Scorpio Rising by Alan Annand
At cruising altitude he grabbed the arm of a stewardess to order a Jack Daniels and a beer. Downing the whisky, a sense of profound relief all but overwhelmed him, like taking a leak after a very long drive. He inspected his hands, especially under the nails and around the cuticles. They were clean and so was his getaway.
The flight touched down briefly in Phoenix where they exchanged passengers and then they were back in the air. Back in Albuquerque at 11 PM, he drove his truck north on I-25, twenty miles up the road to Bernalillo and his usual exit. This time, however, he turned onto South Camino del Pueblo and entered the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant called Los Gatos Locos.
Zeke looked for a red Honda Accord but saw it nowhere. There was a time when the mere sight of it would have given him a boner although he had to admit the effect, lacking positive reinforcement in the past year, was sadly on the wane. He saw a few other vehicles – two pickups, an old Trans Am and a bright red BMW sports car – but nothing he recognized as her ride. He parked his truck next to the BMW and went inside.
The restaurant was dimly-lit with seating for about sixty but there were only a handful of customers. Booths ran along the front windows and down the side wall, the rest of the place occupied by tables. There were serape-style tablecloths, posters of Mexico on the walls, and piñatas hanging from the ceiling. Four Hispanics sat in a booth near the entrance. Zeke saw a short-haired brunette in the last booth along the side wall.
His pulse quickening, he walked to where she was seated. Only when he stood next to her did she look at him. She was nursing a coffee and, to judge by her expression, maybe a grudge. Zeke motioned for her to slide over on the bench so he could sit next to her. When she didn’t budge, he sat on the bench opposite.
A waitress so young she looked like it was past her bedtime brought a cup and a carafe of coffee. She wore a blouse and skirt and had braces on her upper teeth.
Zeke looked at her. “Gimme a Corona, will you, darlin’?”
The waitress gestured to Carrie. “Mas café?”
“Si, por favor.” Carrie nudged her cup in the girl’s direction.
Zeke waited until the girl had left, then turned his most charming smile on the woman facing him. She wore blue jeans and a black sweater that hugged her B-cups in a friendly way. She’d changed her hairstyle since he’d seen her last. It was a nice cut that framed her face, accentuating her eyes.
“You’re lookin’ real good, Hopalong.”
“I’d prefer you didn’t call me that,” she said.
Not easily deflected, Zeke was determined not to be pussy-whipped. He gave her a little leer and pushed on defiantly. “Hopalong Cassidy used to be quite the little buckin’ bronco.”
Her icy tone headed him off at the pass. “I retired from the rodeo, Zeke.”
The waitress brought a glass and a Corona with a plug of lime jammed in the neck of the bottle. Zeke squeezed the lime into the glass, poured the bottle and drank while the lime was still fizzing the beer. He tugged his Marlboros from his shirt and offered her one. She shook her head. He flicked his lighter and drew smoke.
“You used to like it. Liked it a lot.”
“I used to like cheap wine too but my tastes have changed.”
“I figured that. I didn’t see your car outside. What’re you drivin’ these days?”
“Beemer.”
He nodded again, seeing the red sports car in his mind. Funny how he’d picked the parking spot next to hers. Like a homing pigeon, he thought, although the analogy troubled him. He wasn’t anyone’s pigeon. Chicken hawk maybe, but nothing domestic.
“Things must be goin’ well for you.”
“You’re doing all right too.” She kept her voice low. “Don’t get greedy.”
“Greedy? We ain’t even square yet.”
Carrie glanced over her shoulder, opened her purse and took something out. She reached under the table and nodded for him to meet her halfway. He put his hand under the table and received two wads of money. He jammed one between his legs and thumbed through the other, checking they were all hundreds. Lips moving as he counted the bills, he looked at the ceiling a moment to do the math, figuring it was all right. He sucked in his gut and shoved both wads down there next to his power tool, thinking he should have worn a looser pair of jeans.
