The Pain Scale (24 page)

“We just finished eating,” she said. “Can I get you a plate?”

“No,” I said. “I’m fine. Thank you.” I wasn’t sure why I said that. I hadn’t eaten, and my stomach had been growling in the car on the way there.

The three of us chatted a bit about things that didn’t really matter, and when we reached a natural lull in the conversation, Cynthia said, “Why don’t I go clean up the kitchen and give you guys a chance to talk?”

“Thanks,” Harlan said.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Why did you give me the banjo?”

“I told you why. For your physical therapy.”

When I tried to stare him down, he said, “It’ll be even better than a guitar. For your left hand. You have to do more hammer-ons and pull-offs and such.”

“I think you’re full of shit.”

“You know what I did to the last man who said that to me?”

“I don’t know. Dragged him through the town square behind your horse?”

He didn’t quite laugh at that, but I could see that he came close.

“In all seriousness, Danny, I gave it to you because I thought it would do you some good. It’s different having a really good musical instrument like that Deering. You can’t just blow it off like you would some crappy hundred-and-twenty-dollar guitar. It’s serious having something that valuable, and you have to take it seriously. I want your hand to get better. I thought
it would help. Besides, I have two more even better than that one.”

“Even better than the Jens Kruger tone ring?”

He did laugh a bit then. “Spent some time on Google, did you?”

“Even talked to a guy at the factory.”

“Wow.”

We were quiet for a few moments, and then I came right out and asked him the question that had been on my mind since I’d first seen the Deering.

“What if I don’t want to play the banjo?”

“What if I don’t want stomach cancer?”

Fortunately, I didn’t have to reply to that because Cynthia came back into the living room with a plate in each hand and said, “Who wants pie?”

An hour and a half later, I had just left and was putting the key in the lock on my Camry’s door when I heard Harlan’s screen door close and turned to see Cynthia walking toward me with an aluminum foil–covered plate.

“Hey,” she said. “I brought you a piece of pie.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I don’t think my dad believes that I just came out here to give you dessert.”

“Did you?”

“No. I came to ask you about the banjo. Which one did he give you?”

“It’s a Deering Saratoga Star.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Why? He said he had two others that are even better.”

“He has others that are more valuable, but that one’s his favorite,” she said. “He always said it had the best sound of any banjo he’d ever played.”

I
DON’T KNOW
what was worse that night—the worry or the pain. I’d trimmed an hour off the prescribed interval between Vicodin doses, and at two thirty in the morning, I was sitting in the living room watching
Shake ’Em Down
for the sixth or seventh time. Too bad the movie’s star, Jack Palms, turned out to be a junkie asshole wife beater. He might have filled that big gap between Bruce Willis and Jason Statham with a few more decent action flicks if he hadn’t had to go to prison. I’d seen the movie too many times for it to distract me, though, and I couldn’t stop my attention from ping-ponging back and forth between Harlan and the Benton victims. And the viciously constricting tension in my neck and shoulder was constant.

In the bathroom, I turned the shower on to hot and let the water blast me lobster red. When the water heater exhausted its supply, I toweled off and reluctantly put myself to bed, my skin numb and stinging from the heat just enough to pull my focus away from the pain and allow me to settle into a shallow and fitful sleep.

The next morning, Marty came in a few minutes after Jen and me with a big pink box, and I found the only cruller in the batch.

“Good news,” he said.

“Yeah?” I replied, my mouth full of coffee and cruller.

“Driver had two cell phones,” Marty said. “A prepaid throwaway and an iPhone.”

“Get an ID?” Jen asked.

“Not unless he’s a fifty-two-year-old woman from Simi Valley. But there’s an assload of data there. The techs are downloading everything and running it through that new Lantern software to see how far back we can trace the locations.”

“Maybe we’ll catch a break,” I said.

Jen peeled the foil top off a Yoplait and asked, “Any other smartphones we can cross-reference?”

I’d been through the files enough times to know the answer without looking. “Only Sara Benton’s,” I said. “But let’s check the call logs against everything else we have to see what might connect. And let’s check with Patrick, too. See if he’s got anything he picked out of the data.”

An hour later, Marty came back from tech services with what looked like a ream of paper in his hands.

“They printed it all out. Two and half months’ worth of location data.” He dropped the pile on his desk with a thud and fished around in his shirt pocket. “I had to ask them for this.” He held up a black plastic thumb drive.

