Rage Against the Dying - By Becky Masterman Page 0,72
even me to know about. I couldn’t know any of these things, but at least I could find out where her parents lived and check that part of the story.
Today Floyd Lynch would be making his guilty plea in court, and as far as I knew, we had nothing. I’d go to the hearing in time to see what was going on, but until then I had time to cover my tracks before Max found out anything more about my involvement with Gerald Peasil.
I told Carlo … I can’t remember now what I told him but I made up something and headed north to San Manuel, Peasil’s last known.
Thinking while I drove, what if the guy was just talking out of his ass, Quinn? What if he was mentally ill? What if there are no victims? What if you killed an innocent man? Look at Floyd Lynch.
I have to admit, part of my reason for going up there was to prove to myself that I hadn’t killed an innocent man.
Repeating to myself that I had seen blood in the van, I drove as fast as I dared, taking a little over a half hour to drive up two-lane Route 77 and turn right on Tiger Mine Road past a decayed sign that almost welcomed me to San Manuel.
San Manuel is a crummy little town about forty miles northeast of Tucson, off Route 77. A thriving copper mine there made the place quite attractive for a while, to the extent that they even put in a golf course. With the mine petering out, the town is pretty much abandoned, the golf course hardly green. The main road runs between depressed housing on the right and mine tailings on the left, which descend into a milky green lake extending for about a half mile between the town and the Galiuro Mountains farther to the east.
I located Peasil’s address and, usual routine, parked my car down the street where it couldn’t be identified later. Then I donned a pink terry-cloth turban and my Jackie-O sunglasses, slipped on some three-inch wedgies to make me look taller, and walked to the kind of house that would rent a room to the likes of Gerald Peasil. I wondered for a moment what I would have done if I’d found Max’s car there, but there was no vehicle parked in front. A HOUSE FOR RENT sign stuck into the sparsely graveled yard gave me my in. A whiskered old woman who filled her howling-coyote-print caftan came to the door.
Formal introductions were not required. But as we picked our way through drying lantana to the back of her property where a little adobe casita would have afforded Peasil the required privacy, she eyed my turban and the sunglasses.
“You been sick?” she asked.
I mumbled something in a southern accent.
“I been through that, too.”
I mumbled something else. Maybe she figured it was her hearing, because she didn’t ask me to repeat myself.
“The last guy was here for some months but he hasn’t been around for a couple of weeks. He owes me back rent. He paid by the week,” she said.
“It looks like the kind of place that would suit me,” I said, standing at the doorway of the single room building that looked like it had been trashed with no rhyme or deliberation. It smelled, too, and I closed my eyes, trying to detect whether it was simply old food and bad aim at the toilet or something worse.
“Has to be cleaned up, I guess,” said the woman.
“Doesn’t look like he did much entertaining,” I murmured as if talking to myself, seeing what else I could get from her.
“Now and then I heard some noise, like he had girls in. Maybe a woman yelling once, a fight. None of my business.”
For her it was gossip. For me it was crime scene reconstruction. I couldn’t pursue the line of thought and only hoped Max would. “Oh, I’ve seen worse. Would you mind … I’m looking for a place away from it all, to finish a book I’m writing.”
The woman laughed. “One of those mem-was?”
I looked at the old woman and wondered when Peasil would have made her his next victim. Just before he moved on? Go ahead and make fun of me, lady. I probably saved your life. “Would you mind leaving me alone here for fifteen minutes or so, just so I can see if I feel the inspiration of the place? I promise I won’t touch anything.”