The Remake (29 page)

Bentt twitched again, but he smiled this time. “There was only one body, Mr. Brooks. No big deal to ID it. It was in Kelley’s car, carrying Kelley’s ID, wearing Kelley’s ring.” He
turned and started walking back toward the car. “There wasn’t enough fingerprint left on the body to check, and I would have had a hell of a time getting DNA-testing approved.”

R.J. followed the trooper, listening to a delicate little alarm bell ringing deep in his brain. “Just a second,” he called after Bentt, and the trooper turned. “What was that about a ring?”

Bentt shrugged. “He was wearing a big gold ring on his right hand. Pretty distinctive, a skull with one small ruby for the eye.”

“How do you know it was his ring?”

“We didn’t guess. We’re not Manhattan homicide up here, just some hick cops in the woods, but we try to be thorough.”

“Yeah, I know. Sherlock Holmes with cows. What about the ring?”

Bentt gave R.J. a hard look for a moment, like he was trying to decide whether to be offended about the Sherlock Holmes crack. But he decided to let it go. “His pal identified it. Ring like that, very distinctive, there was no doubt about it.”

“So you had his pal in to ID the body.”

“There wasn’t a lot of body left. It burned up, mostly. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. His pal ID’d the effects.”

“Was his pal’s name Pauly Aponti?”

Bentt blinked. He looked uncertain for the first time. “That’s right. Ex-cons don’t have a lot of friends, except other
ex-cons.”

R.J. turned away and walked back down the bank to where the car had burned. What he had wasn’t even an idea yet. There weren’t enough details to call it that. But it was a lot stronger than a hunch.

His earlier doubts about Pauly began to bubble. If Pauly was in on framing R.J. with the envelope, the one with R.J.’s fingerprints, then he knew Kelley was alive. Which meant he was in on it, part of it somehow. How wasn’t important, not right now.

What was important was that it was Pauly who had given
a positive identification of the body. And
that
meant that it could be anybody in that coffin. It could even be William Kelley—But R.J. was more certain all the time that it was not.

So all right: Say it wasn’t Kelley in the box. Then who was it? It was possible that Kelley and Pauly had gotten their hands on a generic body somewhere, but not too likely. Dead bodies are funny things; there’s usually somebody keeping track of them. Somebody who notices when they disappear.

But the cops had pulled
somebody
from the wreck. Somebody with a gold skull ring. Somebody who had just happened to be here and Kelley had killed him? Or maybe somebody who wouldn’t be badly missed, who had conveniently died on the spot?

Somebody like an outlaw biker…?

R.J. turned to look at the river. A cold wind was whipping across it, slicing through his coat like it wasn’t there. He tried to think like William Kelley. From the beginning the one thing that had bothered him was that, from the little he knew about Kelley, he didn’t seem like a killer. It was hard to think that he was one, even now. But if it was the biker in the coffin, Kelley must have killed him.

Prison warps people. It had to have been hard on a gentle, educated guy, which Kelley was supposed to have been. He wouldn’t want to go back.

Had it warped him enough that he would kill a stranger? A guy just riding past on a Harley?

People don’t generally kill strangers. They kill their husbands, wives, sweethearts, parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts, not strangers.

But the biker was dead, had to be dead.

Wait a second, sport, R.J. told himself. Back up half a step. What if Kelley hit the biker accidentally, and the biker died? Kelley’s on parole, the accident is his fault. All he can think is, if he calls the cops, he goes back to prison. He panics—he won’t go back to Somers, no matter what.

So he puts the biker in his own car, runs it into the tree, torches it—

—And what? Walks away thinking he’s free? And maybe a little unhinged from what he’s done, figures he’ll go for the whole salami? Starts stalking his ex-wife, the woman who put him in prison?

R.J. shook his head. It was a lot to hang on a bunch of guesses. He needed proof, something tangible, and there was only one way he was going to get it.

And he could just hear what Captain Schmidt was going to say about it.

CHAPTER 36

“Sorry, Mr. Brooks. I need some proof.”

“Captain, I’d love to oblige you,” R.J. said, “but unless you’ll drag the river there won’t be any proof.”

“What makes you so sure there’s a motorcycle in the river?”

R.J. leaned forward. “There has to be. It’s how the whole thing fits together.”

Captain Schmidt frowned. “You think Kelley faked his death by putting the biker’s body into the car with his own ID.”

“That’s right.”

“And then he rolled the Harley into the river to hide the evidence, torched the car, and walked away. And had his former cell mate, Aponti, identify the effects.”

“And when everybody thinks he’s dead, he’s free to kill off everybody connected to this remake, and eventually his ex-wife.”

“What’s he got against this movie she’s trying to make?”

R.J. shrugged. “Probably nothing. I think that’s a smoke screen. His ex-wife is the target. She’s vulnerable right now,
overextended financially. If Kelley can stop the remake, he stops her career. That’s the only thing that might hurt her.”

“So she suffers before he kills her.”

“That’s how I see it, Captain.”

Schmidt’s eyes hadn’t moved off R.J.’s face the whole time. They didn’t now, either. “Even if you’re right, it’s not exactly my problem.”

“It’s multiple murder, Captain. Four bodies so far. And he’s not done yet.”

Schmidt drummed his fingers on the desktop. He did it very lightly, but it was the first sign R.J. had seen that he actually had nerves. “Mr. Brooks. I think we have been pretty cooperative up until now.”

“Very cooperative, Captain, and I appreciate it, but—”

“But there comes a point in time when asking for cooperation steps over the line and turns into being a pain in the ass.” He pointed a huge, hard finger at R.J.’s nose. “You are standing on that line now, Mr. Brooks.”