“You know how the techs are,” Jen said. “They think everybody over forty is still living in the dark ages.”

“Yeah?” he said. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s cute when you type with two fingers.”

Marty seemed satisfied with that. “Want copies?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Why don’t we all start working on it?”

We agreed and divided the spreadsheets by date, with a section each for Dave and Patrick as well.

Smartphones record their locations by triangulating with cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots and occasionally pinging off satellites, all in the form of latitude and longitude coordinates. The techs were able to download this data from the SUV driver’s
iPhone and translate it into a series of street addresses laid out in spreadsheet form that we could check against all the addresses we had that were related with the case. If we came up dry in that regard and couldn’t make any connections, we’d start Googling the addresses one by one and hope we found a needle in the haystack.

“I’ll cross-reference all the addresses we have in the murder book,” I said. “Let’s see if we get lucky with anything before we start checking the locations one by one.”

Marty and Jen both seemed relieved that I’d volunteered for what amounted to the glorified data-entry task. The truth was, even though I didn’t relish the idea of spending the morning in front of a spreadsheet, the new information kindled the excitement and the connection I felt to the case. As long I believed there might really be a needle in that haystack, I didn’t mind going through it straw by straw.

I ate lunch at my desk and was just finishing up a Modica’s meatball sandwich when Jen came back into the squad.

“Just got off the phone with Kincaid,” she said.

“What’s up?”

“Turchenko wants a meet.”

“Think he’ll roll on Tropov?”

“What else could it be?”

“Did he get a new lawyer?”

“I forgot to ask,” Jen said.

“If Shevchuk was killed to keep him from talking and they were both working for Anton Tropov, how do you figure he’ll play it if he gets word that Turchenko is going to roll?”

“That’s why Ruiz got him transferred to ad-seg. Tough to hit him there.”

“So we’re figuring Tropov’s either got to shut him up or skip.”

“Yeah.” She looked at me and saw the idea take root. “What are you thinking?”

“Why would Tropov want Sara Benton killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if he’s not the shot caller?”

“A contractor?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What if?”

“Then he could be the next target.”

Whenever Bob Kincaid and Jen are in the same room, I always feel like a supporting player. The three of us were in an interview room waiting for the guards to escort Turchenko in for his visit. We had already filled him in on everything we needed to, so they chatted.

“Any leads on houses?” he asked.

“Saw a nice Craftsman last weekend in Belmont Heights.”

She didn’t mention that I’d found it and pointed it out to her.

“Yeah?” he said. “Is it the one?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then it’s not. You’ll know when it is.”

“How?”

“Trust me,” he said, “you’ll just know.”

“I’m not sure I have your confidence.”

“Don’t settle. It’s a buyer’s market.”

She was about to say something else when the door opened and Turchenko was led in and told to sit by a single hulking guard. Usually there are two escorts. Maybe this one was big enough to be counted twice.

The guard looked at Jen, then at Turchenko’s handcuffs. She nodded, and he removed them. The bracelets dangled from the strap around Turchenko’s waist.

After Turchenko was seated, the guard leaned out the door toward the public waiting room and motioned to someone
outside. A man we hadn’t seen before entered. The new guy wore a nicer suit than I did and had a shiny gold watch on his wrist that would have looked too big even on the guard.

“You wanted to see us?” Kincaid said to the Ukrainian.

The new suit talked before Turchenko had a chance to reply.

“Hello. You must be DDA Kincaid and Detectives”—he opened a leather portfolio and pretended to check his notes—“Tanaka and Beckett.”

We nodded.

“I’m Robert Pfister. Mr. Turchenko’s new counsel. He’s agreed to meet with you on my advice.”

“How do you spell that?” I asked, holding up my pen and notebook as if I were about to write it down. “F? P-h?”

“P-f-i-s-t-e-r.”

He hid his irritation well, but it was there. I pretended to write it in my notebook and didn’t press him any further.

“What did you want to talk about?” Kincaid said, directing the question at Turchenko.

He might have been dim, but he knew enough to let his lawyer speak for him.

“There’s a possibility my client may have some information that could be of use to you.”

“I
NEVER WANT
this,” Turchenko began. “Taras, too. This is not why we came to America. Not to kill children.”