Primed for Murder (10 page)

“Can I see it?” Bart asked eagerly.

“It’s already wrapped up. I was going to take it to the landfill, grab a beer someplace on the way back.” He glanced at the pair of aluminum cans sprawled carelessly on the truck’s seat. Bart couldn’t see them from where he stood.

“Which landfill?”

“Off Genesee.”

“One out by Liverpool’s closer. Want some company?” Bart yanked the gun and the elastic waistband snapped against his skin. “I’ll put this away, grab pants and shirt, be back in a jiffy. I’ll even buy the beer.”

“Tell you the truth, Bart, I’m a little beat.” That was no lie. “Think I’ll skip the drink, after all. I’ll just drop kitty and come straight back.”

“I’ll still go with you for the ride. Can’t sleep anyway.”

“What about—?”

“Barbara? We’re quits. She moved out this afternoon. I’m batching it again. That’s why I can’t sleep. So how about that ride?”

“To be honest—” Toby was using up a year’s supply of false sincerity, all in one go—“I’d rather be alone tonight, if you don’t mind. Got things to think about. I’d be lousy company.”

Bart gave him a long stare that seemed to say, “You don’t like me—do you?”

Toby was indifferent to Bart—neither friend nor foe—and that was probably worse than having feelings for him one way or the other. By all accounts, nobody else in the house cared for the creepy slob in the slightest. But his off-putting looks and manner mustn’t have mattered to the succession of girls, some not half-bad in appearance, that Bart brought home for a day, a week, or a month.

Eventually, Bart turned away, hairy shoulders slumped, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other. He slouched towards his apartment. “I’ll take a rain check on that beer,” Toby called after him.

Bart disappeared around the corner of the house. A moment later, a door slammed shut with a sound of finality.

Toby jumped into the cab, started the engine and roared off. Best thing was to get out of here, in case Bart decided to come back. At the end of the driveway he remembered he hadn’t locked the garage doors. Go back? Forget it. There wasn’t much worth stealing. Besides, the space could use a good airing-out.

“Damn me and my big mouth!” Toby turned left onto James Street and accelerated towards the city. Now he couldn’t leave the body at a landfill, as he’d planned. If the dead man turned up there, it would be in the papers, on TV. Bart was bound to learn about it. He might remember this night and put two and two together.

Or was he being paranoid? “Nothing wrong with a little healthy paranoia.” He checked the speedometer. Keep it under the limit, dummy.

There had to be a perfect place to drop the stiff.

Lay him out on that bus bench? Cover him with newspapers so he looked like a sleeping derelict? No, the bench was right under a streetlight. Someone might witness the setup and call the law. On the other hand, the corpse might lie there for days before somebody told it to shove over and share the seat.

Then the bench was blocks behind. He didn’t feel like going back.

How about sitting him in a swing, let him ride a playground teeter-totter? Nope. Bad idea. Some kid might discover the body. Probably give him a complex. Years from now at his trial the once innocent little boy, now grown into a strapping punk, would be asked by a district attorney: “Why’d you machine-gun those thirty-seven co-workers at the post office?”

The kid would sob, tears in his eyes: “I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t seen that awful dead corpse when I was just a tad of five.” Some doctor would come up with a fancy name for just this sort of affliction. They’d probably let the killer off with an apology for what society had done to warp the impressionable kid he’d been.

There, that’s just the spot.

Toby pulled to a stop under a full-spread maple beside the sidewalk, turned off lights and ignition, and sat, invisible within a wide pool of darkness. Lampposts weren’t needed this side of the street, because all occupants for six square blocks were deep in perpetual rest.

The old Grove Street Cemetery was a relic from Syracuse’s early days, fenced with wrought-iron pickets, shaded by mature hardwoods and bounded at each end by cross streets. The rectangular grounds sloped gently, from south to north on the shorter axis. The few acres were crowded with weathered vaults and clusters of monuments. Nobody had been laid to rest here since the First World War. Until now—what better place, thought Toby, to put a new body than in an old cemetery?