He took another pull on his beer and cleared his throat. “I spent a lot of time on planes today, nothin’ to do but watch the clouds go by and catch up on my thinkin’.” He tapped his cigarette in the ashtray. “Month ago you give my name to a friend of yours wants to buy a gun. Turns out he needs a whole lot more’n a gun. He needs a job done. One thing leads to another and after mixin’ business with pleasure I get it done. All this time I don’t hear boo from you. All of a sudden today you call to say he ain’t your friend no more and you want him stomped on like a cockroach. What gives? His friendship warranty expire or what?”
“You shouldn’t think so much, you’ll give yourself a hernia.”
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that.” He shrugged off her backhander. “You never thought I’d put it together – him needin’ wet work done in Santa Fe, you pullin’ strings from behind the scenes?”
“I assumed he could handle it like a man and keep his mouth shut. Turned out I was wrong.”
Zeke nodded. “They don’t all have your balls.”
“What’s your point?”
“I did you a big favor doin’ his dirty work for him. I never asked no embarrassin’ questions, just did it professional. Least you could do is show a little gratitude.”
“Gratitude?” she hissed. “It was supposed to be a simple burglary gone bad. That’s what we’d agreed on, what he asked you to do. But you had to get creative with the terrorist angle and next thing I know the Feds are taking my life apart.”
“I thought it would distance you,” Zeke explained. “Your husband works for a top-level government installation and these al-Qaeda bastards are everywhere…”
She held up a hand. “Only thing needs distance is you and me. If we’re seen together it could be dangerous for us both. I’m taking a big risk just being here.”
“So what, I’m supposed to kiss your ass and say thanks?”
“I know you’d probably like that but why don’t you just take the money and run?”
“When do I get the rest of it?”
“Soon as I read about it in the papers.”
“You will.” Zeke took out his cell phone and tapped a key. “I took a few pictures for you.” He handed the phone to her.
To her credit, she didn’t flinch. After looking she shook her head, in dismay or grudging admiration, and slid the phone back. “You are one sick individual.”
“Thank you.” He returned the phone to his pocket.
She picked up her purse. “I’ve got to go.”
Zeke reached across the table and took one of her hands in his, real gentle-like. When she tried to pull away his grip tightened like a pipefitter’s wrench.
“Aside from what you owe me, I’m gonna need another fifty grand,” he told her, ignoring the surprise in her face. “To keep my silence, you know, about the bigger picture that’s been developin’ before my eyes. And to console my hurt feelin’s, especially after endurin’ all these insults you been hurlin’ my way.”
She shook her head. “I don’t like blackmail.”
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you to share your toys with the other kids?”
He released her wrist, picked up the Marlboros and offered her one again. She took one this time. He flicked his lighter and passed the flame under each of their cigarettes.
“I’ll have to go back to Santa Fe to get the balance of what I owe you,” she said.
“How about we meet right back here, say eleven tomorrow morning?”
She shook her head. “We shouldn’t be seen together. I’ll bring it to your place.” She blew smoke at him. “But just what I owe you for today. The other fifty grand will have to wait a
“You remember how to get to my place?”
“I’ve driven by there once or twice.”
“You shoulda dropped in for old time’s sake.”
“I haven’t been feeling very nostalgic this year.”
“Maybe we’ll have time for a little stroll down memory lane tomorrow.” He gave her an affectionate smile. “Did I mention my hurt feelin’s are a big factor in all this?”
“I think your dick’s a big factor is all.”
“It’s a sore spot all right.”
She granted him her first smile of the night. “Let me sleep on it, see how I feel tomorrow.”
His pulse quickened with anticipation, from adult to freakin’ adolescent in the blink of an eye. “I’ll try to remember and have a shower in the mornin’.” He failed to suppress the leer on his face. “Or do you still like it dirty?”
“Take a shower. And wash your mouth out while you’re at it.” She got up and left.
Chapter 66
San Rafael
Axel Crowe accompanied Starrett and Hutchins back to their office where they mobilized all available staff to work the first crucial hours of the Munson murder case. Crowe wasn’t invited to stay but he wasn’t told to go away either, so he hung around, thinking he might be able to offer some input.
