The Accident (39 page)

Still black.

He slid back the chain with his left hand, then gently turned the handle.

It all happened in seconds.

The door slammed into him with tremendous force. If all it had done was hit his body, that would have been bad enough. But the bottom of the door mashed the toes of Twain’s shoeless left foot. He screamed in anguish as he went sprawling across the carpet.

A figure came into the room. Low, and fast. Twain had never seen him in person before, but he knew instantly who he was. And he could see that Sommer’s hands were gloved, and that one of them was holding a gun.

Somehow, despite the pain, Twain had managed to hold on to his. His back pressed to the industrial carpet that looked like crushed caterpillars, his legs splayed awkwardly, Twain arced his arm swiftly, desperate to get a bead on Sommer.

Pfft
.

Twain felt something hot under his right arm and dropped the gun. He wanted to reach for it, but this new pain, this was something very different than the pain in his foot. It was sapping him, instantly, of all strength.

Sommer moved toward him, stomped a foot on his wrist to make sure he couldn’t get to his weapon. Twain looked up into the barrel of Sommer’s weapon, noticed the silencer attached to the end.

Pfft
.

The second shot went directly into Twain’s forehead. A couple of twitches, and then nothing.

Sommer’s cell phone rang. He tucked his gun away and took out the phone.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?” Darren Slocum asked.

“Taking care of that thing you told me about.”

Slocum hesitated, like he was going to ask, then thought better of it. “You said you were going to Belinda’s to get the money, that Garber said to check with her by the end of the day.”

“Yes. I called her. She said she had the money but there was a problem. Something to do with her husband.”

Sommer looked down and took a step away from the body. The blood was moving, and he didn’t want any to get on his shoes.

“That’d be George. He can be a bit of a tight-ass.”

“It won’t be a problem.”

“I’m coming with you. If she has that money, eight grand of it’s owed to me. I’ve got a funeral to pay for.”

FORTY-SIX

I threw the truck into drive and fell into traffic behind the silver Golf.

The night of the shooting at my house, the cop had told Wedmore that my neighbor—Joan Mueller—had seen a small silver car with something round and yellow on the antenna drive past.

This car being driven by Corey Wilkinson’s friend matched that description very nicely.

I moved over a lane and got in behind them. I made a note, on the pad I kept mounted on the dashboard, of the car’s license plate. I suppose I could have stopped following right then and called the plate number into the cops, but that wasn’t the way I wanted to handle it.

I followed them all the way to the Post Mall, where the kid behind the wheel dropped Corey off at the doors near the Macy’s. Corey took all the McDonald’s trash as he got out, waved as his buddy drove off, and shoved the stuff into a nearby garbage bin. He was starting up the steps to the mall when I pulled over, powered down the window, and called out to him.

“Hey, Corey!”

The kid stopped and turned. He looked at me for a good three seconds before he realized who it was. Then he made a “What the fuck?” face and turned to continue on into the mall.

“Hey!” I shouted. “It’s about my window.”

He stopped again, turned more slowly this time. I tried to coax him over with a wave, but he didn’t move. So I said, “We can either have a
chat, or I can just call the cops. I got your friend’s license number. Which do you think he’d like you to do?”

He walked over, stood about a foot away from the door. “Get in,” I said.

“What’s your problem?”

“I said get in. You can get in, Corey, or I can call the cops.”

Corey gave it another three seconds, then opened the door. I hit the gas and headed for Route 1.

“Who’s your buddy?” I asked. “What buddy?” he said, looking straight ahead.

“Corey, I can find out who he is. So why don’t you just stop playing dumb and tell me?”

“Rick.”

“Rick who?”

“Rick Stahl.”

“How’d it work the other night? Did Rick drive? And you took the shot?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, hang on, I gotta do a U-turn up here.”

“Why, what?”

“I’m just going to drive you straight to police headquarters. I’ll introduce you to Detective Wedmore. You’ll like her.”

“Okay, okay! What’s your deal?”

