Читать книгу Drago #2a - Art LLC Spinella - Страница 5

I sat on the deck, coffee mug throwing steam into a clear dawn and watched the last of the fire’s embers spark and flare as the Madrone dwindled to a white ash. Tendrils of smoke spiraling upward, the sweet wood smell mixing with a hint of gritty aroma from the coffee.

Sal had been right. The bones were unaffected by the fire, needing far more heat to burn than the surrounding wood. The skull was most intriguing, poking through the ash, crown first, sooty and slightly charred, somehow grizzly. A person at least 120 years dead laying out a puzzle of who and why.

“That’s just wrong,” Cookie’s soft voice interrupted as she stepped through the glass slider and parked in the accompanying chair. She, like Sal, had learned long ago not to say that miserable phrase Good morning. “The fire reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask ever since I got home.”

I turned and smiled at her. Her hair hadn’t been combed, hanging in dark brown waves to her shoulders, enough mussed to be enticing, not mussed enough to be scary. “Yes, my sweet, and what would that be?”

“What the hell did you do to your car?”

“Are you speaking ill of the flames or the side exhaust or the spoiler?”

“All of it, Nick. It looks like a pimp mobile.”

Laughing, “It was either that or go to Reno and chase women.”

She cocked her head and chuckled. “Did I tell you I love the flames?” She leaned across the table, kissed me on the ear, “And you.”

“Good answer.” I took a long pull of coffee. “When do you leave?” I could hear a tinge of sadness in my own voice even though I wasn’t intending it.

Cookie sat silent for a moment then, “The club would like it if I came back next week. Nick, it’s not like last time. I’d only be gone till the end of the season and hopefully, the way they’re playing, through the World Series and you know you’ve been invited to come along for all of the post-season games. You’d have a blast.”

Last time was a full year absence after Cookie won a trillion to one game of chance.

The Chicago Cubs started the previous season with what they thought was a gimmick promotion. Anyone who could guess the batting average each rostered player would have at All Star Break would win a full year with the team. Every game. Every flight. Every team meeting. Sit in the dugout during games and practices, home and away. Be part of the owners and general managers’ meetings. Be an observer in trade talks and player negotiations. In effect, a Cubs shadow with unlimited access.

In the off season, time with scouts in the Dominican Republic, Mexico and anywhere else a future “phenom” might be found. Then back to Mesa for Spring Training and the opening half of the new season up to the All Star break.

More than six million entries flooded the Cubs North Side offices. The Cubs figured there was no way anyone would win because the odds of guessing just the batting average for one player over the opening four months of a season would be difficult. Multiply that by 20-plus players and suddenly the odds were so miniscule it was all but assured the team wouldn’t be babysitting some fanatical sports-talk caller-dimwit from Staten Island for a year.

The problem: Cookie is an analyst, a baseball fan, a Cubs fanatic... and damn lucky.

When the Cubs finished inputting all the entries to a computer and matching it against player batting averages, no one was more surprised than Cubs management at the result. Someone had actually beaten the billion to one odds. Even worse, it was a woman from Oregon -- a state that didn’t even have a professional baseball team – who admitted she could barely hit a baseball.

Initial panic turned to the biggest public relations hype since the club’s cross-town rivals the Chicago White Sox had Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979 when blowing up a crate of vinyl records turned into a near riot with fans surging onto the field to the shouts of “Kill Disco!”

Cookie wound up on talk shows, the cover of Sports Illustrated (she refused the swim suit edition) and in virtually every national and baseball-loving international newspaper. She quickly proved she knew the game to Cubs management and the team manager as well as the initially skeptical players. She became “Big Sis” to the 20-somethings who asked for advice both personal and professional.

She loved it.

And now the team wanted her back for the close of what would be the Cubs’ most successful season in more than 100 years if things continued on the track they were currently following. For players and management alike, Cookie had become a goat-killing good luck charm whose even temper and enthusiastic understanding and passion for the club and the game seemed to provide an emotional balance in a sport dominated by testosterone.

So successful was Cookie’s influence, other teams were scouring the planet for another female baseball fan who might do for them what she did for the Cubs.

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Sal tells me Tatiana is heading back to Moscow.”

“Yup.”

“And that she doesn’t want him to pull some strings to keep her in the States.”

“She really misses her family and home, Nick.”

Nodding, “Well, I guess with the two of you gone, Sal and I will have to revert to eating pizza and cruising the dark nasty streets of Bandon at night in my pimpmobile.”

Cookie snorted. “After 9 you’d be the only car in town. Even the cops go home at 7. Can’t get into too much trouble.”

The thrashing of Sal lumbering through the wooded area between our properties ended our conversation. He and Tatiana broke into the clearing and joined us at the patio table. The two women hugged while Sal settled into a plastic lawn chair and dropped his travel mug of coffee on the table.