He clicked off the interior light, eased his door open and closed it softly as he stepped out. He leaned against the side of the truck, heard the engine tick as it cooled, listened for other sounds, watched for movement. It was quiet here, though balmy wind rustled leaves, bringing whiffs of heated motor oil and the faint rush of traffic from never-sleeping Highway 690, a dozen blocks west. Big, old two- and three-story houses bordering the cemetery were, except for occasional porch lights, dark and still. Nobody was walking a dog or strolling off insomnia. Nothing moved at all, anywhere.

Toby quickly undid knots securing the tarp along one side of the truck. He flung back the cover and climbed into coveralls. With a grimace he wrestled the swaddled corpse onto a shoulder and made for the cemetery at a fast waddle. The man felt like a bag of mush under layers of newspaper and cloth. The bundle stank to high heaven, like a mound of spoiled hamburger left to rot in the sun.

Toby darted through a man-sized gap in the fence, almost tripping over a square of granite protruding from the ground. Weaving crazily to maintain balance, he dodged rows of tombstones like blunt teeth and skirted carved stone vaults half the size of a caboose. Near the center of the cemetery, where monuments were thickest, he placed his burden on a slab of marble set flush with the ground.

Panting, Toby unwrapped the body. He folded newspapers into drop cloth—he’d dispose of them elsewhere later—then peeled back the carpet. Freed, foul odor arose, overpowering sweet fragrances of new-mown grass and fading floral arrangements. Toby pinched his nostrils shut, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

In faint illumination from distant streetlights, the dead man looked terrible, skin blotchy, gray and sagging. His sunken eyes were chipped, dull agates a kid might have thrown out of a marble collection. The tan suit was stained where body fluids had leaked.

Yet even in death, there was something noble about the man. The ancient profile proudly carved the night air. The hawk nose and thick lips looked sculpted now, as though turning to the weathered stone of a jungle-shrouded Mayan temple.

Whoever he was, the dead man deserved better than this. But Toby had his own sweaty neck to protect. He centered the body on the rug, lined it lengthwise on the white marble rectangle. The tomb belonged to a merchant named Jonas Adams who died in 1847, according to figures, once deeply chiseled, now soft-edged and timeworn.

Toby felt he should mumble something over the body, a message of farewell, at least. But no comforting words came. What could he say? He didn’t even know the man’s name. Or why he’d been killed. Or who’d killed him. He didn’t know lots of things that might be important for sorting out this whole business.

“My only connection with you,” Toby whispered to the corpse, “is that somebody fobbed you off on me. I’ve had to work like hell to get rid of you.”

What a thing to send after someone bound for the next world!

“You’re dead. I’m still kicking, and I’m plenty pissed.” Now that he thought about it, he really was angry. His face felt flushed and his heart was racing. He was as alert and energetic as if he’d had fifty cups of coffee. The beer made him bold.

“Mister, I promise you, somebody’s going to pay for roping me into this. I’m going to find out what happened. People are going to be in big trouble. Maybe you’ll be revenged, after all.” Figuring it couldn’t hurt, he formed a sloppy sign of the cross over the body. “Sleep well, friend.”

Toby backed away towards the truck. Was it his imagination, a trick of uncertain light, or did the old dead man appear to be smiling?

Chapter 9

Too wired to return home and hit the sack, too loaded to care what might happen next, Toby shucked the overly warm coveralls. He climbed into his truck, chugged a beer, let loose a loud belch. He started the engine. At the far end of the cemetery, he swung right, northeast, toward the Puterbaugh place. “Let’s see what they’re up to.” They’d caused him problems. Maybe he could return the favor.

On the way, he stuffed the bloody newspapers into a dumpster full of worse stuff behind a fish market. A few blocks farther he wadded the stained drop cloth into an overflowing Salvation Army collection bin in the parking lot of a darkened, decrepit strip mall. Now, everything that could incriminate him—except the papers in his oven and he wasn’t yet sure what to do with them—was taken care of.

He could almost envision events as they would unfold. The body would be discovered today or tomorrow for sure. Somebody taking a shortcut or chasing a stray Frisbee or bringing flowers to a long-dead relative or caretaking the cemetery grounds was bound to stumble across it. Cops would be called. They’d investigate and figure right away the man hadn’t been killed in the graveyard. Dixon and French would hear about it, learn that the corpse and the rug he lay on matched the description Toby had given them. Then what? “They’ll talk to the Puterbaughs.” Toby cruised dark, silent streets. “And they’ll talk to me.”

