Confined

by Matthew Stern

The sidewalks were thick with the usual Friday night partiers as I drove down Fourth Avenue towards the underpass that cut off downtown from the rest of the city. From a distance I could see the flashing blue and red reflecting off the dark buildings. I tried to make a left onto Ninth and was stopped by a fleshy-faced cop with matted brown hair peeking from under his cap standing next to a Tucson Police cruiser. He was sweating and dark stains ringed his collar and armpits.

I rolled down the window. “Can't go no farther, sir, I'm sorry.” He said, not appearing very sorry.

“I'm here to see Detective Chappa,” I said.

“If you're press, you can line up over there with the rest.” He pointed to one corner of the sidewalk where a group of people, some with notepads others with video cameras, milled about. The crowd was thicker down this far as the drunk and curious migrated toward the flashing lights.

I took out a business card. “My name is Noah Winter. Detective Chappa called me down.”

The cop, whose tag read McNamara, held the card and flicked it with his fingernails. “P.I., huh?” He looked at me like I was stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He then took the radio from his belt and spoke softly into it.

Two minutes and several transmissions later, McNamara handed my card back and rapped on the roof of my car. He pointed to a spot behind several blue and whites. “You can park there. Chappa's in the parking lot behind the bar.” He stood back and let me drive past him. I parked behind the other police cars.

I found Darren standing next to a rusty dumpster in the parking lot behind the bar. He was talking to two uniformed officers. A second later they both took off at a trot. Darren rubbed his face with his hands, spotted me, and waved me over.

He was a short, compact man with a hard round face that always made me think of a bowling ball. His black hair was matted to his forehead and his gray suit looked like a wadded sheet of paper. He offered his hand. “Thanks for coming out, Noah,” he said.

“So what can I do for you on this wonderful night?” I asked.

“You're looking for Diane Carson?”

“Yup.”

“We found her.”

“Here?” I said.

“Here.”

The silent question hung in the air between us. Darren nodded.

“How?” I asked.

“We're not sure yet, but she's not pretty.”

“Show me.”

“Do you still have a weak stomach?”

“Is she that bad?”

Darren nodded. “The worst I've seen in a while.”

“Are you thinking maybe a psycho?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “We see a couple of these every summer. The heat gets past 110 degrees and the wires in some guy's head go blammo and all of a sudden he's picking up radio transmissions from alpha-centauri that tell him to play T-ball with his neighbor's head.” He let out a deep breath. “Come on,” he said.

He led me toward the back wall of the club. This close, the walls seemed to vibrate with the thumping bass inside. Set against the wall was a rusted out dumpster, half filled with rubbish and smelling like New Jersey . In the small space between the dumpster and the wall was a soiled mattress with springs and tufts of padding showing through the torn cloth.

On the mattress was a body.

She had been beautiful once, but I only knew that because I had seen a picture of her. She had blonde hair, though it was now matted and dark with a mixture of dirt and blood. Her face, once streamlined and fair, was bloated and black. It was wider now, as both cheekbones had been smashed. There was also a concave indentation in her forehead which had pooled with blood and then dried.

Then the rats had done their work.

The cheeks had been nibbled on as well as the ears and around the neck. They had feasted on the eyes. In the picture she had bright green eyes like grass on a soccer field. Now they were masses of crusted red and black.

It seemed that they had left most of the lower body alone. She was clothed in the same black and purple dress in which she was last seen. Her right arm was at an awkward angle and I could tell that it had been broken.

I felt sour bile rise in my throat. I turned away quickly and fought to keep from vomiting. I took deep breaths but I just got lungfuls of putrid air from the dumpster.

Darren looked at me. “If you're gonna puke, do it elsewhere. Don't mess up the body.”

I took more deep breaths and my stomach slowly stopped doing gymnastics.

“You gonna live?” Darren asked.

“I'll be fine,” I said, wishing I had a piece of gum to take the fetid taste out of my mouth. “Who found her?”

“Two kids who came back here to make out. Almost fell on her,” Darren said.

I looked at the grimy walls, the rusted dumpster and the refuse littered ground. “Romantic.”

“Give me the short version of what you know,” he said.

“Not much,” I said. “Diane Carson disappeared last weekend. Her husband Walter hired me two days ago. I had barely started looking before I got your call.”

“I'm going to talk to Carson tonight. Let's talk tomorrow and go over some things.”

“Sure.”