He looked at the remnants of the fire and what I assumed was supposed to be a Shakespearean tenor, “Alas poor Euric, I knew thee well.”

“Close,” I said, “but don’t give up your day job.”

“You have no culture, Nick.” Looking around, “Where are the donuts?”

Cookie said, “Inside, big guy. Tatiana and I are going to Eugene today for kicks.”

A puzzled look crossed the tall, Eurasian-looking Russian’s face. “Kicks?” with her Russian accent making it sound like “keeks.”

“Fun,” Cookie explained. “And some shopping.” To Sal, “I’ll bring the donut box.”

Tatiana smiled. “Da. Keeks and shopping.”

The two went inside while Sal and I stared at the smoldering heap of white ash.

“Small skull,” he said.

“Small.”

“People weren’t as big then as they are today.”

“Small feet, too,” I said, pulling from my coffee mug.

Cookie returned with the box of donuts, put them on the table, kissed my cheek and went back through the slider.

“Got some bar-b-q tongs handy?” Sal asked as he devoured a cinnamon twist in three bites.

“Yup.”

A moment passed. “Well, you gonna get ‘em?”

“Yup.” I took another swig of coffee, not moving.

“Today?”

“Nag.”

I climbed from the chair, opened the shed and found the tongs. Returning to the fire heap, I began rooting around the ashes for bones, Sal standing a couple of feet away. Piece by piece, I placed the still-hot bones on the adjacent lawn in approximation of their actual skeletal location. Sal called up a medical library on his iPhone and refined the placement by comparing the bones with an image on his screen.

In an hour we just about had it right.

Standing back, the two of us looked at the slightly charred remains. I leaned down and touched one of the thigh bones. “Cool enough.”

Sal took a series of pictures with his phone and we both returned to the deck chairs, poured more coffee from a carafe Cookie had placed on the table.

“Little guy. What do you figure, 5-foot-4 or so?”

Sal nodded. “He’s all there.”

Flipping open my phone I speed dialed Chief Forte.

“Nick. I was just going to call you. We got a problem.”

“What’s up?” I asked, punching the speaker button so Sal could hear.

“We found Jacob Cobb with a bullet hole in his head.”

Dread first, then an “aw shit” moment.

“Where?”

“At his home.”

“When?”

“Looks like he was shot maybe early this morning. Sometime after midnight for sure. He had a couple of small tree-cutting jobs after he left us at the golf course, finished up around 7 and went to the Arcade for a couple beers. We know he left around midnight to go home. At least that’s what he told the bartender.”

“Related to the tree man?”

“Don’t see how, but sure is coincidental, don’t ya think?”

“I think.”

“Could use you and Sal to give the scene a look-see if you’ve got the time.”

“Be there in 15.”

I stuck my head through the slider. Cookie and Tatiana were sitting at the dining room table laughing over something.

“Sal and I are heading to town. Someone shot Jacob Cobb this morning.”

“Oh, no,” both women said in unison. Jacob was a fixture in town who we often called to clear a dead tree or make room for new outbuildings. He and I worked together in the woods some years back so whenever I needed an extra hand to cull the shore pines at Willow Weep he’d help. He was a master with a chain saw and could drop a tree within inches of where he wanted it to fall.

Sal and I climbed into the Crown Vic and rumbled up to Highway 101, turned south and aimed the flames toward Bandon.

“What the hell is this about, Nick?”

“Got me. Jacob’s one of those guys who doesn’t make enemies. Trying to figure out how cutting down an old Madrone could possibly make someone angry enough to kill him.”

“Crazy environmentalist, maybe? It was a 120 year old tree.”

The Vic thundered across the Coquille bridge and we swung east on Highway 42. A quick right and up a gravel road where Cobb lived. Past a half dozen clapboard houses with “country lawns” and into a gravel driveway behind two Bandon cop cars. Shutting down the engine, the sidepipes ticked as they cooled.

“Let’s find out.”

Chief Forte and three patrol officers were standing on the porch of a freshly painted white salt box house waiting.

Forte met us at the car.

“He’s in the living room. Single shot in the back of his head. Close range, by the look of it. The doc says it was about midnight.”

“Was the front door open or closed?”

“Closed,” Forte answered. “Either he knew the person or at least didn’t feel threatened by him…”

“Or the killer already had the gun aimed at Jacob when he opened the door.”

“Position of the body indicates they were already way into the room. Want to see?”

Forte, Sal and I climbed the porch steps and the Chief pushed open the door with his knuckles. “The county is sending over one of their forensic guys to dust for prints and collect any trace evidence so we shouldn’t go in.”

Not necessary. The entire room was clearly visible from the open doorway. Jacob’s body lay face down at the far side of the living room area in front of a passageway to a small dining room. A pool of blood surrounding his head. From the position of the body it was, as Forte had said, clear enough that he had been walking toward the dining room when shot from behind, fell forward, face down.

