An End to a Silence: A mystery novel (The Montana Trilogy Book 1) (10 page)

The
Westmoreland
Echo
was the first thing Ward noticed on McNeely’s desk. He was a little
later this morning as he had driven straight to the Honey Pie but it was in
darkness. Didn’t open till eleven anyway but that didn’t calm Ward’s nerves,
which had been on edge since last night. The story under Pete Larsson’s byline
carried a photo of Newton, and Ward knew that it would take another notch out
of Newton’s steadily faltering psyche.

So he was
surprised when Newton emerged from his desk as sprightly as a keen young
rookie. Newton strode over to McNeely’s desk and plucked the newspaper from it
and tossed it into the trash can.

“Ward,”
Newton said, and he walked back to his desk and picked up a box and gestured
towards two more. Ward nodded and he picked up the other two boxes. He followed
Newton towards the door and just as they had almost reached it, Gammond
appeared.

“What you
got there?” Gammond said.

Both
detectives stopped and turned toward Gammond. Ward looked at Newton.

Newton
said, “Just my things. Taking them home.”

Gammond
stared at the boxes for a long spell and nobody moved. Then Newton took the lid
off his box and tilted it towards Gammond. Gammond saw the photographs that
Newton had had on his desk. He waved a fat hand at them both and walked to his
office.

In the
parking lot Newton walked straight to Ward’s Alfa Romeo, and Ward put his boxes
down and popped the trunk. They put the boxes in the trunk and Newton opened
the box with the photos inside. He lifted up the photos and Ward saw the papers
relating to the Ryan Novak case concealed beneath them.

“Your
wife?” Ward said, and Newton nodded. “We’re going out on a limb here.”

“I know
it.”

“Okay.
I’ll take a look at this later,” Ward said, and he dropped the trunk lid.

Back
inside the warm station McNeely said to Ward, “We are where we were. We have no
meaningful forensics from the first scene. All we got is the latents from the
windowsill. We’ve sent away for DNA tests on those but we won’t get the results
back for a day or two. Plus, if he’s not in the fingerprint database, chances
are he won’t be in the DNA one. From the second scene we have even less.”

Ward
said, “Okay. We’ll leave the second scene for now. Statements? How we doing
with those?” He directed that at Poynter, who leaned on the dividing screen
that backed against McNeely’s desk. Ward wondered if that was his favorite
position in the whole world.

“Everything
we got is in the file on your desk, sir,” said Poynter, standing up straight
just long enough to say it before returning to his perch.

“Okay,
I’ll go through those. Let’s keep looking. There has to be something we haven’t
found yet. I know it looks like we haven’t got a whole lot but now might be
time to throw all this in the air and see where it lands. Go back over the
evidence. See if there’s something we’ve missed. Look again at the crime scene
photos. Try to think if there’s anybody else we need to talk to. If we need to
ask more questions we go ask them. Somebody out there knows something.”

Ward’s
desk was like his motel room. Stuff still in boxes and arranged neatly, apart
from the file containing statements that Poynter had put there. He had barely
sat down at his desk since his arrival at the station. Never liked sitting at
desks. He figured detective work was best done on foot and not in front of a
computer screen. He was tucked into the corner of the open-plan office with a
short screen offering minimal privacy. It was department policy. Suggesting
openness and accountability. Ward was okay with that as he didn’t intend to
spend more time than he needed to there. He remained standing as he opened the
file of statements.

A half
hour later he looked at his watch. And he decided Cherry couldn’t be put off.
He grabbed his Stetson and coat and made for the door. As he did, Mallory was
standing by the water cooler and he stepped in front of Ward
 
and
faced up to him.

“I hear
you cowboys are
 
all
fags,” Mallory said through teeth as big, white and gapped as a well-tended picket
fence.

Ward
wasn’t expecting Mallory to be such an outwardly stupid dick as to insult a
more senior colleague but he guessed that he had gotten away with being a dick
for such a long time that it was accepted around these parts. Mallory was a big
man. Tall and well built. But Ward confidently knew that he could drop him with
one punch. But he just paused and sighed, looking at Mallory with doe eyes.

“You got
nice lips,” Ward said, and Mallory stepped back, his lips suddenly pursing and
covering up his dazzling teeth until the lips seemed to disappear altogether.
He let Ward pass and made a little sound of disgust from the back of his
throat. “Catch you later,” Ward said.

McNeely
had seen the exchange from where she sat eating a salad from a plastic container,
and she smiled. Mallory saw her and he stared at her for a couple of seconds
then turned and walked.

“Asshole,”
McNeely said through a mouth full of leaves.

