Read Online Open Season by Archer Mayor - Free Book Online Page B

voice was stronger.
    “Well, he’ll be back. Is that all right?”
    “Yes. I feel better now. Thank you.”
    I rose and headed for the door. “There is one last thing.”
    “Yes?”
    “We are going to pick up Manny Rodriguez, but until we get his side of the story, none of us is absolutely positive he was the man who assaulted you.”
    “It was his tattoo.”
    She said this in the same flat voice. I returned to her and crouched by her chair. “I realize that, but it may not have been his hand. I know that sounds crazy, but just lately we’ve had a couple of things like this, where someone pretends to be someone else. All I’m saying is that Rodriguez may be innocent.”
    She looked confused. “All right.”
    “The reason I bring it up is that the newspaper is always hot to follow up a story like this one. They’ll try to find out and interview you. So if you mention Rodriguez’s name and he turns out to be innocent, he’ll have a tough time with it. You will, too, of course. We’ll do our damnedest to keep what happened to you private, but secrets are hard to keep unless everyone cooperates.”
    She nodded. “I understand.”
    I squeezed her hand. “Thank you.”
    I sent a nurse in to check on her and called Murphy from a pay phone. I told him Wendy Stiller’s story. “I know Willy’s got his problems, but there’s no way I’m going to sit around waiting for him to waltz in and do what I’ve just done before rounding up Rodriguez. The guy might have one foot on the bus right now, if he’s still in town.”
    Murphy spared me the problem. “I called Kunkle and told him that she’d asked to make a statement and you were hanging around with nothing to do. He didn’t like it, but he swallowed it. I’ll send him to pick up Rodriguez and you file a report to back me up. Once we’ve got the guy downstairs, I’ll make sure you get a crack at him.”
    “Tell Kunkle to be quiet about it, okay? I think I got Stiller to clam up with the news boys. The less they get, the better.”
    “Amen.”
    I hung up. A friend of mine—a former cop—once told me I’d get a lot more money and a lot less grief if I went into the security business as he had done. I’d answered I could live without the corporate politics. He’d laughed.
    Rodriguez hadn’t left town. Kunkle found him at work, contentedly etching frost curlicues on a custom mirror. On first mention of Wendy Stiller’s name, he didn’t even know who she was. He’d been reminded dramatically by the time I got to see him in one of the basement holding cells.
    That part of the building isn’t designed to boost morale anyway. The cells line one wall of a low-ceilinged beige room lit with bare bulbs and spotlights. They’re fancy kennels, really, with one steel fold-away cot and a porcelain toilet per cell. Surveillance cameras are mounted on the opposite wall.
    Rodriguez was our only tenant. He was sitting on the cot with his hands between his knees when I walked in. He sprang to his feet as soon as he saw me. “You’ve got to get me out of here. This is a mistake. I haven’t done anything.” His voice was high-pitched and tinged with hysteria.
    “Relax. It feels worse than it is.”
    “But I’m in jail.” He grabbed the bars and shook them to demonstrate his point.
    “Not for long. Sit down and calm yourself. Come on. Sit.”
    He sat reluctantly. He was about thirty years old, good-looking, with a full head of dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was wearing denim work clothes, also neat and clean.
    “Good. Now hold out your hands, palms down.”
    He looked at me as if I’d lost my marbles, but he did it. There was a wicked triple scratch running across the center of the eagle tattoo on his right hand. It looked infected and painful.
    “How did you get the scratch?”
    He looked at it as if for the first time, thrown further off balance. His words came out more slowly now. “My cat. I threw him out of the house a couple of days ago and