey generation to be so recorded.) Libby, on the other hand, clung white-knuckled to the tractor hand-holds as if for dear life, face fixed in a jaw-clenched frown as the tractor bounced and ground along at a fast walking pace, nodding acceptingly at Mac's comments and descriptions about what they were seeing but, uncharacteristically, asking no questions. Mac ended the tour with a half mile run in road gear on Old Kennesaw Road that raised dust and flew gravel and scattered birds and whipped Libby's choppy red hair around. Back in the car port, the engine noise was still echoing as Libby eased herself down to the ground, clearly conscious of the potential to dirty or damage her clothes, and stepped away from the machine with no small amount of stiffness, and whispered – at least Mac thought he heard this – "Never again."

On the deck behind the house Mac whipped up steaks and stir fry vegetables on the grill. Libby sat and watched, sipping a white wine, as the sun blazed its downward trail to the west. They ate with good appetite and reasonably good cheer, talking mostly St. Marys area politics and business. Libby was very well read -- no surprise -- and her years as a reporter, and the range of stories she covered, gave her a vast fund of anecdotes and experiences that she related during their conversation with an entertaining and amusing edge. For his part, Mac described the historical preservation work he had been involved in, a few of the less sensitive aspects of his Naval service, and some of the choicest characters from his years as a PPO. They avoided talk of their marriages and families. And Mac – though Nicholas was never far from conscious thought, especially out here – said nothing about his son, deeming it too early.

Dinner done, Mac put away the dishes, poured Libby another glass of wine, and sat close by her on the deck, facing the deep bluish-green meadow and the sections of woods rising high up hills to the north. "So I took your suggestion," he said.

"What was that?"

"Went to see Bucaro today."