"You didn't call the cops? Jesus, Tess, what were you thinking?"
"That we could use a head start."
"Why?" Crow asked. He was sprawled in the only chair in the duplex's living room, his guitar in his lap. "I've been here all day, I obviously didn't sneak down to this restaurant and murder some guy I've never even met."
"Trust me, it's not today you need an alibi for," Tess said, remembering the smell and A. J.'s description of the maggots.
Rick paced the small living room. Tess realized she had finally made it inside Crow's house. The shotgun duplex was charming in a funky, retro way, or could have been. It had old-fashioned built-in bookcases and a huge fireplace, which had been converted to gas. The wood floors needed refinishing, but were basically sound, the windows large and numerous. But there were no domestic touches, no indication that Crow and Emmie had considered this anything but a way station to wherever they were headed.
"If Tess is right, and that's Laylan Weeks in Espejo Verde, the police will want to question you again," Rick told Crow. "I wouldn't be surprised if they find a way to charge you this time, if only to coerce you into finally telling them what you know."
Crow ran his fingers lightly over his guitar strings, humming softly to himself. He was like a little kid who puts his hands over his ears and chants to avoid hearing what he didn't want to hear.
Tess leaned toward him. "You do know something, don't you, Crow?"
"I know Emmie's not going to surface until she's good and ready. All we can do is wait."
"You'll be waiting downtown," Rick said.
Crow looked unconcerned. "Big deal, so I spend the afternoon down there. They'll take me in, they'll try to get me to tell them something, they'll let me go because I don't have anything to tell."
"You better be prepared for the reality that you could be charged and held without bail," Rick said. "It's a homicide rap, you're from out of state. They'll argue you're at risk for flight. You could be in jail until your trial comes around."
"They can't do that."
"If there's one shred of physical evidence to tie you to that scene, they can. Someone's already tried to frame you once, and only police incompetence kept it from working. Why wouldn't they do it again?"
Tess saw a flash of orange in the gloom of the Espejo Verde kitchen, and then remembered Crow happily dying his Cafe Hon T-shirt in her sink, until his hands were bright yellow and the sink had a permanent ring. It had been that same mango-y color, almost exactly, as the stained cloth she had seen. "I used to have a Cafe Hon T-shirt," he had told her Saturday night.
"I can't be in jail this weekend-"
"Why, Crow?" Tess asked. "What's going to happen? What's Emmie going to do?"
"Nothing," he said, and his eyes went dark and flat. "But we've got all these gigs. The Morgue paid us in advance, and we'll have to give it back if at least three-quarters of the band doesn't play Friday and Saturday. And I don't have it, okay? It's already gone, blown on frivolous things like food and gas for my car."
"You won't have to worry about those things if you're in jail," Rick said. "If you do get charged, and I can get bail, will your parents be able to cough up the money?"
"Call my parents and I fire you," Crow said firmly. "I don't want them bailing me out of anything, literally or figuratively. Besides, if you're right, there's not going to be any bail."
Rick glanced at his watch. "I have to call the cops. Better I call them before they call on us."
Crow smiled, a bitter, downturned smile. "I'll brush my teeth so my breath will be kissing-fresh for the interrogation."
Rick picked up the phone, which sat in a curved niche in the wall. "Detective Guzman," he said into the receiver. Then, to Tess, as he waited to be put through. "You should have called me from there. It looks bad, the way you handled it. As if you assumed he was guilty."
He made her feel like a child, and she answered in a child's whiney tone. "I'm tired of talking to cops. I'm tired of finding dead bodies. Let A. J. give them the blow-by-blow. He saw everything. Besides, as long as Crow surrenders, what's the big deal? There's no reason we should assume he's involved in this."
"I just hope Guzman sees things your way," he said. "If he ever picks up. I hate to think of how many minutes of my life I've spent on goddamn hold. I want those minutes back. When death comes for me, I want back every minute I was on hold, in traffic jams, and behind people with eleven items in the ten-items-or-less line."
For all its windows, the living room was fairly dark, perhaps because it faced north. Crow's neighborhood was quiet in the late afternoon, and Tess became aware of the sounds around her-Rick's tuneless humming, the wind moving through the trees, a car moving slowly down the block, bushes rustling, a burst of barking from what sounded like an entire kennel of dogs a block or two away. The steady, muffled sounds of traffic from the nearby highway.
Then she became aware of the sounds she wasn't hearing-running water from the bathroom, Crow's footsteps as he moved about the rear of the house, gathering his things.
"Rick-"
But he was hearing, or not-hearing, the same thing. He dropped the phone, even as Guzman's voice came on the line. They ran down the narrow hall to the bathroom, a large old-fashioned room with a vanity flanked by high built-in cabinets and small square windows bracketing the vanity's mirror. The window closest to the door was up, and the screen had been pushed out on the ground below.
"The car's still there," Tess said, pointing to the Volvo with Maryland tags.
"Only because his key ring is in the front door. And with the park nearby, he can get a good head start on foot," Rick said. "I just wish I'd known he was going to do ‘Norwegian Wood' for his encore."
"Norwegian Wood?"
"Sure. This Crow had flown." And he laughed mirthlessly at his own bad joke, while Tess just stared at the empty space where a screen had once been, where Crow's body had been only minutes ago. It was such a small space, even for someone as slender as Crow. It couldn't have been easy to slide through it without making too much noise, to drop to the ground without a thump that would draw their attention.
Such a small space, yet it reminded her just how big trouble can be.
Chapter 22
"Obstruction of justice," Al Guzman said, as if reading from a mental grocery list. "Accessory after the fact. Criminal trespassing. What else? There's gotta be more. Maybe I'll have your car towed down to a garage, make sure it meets our safety standards, check your dog's license, impound it if you don't have your rabies certificate number. Then again, if there was a felony charge for being estupida, I'd have you on a dozen counts of that."
Tess regretted not following Crow out the window. She was persona non grata at SAPD, the city's most unwelcome visitor since Santa Anna, to hear Guzman tell it. Rick was sulking, convinced that she had put him at risk for possible disbarment. A. J. Sheppard, who had sat a long, lonely vigil at Espejo Verde, only to be picked up by the cops, no longer wanted to be her new best friend. As for Steve Villanueve, who glimpsed her in the hallway, he just shook his head sadly.
"So what do you think?" Guzman demanded. "Would your boyfriend come back for you if I lock you up? Or is he running toward the border with Emmie Sterne? I guess what I'm really asking is if you were a willing accomplice or a dupe."
"C'mon, Guzman," Rick said, rousing himself from his funk. "She was trying to help. She kept the story out of the media for the short term, no easy trick when one of the most aggressive reporters in town is on the scene. By calling me and asking me to meet her at Ed Ransome's apartment, she was trying to ensure he turned himself in. I was on the line with you when he went out the back window. What do you think, I was calling you to chat? Besides, how far could he get? He left his car and, according to him, he was low on funds."