I remembered Josie telling me that Billy had given his phone to someone. To Bron? But why? And then had he given the Miata to Bron so that detectives couldn’t find him through his car? Had Bron been killed by someone who mistook him for Billy? Had Billy really been running away from danger, danger whose seriousness he was too naive to recognize?

The cell phone. What had I done with it. I had a vague memory of the clean-shaven man from Scarface demanding it from me, but I couldn’t remember whether he’d gotten it.

I’d dropped my dirty clothes just inside my door. Billy’s cell phone was still in the jacket pocket. As was Morrell’s thermos, or the thermos that looked like his. I’d handled it so much by now that I doubted it had much forensic value, but I still put it in a plastic bag, and went back down the stairs on slow, stiff legs. It used to be that I could have gone running after twenty-four hours of rest, but these legs were not going running anytime soon that I could imagine.

30

Comrades in Arms

When I returned to Mr. Contreras’s kitchen, I found Conrad had arrived. He was sitting next to Morrell at the chipped enamel table while Mr. Contreras finished flipping a stack of fresh flapjacks for him.

“How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity,” I said.

Conrad grinned at me, his gold tooth glinting. “Don’t think of this as a macho meeting, Ms. W.; you are definitely the star attraction. Tell me, what led you to that pit yesterday?”

“The dog,” I said promptly, adding, as the good nature faded from his face, “no, really: ask Mr. Contreras.”

I explained what had happened, from Rose Dorrado’s call to finding Billy’s Miata under the Skyway, and Mitch’s reappearance west of the river on 100th Street. “Billy knows April Czernin because he knows Josie. And he knows—knew—Bron because Bron drove for the Bysen warehouse on 103rd and Billy knew all the truckers. So I’m wondering if Billy gave Bron his phone, and then his car.”

Conrad nodded. “It could be. Ms. Czernin—she’s one tormented, twisted-up lady. Her girl is sick, I understand, and now she doesn’t know which end is up. I didn’t ask her about the phone, because I didn’t know about it, but she might not have, either: by what she was saying, he didn’t tell her much.”

He took out his cell phone and called down to his charge sergeant to send someone over to the underpass for whatever might be left of the Miata. “And get a really good tracking team to scour the area between Ewing and the river at 100th Street. A PI’s dog picked up the Love woman’s scent down there someplace: it may be where they were attacked.”