“Never saw it coming,” Sal said.

The furnishings in the room said bachelor. Wood, heavy, browns and dark greens, well worn. Neat but not fussy. I recognized the small coffee table having made it for Jacob from an old piece of reclaimed American Chestnut a dozen years before as a gift for helping me clear a particularly stubborn patch of Shore Pine at Willow Weep.

Jacob, like me, had an affinity for unusual or hard-to-get wood and the American Chestnut tree had been all but wiped out by a blight that started in New York in 1904 and virtually downed all four billion Chestnut trees in the U.S. by the start of World War II.

Attempts at repopulating the U.S. with the tight grained hardwood haven’t succeeded even though efforts began in the 1930s. California and the Northwest are the only remaining areas where the American Chestnut still survives in any significant numbers, but even at that they’re typically single trees among forests of others.

Jacob and I had been working for a logging company east of Myrtle Point and ran across three American Chestnuts in a single afternoon. We cleared everything around them and convinced the foreman that we couldn’t fell those particular trees because of the rarity.

A few weeks later only two were standing. Seems the foreman knocked one of them down and hauled it away to make some cash on the side. When Jacob heard about it, he and I made a special visit to the foreman, left him with a broken nose and some busted fingers and the threat to chainsaw his house to the ground if he touched the last two trees.

Don’t get me wrong, I consider forests a crop to be thinned, turned into lumber and used. After all, who wants plastic toilet paper? But I have no patience for unnecessary destruction. But, hey, that’s me. And was Jacob.

A light blue Chevy Silverado pulled into the drive, county seal on the door. A small, thin man with a moustache and only a fringe of hair climbed out, opened the rear door and pulled out a battered hard-side case.

“Forensics is here,” Forte said.

Harry Bosch, unrelated to the Los Angeles detective, lugged the big case to the porch.

“Gentlemen,” he said to the three of us. “You have a client for me?”

Forte pointed through the door.

“Well, he looks dead.”

“Reason I called, Harry.”

“Just joking. Give me a few and I’ll let you know whatever I can. Did anyone touch anything?”

“Nope. What you see is what we saw,” Forte responded.

Bosch opened his case on the porch, pulled out a pair of latex gloves and a small hand-held black light. He pointed it toward the door and scanned the jam, handle and facing.

“Nothing unusual here,” he said more to himself than to us.

He switched to a super-bright flashlight, crouched down so the beam played across the carpet at a low angle and directed it between the doorway and Jacob’s feet. “Couple of shoe indentations. Tennies, I’d guess.”

I glanced just inside the doorway. On a rubber mat were two pair of boots and a pair of Velcro-strap nylon shoes. Few people in the area would walk into their homes with their shoes or boots on electing, instead, to leave them just inside the door. Too much rain, pine needles and dirt get dragged in otherwise.

“Jake isn’t wearing shoes,” I said, nodding toward the body.

“Sweat socks,” Sal responded. “Looks like the killer didn’t know the local courtesy.”

I leaned over Bosch’s case and pulled a small tape measure from his kit, slid out about a foot of the metal ruler and carefully set it next to the first shoe impression. “About a size eight or nine. Hard to tell on the carpet, but certainly not bigger than a nine.” Harry nodded agreement.

I asked Bosch to push down hard on the carpet with his gloved hand and remove it when I told him to. He did. I gave it a five count then nodded. Bosch lifted his hand. The impression remained in the nap.

“Old carpet,” Bosch and I said in virtual unison.

“Lost its resiliency,” I said.

Bosch leaned over and planted his nose into the carpet. “It’s been recently shampooed and vacuumed.” Standing up he looked at Forte, “Your guy weighs 130 to 150 pounds, wears a size nine shoe so he’s probably not carrying around a beer-barrel gut unless he’s a big-footed midget. You agree, Nick?”

“Spot on.”

“This have something to do with the guy you found in the tree?”

“Could be,” Forte answered.

“Huh. And where are the bones?”

Sal and I looked at each other. A smile spread across Forte’s face. Clearing my throat, “Well, we kinda burned them.”

“What?”

“Well, not really. We started a fire with the Madrone…”

“Jesus H, Nick. You burned them?”

“Not a lot.”

“You didn’t burn them a lot.” Bosch started to cluck. “You meat head. That sounds like something Sal would do.”

Sal sputtered, “I beg your pardon?”

Forte shook his head and walked away. I thought I heard him laughing to himself.

“No offense,” Bosch said, raising his hand in defense. “Actually, it’s the most expedient way of getting bones out of wood. Chalk one up for you guys. Can I see them?”

“Well, sure. You want to come out and pick them up or do you want us to put them in a trash bag and deliver them?”

Bosch looked to the sky. “Nick, Nick, Nick.” he sighed, “I’ll come get them. This afternoon okay?”

“Sure. The trash bag offer still stands.”