R.J. sighed. He had known this wasn’t going to be easy. It was a hell of a thing to be right about. He’d take being wrong any day. “Captain, I admit it’s a long shot. I’m telling you it is, so you know I’m leveling with you. But I’ll bet my molars there’s a motorcycle in the water there. And if there is, I’ve got proof of who’s killing off half of Hollywood.”

Schmidt shook his head and turned around in his swivel chair. He sat there facing the back wall for a minute. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “But I can’t always do what I would like to do.”

“Captain—” R.J. said wearily.

“I have to think about other factors. And dragging the river is going to cost me a full shift for five or six troopers.” He turned back around to face R.J. “I can’t justify it, and I can’t fit it into the budget.”

“I know I’m right about this,” R.J. said.

Schmidt looked at him hard for a moment. “Are you willing to bet a little sweat on it?”

“Hell, yes,” R.J. blurted without thinking.

And that’s how R.J. found himself standing on the bank of the river the next morning, with a grappling hook on the end of a long line. A grappling hook provided by Captain Schmidt, in the spirit of cooperation.

R.J.’s fingers were already numb, and his shoulder was permanently cramped into a painful knot, from swinging the hook out into the water, hauling the line back, swinging it again.

A little too eager to bet a little sweat, he thought sourly. As if he could sweat when it was forty-five degrees, standing on a river bank with the wind blowing on him. Probably another twenty degrees colder when you figure in wind chill.

And the water, running down the rope and into his sleeves. R.J. had felt ice that was warmer. He’d probably catch pneumonia. But hell, look at the bright side. That would save Kelley the trouble of killing him.

Haul in. Swing the hook. Let it fly. Shake some of the water off. Repeat the whole thing.

The bottom was soft here, muddy. Which only added to the experience, since the hook came back covered with brown goo. Which of course dripped down R.J.’s sleeve. I’m freezing to death, R.J. thought bitterly, and I won’t even get a funeral. I’ll stink so bad they’re going to leave me here for fertilizer.

But he kept swinging the hook.

The bike couldn’t be far out. There was a stretch of only fifty yards or so where it had to be. Had to be.

Didn’t it?

The hook stuck. R.J. grunted, felt the excitement swirl through him. He pulled hard, steadily, leaning all his weight into it—

—and saw a tree branch break surface fifteen feet out.

Swearing, he shook the line. No good: it was stuck tight, wedged into a space between branches.

He hauled in the branch, a nice big one.
At least I’m finally getting a good sweat going,
he thought.

He cleared the branch from the grappling hook and swung the line again.
This is getting old. What if I’m wrong?

Don’t even think about that. Just swing the line, let it fly, one more time. Swish, splash, pull it in, start again. Swish, splash, one more time. Swish, splash, clank.

Clank?

R.J.’s heart thundered. This had to be it. The hook had given out a clank that was clearly the sound of metal against metal. He pulled the line tight, leaned into it—

And fell onto his ass on the muddy river bank.

He stood up, not even trying to brush off the mud, and hauled in the line, noting carefully where the hook cut through the surface of the water. He threw just beyond that same spot again.

Clank.

There it was again, the same sound, no mistaking it.

R.J. slowly, carefully pulled the line tight. When he could lean away from it a little, he gave a couple of quick pulls, like he was setting the hook in a big fish.

The hook held.

Slowly, carefully, R.J. pulled. He pulled until the line was singing with tension and the drops of water flew off the taut rope. He pulled harder, pulled until his shoulders creaked and his neck crackled, until finally his foot slipped in the muck and he lay sprawled on the gooey bank again, sweating and swearing.

How much did a big motorcycle weigh?

More than R.J., that was clear. He couldn’t budge the damned thing. That is,
if
the
damned thing on the end of his grappling line was a big motorcycle. Or
the
big motorcycle.

So now what? If he let the tension off the line, he might lose the bike—if it was the bike. But he couldn’t move it and he couldn’t stand here forever.

R.J. glanced up the bank. His rental Buick was parked up on the shoulder, about two hundred feet away. He had about
twenty-five feet of slack. He might as well have parked in California.

He looked around. The tree branch he had hauled out was lying on the bank about ten feet away. R.J. stepped over to it. The branch was just big enough to keep the line taut. He tied a clumsy bowline knot around the branch. He hadn’t tied one for twenty-some years, since he was a Boy Scout. They had always told him that knowing knots would come in handy when he grew up. They just hadn’t said how.

R.J. hurried up to the car, not really trusting his knot. He started the car and moved it gingerly down the bank. Up close to the road the earth was packed down, firm, and he had no trouble until he got closer to the river. There had already been one or two warmer spells and snow had melted and poured down to the river. Down there the ground was mushy from the run-off.

But R.J. found a patch of solid ground within reach of the rope. That was the important thing. He backed the car as close to the branch as he could get it safely, then spent a couple of bad minutes trying to untie his bowline without letting tension off the line.

His fingers were numb, stiff, and clumsy, and the rope was just as stiff. But he finally undid it and got a loop around the bumper, pulled it tight, and then, thinking what the hell, he tied another bowline.

He got back behind the wheel and just sat for a moment, turning the heater up to full blast and letting it blow onto his hands. He flexed the fingers, getting the feeling back into them.

Then he stuck his left hand on the wheel and turned in the seat to watch behind him. He put the car in gear and stepped down on the gas, giving it slow and steady pressure and watching the line. He knew the rope wouldn’t break—it was half-inch nylon—but he wasn’t so sure about his knot.

R.J. held his breath as the car eased forward a few inches. Something heaved under the surface of the river as the water
churned and turned even darker. R.J. thought he saw a metallic flash, but it might have been just a reflection off the water.

Then the car’s tires hit a slick spot and began to spin. The rope slackened a little. R.J. tried rocking the car, tapping the pedal in short bursts, but quickly gave it up when he saw that he wasn’t going anywhere.