The Innocent

Thurston came around and half-sat/half-leaned against the front lip of her desk. She folded her arms and focused her attention on Loren.

“Tell me what you have so far.”

Loren glanced at Ed Steinberg. He nodded.

“We have three dead people. The first, well, we don’t know her real name. That’s why we’re here.”

“This would be Sister Mary Rose?” Thurston asked.

“Yes.”

“How did you stumble across her case?”

“Pardon?”

“I understand that the death was originally ruled of natural causes,” Thurston said. “What made you look into it deeper?”

Steinberg took that one. “The Mother Superior personally asked Investigator Muse to look into it.”

“Why?”

“Loren is an alum of St. Margaret’s.”

“I understand that, but what made this Mother Superior . . . what’s her name?”

“Mother Katherine,” Loren said.

“Mother Katherine, right. What made her suspect foul play in the first place?”

“I’m not sure she suspected anything,” Loren said. “When Mother Katherine found Sister Mary Rose’s body, she tried to resuscitate her with chest compressions and discovered that she had breast implants. That didn’t mesh with Sister Mary Rose’s history.”

“So she came to you to find out what was up?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Thurston nodded. “And the second body?”

“Max Darrow. He was a retired Vegas police officer now residing in the Reno area.”

They all looked at Adam Yates. He stayed still. So, Loren thought, this would be the game. They’d roll over and maybe, just maybe, the feds would award them with a tiny doggie treat.

Thurston asked, “How did you connect Max Darrow to Sister Mary Rose?”

“Fingerprints,” Loren said. “Darrow’s fingerprints were found in the nun’s private quarters.”

“Anything else?”

“Darrow was found dead in his car. Shot twice at point-blank range. His pants were down around his ankles. We think the killer tried to make it look like a prostitute rolled him.”

“Fine, we can go into the details later,” Thurston said. “Tell us how Max Darrow connects to the third victim.”

“The third victim is Charles Talley. For one thing, both Talley and Darrow lived in the Reno area. For another, they were both staying at the Howard Johnson’s near Newark Airport. Their rooms were next door to one another’s.”

“And that’s where you found Talley’s body? At the hotel?”

“Not me. A night custodian found him in the stairwell. He’d been shot twice.”

“Same as Darrow?”

“Similar, yes.”

“Time of death?”

“It’s still being worked on, but sometime tonight between eleven P.M. and two A.M. The stairwell had no air-conditioning, no windows, no ventilation—it had to be over a hundred degrees in there.”

“That’s why Investigator Muse here looks like that,” Steinberg said, gesturing with both hands as if he were presenting a soiled prize. “From being in that sauna.”

Loren shot him a look and tried to hold back from smoothing her hair. “The heat makes it more difficult for our ME to pinpoint a better time frame.”

“What else?” Thurston asked.

Loren hesitated. Her guess was that Thurston and Yates probably knew—or at least, could readily learn—most of what she’d already told them. So far, this had all been about getting up to speed. All that she really had left—all that she’d have that they probably wouldn’t—was Matt Hunter.

Steinberg held up a hand. “May I make a suggestion?”

Thurston turned toward him. “Of course, Ed.”

“I don’t want to have any jurisdictional hassles here.”

“Neither do we.”

“So why don’t we just pool our resources on this one? Totally open communication both ways. We tell you what we know, you tell us what you know. No holding back.”

Thurston glanced at Yates. Adam Yates cleared his throat and said, “We have no problem with that.”

“Do you know the real identity of Sister Mary Rose?” Steinberg asked.

Yates nodded. “We do, yes.”

Loren waited. Yates took his time. He uncrossed his legs, tugged at the front of his shirt as if trying to get some air.

“Your nun—well, she’s not even close to being a nun, believe me—was one Emma Lemay,” Yates said.

The name meant nothing to Loren. She looked at Steinberg. He, too, had no reaction to the name.

Yates continued: “Emma Lemay and her partner, a cretin named Clyde Rangor, disappeared from Vegas ten years ago. We did a fairly massive search for both of them but turned up nothing. One day they were there, the next—poof—they were both gone.”

Steinberg asked, “How did you know we found Lemay’s body?”

“The Lockwood Corporation had her silicone implants marked. The NCIC now puts everything they can into the national database. Fingerprints, you know about. DNA and descriptions, those have been in there for a while. But now we’re working on a national database for medical devices—any kind of joint replacements, surgical implants, colostomy bags, pacemakers—mostly to help identify Jane and John Does. You get the model number, you put it in the system. It’s new, pretty experimental. We’re trying it out on a select few that we’re very anxious to locate.”

“And this Emma Lemay,” Loren said. “You were anxious to locate her?”

Yates had a good smile. “Oh, yes.”

“Why?” Loren asked.

“Ten years ago Lemay and Rangor agreed to turn on a nasty perennial RICO top-ten asswipe, guy named Tom ‘Comb-Over’ Busher.”

“Comb-Over?”

“That’s what they call him, though not to his face. Been his nickname for years, actually. Used to be, he had this comb-over going. You know, when he started going bald. But it just kept growing. So now he kinda twirls it around and around, looks like he stuck a cinnamon swirl on top of his head.”

Yates chuckled. Nobody else did.

Thurston said, “You were talking about Lemay and Rangor?”

“Right. So anyway, we nailed Lemay and Rangor on pretty serious drug charges, pressed them like hell, and for the first time, we got someone on the inside to flip. Clyde Rangor and Comb-Over are cousins. They started working with us, taping conversations, gathering evidence. And then. . . .” Yates shrugged.