The physical evidence was now at the CSU lab where knife and bowling ball were examined for latent prints. Other prints, taken from bedroom, ensuite bathroom and elsewhere in the house, were fed into the National Fingerprint File database.
Body hairs from the bed, shower drain and bedroom carpet were sorted and processed. Useless for the moment to identify a suspect, they might later be recalled if DNA comparison was required to confirm a suspect’s presence at the scene of the crime.
Starrett brought Hutchins up to speed on the bigger picture. “Bernie Lang died within an hour of two other victims, Janis Stockwell in New York and Walter Cassidy in Los Alamos. That same day, Munson was in Albuquerque, Jeb Stockwell in San Francisco, and Cassidy’s wife in New York. Crowe thinks they might have done each other a favor. We need to establish a connection.”
“I’ll start with phone records.” As part of the investigation into Lang’s death, Hutchins had already subpoenaed phone records for Bernie Lang’s mobile and land line, and Dave Munson’s mobile, and examined them for calls to known bookies, drug dealers and felons. “Can we get phone numbers for Stockwell and the Cassidy woman?”
Starrett phoned Levinson in New York to explain what they needed. Levinson had already acquired similar records for Jeb Stockwell’s home and office, his mobile and his wife’s mobile. They exchanged key telephone numbers from their respective cases and promised to report back if they got a hit.
Starrett called the Albuquerque FBI office and requested telephone numbers for Walter Cassidy and his wife. The agent on the phone refused to give out any information, and asked Starrett to leave a number so the Special-Agent-in-Charge could phone him back tomorrow.
Starrett left a number and then tried Directory Assistance for Santa Fe, where he got numbers for Cassidy’s home phone and his wife’s mobile. Dr. Cassidy’s mobile was unlisted.
Armed with these key phone numbers, Hutchins searched for a connection between Munson and Stockwell or Cassidy. Within minutes he found a call from Lang’s home to Stockwell’s home this morning.
“Munson probably thought he was in the clear until I showed up at his door asking about Stockwell,” Crowe said. “It probably freaked him out and prompted a panic call to Stockwell.”
“We should talk to New York again,” Hutchins said. “If Stockwell feared Munson might crack under pressure, his next call might have been to someone who could take care of the problem.”
Starrett called Levinson, who had by now scoured his own telephone histories and found the call from Lang’s house to Stockwell’s this morning. “Right after that incoming call,” Starrett asked, “any outgoing calls to New Mexico or California?”
“No,” Levinson said. “But if he had to make a call that left no trace he could have used Skype, preferably from an internet café.”
“Any way to trace the call over the internet?” Starrett said.
“Assuming you could trace a Skype account to him, best you’d get is proof one computer talked to another. You couldn’t prove who was there at the time. And given the small transactions at internet cafés, they’re almost always in cash.”
“Any luck at your end? Did you get a warrant issued for Carrie Cassidy?”
“Yeah, but she’s gone missing. The New Mexico State Police have got a bulletin out on her now.”
“Shit! We don’t have a clue who this new player is.”
“Wish I could help you,” Levinson said, “but it’s been a long day at my end. I’ve got to go home and catch a few hours of sleep.”
“Okay, thanks for your help. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Starrett looked at Hutchins. They both looked at Crowe. They couldn’t seem to say it, but their expressions were asking for help.
“What about the car?” Crowe said.
“What about it? Without tag numbers, we’re nowhere.”
“Based on Munson’s chart,” Crowe said, “I don’t think he was capable of killing Cassidy. You met him, what do you think?”
“I have to agree,” Starrett said. “He doesn’t have the cojones.”
“So where’s that leave us?” Hutchins said.
“Even if Munson was in New Mexico when Dr. Cassidy was killed, he probably didn’t do it himself,” Crowe said. “What if he hired someone to do the dirty work?”
Starrett nudged Hutchins. “The sixty grand.”
“What sixty grand?” Crowe said.
“Bernie Lang withdrew sixty thousand dollars a few months ago,” Hutchins said. “We were never able to figure out where it went.”