Darren rubbed his face again. Across the parking lot a fight had broken out between two members of the crowd.

Darren watched as a few cops ran to stop the altercation. “Goddamn heat,” he said. “It's getting to everybody.”

I looked once more down at the brutalized body on the mattress. “Not everybody,” I said.

***

Walter Carson finished writing the check and ripped it from the book with a ferocity that bellied his mild appearance. We were in his office in the back of the software company in which he was part owner. Sunlight came through the windows and glinted off the metal frame of his wheelchair, the front wheel of which squeaked whenever he moved.

Darren had told him last night about his wife. When I arrived in my office that morning there was a message on my voice mail: Carson speaking in a low monotone asking me to come to his office at my earliest convenience.

He slid the check across the desk to me, then leaned back and stared at the cracked and water stained ceiling. I placed the check in my pocket and looked at him. He was in his early forties but looked younger. His thin red hair was just starting to retreat and the skin of his face was light and smooth, save for little crow's feet at his eyes and two deep furrows between his eyebrows. He was dressed casually in an olive green polo shirt and a thin gold chain around his neck. The rest was hidden behind the metal frame desk, but I knew it was also hidden by the blanket that hid his legs. He told me when we first met that a degenerative muscle condition that appeared in his late teens no longer allowed him to walk.

He tore his eyes from the ceiling and placed them on me. They looked black and moist. “I think that concludes our business, Mr. Winter.” He wheeled himself from around the desk. I stood up.

“You have my deepest condolences, sir. I'm sorry I wasn't able to do more.”

He led me out of his office into a large rectangular room. It was painted light blue and lit by multiple skylights. The room was divided into cubicles with portable walls on wheels. Each partitioned square contained a desk, a computer, and a person tapping mercilessly on a keyboard.

Whispers followed us as we moved down the walkway that ran down the center of the room. By now everyone in the office knew that Diane Carson was dead. A tall rhinoceros of a man in faded jeans, cowboy boots and hat, and a tan western shirt strode down the aisle toward us.

He stopped in front of Carson , bent and grabbed both of his arms. “I just heard, Walter. I'm so sorry.”

Carson politely disengaged himself and smoothed his shirt. “If there's anything I can do,” the cowboy was saying, “just let me know.”

Physically he was similar to Carson . They were roughly the same build and, if Carson was standing, the same height. From under the 10 gallon hat, I saw wisps of light blonde hair. His face was rough and dark as leather left out in the sun for years.

“Will,” Carson said , “this is Noah Winter. The investigator I had hired to find Diane.” I took his proffered hand. His grip was dry and firm. “Will Rogan, I'm the other half of the company.” He smiled. “The not-so-better half.” His eyes grew somber. “It's a damn shame, this.”

“Yes it is,” I said.

Carson kept slowly rolling farther down the aisle but Rogan kept pace with us.

“Walter, I just got off the phone with Seattle . They were confirming the meeting for tomorrow. I said I would call them back. I wasn't sure what you would want to do.”

Carson thought for a moment then said, “Tell them I have had a family emergency and that we will reschedule next week.”

“Okay.” Rogan turned to me. “A company in Washington wants to buy us out. Walter wants to sell and retire. I want to wait and go public ourselves in a year or two.” He rubbed his fingers together. “That's where the real money is.”

Carson wheeled closer to the door. “Will, I don't think that Mr. Winter wants to hear about boring corporate dealings. Call them back and ask them to postpone for me and we'll see what they have to say next week.” He kept rolling toward the door and I followed.

We stopped at a frosted glass door. He said thank you again. I gave him my normal call-if-you-need-anything speech for clients whom I hadn't been able to do anything for. We shook hands and I walked outside to my car.

***

I drove to my office where a message waited for me from Darren asking me to call him. I did.

“The M.E. did a quick and dirty on the body for me. Looks like she probably was beaten to death. He wagers that the big dent in her head is the one that did it. Whoever did it worked her over pretty good though, even though most of it was probably after the one that laid her out.”

“So either a psycho or someone who knew her and hated her,” I said.

“She also recently had sex before she died.”

“Rape?” I asked.

“M.E. can't tell due to the rat thing –“

“– don't mention the rats, please.”

“– but the guy used a condom so no DNA.” I heard him cover the mouth piece with his hand and mumble something to someone else.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“On the night she disappeared there were charges on her credit card at the bar at the Westin Resort. That's it though. You have anything that might be of use?”