He’d have to make up a reasonable story and stick to it. Maybe he should have buried the man, after all. Then the whole problem would be out of sight, out of mind.

No, even underground the body would continue to gnaw at him like a zombie. It was better this way: out in the open to shake things up, make things happen. “I’m innocent, so I have nothing to worry about. But other people are going to start sweating soon.”

A couple blocks south of Charbold Street, Toby parked. The Puterbaughs might recognize the truck, even in the dark, especially if they were the ones who had unloaded the body on him. He left the truck behind a light-colored compact sedan wearing a fine layer of dust—in which some sidewalk wag had written with a finger WASH ME on the hood. The car had a couple parking tickets tucked under the driver’s windshield wiper.

Toby walked north until he found the alley he was looking for, turned down it, but stopped after a few feet.

A car colored black by night was parked along the fence behind the Puterbaugh’s, facing away. A silhouette showed in the driver’s seat: the man raised a hand to his mouth and a cigarette coal glowed in the dark interior. Was it the same vehicle Toby had seen pull away after the murder? It was impossible to tell in the dark. If he inched closer to catch the license plate number, he might be spotted. Toby continued up the block, veered onto Charbold, and slowly approached 1413. The fence along the alley hid the car waiting there. The man in the car couldn’t see him either.

Three houses in the neighborhood showed signs of life. The bluish flicker of a television set came from a downstairs window of an insomniac’s house on the corner. Farther down the street an upstairs light came on—long enough for someone to visit a bathroom—before being extinguished. The third house was the Puterbaugh’s where a lamp burned in the den. As Toby neared, a figure moved between light and window, casting a blurry, human-shaped silhouette on the blinds.

Toby left the sidewalk and crept across the lawn into shadow beneath the window. The sash was raised to create a draft and a gentle breeze ruffled the blinds. From inside came the murmur of voices. Toby held his breath to hear the words.

“Keep playing dumb,” a man said. “Shouldn’t be tough for you.” The voice, which Toby had never heard before, was flat, calm and unemotional. By the way his words faded as he spoke, the man was moving away from the window.

“You have no right—” Sandy Puterbaugh said.

The unknown man interrupted. “I have every right. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you hadn’t been nosy, if you’d just done what you were paid to do.”

Mr. Puterbaugh said with an edge, “It would not have happened if your man here had not panicked, Leo.” He was at a distance, perhaps sitting at the desk.

Another man, somewhere deep in the room, said, “Hey, the guy jumped me.” He sounded young, his upstate accent broad and nasal, the tone of his voice as deadened as a cracked brass bell. “Get over it.”

“Artie was protecting our interests,” the man called Leo said. “He did what he thought was right at the time. He didn’t have lots of choices.”

“What was Artie doing here?” Sandy shrilled.

If anyone answered, Toby didn’t hear it. Just then, a car with a loud muffler accelerated down Charbold, blasted noisily through a succession of stop signs, flew sleek and red beneath streetlights, roared past the house and sped away.

A man came nearer to the window to listen. His shadow loomed on the blinds. Toby shrank back against the clapboards. “We knew you’d snooped the minute you delivered the package,” Leo said from above. “Our man down south packed the goods a certain way. It was different when you gave it to us. Which of you did it? And why?”

“Me,” Sandy said in a tiny voice. “I was curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.” Leo emphasized the second word.

“We were worried it might contain drugs, that is why we opened it.” Mr. Puterbaugh sounded strained. “We had the children to think of.”

“Where are your kids, by the way?” Leo asked.

“They’re staying with friends in Mattydale,” Sandy said. “Why?”

“No reason. Just wondered.” To Toby, there was sinister purpose in Leo’s offhand question. But to be fair, the man’s cold voice might give that impression if he was talking about the weather.

Leo moved away from the window. “Let’s stick to reality, okay? You know we wouldn’t send you all the way down there after drugs that can be purchased off any street corner in the country.”

“Mr. G’s not into that,” the man named Artie added.

“He is more interested in other illegal activities,” Mr. Puterbaugh said.

“His business is none of your business, Jim,” Leo snapped. “You were hired to do a specific job. You were paid well for it. You agreed to do it our way. Right?”