Playing God (26 page)

Beside him, Kyle had pushed his own jacket back to show the gun on his belt, doing one of the things he did best, casting an air of quiet, powerful authority over the proceedings without saying a word. Burgess watched Bailey's eyes flicker from one to the other, and saw the dawning of what was probably a rare thing for the man—a sense that maybe he'd gotten it wrong. The doctor swallowed and his gaze dropped. Score one for the alpha male. This time. Burgess felt a prickling of the hair on the back of his neck, though, and a sense that, despite the setting and their respective professional affiliations, Bailey wasn't someone he was comfortable turning his back on.

"You ready, Joe?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah." He stepped around Bailey and followed Kyle out, pausing outside the door to suck in some air, trying to bring his anger down to a manageable level. He'd just been shoved around by a belligerent asshole in a public place. He had evidence that Bailey was trying to interfere with an investigation and was intimidating witnesses, and he hadn't even dragged the guy down to the station. Man didn't know when to be grateful. Probably didn't know enough to let it drop, either. By the time he got back, Bailey would have called and Cote would be in a new snit.

Kyle waited until he'd calmed down. "I think we just saw a side of Dr. Bailey that few people have seen."

"I think he was surprised, too." After a few minutes, his equilibrium restored, Burgess said, "I still need to speak with the attendant."

"Sure thing."

"Can you call Martha McFarland and see if she can make some time for us?"

Burgess set off across the lot. He didn't know what was going on here—a conspiracy of silence or a bunch of different people, acting from different motives, who happened to work in the same place and share a similar disinclination toward cooperation. The guy in the booth better be cooperative. He wasn't in the mood for any more crap. He knocked on the glass and showed his badge. "Sergeant Burgess, Portland Police. Investigating the death of Dr. Stephen Pleasant. I need to ask you some questions."

Chapter 20

The kid in the booth had a biology textbook open on his lap. He nearly dropped it when Burgess said police, but he recovered himself, closed it, and tried to look calm. "I don't know anything about that, sir," he said. Despite the spiked hair, a jagged mix of blond and black, and the eyebrow ring, he was clean and polite. Not the attitude many of them affected.

Nice parents, Burgess decided. "Maybe," he said, "maybe not. How long have you worked here?"

"Since September."

"You're a student?"

"Yes, sir. USM."

"You usually work days?"

"No, sir. I go to school days, work evenings. They got stuck today, so I cut class."

Burgess got his name and address. "You ever see a big guy in a battered truck come in here, just sit in the truck watching the hospital, and then drive away without ever going inside? Ever notice anything like that?"

The kid considered. Swallowed. "No, sir, I don't think so. We get a lot of battered trucks. I haven't noticed anything special." He shook his head and looked hopefully down at the book. Student or not, this kid liked the easy answers.

Burgess's feet were getting cold. "You never saw someone like that wait down at the far end of the lot, then drive off when Dr. Pleasant came out?"

The kid swallowed again, then stretched his neck and looked down the lot as if the answer might be there. Nothing but rows of dirty cars and piles of dirty snow. "The guy with the bandana?" he offered.

Burgess nodded. "What did he look like?"

The kid's hand described big curves beside his mouth. Kid's nails were polished black. Probably gave his father heart failure, if his father was still in the house. Now that his nieces were growing up, Burgess understood this stuff better. They might look like painted savages and dress like bums, but they were just regular kids. "Mustache," the kid said. "Big one. Dark."

"Can you tell me anything else about him?"

The kid shrugged. "People come. People go. I try not to look at their faces. Too much bad stuff there."

"Try," Burgess suggested.

"He was a big guy. Strong Maine accent."

"Age?"

"About my dad's age, maybe? Forties?"

"Good. What about the truck?"

"GMC. Cap on the back."

"Anything else?"

"The dog?" Like this was a test and he was hoping to get the answers right.

"Big dog? Little dog?"

"Medium. No special type."

"Anything else?" Burgess tried not to throttle him. Kid's brain was like a Magic Eight-ball—ask a question, then wait for the answer to swim into the window. Shaking wouldn't help. He wanted to do it anyway. Finally the kid said, "Dented right fender?"

"He come often?"

"A few times."

"Except for the dog, he was alone?"

"Once he had someone with him. A girl." The kid's eyes darted nervously over Burgess's shoulder. "Excuse me, sir. Cars?"

Burgess stomped his numb feet impatiently while the kid checked out some cars. "Tell me about the girl."

The kid wrapped his arms around himself. Talking with Burgess let the cold in. "I only got a quick look when they drove in. But she was a babe."

"Care to elaborate?"

"Blonde hair. Gorgeous. You know." The kid made curves with his hands.

"Was she the same age as the guy?"

"I told ya. She was a babe." Women in their forties weren't babes, they were mothers. "Like my age."

"She wasn't wearing a coat?" Kid shook his head. "Was the guy wearing a coat?"

The kid shrugged. "I didn't notice."

Thinking with his pecker. "The guy would drive into the lot and then?"

"Sit there with the engine running. I figured he was waiting for someone."

"Anyone ever come out and get into the truck?" Negative. "Anyone ever get out and go inside?" Another negative. "He sat and watched and then what?"

"He'd drive away. He was always in a hurry going out. Used to give me five bucks, no matter how much he owed."

