Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery (34 page)

“Safe?”

“Safer than safe,” he said, then laughed. “Safe
as
a safe.”

“You want to tell me where?”

“What’s the old saying? Three can keep a secret as long as two are dead.”

“Come
on,
Trey.”

“I need to clean up,” he said, and stepped inside.

*   *   *

Randall and I drank coffee on the deck. Soon Trey stepped from the kitchen in fresh clothes, his hair wet. Instead of pulling up a chair he just squatted, the backs of his thighs pressed tight to his calves. He folded his arms across his knees and said, “What’s going on?”

“You know Josh Whipple, the kid I told you about from Motorenwerk?” I said. “If Patty Marx is right, he’s a flat-out psycho. Got started killing his mother when he was nine years old.”

“Mother of God.”

“Killed aunts, uncles, cousins, grannies,” I said. “It was him killed your father, Ollie Dufresne, and Ollie’s mom.”

Trey worked his mouth. After a while he said, “What about the police, Conway?”

“They’re looking for him. I hope they get him soon. But he knows about your father’s stash, and he wants it.”

“He can have every penny if he’ll let us alone,” Trey said.

I was proud of him. There aren’t a lot of people can kiss seventy-five grand good-bye, especially once they’ve got it spent in their heads. “Wish it were that simple,” I said. “But there’s more dough. A lot more.”

“Where?”

“Wish I knew.” I had an idea, but wanted to keep it to myself.

“Tactically speaking,” Randall said, “the primary question is whether Josh can find us.”

I shook my head. “Thought about that. The house is still in my friend’s name, and Josh never heard of him. Takes a year or more for the records to transfer and the databases to catch up.”

“So this is a safe base of operations,” Randall said.

I nodded.

“I know you well enough to guess what happens next,” he said. Trey watched our conversation like a tennis match.

“So tell me,” I said.

“We’re going to take a run at Josh.”

“
I’m
going to. I need you to keep an eye on things down here.”

“But we just agreed this is a safe house.”

“Belt and suspenders.”

Randall smiled with one corner of his mouth. “When you find Monsieur Whipple, what are your, ah, intentions?”

“Give him to the cops.”

“Really?”

“Really. I don’t go looking for … for the things I run into.”

“You do manage to find them, though.”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“Ever wonder why?”

“No.”

“Yours is but to do or die,” Randall said, and snorted a laugh. I didn’t bother to ask what the hell he meant.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Inside the house, I worked my cell. Called Charlene. No word on Fred. I hemmed and tap-danced, then finally asked her to stay away from her house, to come to Framingham after work instead.

“Why in God’s name would I do that?”

Shit. “One of the players in this Tander Phigg thing is bad news,” I said.

“So?”

“So he might come looking for me.”

“He might show up on
my
doorstep looking for
you
?”

“He busted into my truck today. Your address is on the registration.”

“And that,” she said, “is how things go when Conway Sax is in your life.”

I said nothing.

“
Je
sus, Conway!” Click.

*   *   *

Waiting. I’m better at it than I used to be. Prison does that.

Long evening. To pass time I prowled the yard, picking up construction scrap. Cell in one pocket, cordless home phone in another, hoping for word on Josh.

On Fred.

Looking down, I started to round the corner into the backyard … and heard a voice that stopped me.

Myna Roper. With all hell breaking loose, I’d forgotten about her. I slowed, stuck my head around the corner, looked at the deck.

She sat next to Trey on folding chairs. She was talking, he was listening. Spread across their laps was an oversize three-ring binder. Myna would point at something in the binder, talk about it, look at it a few seconds, flip the page. Next time the page flipped, I saw a black-and-white photo.

Myna was showing Trey his father’s five happy years.

In her trailer, she’d pointed at Tander’s stunning picture of her and claimed it was the only memento she saved from back then.

It was a lie.

I was glad.

I smiled, backed away, and walked softly to the front porch.

*   *   *

The next morning I headed north before dawn. I was dying to get in touch with McCord, see what the Motorenwerk task force had turned up, but with things as hot as they were, it couldn’t be good for him to have cell contact with me.

McCord was thinking the same way. As I worked north on Route 495, a text buzzed in from a strange number:
Know who this is?

Smart. He’d bought an el cheapo prepaid cell. I texted back:
U drive a charger. Mwerks search?

H yes, $ no

Thoro?

They tore it apart

Thx

Use this #

Duh

So the task force had found heroin traces in Ollie’s garage, but no big pile of money.

Huh.

So why did I still think Phigg’s Mercedes was the key? Why’d I think I could find what thirty cops with Sawzalls had missed?

Because I knew the pride Ollie had taken in stashing drugs. Because I knew Phigg’s obsession with the car.

Because the suicide mission, the stupid odds, the brass-balls attack is what you live for.

Okay, that, too.

I drove and I thought, trying to click pieces in place.

Patty Marx showed up a year and a half ago, did the tender reunion bit with Tander Phigg, and sold him a horseshit vision of the two of them in Canada. Phigg bought it and started cashing out.

At some point, I still believed—despite the thirty cops tearing apart Motorenwerk and coming up dry—Phigg had Ollie hide the money in the Mercedes. He’d somehow figured out Ollie’s drug connection. The knowledge had to be his leverage, and it explained why Phigg and Ollie hated each other from the get-go. Phigg made the deal worth Ollie’s while with seventy-five thousand untraceable—but kept the whip hand by paying only on delivery.