I grabbed the Carson case file from the top of my desk and flipped in open. “Nothing you probably don't already have. She disappeared a week ago. Her husband saw her Saturday morning before he left for work. He's going through some big deal with his company right now so he's working weekends. He stayed there late and slept there. A common thing over the past few months he tells me. When he got home in the morning he assumed she had already left for a hair appointment she had. He went back to work and says he tried to call her a couple of times.”

“He did. We found her phone. Seven missed calls, all from him.”

“He slept at work again, and started to get worried Monday when he tried to call her to have lunch and didn't get her. When she didn't show for dinner that night, he called the police.”

“Who took a report and did nothing. Too early,” Darren said.

“Yep. By Wednesday he had called me. I found out she did not show up for her hair appointment. I had only started looking through her stuff and was getting ready to start talking to her friends when you called me on Friday.”

“I talked to Collman in missing persons. They had just started looking too. They were starting to take it a little more serious, but had barely started when we found her. Now it's on my desk.” He covered the mouth piece and again talked to someone else. “You talk to Carson today?” he asked me when he came back.

“Yeah, we settled up. He's not quite there right now, you know? Seemed like he like he was sleepwalking.”

“That's where I'm off to. Better start showing why I make the big bucks.”

“Just get the bastard. She seemed like a nice lady and that was a scary and lonely way to go,” I said.

“It's always scary,” he said and hung up.

The rest of the day I varied between watching TV with my feet on the desk and typing up past cases from an inbox that leaned with more precariousness than the tower in Pisa . Through it all, the bloodied, smashed face of Diane Carson stared at me. The seeping, bloody eyes. The open, smashed mouth. The crushed cheeks. I shook my head to dispel the images.

I quit at 5:00 and planned to drive home with a quick stop for dinner. I felt tired and gritty, like I needed to be oiled. In the car, I found myself driving north and soon was turning off the engine in the parking lot of the Westin Resort.

The lot was filled with expensive cars that made mine feel like a tricycle. I parked my car between an Audi and a Jaguar and hoped it didn't feel intimidated. I exited and locked the car but felt ridiculous doing so. The air was still hot and thick but lacking the broiling quality that the sun brings. I walked quickly up the peppered concrete walkway decorated with Native American petroglyphs, past the valets in white shirts and red vests, and through heavy swinging glass doors. I entered into a well-lit, air-conditioned foyer decorated in tan marble with black trim. The desk clerk looked at me like she just ate a bucket of lemons as I headed for the bar, which was off to the left through an opening lined with chocolate wood.

The inside was dark and small. Four tables draped in forest green linen sat on the lacquered hardwood floor. Two of the tables were occupied. At one, two older gentlemen in business suits with ham fists around bottles of Heineken talked animatedly. At the other table was a paunchy middle-aged woman. She wore a red dress and morosely sipped a martini with a chain of olives balanced at the lip.

To the right was a long bar. Tall plush stools lined along a gold rail. The top of the bar was a plate of glass laid atop wine corks. Behind the bar a young man with long horse-brown hair in a ponytail, thin stretched face, and black vest and bow tie absentmindedly polished wine glasses. He chatted in low tones with an attractive girl in an even more attractive dress drinking a pink cocktail in a tall glass with an umbrella and more fruit than a grocery store display.

I took a seat at the bar, two stools down from the girl. The bartender slid over to me and placed a small square napkin in front of me.

“Hi there,” he said. “What can I get for you?” He had a pinched tight voice.

“You got Nimbus on tap?” I asked.

He nodded. The ponytail swung. “Pale and Nut.”

“How about the Nut.”

He nodded and turned. He found a frosted glass and after fighting with the tap for a moment, poured me a glass. He placed it in front of me.

“You want to run a tab?”

I shook my head

“Eight dollars then.”

I coughed into the beer. When you had to pay eight dollars for a beer, could the fall of civilization be far behind? I placed a ten on the bar.

He turned to go back to the blonde but I placed another ten down and he stopped. “Were you working here last Saturday?” I asked. He nodded. I placed the picture of Diane Carson that I still had in my wallet on the bar next to the ten. “You remember her?”

He picked up the picture and looked at it. Then at me. “You a cop?”

“Private,” I said.

“Why are you asking?”

I decided to leave the being dead part out of it for now. “She's missing. You seen her?”

He looked down at the ten still on the bar and then back at me. “Maybe.”