The Honey
Pie was open for business and Ward felt relieved. But that relief was short-lived
as Cherry wasn’t there. The girl working was someone called Sally who had been
called in to cover Cherry’s shift.

“I need
her phone numbers, cell and home,” Ward said, and Sally eyed him with suspicion
until he produced his badge.

“She’s
okay, right?” said Sally, as she wrote down the numbers on her pad and tore
them off.

“Everything’s
fine, ma’am,” Ward said. “I just need to talk to her.” And he left the diner
and called the cell number. Cherry answered after four rings.

“It’s me.
Ward,” he said, trying not to show too much concern. “How you doing? I just
went to the diner and you weren’t there.”

“I’m
fine, detective,” Cherry said, and Ward knew she wasn’t. Something in her
voice. She sounded like she had a mouthful of food but didn’t sound like she
was chewing. “Why’d you want to see me?”

“You sure
you’re okay?”

“I said
I’m fine.”

“Okay,”
Ward said. “I’m going to come and see you. You at home?”

“No,”
Cherry said. “Yes. But I’ve got—I’m in the middle of something.”

“I’m
coming.”

Cherry
became quiet and then Ward thought he heard her choke back tears as she
swallowed a couple of times. Maybe she was eating after all.

“Okay,”
she said.

When Ward
got there he saw her glance quickly through the window and she opened the door
and walked into the house, Ward following. She had her back to him as she
fussed over some dishes in the kitchen sink. Ward approached her slowly and he
placed his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s
okay,” he said. “It’s okay.” And Cherry burst into tears and turned and hugged
him. He hugged her back but she winced with pain and he eased off a little. He
gently held her there for a minute, maybe two, taking the time to calm himself
and to prepare himself for what he knew he was about to see. Cherry let go and
stepped back, her eyes cast down to Ward’s feet but he could see.

“Aw
jeez,” Ward said when he saw her face, bruised and bloodied. “Aw jeez.” Her
left eye was almost closed and was blue and she had a cut that crossed both
lips and made it difficult for her to talk. The right-hand side of her face had
a swollen blue grazed-up ridge where she had struck something hard, probably as
she had fallen. He didn’t see what damage there was under her clothes and she
wasn’t inclined to show him any more than he could already see.

“He came
after you’d left,” she said. “I told you he would do anything to get a fix.
Look what he did. Nice work, huh?”

Ward
fought back rage. She noticed it in his eyes and she held his hand.

“It
wasn’t your fault,” she said. “This is what he does. He didn’t take much. I didn’t
have much. Maybe that’s why” – and she gestured to her face – “this.”

Ward bit
his bottom lip and when he finally spoke he spoke through gritted teeth,
struggling to part his lips through the anger and the sorrow he felt inside. “I
am so sorry,” he said. “I’ll call this in and get someone out here.”

“No,”
Cherry cried, and again she winced against the pain in her middle. “I don’t
want that. The cops don’t do anything.”

And Ward
felt even worse at that. He was quiet for a few moments but he knew she
wouldn’t back down. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

“I don’t
like the sound of your voice. Don’t you do
anything.
Don’t you dare get involved in this… in this
shit.
It’s not your problem. I hardly even know you. Promise me.”

He nodded
and said, “You have my number now. If he comes back you call me.” But he knew
Troy wouldn’t come back.

Cherry
nodded and closed her eyes. When she opened them Ward was gone.

Ward
entered Bill Bear’s Mountain and River Outlet. He bought a pair of ski gloves.
The sales assistant asked him, “Would you like a bag for that?”

Ward
said, “No,” and then, “Actually I will take a bag,” and the assistant handed
over the gloves in a large plastic bag.

“I’m
sorry, it’s the only size we have.”

“That’s
fine,” Ward said. He left and climbed into his car. He took the gloves out of
the bag and stuffed them into his coat pocket. He scrunched up the bag and
placed it behind his car seat.

It didn’t
take Ward long to find the house where Troy was staying. A rundown 1920s house
in the west side of town, it was ready for demolition but had had a stay of
execution due to City Hall red tape. It had been taken over by squatters of
various bad character and degrees of drug addiction. Two women who turned
tricks for drug money were the first people he saw when he entered the house
without knocking. One sat on the stairs in the hallway smoking a cigarette and
the other was standing and she approached Ward and tried to touch his crotch.
He knocked her arm away and the whip of his hand almost broke her wrist.

“Motherfucker,”
said the whore. She was ready to take a swing at Ward but he shoved her away so
that she sat on the stair next to her colleague. “Motherfucker,” she said again
but this time quieter. She took the cigarette from her friend and took a long
draw on it.

