The Final Detail (Myron Bolitar 6)

“Once again, your name rears its ugly head.”

“He was a strung-out addict.”

“I see,” Win said. “So he was just ranting?”

Silence.

“Somehow,” Myron said, “I keep ending up in the middle of this.”

“So it seems.”

“But I can’t imagine why.”

“Life’s little mysteries.”

“I also can’t figure out how Billy Lee fits into any of this: into Clu’s murder, into Esperanza’s affair with Bonnie, into Clu getting thrown off the team, into Clu signing with FJ, into any of it.”

Win put down his snifter and stood. “I suggest we sleep on it.”

Good advice. Myron crawled under the covers and plunged immediately into slumber land. It was several hours later—after the REM and alpha sleep cycles, when he started rising to consciousness and his brain activity started going haywire—that it came to him. He thought again about FJ and about his having tailed Myron. He thought about what FJ had said, about how he had even seen Myron at the cemetery before Myron disappeared with Terese in the Caribbean.

And a big click sounded in his head.

Chapter 27

He called FJ at nine in the morning. FJ’s secretary said that Mr. Ache could not be disturbed. Myron told her it was urgent. Sorry, Mr. Ache was out of the office. But, Myron reminded her, you just said he could not be disturbed. He cannot be disturbed, the secretary countered, because he is not in the office. Ah.

“Tell him I want to meet with him,” Myron said. “And it has to be today.”

“I can’t promise you—”

“Just tell him.”

He looked at his watch. He was meeting Dad at “the Club” at noon. It gave him time to try to rendezvous with Sally Li, chief medical examiner for Bergen County. He called her office and told her he wanted to talk.

“Not here,” Sally said. “You know the Fashion Center?”

“It’s one of the malls on Route Seventeen, right?”

“On the Ridgewood Avenue intersection, yeah. There’s a sub shop outside the Bed, Bath and Beyond. Meet me there in an hour.”

“Bed, Bath and Beyond is part of the Fashion Center?”

“Must have something to do with the Beyond part.”

She hung up. He got in the rental car and started out to Paramus, New Jersey. Motto: There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Commerce. The town of Paramus was like a muggy, jam-packed elevator with some jerk holding the door-open button and shouting, “Come on, we can squeeze in one more strip mall.”

Nothing about the Fashion Center was particularly fashionable; the mall was in fact so unhip that teenagers didn’t even hang out there. Sally Li sat on a bench, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. She wore green hospital scrubs and rubber sports sandals with no socks—footwear sported by many a coroner because it made cleaning off blood and guts and other human debris easy with a simple garden hose.

Okay, a little background here: For the past decade or so, Myron had been involved in an on-again, off-again romance with Jessica Culver. More recently they’d been in love. They’d moved in together. And now it was over. Or so he thought. He was not sure what exactly had happened. Objective observers might point to Brenda. She came along and changed a lot of things. But Myron was not sure.

So what’s that have to do with Sally Li?

Jessica’s father, Adam Culver, had been the Bergen County chief medical examiner until he was murdered several years ago. Sally Li, his assistant and close friend, had taken his place. That was how Myron knew her.

He approached. “Another no-smoking mall?”

“No one uses the word no anymore,” Sally said. “They say free instead. This isn’t a no-smoking mall; it’s a smoke-free zone. Next they’ll call underwater an air-free zone. Or the Senate a brain-free zone.”

“So why did you want to meet here?”

Sally sighed, sat up. “Because you want to know about Clu Haid’s autopsy, right?”

Myron hesitated, nodded.

“Well, my superiors—and I use that term knowing I don’t even have equals—would frown upon seeing us together. In fact, they’d probably try to fire my ass.”

“So why take the risk?” he asked.

“First off, I’m going to change jobs. I’m going back West, probably UCLA. Second, I’m cute, female, and what they now call Asian-American. It makes it harder to fire me. I might make a stink and the politically ambitious hate to look like they’re beating up a minority. Third, you’re a good guy. You figured out the truth when Adam was killed. I figure I owe you.” She took the cigarette out of her mouth, put it back in the package, took out another one, put it in her mouth. “So what do you want to know?”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Myron said, “I thought I’d have to turn on my charm.”

“Only if you want to get me naked.” She waved a hand. “Ah, who am I kidding? Go ahead, Myron, fire away.”

“Injuries?” Myron asked.

“Four bullet wounds.”

“I thought there were three.”

“So did we at first. Two to the head, both at close range, either one of which would have been fatal. The cops thought there was only one. There was another in the right calf, and another in the back between the shoulder blades.”

“Longer range?”

“Yeah, I’d say at least five feet. Looked liked thirty-eights, but I don’t do ballistics.”

“You were at the scene, right?”

“Yup.”

“Could you tell if there was forced entry?”

“The cops said no.”

Myron sat back and nodded to himself. “Let me see if I got the DA’s theory right. Correct me if I’m wrong.”

“I look forward to it.”

“They figure Clu knew the killer. He let him or her in voluntarily, they talked or whatever, and something went wrong. The killer draws a gun, Clu runs, the killer fires two shots. One hits his calf, the other his back. Could you tell which came first?”

“Which what?”

“The calf shot or the back shot.”

“No,” Sally said.

“Okay, so Clu goes down. He’s hurt but not dead. The killer puts the gun to Clu’s head. Bang, bang.”

Sally arched an eyebrow. “I’m impressed.”

“Thanks.”

“As far as it goes.”