I placed another ten down on the bar next to the first one. “Mrs. Carson,” he said. “Tanqueray Martini with two olives and one onion. Pretty good tipper. She was here last Saturday and left around…” he closed his eyes for a moment while he thought, “maybe nine-thirty.”

“Did she leave with anyone?”

“Yeah, the Cowboy.” He picked up a glass and started polishing.

“The Cowboy?” I asked.

“Yeah, a cowboy. Ten-gallon hat, belt buckle the size of Wisconsin . All that was missing were spurs. He even walked like he just got off a horse. All waddle-y like.”

“Did you see what he looked like?”

He shook his head and the ponytail swung again. “She got the drinks and he sat in the corner. Had the hat turned down low over his eyes like he was Clint Eastwood or something.”

“Have you ever seen him in here before?”

“Nope.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“Probably not.”

“Did you see where they went when they left?”

“They turned left, which is toward the elevator, so I assumed up to a room.”

The girl with the flowery – but now empty drink – cleared her throat and twirled her empty glass. The pony tail swung back over to her and started mixing another.

A cowboy.

I had just met a cowboy. A big gorilla of a cowboy with more than enough strength to cave a lady's head in. Were Diane Carson and Will Rogan having an affair? And something went wrong? Walter Carson's confinement to a wheelchair might lead his wife to look outside the marriage.

I finished my beer and got up from the stool. “Thanks,” I said to the bartender.

He flipped me a salute with two fingers and went back to talking with the girl. I walked out of the bar and into the lobby where Darren Chappa was talking to the receptionist. I was out of his line of sight, so I made straight for the door before he could see me.

I retrieved my car from its intimidating spot and drove home.

***

The phone was ringing as I arrived at my office the next morning. I picked it up.

“A pony tailed bird told me you were at the Westin last night playing real detective,” Darren said without preamble, “so this shouldn't come as much of a shock. We just arrested William Rogan, for the murder of Diane Carson.”

“Already?” I said. I figured it was coming, but not so soon.

“D.A. says we got a slam dunk case and that a few days in the pokey we'll probably get a confession to boot.”

“You and I both know that the D.A. is not the sharpest tack on the board.”

“Very true,” Darren said, “but Rogan seems good for it.”

“Did you get anything new?” I asked.

“The bartender identified Rogan from a picture. We are still canvassing the hotel for more witnesses.”

“The bartender told me he barely saw him and had his cowboy hat pulled down the entire time.”

I could almost hear his shoulders shrug over the phone. “Hey, what can I say? He picked him. Was ‘pretty sure' it was the guy.”

“Anything else?”

“The kicker, a couple of his hairs were found on her body.”

“Really?” I said.

“The crime scene guys were cursing the heck out of me for making them work through the night and they had a ton of hairs to go through but we got her husband's, which you would expect, a whole slew of rat hair and a few strands of his hair, DNA tag and all.”

“I guess you got him then,” I said, doodling on a pad of paper.

“What's the matter?”

“I don't know. Something bugs me.”

“What?”

“I can't say, just a feeling. You don't feel you are moving too fast?”

“What fast? We got a witness and DNA. I'd love for all of my cases to go this smoothly. Listen, we got the guy, he's going to sit in jail for a long time. You wanted me to catch him and hey, I did.”

“I know, I know.” I said.

“Anyway” Darren said, “I've got more protecting and serving to do.” I heard a click and he was gone.

I hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment. Something still bothered me. I put my feet up on my desk and looked out my window. Probably nothing. I had liked Rogan, and he hadn't seemed the murdering type, but, as people were fond of pointing out, I've been wrong before.

I took my feet off the desk. It was the D.A.'s problem now. I looked to the pile of files on top of the desk and grabbed the first one and set to work. Might as well get industrious.

Soon I was on another case and in a few days I forgot about William Rogan and my doubts.

***

A month later I entered my office at lunchtime with a large paper bag and paperboard cup of soda from a sandwich shop down the street. I had just finished a week of surveillance on a cheating husband who enjoyed embezzling from his wife's sewing shop on the side, and was celebrating with one of the store's monster sandwiches.

I had just taken a large bite of the sandwich; a sourdough roll about the size of my head stuffed with roast beef, onions, and melted gorgonzola, when the phone rang. I picked it up.

“HMMmpphh,” I said.

“Hello?” came a throaty female voice.