Ward
opened the first door. There were three rooms off this ground-floor corridor.
The first room was dark but there were no curtains. The windows had been
boarded up on the outside and the only light came from a candle burning in an
old jelly jar and the occasional glow of the red tip of a joint that indicated
where a body was. He could make out three in the room, spread out on the floor,
on old duvets and cardboard boxes. Someone was curled up on two sofa cushions
laid end to end to almost make a mattress. The smell offended Ward and he
didn’t want to stay in there longer than he needed to. He went around each body
shape and knew quickly that none of them were Troy. So he left the room and
took a deep breath outside. The two whores didn’t pay him any attention at all
this time.

He made
his way into the next room, which appeared to be empty, and then he saw a lump
in the corner. He strode over and tore the thin bedsheet away and got a “
whatthefuck
” for his trouble. It wasn’t Troy but a man of
about sixty who had no flesh on his bones and no clothes on his body save for
an undershirt. Ward left the room and went into the next one, which had once
been a kitchen. It was empty of people but full of other detritus which he
could just make out as his eyes had adjusted to the gloom – empty beer cans,
cigarette butts, empty food tins.

The
whores parted, leaning away from each other at the shoulder to let Ward step
past and on up the stairs. He reached the upper landing and stopped, reached
into his pocket, pulled out the pair of ski gloves and put them on. There were
four rooms off the landing, one being a bathroom. He ignored that and gently
pushed at the door of the first room. There was somebody in this one. He could
smell the rancid body odor and the marijuana smoke. Light entered through a
small gap in the boarding on the window and he could make out two bodies, one
sitting up but only half-awake and the other curled up in a fetal position.

The half-awake
guy looked up at Ward and started to stand but Ward had seen something he
recognized lying on the floor next to the other guy so he didn’t notice the
first guy come over to him. The first thing he knew was the wind displacement
caused by a fist flying past his head, just catching enough of his face to
register a bit of pain, which cut through Ward’s adrenaline-fueled body. Ward
waited till the punch had passed him and then he wrenched the arm out of the
man’s shoulder socket and spun him towards the open door, the arm flopping
behind him at an unnatural angle. The bum tumbled out onto the landing, his
head crashing against the banister, and he stayed down.

The
commotion had brought the other body awake, and it sat up and made a grab for
its jacket that lay next to its makeshift bed, the jacket that Ward recognized
from the diner. Ward rushed over and stomped on Troy’s wrist, and something
crunched and Troy cried out. Ward kicked away the jacket and then kicked out
behind him to close the door, and as he did so Troy rolled on the floor,
sniffling and cursing and clutching his arm.

Ward took
off a glove and reached into his own jacket and drew out his pistol. Troy saw
it and he stopped crying and shrunk back into his corner of the room, kicking
up dust and narcotic remainders with his scuttling heels. Ward placed the gun
on top of an upturned cardboard box that was being used as a makeshift coffee
table and placed his hat next to the gun. He slipped the glove back on and in
two steps he reached Troy, and Troy whimpered as Ward loomed over him. The
first punch struck Troy high on the head and knocked it to one side. The second
one struck him full in the face, straightening him up, and the world suddenly
became even dimmer for Troy as his brain fought unconsciousness.

Ward
wanted him to remain awake, though, so he turned his attention to Troy’s body
and he let go with two, three, four solid hits to his ribs, feeling more than
one bone break under his fists. Troy yelped and cried like a trapped animal and
then started gasping for breath. And then Ward hit him once more in the face,
this time snapping his nose and he stepped back and Troy lay there, blood
spilling from his nose and from a cut below his left eye.

“If you
go near her again…” Ward said but he didn’t finish the sentence. He took off
his gloves, stuffed them into an evidence bag and then back in his pocket and
straightened his jacket. He turned and picked up his hat from the cardboard box
and put it on and then slowly made his way to the door, where he stopped. He
heard Troy move behind him and when he turned around Troy had his gun. Ward
could see blood coming from his mouth and right ear now and Troy held the gun
shakily in his good hand, the other one hanging by his side. Ward just stared
at Troy and then Troy pulled the trigger. An empty click broke the silence.
Troy gaped at the gun for a second or two, struggling to draw breath, and then
he pulled the trigger four more times, all giving him dull, ineffective clicks.
Ward stepped toward him and Troy dropped the weapon and then sank to the floor,
a piss stain spreading on the front of his jogging pants.

“If I had
come with a loaded gun I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t have killed you. Next time
be assured that the gun will be loaded.” He holstered the gun and left Troy
with those words ringing in his already ringing ears.