“Yeah. Maybe four if you’re tough.”
“Like Darryl.”
“Like Darryl.”
I could take it no longer.
“Please,” I said. “Do you know where Tamela is?”
Tyree tipped his head and glanced over Slidel ’s shoulder. For a moment his eyes fixed on mine. It was only a moment, but it was enough. I felt like I was looking into the dark, empty void of hel .
Wordlessly, Tyree turned away.
“Please,” I said to the side of his face. “It’s not too late to help yourself.”
Snorting air through his nose, Tyree shifted his feet and gave a who-gives-a-shit shrug.
A terrible thought kept recycling through my brain. Tamela and her family are dead. This man knows.
This man knows a lot.
As I watched Tyree being led off, a cold, sick feeling overcame me.
At the MCME, Tim Larabee’s office door was open. I suspected he’d been lying in wait for me. He cal ed out as I passed.
“Hear you’re bucking for a spot onNYPD Blue.”
I stepped into his office.
“Word is you wanted to do an orifice search on Tyree. Slidel had to restrain you.”
“Slidel was in no shape to restrain anybody. I thought I’d have to do CPR on him.”
“Tyree tel you anything useful?”
“He’s innocent as the Little Flower.”
“That the kid saw the Virgin at Lourdes?”
I nodded.
“Cute analogy.”
“I was taught by nuns.”
“Hard to break the habit.”
Eye rol .
“Now what?” Larabee asked.
“Once they’ve completed intake, Rinaldi and Slidel are going to gril Tyree, play him off against Sonny Pounder. One or the other wil rol over.”
“My money’s on Pounder.”
“Good bet. The question is, how much does Sonny know?”
Larabee’s face got the look of a kid bursting with a secret.
“Guess who’s in storage?”
Larabee’s way of referring to a decedent’s sojourn to the morgue. Temporary storage.
“Ricky Don Dorton.”
“Old news.”
“Osama bin Laden.”
“Better than that.”
I gave him a come-on gesture with my fingers.
The name was the last I expected to hear.
30
“BRIANAIKER.”
I felt a plunging sensation like you get just before screaming downward toward terra firma on a rol er coaster. One of my toothpick towers was col apsing.
“Are you sure?”
“Body was found in Aiker’s car. Lots of ID on the body. A perfect match on the dentals.”
“But the skul , the Lancaster bones…,” I sputtered.
“Not your boy. You already knew the skul wasn’t his. Turns out the bones aren’t either.”
“How? Where?” I was too taken aback to ask meaningful questions.
“Hauled his car out of a smal lake at Crowder’s Mountain State Park.”
“What was Aiker doing at Crowder’s Mountain?”
“Not paying attention at the wheel.”
“It took five years to find him?”
“Apparently it’s not a popular lake.”
“Why now?”