I swallowed hard and said, “Hello.”

“Is this Mr. Winter?” said the voice.

“Yes, it is. How can I help you?”

“Mr. Winter, my name is Becky Rogan. I'm William Rogan's wife.”

I had barely thought of Diane Carson and William Rogan in the month since he had been arrested. I had seen a passage in the paper about Rogan being denied bail, but besides that, I had concentrated on work.

I tucked the phone under my chin, grabbed a napkin and wiped my hands and mouth. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Rogan?”

“You can come out to see me, Mr. Winter,” she said. “I want to hire you. I want you to help my husband.”

***

Becky Rogan lived in Oro Valley , to the north of town, in one of the new gated subdivisions that were laid across the area like a patchwork quilt. I drove up to the iron-gate and punched in the number I had jotted down on a piece of paper and waited. A brick wall to my right said “The Meadows” in flowing cursive.

The metal box crackled and a voice that was barely discernable as human, let alone female, said, “Mr. Winter?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Come in. You can find your way to the house?”

She had given me directions on the phone. “Yes, I'll be there in a moment.” I had spoken too soon. Incomprehensible Spanish street names, and a layout that would do a maze maker proud, led to two wrong turns until I finally pulled up to surprisingly modest two story brown stucco house with Spanish tiles on the roof and two small mesquite saplings in the front gravel yard.

Becky Rogan met me at the door and ushered me into a modestly furnished living room decorated in tans and browns. I sat on what felt like an old leather sofa and Becky sat herself into a matching recliner.

She had an oval face with full lips and wavy brown hair that framed her face. She was dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt that had a logo on the front for a breast cancer 5k run. Her eyes were rimmed with red from crying but her face was stolid and her jaw set. She offered me coffee, which I accepted.

“Thank you for coming all the way out to see me, Mr. Winter.”

“Noah.”

She nodded her head then took a sip of her own cup of coffee. “My husband did not kill Diane Carson. I know that everyone thinks so, even our lawyer, maybe even you. He was with me that night, but they just think that I am lying to protect him.”

I nodded, and then realized that she might think I was thinking she was lying so stopped.

“William liked you. He only met you that one time at the business, he told me, but he is a good judge of a person and he said that maybe you could help us find out who is framing him.”

“I'm not sure what I can do for you Mrs. Rogan,” I said. “I'm sure your lawyer has his own investigator and will want to use him.”

She gave a small chuckle. “Our lawyer has barely given us the time of day. The business may be starting to take off but we are not financially well off and have a court appointed attorney who wants Will to take a deal.”

I refrained from saying that it might be a good idea.

“Even he thinks I am lying. If we go to trial he doesn't want me on the stand.”

I took another sip of coffee. She was either telling the truth or deserved an Emmy. To lie this convincingly she would have to be a genuine sociopath and sociopaths didn't make coffee this good. “Why don't I ask a few questions and see where we stand and then decide if I can do anything for you.”

She smiled the first genuine smile I had seen from her, said, “Thank you,” and went to get some more coffee. A black cat poked its head from around the back of the chair, twitched its whiskers at me then bolted from the room as Becky came back with more coffee.

“Though Walter did not know it,” she said, “Diane and I were good friends. We would meet for lunch a couple of days a week while the boys were playing with their computers.”

“Why didn't Walter know?”

She took a sip of coffee then set it down on the table. She was more relaxed now, less strung like a bow. “Walter does not like Will. They work well together, they compliment each other's skills, but Walter is not a nice man. He wanted little to do with Will and I outside of the business no matter how hard Will tried. Diane and I became friends after talking for a bit at a company party. She kept it from Walter so as not to complicate things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Diane and Walter had been having marital problems for awhile. There was a time a few months ago when she was getting ready to leave him.”

“Was she seeing anybody else?”

She shook her head

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Diane didn't tell me she was seeing anyone and I would like to think she would have.”

I didn't say that she probably wouldn't have said anything if she was seeing her friend's husband.

“Diane recently told me that she and Walter were trying to patch things up and make a fresh start. He would bring her flowers. They would meet for dates, things like that.” She reddened a bit. “They would pretend they were picking each other up at a bar sometimes. A little role play. To make it like when they first started dating. They even dressed up.”

Something slowly started itching in the back of my brain. “Still, I'm sure him being in the chair was a strain for them that might cause her to look outside of the marriage,” I said. “Him not being able to walk at all, needing her help. It was probably tough.”