"You figure out why he was driving away?"

"He was following the doctors."

"Which doctors?" Now his ears were freezing. Made him wonder why he'd ever wanted to be a cop. It was a miserable life. Bad hours. Bad pay. Bad dreams. He shifted his shoulders and stomped his feet.

The kid shrugged for the millionth time. Burgess repressed an urge to haul him out of the booth and pound him, knowing it wasn't the kid he wanted to pound, kid was just the next thing that crossed his path. "He followed Mercedes. Couple of the docs have 'em. I thought maybe he was looking to steal one."

"You ever report this to anyone?"

"Not my job, was it?"

"You work the night Pleasant was killed?"

"Yeah. 'Bout froze my ass off."

"Anybody watching him that night, follow him when he left?"

The kid shook his head. "Bandana guy wasn't here that night."

"You happen to notice when Pleasant left?"

"He wasn't in the lot," the kid said unhelpfully. "He never parked here, used to leave his car by the door. Like he was better than everybody else."

"You see him leave?"

"Yeah. But no one followed him except his wife." The hands sketched briefer curves. "Good lookin' blonde, if you don't mind skinny. She didn't follow exactly."

"What did she do?"

"She was waiting by his car when he came out. She'd been standing there a hell of a long time. Musta frozen her ass off. Not that she had much ass to freeze. She looked so pitiful, standing there... she didn't have a hat and the wind was blowing her hair around." The kid traced circles around his head.

Burgess saw Jen Kelly's sad blue eyes, her translucent skin. Pictured that thin hand clutching her coat. Wondered why she'd lied. He looked down the parking lot to the distant hospital door. Could the kid have seen all that? "It's pretty far," he said.

The spiked hair bobbed. "But the lights are bright. And there wasn't much going on. When Dr. Pleasant came out, she went up to him and grabbed his arm. He shook her off. Said something to her. I don't know what it was, but she turned and ran. Ran right across the road without looking, almost got hit. Got into her car and drove right out of the lot without paying. Took the arm clean off."

He touched his forehead, the black fingernails like punctuation marks against the pale skin. The little ring through his eyebrow shivered. "Oh, yeah. Guess I should have remembered that, huh? But my boss told me not to worry about it, said people get upset by things that happen in the hospital, we should be sympathetic. He gave me a twenty, said the family had asked him to apologize, like I was traumatized or something, you know? You ask me, she was the one who was traumatized, pale like a ghost, her hair all wild, tears running down her face. Then he goes and gets killed and she never sees him again."

"You notice a lot," Burgess said. Couldn't organize it or spit it out, but that was no different from a lot of people. Another day, another mood, he'd be grateful for this. "You've seen Pleasant's wife before, waiting for him?"

"Sometimes, back in the fall, she'd be meeting him, like for dinner, I'd guess, because she was all dressed up, but then she'd park and go inside. Last couple months, I haven't seen her at all."

A car behind him honked and the kid jumped a mile. "Excuse me," he said. "I'd better—"

"When did you get the twenty?" Burgess asked.

"Next day."

Burgess muttered thanks through gritted teeth, slogged across the lot, and got in the car. "Get anything?" Kyle asked.

"Terrorists could have been setting up a bazooka and the kid would have sat and watched. Not his job to get involved. It was like pulling teeth, but he did say a couple interesting things. He saw Alana's guy in the truck with the dog, says once the guy had a gorgeous blonde with him. And he saw the Pleasants arguing the night Dr. Pleasant was killed."

"Wouldn't occur to him to come and tell us that, would it? It's the TV generation. Life as entertainment. Attorney McFarland can see us this afternoon. So can we eat, please? My belly button's sticking to my spine."

Kyle got any thinner, he'd vanish, and Burgess needed him. "Whatever you want, Terry. Just give me some heat. My feet are frozen."

"Thought you were the guy always dressed for the weather."

"Alana picked my summer shoes. Where you want to eat?"

"Sportsman's Grill okay?"

A bit heavy on cops, and half the kitchen staff were the usual suspects, but the food was okay. "Fine."

"I admired your restraint with Bailey," Kyle said.

"Don't think I could have taken him with one arm."

"And the sterling admonitions of Captain Cote ringing in your ears."

"Cote's an asshole. Bailey's an asshole. Kid in the parking lot's an asshole." He had a vision of a world populated by hairy pink butts with legs. "You get anything?"

"Tell you over lunch," Kyle grunted, jamming the car into a tight space and turning off the engine. "And whether you're hungry or not, you'd better eat something. In case you haven't noticed, you're in a piss-poor mood."

"You must be a hell of a detective to have figured that out."

Kyle ordered pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy. Burgess got a bowl of beef barley soup. After the waitress had poured their coffee and left, Kyle sighed. "This thing's clear as mud, isn't it?"

"Not so bad, Ter. The wife's lying, the docs are lying, Alana's lying. If we could find anyone else to talk to, they'd be lying. How'd it go with your guys?"

"One of 'em's still living on Sesame Street. Thinks Pleasant was the nicest guy he ever met. Could hardly bring himself to admit he knew about the hookers. He did, though. And when I asked him about drugs, I thought he'd wet his pants."

"And the other?"

"Clams are more talkative."

"The surgeon, right? What the hell is it with these people?"