I shot him a look. “My deal? Is that what you said? You want to know what my
deal
is? You clowns shot at my house. You blew the window out in my daughter’s bedroom.” I jabbed a finger at him. “In my daughter’s fucking bedroom! You got that? And she was in the room! That’s what my fucking deal is.”

“Hey, man—”

“I’m as sorry as I can be about what happened to your dad and your brother, and I understand who you believe is responsible, but I don’t care if you think my wife wiped out your entire fucking family tree, you do not shoot into my daughter’s bedroom.” I reached over, took his arm in a vise grip and shook it. “Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”

“Ouch! Yeah,” he mumbled.

“I didn’t hear that.”

“Yeah!”

I held on to him. “Who fired the shot?”

“We didn’t know anyone was in the room,” he said. “We didn’t even know whose room it
was.
” I squeezed harder. “It was me. I did it. Rick drove—I don’t have my license yet—and I was in the back seat with the window down and I took the shot as we drove by and I swear to God I just thought I’d hit the house or your car or something like that. I didn’t think I’d actually hit a window. Or that anyone would be inside.”

I gave his arm a painful twist, then let go. We drove the next few miles in silence. Finally, I asked, “Just tell me.”

“Huh?”

“What was the thinking behind this?”

“Thinking?”

I almost laughed. “Okay, I get that there wasn’t very much thinking going on, but what the hell was going on in your head?”

“I just wanted to do something.” He said it quietly. “I mean, my mom, she’s suing you, but I wanted to be able to do something, too.” He glanced over and I could see the tears welling up in his eyes. “It wasn’t just her that lost people. I did, too. My dad and my brother.”

“You wanted to put a scare into us.”

“I guess.”

“Well, you did that. You scared me. You know who else you scared?”

He waited for me to tell him.

“You scared my daughter. She’s eight. Eight. Years. Old. The bullet came in about six feet away from her, through her window. She was screaming her head off. There was glass all over her bed. Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”

“I hear.”

“Do you feel better now? Do you feel better about what happened to your brother and your dad now that you terrified a little girl who’d never done anything to you? Is that the justice you’re looking for?”

Corey didn’t say anything.

“Whose gun was it?”

“It was Rick’s. Like, it was Rick’s dad’s. He’s got all kinds of them.”

“I’m going to give you half an hour,” I said.

“I don’t—”

“If I don’t see you in half an hour, I call the cops and I’ll tell them just what you did. You get on the phone to your friend Rick. You two are
going to be at my house, in half an hour, with that gun, and you’re going to hand it over.”

“His dad’s not going to let him—”

“Half an hour,” I repeated. “And there’s one more thing.”

He glanced at me anxiously.

“Bring your mother.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” I pulled the truck over to the side of the road and stopped. “Get out.”

“Here? This is, like, nowhere.”

“That’s right.”

He climbed out of the truck. I saw him in my rearview mirror, talking on his cell phone, as I drove off.

They were at my door in thirty-seven minutes. I was actually prepared to give them forty-five before making the call to Wedmore. The two boys, looking very nervous, were accompanied by Corey’s mother. Bonnie Wilkinson was pale and haggard. She eyed me with a mixture of contempt and apprehension.

Rick had a paper bag in his hand.

I opened the door and motioned for them all to come in. No one said anything. Rick handed me the bag. I unrolled the top and looked inside.

The gun.

I said to Bonnie Wilkinson, “They filled you in?”

She nodded.

“If it were just him,” I said, nodding to Rick, “I’d call the cops. But I can’t turn him in without turning in your boy.” The kid had just lost both his father and his brother. I couldn’t be part of dumping any more grief on the Wilkinson family, regardless of the crippling suit the mother had filed against me.

“But if either of them ever tries anything like this again, if they so much as look at my daughter the wrong way, I will press charges.”

“I understand,” Mrs. Wilkinson said.

Rick said, “What am I going to tell my dad when he notices his gun’s missing?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Mrs. Wilkinson told Rick. No one spoke for a
moment. Finally, she said, “I didn’t know Corey was going to do something stupid like this. I’d never have allowed it.”