“Oh, Walter can walk,” she said.

I sputtered a bit into my coffee. “What?”

“According to Diane. It's awkward and tiring for him, and he waddles like a penguin, but he can walk without the chair. It's just easier for him to stay in it most of the time.” She paused for a moment. “Diane also told me that he uses it for psychological purposes. People underestimate him.”

Most of us have a moment from when we were kids when we were given the differently shaped blocks and holes to put them in. Trying to put the square peg in the round hole was frustrating until you made an offhand stab at the round hole and voila…enlightenment.

Something about Will Rogan's arrest had bothered me. Some piece of information that just didn't fit. A peg with no hole that it would go into, so it just sat on the side, forgotten. Until a new hole had opened.

The bartender had said that the Cowboy with Diane Carson had walked like a cowboy, with a waddle. Cowboys don't waddle and neither did Will Rogan. But Walter Carson apparently did.

Becky Rogan continued. “Today I went to Walter and told him that William couldn't have done it. I told him that Diane and I had been meeting for lunches and that I was not lying when I said that he was with me that night. I told him that I was going to take the stand no matter what our lawyer wants.”

“What did he say?” I asked, finding my voice.

She took a sip of her coffee then shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing at first. He just looked a bit stunned and said he would have to think about what I said.”

I could imagine his stunned state. Realizing there was a hole the size of a SUV in his perfect plan.

I caught myself then and told myself to calm down. Thought it felt more right than Rogan doing the deed. It still was not definite that Carson did it. I had no proof, only supposition. But it felt right.

I explained to Becky Rogan that I would try and see if I could look into it but made no promises. I did not want to get her hopes up.

She thanked me profusely, apparently getting more than she thought she would and led me to the door. Soon I was back in my car and driving through the fortified gate.

I headed south back into the city. The Catalina Mountains were lit up in the bright orange color they get when the sun has just dipped out of sight. It was an unnatural color that looked like it belonged on a crayon box and not on a nine thousand foot mountain range.

I tried calling Darren. There was no answer on his cell and I did not have his home phone.

I tried police headquarters. Not at the office, I was told by a nasal female voice. I asked where he was.

Who was I and what business of it was mine?

I explained who I was.

He would be in the office tomorrow; did I want to leave a message?

“Please have him call me as soon as possible,” I said.

I stopped for a red light and took a few breaths. No need to rush. Will Rogan could last one more night in jail if he had to. He had been there a month. I would have to convince Darren and probably the DA first anyway. There was nothing that could be done tonight.

I would just go home and relax get a good nights sleep. As long as Becky Rogan didn't slip and break her neck tonight I could be satisfied tomorrow with a job well done.

The light turned green, but I didn't press on the gas. Instead my heart jumped into my throat like I was on an elevator that just had its cables cut.

I went to Walter and told him…

Becky had told Walter that she had been friends with Diane.

 He was with me that night…

She was Will's alibi. Granted, an alibi that was not believed right now, but she was forceful enough. She was persistent. People would start to listen.

Walter was not a dumb person. I could see him going over things sitting at his desk. In the wheelchair he didn't really need. What had Diane told Becky? About the chair? About maybe a planned date? What else did she know?

If Becky was gone, there was no alibi. There was no one to fight for Will.

With a certainty that I found unnerving I knew that Walter needed Becky Rogan dead and the sooner the better. He would probably make it look like a suicide so that it would look like she thought Will was guilty.

Behind me a car horn blared and an engine revved as a car swerved around me. A college student in a black jeep extended his middle finger at me and yelled obscenities as he went by.

I slammed down the gas and shot forward. I made a U-turn at the next light and headed back to Becky Rogan's house. It was unlikely that Walter would try something tonight, but the quicker I got her out of there and someplace safe, the better all around.

I tried Darren again and again got the same receptionist. I explained now that it was an emergency and that I needed to talk to Detective Chappa immediately.

“Sir, if this is a real emergency, please dial 911,” she said.

I finally lost my temper. Preceding with a few choice obscenities I save for special occasions, I said, “Lady, I don't want SWAT busting down doors or every officer in town to come to me with sirens blaring! I need to talk to Detective Chappa! Maybe you could give him a call sometime this year and give him that message!”

I heard a click as she hung up.

Resisting the urge to hurl my phone out the window I pressed harder on the accelerator. Hopefully I was just embarrassing myself.