I played with ideas. Josh hadn’t been working at the shop for long, so the Mercedes could have been all buttoned up and buried under a car cover by the time he hit the scene. Then maybe he got a whiff of the deal via Phigg’s big mouth. It was easy to picture Phigg bullshitting around at Motorenwerk, saying golly he was broke but not really, wink wink. It was the type of thing he’d do. And smart-as-a-whip Josh, acting dumb and doing oil changes, wouldn’t miss a word.

You could build a scene where Phigg owed Ollie the seventy-five grand from the pump house—stash one—but was holding back for some reason, and couldn’t get his Mercedes—stash two—until he paid up. Mexican standoff.

And you could picture Josh getting nosy, antsy—two big wads of money so close he could nearly touch them.

You could picture him forcing the issue. It felt right.

But something wouldn’t click. I sighed. The more I chased it, the greasier it would be. Had to wait until it came to me. So I headed for Motorenwerk.

*   *   *

But had a stop to make first.

I slowed when I saw the mailbox embedded in the steel rims, pulled slowly down the dirt road to minimize bumps and dust. The sun was just rising behind me, and as I rolled into the Beets’ clearing I noticed that for the first time, the goddamn dog behind the main house wasn’t howling and going nuts.

I looked to my left.

Black Escalade, Quebec plates. All four tires and wheels were off, the SUV sitting on half-assed jack stands of cinder blocks and wood. Best of all, the rear portion of the roof had been hacksawed off to turn the thing into a huge four-door pickup truck.

For all I knew, the dog out back wasn’t howling because he’d finally been fed a decent meal.

I backed out. Didn’t feel as bad as I’d thought I would.

Heroin.

*   *   *

As I passed Dot’s Place in Rourke, a block and a half from Mechanic Street, the thing I’d forgotten, the piece that prevented everything from clicking into place, hit me. It hit hard, the way those things always do. Hard enough so that I pulled over in front of a real-estate storefront with yellowing poster board in its window, the poster board covered with edges-curling snapshots of homes that would never sell.

I called my house. Waited, three rings, glanced at my Seiko, not yet seven o’clock, four rings, come on, don’t let it go to voice mail.…

“Yes?”

“Trey?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Conway. Get Patty Marx. Hurry.”

She’d slept on the family room couch, basically our prisoner though nobody said so, Randall and I nervous over what she’d do if we sent her away. It took Trey forty-five seconds to wake her and get her to the phone, me staring at my watch, clicking possibilities.

“’Lo,” she finally said.

“You researched Josh Whipple,” I said. “The Utica killing happened when he was seventeen, and next thing you told us a Vermont newspaper profiled him.”

“The tragic orphan. Right. So?”

“Where in Vermont?”

“What do you mean?”

“What paper? What town?”

“Jesus, I don’t know. Want me to look it up?”

“Yes.”

I waited some more as the laptop was fired up, the folder and Word document found, the link followed. What had Josh said at Purgatory Chasm?
I’ll tell Fred you said hello!
I’d assumed it was bullshit talk, that Josh had somehow learned Fred was missing and was shooting me a little
fuck-you-very-much
look.

Could it have been more than that? As I listened to Patty walk back to the phone, my belly prepped me for the worst, the way it always does.

“Brattleboro Reformer,”
she said.

It was the town I didn’t want to hear. But knew I would.

“Brattleboro Reformer,”
she said again. “Got it? You there?”

“Have Trey put Randall on.”

“You’re welcome,” Patty said. I heard grousing.

Trey got back on the line. “Isn’t Randall with you, Conway?” he said.

“What?”

“He left shortly after you did. He said he was backing you up. I assumed you had arranged it.”

Jesus Christ, that was a bad move. If I was right, and my belly told me I was, Fred was with Josh—and could lead him right to the house. And Josh had every reason to believe there was at least seventy-five grand there.

“Listen up, Trey,” I said, keeping my voice calm. I needed him steady. “Wake everybody
now
and get the hell out of that house.”

“But—”

“Now, Trey. Pile in cars, pajamas and all, and drive to a police station, okay? Wait for me to call with an all clear.
Now
.”

Spun my truck around, buried the throttle, dialed Randall. “I know you followed me,” I said when he picked up. “Bad move. Worry about it later. Right now, let’s make tracks for Framingham.”

“Why?”

“Josh can find my house.”

“How?”

I looked at my speedometer. Eighty-six and climbing.

“How, Conway?”

“I think Fred’s working with him.”

“Oh, Jeez—”

I clicked off and drove.

Brattleboro Fucking Vermont. A hippy-dippy town, bums welcome. Hell, in the summer the whole town common turned into a big homeless camp, Panhandling Central.

Fred spent summers there for fifteen years at least. Somewhere along the way, he must have met Josh Whipple. Must have spewed hate about his son, the big NASCAR driver who never did a goddamn thing for him. The son who didn’t even offer him a lift when they saw each other at a toll booth.

Before Fred took off, Charlene had heard those mystery phone calls.

When he took off, we assumed he’d gone on a bender.

Maybe he had.

But maybe he’d visited Josh and pitched revenge.