I was going to tell her I knew that. I was going to tell her that I appreciated that her strategy was to kill us in court, not on the street. But all I did was nod.

It seemed we were done here. As they started to turn for the door I said, “Rick. One last thing.”

The kid looked at me, scared.

“Lose that ball off your antenna before the cops spot it.”

FORTY-SEVEN

Shortly after they left, the phone rang.

“Mr. Garber, Detective Julie Stryker here.” The woman investigating Theo Stamos’s murder. “I have a question for you. Why might Theo Stamos have been writing a letter to you?”

“A letter?”

“That’s right.”

“Was it threatening? I’d told him he couldn’t work for me anymore. You found a letter like that?”

“It was shoved under some papers on the kitchen table. Looks like he was making notes about what to say to you in a letter, or maybe on the phone. Getting his thoughts in order.”

“What did the notes say?”

“He appears to have been trying to draft some sort of apology, maybe even a confession. Can you think of anything he might want to confess to you?”

“I told you about that house he wired for me that burned down.”

“There was an incident between the two of you the other day. I spoke to a Hank Simmons. Mr. Stamos was doing some work for him.”

“Yes.” I had a feeling she might find out about that sooner or later. “I confronted him with some news. I’d just heard from the fire department that electrical parts he’d installed were no good. It was what caused the fire.”

“You didn’t mention this earlier.” Stryker didn’t sound pleased.

“I told you about the electrical parts.”

“According to Mr. Simmons, you cut some … rubber testicles off Mr. Stamos’s truck?”

“Yes,” I said.

A pause, then, “I can’t say I blame you there.”

Talking to her, I realized, was probably unwise.
Hang up and call Edwin
, I thought. I really might need a lawyer. Was my confrontation with Theo about to make me into a murder suspect? After all, I’d been up there, too, to his trailer. I’d found the body. Was Stryker thinking I had something to do with his murder?

But if she considered me a suspect, would she be interviewing me over the phone? Wouldn’t there have been a police car parked out front, waiting for my return?

And of course, they did have Doug in custody.

“So is that what the apology’s about?” I asked. “The fire?”

“Hard to say. At the top of the page is your name, and under that some words. Let me read you what he wrote. Keep in mind, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Just phrases jotted down in very messy handwriting. And he wasn’t much of a speller, either. Let’s see here … Okay. ‘Mr. Garber, you judged me, not fair’ and ‘sorry about Wilson.’ Who’s Wilson?”

“It was the Wilson house that burned down.”

“Okay. Then, ‘just trying to make a living’ and ‘thought parts up to’ and it looks like
c
,
o
, maybe a
b
, and—”

“Probably ‘code.’ The parts were up to code, he thought.”

“And ‘can’t cover it up anymore.’ Does that make sense?”

“No,” I said.

“And then the last thing scribbled down is ‘sorry about your wife.’ Why would Theo Stamos be sorry about your wife, Mr. Garber?”

I felt chilled. “Is there anything else?”

“That’s it. What’s he got to be sorry for where your wife is concerned? Is she there? Would you be able to put her on?”

“My wife’s dead.” I heard the bleakness in my voice.

“Oh,” said Stryker. “When did she pass away?”

“Three weeks ago.”

“That recently.”

“Yes.”

“Had she been ill?”

“No. Her car got hit in a traffic accident. She was killed.”

I could sense her interest growing. “Was Mr. Stamos at fault in that accident? Would that be why he was sorry?”

“I don’t know why he would say that. He wasn’t driving the other car.”

“So he wasn’t involved in the accident?”

“No … no,” I said.

“You seemed to hesitate there.”

“No,” I repeated. What the hell did it mean? Why had Theo written that? Of course, plenty of people had said something along those lines to me in the past weeks.
Sorry about Sheila
. But it was out of context here. It didn’t make sense.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Now I have a question for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Are you sure about Doug? Do you really think he killed Theo?”

“We charged him, Mr. Garber. There’s your answer.”

“What about the gun you found in the car? I’ll bet, even if it’s the gun that killed Theo, that Doug’s fingerprints aren’t on it.”

A pause. “What makes you say that?”