It seemed to take forever to get back to the iron-gate. I jabbed in the same number as earlier.

No response.

I waited, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel.

I punched the number again. Still nothing.

It didn't mean much. She might have gone to sleep or she could have gone out. But there was that nagging feeling in my gut that I had learned not to ignore.

I reversed and made a U-turn. I pulled out onto the road, drove down fifty feet until I saw what I was looking for, and then stopped. I grabbed my gun and an extra clip from under the seat, and then got out of the car.

The mesquite tree was old, at least fifty years. The branches snaked out and up it all directions except for where it had been cut away from the road. Dried pods littered the ground and they snapped like cornflakes as I walked closer. One low branch was close enough to the outer wall of the development that with some struggling, panting, and a skinned wrist I was able to make it on and over the wall.

I dropped into a small grassy area with a swing set and slide. A sprinkler was going and I caught a blast of pressurized lukewarm water before I made it out of range. I quickly oriented myself and ran in the direction of the Rogan's house. It took five minutes, but eventually I saw the familiar exterior.

There were lights on in the house but I could detect no movement inside. I looked up and down the street. I didn't know what Walter Carson drove but I assumed he would be smart enough to not park in front of the house he was going to commit murder in. If he was even here.

I was about to walk up and ring the doorbell when I stopped and quickly continued walking past the house. If Carson was in there, and I rang the doorbell he would have two choices. He could either ignore the ringing and risk whoever was outside possibly having a key, or he could finish the killing of Becky Rogan then answer the door and say he just found her.

I didn't want to risk the second option and the first did me no good, so I kept walking.

I turned right at the next road and walked down to the next road that ran parallel to the road that Rogan's house was on. I turned right again and continued walking until I was in front of the house directly behind the Rogan's. I was in luck, and the house was dark.

Acting like I belonged, I walked up to the gate on the side of the house that led to the backyard and opened it. Luck again: no dog. I was getting nervous. I didn't deserve this much luck.

The development being new, both houses had back yards the size of an index card and shared a low stone wall that didn't allow much in regards to privacy.

The Rogan's house rose before me. I could see lights on in two windows upstairs. The windows on the bottom floor were dark.

I quickly walked to the low stone wall and hoisted myself over and did my best not to land on the other side with little more noise than a stampeding water buffalo. I looked for movement in the windows and saw none. In front of me a sliding glass door with the shades drawn seemed to be the only way in from the back.

I crunched softly across the gravel wondering if Becky Rogan was the kind of person who would leave her back door unlocked. Maybe my luck would hold for a little longer. I reached the paved patio and blessedly the crunching on the gravel gave way. I slid the screen door silently back, grateful that it was a new house, not yet rusty and creaky. I held my breath and pulled on the glass door. It moved. I opened it wide enough and slipped through, pushing the light cloth shades aside.

I was five steps into the Rogan's darkened dining room when my luck ran out.

The lights suddenly switched on and through squinting eyes and blurry spots I could see Walter Carson standing by the doorway, one hand on the light switch, the other holding a very large automatic pistol aimed right at me. “You are smarter than I thought, but you're really not too bright, are you?”

The pistol had a large black silencer attached to the front and my first inane thought was wondering where Carson learned to make a silencer. A further sequence of thoughts ran through my head in quick succession. There was no way he was going to let me live. He had to kill me or his whole plan fell apart. My gun, hanging uselessly in a hip holster, might as well have been in Kentucky for all the good it did me with the barrel of his gun steady in my direction. If I was going to try something it had better be now because he would not waste time talking to me.

“Slowly,” he said, “with your index finger and thumb, take your gun out and put it on the ground. If a third finger touches the gun I will shoot you in the left eye.”

I slowly did as he said, taking the gun out of its holster. I then dropped the gun and at the same time, jumped quickly to my left towards the other entrance to the dining room. Carson fired at the same time.

It felt like someone took a backhoe to my left side as the bullet tore through my love handle. I landed in the living room sliding into a coffee table and leaving a runway of blood on the beautiful wood floors. I scrambled to my feet fighting through the pain and nausea that welled up. I hobbled out of the living room, caught a glimpse of Carson coming around the corner - he really did waddle like a penguin - and rounded a corner as two more bullets took out a framed painting on the wall. I saw the stairs and clambered up on hands and knees. Two more bullets thunked into the steps below as I reached the top.

