though his actions required no thought at all. The man went flat against the wall and turned quickly to peek in through the glass window in the back door. Seeing no one, he sent his gloved hand through the glass and was turning the knob from the inside in half a second. And then he was gone, disappearing into the house. Textbook moves, Victor thought.
Tom stared at Victor and asked, “Who the hell was that?”
Victor returned the stare and shrugged. They waited another minute. Glancing back and forth from the house to each other. But with every second, Lugano was getting further away. They might lose him. Finally, Victor started the car and pulled away.
“Fuck it,” he said. “If the bastard’s getting robbed, it only proves there’s justice in the world.”
“Karmic fate,” Tom laughed.
“Fuckin’ A.”
XXVII
All night, the pieces churned inside him: the dog’s piss running through the dust on the tire; the wheel ruts in the sand in the desert; the tee-pee of baseball bats in the corner by the door; the curvature of the dent in the aluminum frame of the dead man’s backpack. Then there was Ron’s strange and nervous tone. The conversation replayed itself in an infinite loop, posing the same question over and over: Why would a forklift driver move from Houston for a job driving a forklift? Surely there were forklift jobs in Houston. Loading and unloading trucks had very little to do with the oil industry. All of it seemed connected in ways that made no sense, but persisted nonetheless.
After a fitful sleep, Mickey lurched up from unconsciousness knowing immediately that it was Ron, without entirely knowing why. He sat upright in the bed, wondering why he hadn’t seen it sooner. And almost as soon as it seemed clear he was overwhelmed with doubt. Didn’t it seem absurd? How could he be sure? There was nothing about Ron Grimaldi that seemed suspicious—certainly nothing that suggested he was a killer. What would the motive be? It made no sense at all.
But Mickey couldn’t help thinking about it. At his kitchen counter, making coffee, he ran through everything he knew about Grimaldi, which he realized was next to nothing. The guy moved to town a few years before. He worked at Monarch. He coached baseball. He was quiet and kept to himself and never caused any trouble of any kind. In nearly every way, Ron Grimaldi was a model citizen, at least by Mickey’s standards. Keep your mouth shut, keep to yourself, don’t bother anyone. If only everyone were like that.
In the Suburban, he thought about the footprints in the sand memorializing the young man’s final moments. Then he remembered the stink of the rotting body. Mickey winced at the thought of it. Disturbing memories of death floated through his head. He shook them off as he ran into his office to grab the file.
Jimmy looked up from the counter and checked his watch. “Bit early for you, isn’t it, Chief?”
Mickey grunted and went through to the back, snatched the file off his desk, and flipped through it on his way back down the hall. There was virtually nothing in it but a few grisly Polaroids, a brief medical report from Dr. Kramer, photocopies of the kid’s ID, the background check, the parents’ address, and the notes from the brief but painful conversation he’d had with them.
Jimmy looked up again when Mickey came back into the room. Mickey lingered at the end of the counter, thumbing through the file, and then closed it and asked, “What do you know about Grimaldi? The baseball coach?”
Jimmy scratched at his wide, square jaw and then folded his arms across his chest. “Seems like an alright guy. Guess I never thought about him much. Quiet. Keeps to himself.” Jimmy raised his eyebrows and shrugged. What else was there to say?
“You remember when he came to town?”
“Not really.” Jimmy took a drink from a Remington Firearms coffee mug and added. “Been here four or five years I guess. Something like that.”
“Yeah. I guess it’s been about that long.” Mickey set the folder on the counter and put his hands on his hips. “You hear about the 911 we had last night?”
“Carl said something about it when I came in. Said it was an erroneous call or something. No big deal.”
“It was at Grimaldi’s house. We went though the place. Didn’t find anything. But he seemed kind of strange. I guess it got me thinking about the guy and I realized I