“Why are you telling me all this? What is it you want? I told you, I don’t know anything about the kid.”
“I know, Bull. I know you’ve got nothing to do with what happened to the Davenports. But the money Hiram’s been paying you went up recently—the Feds have already looked at your bank account. I think Hiram knew trouble was coming and he paid you to watch his son and his family. You’d done security work for him in the past, right? Now maybe you’ve lost your edge. Samantha must have seen you or sensed you—she thought you were a stalker.” I shrugged. “But so what? Watching out for someone isn’t a crime. I’m just wondering if you saw something you don’t even know is important.”
Bull shrugged. “Hiram got some threatening letters from the guy you just mentioned. Roman Quinn. Hiram said the guy’s story was a bunch of bullshit, but he was worried about his family.”
“Did he call the police?” I asked, knowing damn well Hiram hadn’t. Calling the police would lead to Roman, which would lead to the whole story getting out. Bad timing, when you were competing for billions in federal funding.
“He likes to handle things himself.”
“So were you watching the family last Friday? The day this started?”
Bull nodded. “It was a pain in the ass watching them, with everyone all over the place. I kind of moved around, rotated who I was watching. On Friday, I was watching Samantha. Beautiful woman, Samantha.”
I’ll bet you were watching her. “Where was she?”
“At her studio. I was about to leave, go check on the boys—they were at summer camp. Then Sam up and left by herself, without her assistant, so I followed her.”
“Where did she go?”
“That place near where she ended up dying. That old cement factory.”
A spatter of rain hit the window high up in the wall. Clyde lifted his head.
“What did she do there?” I asked.
“She just took a lot of pictures. I don’t know why. She already had a lot of photos of that place. It’s uglier than I am—why would anyone want to look at pictures of it?”
“Where, exactly, did she go in the factory?”
“She parked at the gate, walked in. There’s a gap there between the fence and the gate. She went by the beehive things—”
“The kilns?”
He shrugged. “Whatever. I followed her that far, but when she wandered in deeper with her camera, I decided to wait. I was afraid she’d see me. After half an hour or so, she came back out. She went right by me without seeing me, then got in her car and left. I was finishing up my cigarette, so I didn’t leave right away. I should have, though.”
“A man came,” I said, remembering the body outside the kiln and what Cohen had said about the ballistics not matching. “He surprised you.”
“You know about that?”
“The gun used on the Davenports was different from the one that killed the man at the factory.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “What kind of weapon you have, Bull? Man like you, it’ll be high-caliber. When the police find it—”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Bull said quickly. “Asshole came out of nowhere, running at me. I was already spooked as shit. I had my gun since I was on duty, watching out for that crazy Roman Quinn. I thought it was him. So I brought the gun up fast and shot him.”
“In the stomach.”
“Right. In the stomach. I didn’t have time to get my gun up more than that.”
“Did you call an ambulance?”
“Why bother? The guy was dead.”
“You have any idea who he was?”
Bull shrugged. “I checked his wallet. Dave something-or-other. He worked for some engineering firm.”
Alfred Tate’s surveyor. “Clinefeld Engineering?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Okay, Bull. Not your fault.” I kept my hands fisted tight together so I wouldn’t choke the life out of him. My heart was racing now. The threads of this case were so knotted I wasn’t sure we’d ever unravel all of them. But Bull was pulling at least a few of the threads free.
“What happened after that?”
“I snapped a photo, sent it to Hiram. He said it wasn’t him. Wasn’t Roman. I started freaking out, figuring I’d just killed some innocent guy. I went home to clean up. But there was a note on my door.”
“Go on.”
“It said, ‘I’m coming for you.’ It was signed with an X, which is how the letters to Hiram had been signed.”
“So you left town,” I said.
“Damn straight. I was supposed to wait around for some guy to break in and kill me in my sleep? Hiram didn’t pay me that much. Plus there was the guy I shot on accident. I had to figure out what to do about that. I needed time to think.”
The disappointment bit deep. I’d been hoping he’d seen Roman go into the Davenports’ home, maybe followed Roman and Samantha and Lucy when they left in Samantha’s car. I’d been hoping he’d have some clue to Lucy’s whereabouts.
I got to my feet and signaled Clyde that he was free to get up. I poured Bull another round. Why not? It might be his last. And we weren’t done yet. Not by a long shot.
While Bull had been talking, I’d been doing some mental fact-checking, running down what I knew about the night of Raya’s death. And what I knew about Bull.
“Deadman’s Crossing,” I said. “Does that ring a bell?”
“I remember it. It’s an overpass now, but it used to be a grade crossing.”
“Do you remember the last accident that occurred there?”
“Not in particular.”
“July 1982. A woman named Raya Quinn.”
Bull set down the empty glass and pushed the trash around on the desk until he found a metal nail file. He placed the tip beneath his thumbnail and scraped out a wedge of dirt. “I don’t remember.”
“Young. Beautiful. Had an affair with Hiram and bore him a son. That Raya Quinn.”
“Oh.” A smiled played around his lips. “That Raya Quinn.”
“You knew about the affair.”
He nodded slowly, the eye patch black in the dim light, like an empty socket. “I was the one set things up for him after she caught his eye. She was just a high school kid when it started. Sometimes I picked her up, drove her to a hotel. I’d watch out for them while they were inside doing the nasty. Then I’d drive her back home. Get her something to eat if she was hungry. I did a lot of things for Hiram Davenport back then, just like now. If he needed something, I took care of it.”
“But that isn’t why you took care of Raya Quinn. You did that for yourself.”
Something dark and cold slithered into his eye. “What do you mean? Her death was an accident. You just said so yourself.”
“No, Bull, it was definitely murder. At first we—the police and the FBI and I—we thought Raya’s killer was either Hiram or Alfred Tate. Hiram because of the affair and the child. He’s been paying Raya’s mother all this time. I figured it was blood money, but what if it was child support? Hiram’s way of absolving himself of any guilt over abandoning his son. He may not be able to pass through the eye of a needle, but he can certainly afford to buy off people here on earth. You with me so far, Bull?”