I heard Carson slowly come up the stairs. I risked a peek. A bullet took out drywall an inch from my eye. No way to rush him. In front of me was a bathroom and down the hallway were bedrooms. I moved down the hallway, past two guest bedrooms and into the master suite where Becky Rogan lay silently and unmoving on a rust colored duvet. I thought for a moment that she was dead but then saw that her chest rose and dropped slowly and regularly.

Alive.

For now.

To my right was a walk-in closet with the door ajar, to my left, a cherry oak armoire. I heard Carson reach the top of the stairs and slowly come down the hall.

“Cops are on their way, Carson ,” I said, “might as well save all the trouble.” I closed the doorway to the walk-in closet a bit more than it was, making sure to get some blood on the handle. I then slipped to the side of the armoire that was away from the door.

The steps got closer. I took slow even breaths and fought to keep my eyes open. I knew if I closed them, I would not open them again.

The steps reached the door to the bedroom and stopped. I tensed and waited. I heard him kick open the door to the closet and I sprang. He was quicker than I thought and was almost all the way around when I slammed into him knocking the gun from his hands with my arms.

He was big and I was injured and he was stronger than he looked. I drove a punch into his stomach that was about one-third normal power. He slammed my head into the wall and I felt blood start to trickle down the right side of my face. I tried to bring a knee up to his groin but he turned so that it glanced uselessly off his hip. Another slam against the wall and I saw stars and lights. He then slipped his hands around my neck and started to squeeze.

Jesus he was strong. Must be all the wheelchair rolling I thought stupidly. I felt at last the loss of blood taking effect and knew I didn't have much longer. He squeezed tighter around my neck. I drove my forehead into his nose and a felt satisfying crunch. His hands loosened enough for me to break his arms away and push him back against the wall. I dropped to the ground heaving for breath.

I looked up and Carson was again on his feet. He had regained his gun and swung it in my direction.

There was a gunshot and a red spot appeared dead center of his chest and he dropped to the ground instantaneously.

Darren Chappa stood in the doorway, smoking gun in hand, a throng of cops and medical personnel were gathered behind him. I slumped back against a wall. He stepped aside to let them in the room. A group of medics went to Becky Rogan and a group to me

The paramedics started their ministrations which I barely noticed

“You know,” Darren said holstering his pistol, “you aren't too bright.”

I could feel the blood pouring out of my left side. I felt like a water barrel with a gash in it. A needle slipped into my arm. “So people keep telling me,” I said, and passed out.

***

Darren walked into my hospital room while I was watching an awful daytime soap opera involving much more bed swapping than one normally sees in a sleepy coastal town.

I had a bandaged right temple, multiple IVs and a heavily bandaged left side that felt like it was gnawed at by either a Doberman or a poodle depending on how much drugs were in my system. I clicked off the TV as Darren sat down.

“Becky Rogan all right?” I asked.

Darren nodded. “ Carson drugged her. He showed up to talk and they had drinks. Hers with a little something extra.”

“Is Will Rogan out of jail?”

Darren nodded again. “It took some doing because the D.A. was camping at Mount Graham but I managed to finally get him out.”

“Is there anything you need me to fill in or have you sussed it all out by now?”

“I am a trained detective you know,” Darren said. “ Carson wanted to off his wife and also really wanted control of his company. Being the multi-tasker he is, he opted for the two birds-one stone approach. He started having play dates with his wife, dressing up, meeting in bars, role playing and the like. Then meets her at the Westin dressed as a cowboy. He offs her, dumps her after planting some hair from Rogan that he probably got off a brush or something in their office bathroom where both sometimes spend the night, and hires you to find her so he looks like the concerned husband.”

“And no one's going to suspect him since no one knows he can walk without the wheelchair,” I added.

“Exactly. We go looking for a cowboy and lookee, he works with one. He knew he looked enough like Rogan that some Mr. Magoo of a bartender would probably ID him if we showed a picture of Rogan. I got to admit I bought it. I thought Rogan looked good for it.”

“Me too. I never would have thought different if Becky Rogan hadn't called me.”

“She's lucky you did.”

“Well, I was lucky too.”

“Damn right you were. Lucky that a certain police receptionist, whom you were very rude to, decided to go the extra mile and make sure a certain police detective knew how important you seemed to think your message was. I'd say that you would maybe owe that lady an apology.”

“I'll send her flowers,” I said.

“Good idea,” He said.