“Munson could have borrowed it from Lang and used it to pay for the hit on Dr. Cassidy,” Starrett said.
“And you said he didn’t have balls,” Hutchins said.
“If he paid someone to do a job in New Mexico,” Crowe said, “it was probably someone from the area.”
“So…?”
“If Munson came unglued the killer would be put at risk. If arrested, Munson might roll over on him in a plea bargain. So the killer came here to shut him up. You see where I’m going with this?”
“Out of town killer,” Starrett said. “Flies in, rents a car at the airport, does the job and flies home.”
“That white Sunfire Lang’s neighbor saw,” Hutchins said. “Sunfire’s a popular rental model.”
“Let’s check it out,” Starrett said. “I’ll call the airlines and get passenger lists of every flight from New Mexico in the last twenty-four. Fred, you call the airport rentals and get them to pull the files on every white Sunfire rented out in the same period.”
With nothing else to contribute, Crowe went outside for a walk. It was a beautiful spring evening and he smelled honeysuckle on the air. He walked down to 4th Street where a number of people milled on the sidewalk outside a movie theatre. Among them was a Japanese man with two children. Crowe was reminded of the Berkeley karate instructor Ken Ataka. He’d meant to call him earlier, but it had slipped his mind.
Crowe got Ataka’s number from Directory Assistance. Despite working in Berkeley, Ataka lived in San Francisco. He agreed to meet Crowe early tomorrow morning in a park near Chinatown.
Crowe bought six large coffees and a dozen cookies at a coffee shop to take back to the detectives’ office. Starrett rewarded his gesture with some news.
After 90 million print comparisons via the NFF database, the fingerprint technician had nothing to show for the effort. Other than Munson’s, there were no matches to the fingerprints gathered from the Lang house. This meant that, even if they’d captured the prints of the killer, he’d never been arrested and wasn’t in the system.
“So now what?”
“Data from the airlines and
“Anything I can help with?”
“It’s going to be a long night for us.” Starrett glanced at his watch. “You might as well go back to your hotel. I’ll give you a ring in the morning, let you know if we’ve found anything.”
~~~
Crowe headed back to San Francisco on the 101 where a steady stream of traffic – wine aficionados returning from Napa Valley, weekend hikers returning from camping trips – accompanied him across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Crowe thought about Carrie Cassidy. Although Starrett had pulled her date of birth from the DMV file, Crowe hadn’t had time to look at her chart. He wondered what her next move might be. She’d come and gone from New York with stealth and swiftness, leaving little in her tracks. Would she sit waiting for the police to appear at her door? He reminded himself to look at her chart back in the hotel, although he’d have to guess her rising sign, having never laid eyes on her, knowing nothing other than she was a writer.
Back at the hotel he returned his car to the rental agency. On a whim he asked the clerk if he had any maps of New Mexico. The clerk obliged with a map of the entire Southwest.
“I’m looking for someone. Can you give me a number too?”
“A phone number?” the clerk said.
“No, just any number between one and twelve.”
The clerk shrugged. Weirdo, you could hear him thinking. He said, “Six.”
In his room, Crowe calculated Cassidy’s birth chart, using Santa Fe as a tentative birth place. He chose a Virgo ascendant because it was the sixth sign in the zodiac, the number the rental clerk had given him.
The chart made immediate sense. Mars was in its own sign Scorpio in the third house, associated with powerful desire, athleticism and the arts. Venus was exalted in the seventh house and, since it ruled the second house of vocabulary and ninth house of publishing, gave evidence of a writing career. Moon in the fifth house of authorship nailed it.
But the rest of it? Ascendant lord Mercury was in the eighth house of trauma with a debilitated Saturn, hinting at a twisted mind. Moon in Capricorn was also influenced by Saturn, more evidence of a dark mind. Although exalted, Venus combust in the seventh house with Rahu indicated marital problems, a bias for multiple relationships ranging from eccentric geniuses to renegades. Was she capable of violence? The malefic planets all exerted influences on her ascendant, its lord Mercury, the Sun and Moon.