The Ten-Mile Trials (19 page)

‘Uh . . . Goldberg? No, Goldbloom.' He shrugged. ‘I got it at the bank.'

I asked him to let me see the paperwork from the sale.

‘Well now,' he said, ‘I probably better talk to my son first, but I don't see why not.' He agreed to let me know as soon as possible. I thought he stood a little straighter as he walked out with Clint, and looked as if he enjoyed a little commotion. Maybe he shouldn't have sold the store just yet.

‘Nice old guy,' Kevin said. ‘But it's the new owner we're interested in, right?'

‘More than interested,' I said, ‘Getting downright fixated on Riteway Incorporated. Let me ask you both, does this begin to smell like a criminal enterprise? Well funded, well organized?'

‘With tentacles,' Ray said. ‘And growing fast.'

‘Why would such an organization come to Rutherford?'

‘Well now,' Kevin said, ‘what's wrong with Rutherford?'

‘Oh, please,' I said, ‘this is not the Chamber of Commerce. What other cities did Amos talk to you about, Ray? Where they're seeing this particular cluster of quick skillful burglaries carried out by teams of foreign nationals?'

‘San Francisco, Chicago. Three boroughs of New York City.'

‘Right. And Amos is in Phoenix. Not as big as New York, but a big city compared to Rutherford.'

‘See what you mean,' Ray said. ‘Why would they come to Rutherford?'

Kevin said, ‘Because they know where there's an old store they can buy very cheap and turn into a fence?'

‘I can't believe they'd come just for that,' I said. ‘But it does sound like they picked it out from a distance, doesn't it? Targeted it and came after it.'

‘Yes,' Kevin said. ‘OK, an old store and what else?'

‘Maybe it's not complicated,' Ray said. ‘Maybe it's just a handy fence next to a large metropolitan area like the Twin Cities.'

I said, ‘The Twin Cities? Are they seeing clusters of rapid home invasions in Minneapolis and Saint Paul?'

‘Isn't it funny,' Ray said, ‘that I never thought to ask?'

‘And till right now I never thought to ask Amos,' I said, ‘if he knows a Phoenix suburb that has an old pawnstore doing a lot of business all of a sudden.'

‘Amos has never said so,' Ray said. ‘I guess it's time for Winnie and me to make a lot more phone calls.'

‘How's that working out for you? Having her for a helper?'

‘Best idea I ever had. Like growing an extra head. I'm still pretending it's for her education – but really, I may never turn her loose. Everybody needs a Winnie.'

‘That sounds like something to frame and put on a little stand on your desk.'

Finding out that Clint Maddox had worked on this floor for four days without hearing everybody around him talk about his uncle's store made me more determined than ever to get everybody on the same page. I carried a fistful of crude notes to LeeAnn's desk and, standing up and dodging constant traffic, dictated a quick and dirty version of the last two days' events. LeeAnn typed it all into the log at blazing speed. It wasn't pretty, but it was fresh information.

Rosie phoned in while I was there to tell me she'd seen the counselor. ‘He says Ricky Anderson is strictly bad news in school, they're ready to expel him. This kid is in much more trouble than his mother's letting on. It sounds like he's been using for some time. I'm on my way now to interview the owner/guide of the adventure trip.'

‘This is the man who sent the kid home?'

‘Yes. Soon as I finish with him, I've got an appointment with Ricky's dad.'

As I hung up, I remembered I'd never told Chris and Julie that Ricky went to Jefferson School, too. I went across the hall to look for them, but Kevin said they'd gone to interview the manager of Home Cleaners. ‘Julie saw something in one of those lists – she went out of here like her tail was on fire.'

NINE

‘
Y
ou about ready for lunch?' Ray asked me, at quarter to twelve.

‘I'm sorry, Ray,' I said, ‘I'm brown-bagging again.'

‘I am too,' he said. ‘Your Swedish stew the other day reminded me how much easier it is than going out.' The bag he held up was, in fact, immaculate white and cotton. And ironed? I kept sneaking peeks at it as we walked into the break room together.

‘Cheaper too,' I said. ‘I guess it might not seem so much easier if I made my own – but I have to confess, Trudy packs mine.'

‘Yes, well.' He laid his flawless white bag sideways and pulled out a big roast beef sandwich, a dill pickle nicely wrapped in its own little bag, two paper napkins neatly folded, and an apple so shiny I could see my face in it. ‘I been kind of lucky that way myself lately.'

I have been looking at Ray Bailey five days a week for eight years, so I guess I don't really see him at all any more, ordinarily. There's not much to ogle – he is what he is, never a handsome man and now passing forty, balding on top, his long, pale face as gaunt and gloomy as only a Bailey's can be. Reliable and hard-working, he is all you could ask in an able assistant, and I ask plenty. But his lunch today had the kind of square-corners elegance rarely seen in the hardscrabble break room, and never before in the hands of my plain-as-dirt bachelor lieutenant.

I subjected the individual to further scrutiny, as we say in police work. Didn't his near-sighted brown eyes show an unaccustomed sparkle behind his thick glasses? And the hair encircling his bald spot, wasn't it neat all the way around? Almost as if he had remembered to comb it. Also, there was a nice crease in his shirt sleeves that I didn't remember seeing there before, and the set of his shoulders gave off a new air of— Could it be optimism? Ray Bailey?

‘Something's happened to you,' I said. ‘What?'

He tried to look blasé, but blushed madly and grinned like a silly fool.

Then I saw it. ‘You old dog. You and Cathy Niemeyer—'

‘Finally made the deal. Yes.' Add a few zits, his face would have looked right at home in Sophomore English class at Jefferson High.

‘And you've already moved in?'

‘What do you mean, already?' A touch of his usual cynicism finally reasserted itself. ‘I've been running errands and chopping wood out there in Mantorville for two years. If anybody was keeping records, I'd probably be marked down as the slowest lover in the entire twenty-first century.'

‘Slow but sure, huh?' We were both grinning inanely. ‘Well, she had a lot of grieving to do.' The memory of that terrible day came back, sharp as a knife, the day Ray and I had to go tell her that her hero was dead.

‘Yes. Maybe it sounds weird – well, it
is
weird – but that was what made me want her so much. When I saw how she cared about that guy. I watched her cry and I understood exactly what was missing from my life – nobody had ever cared for me like that. I been working for it ever since.'

‘Looks like you've got it now all right. That's a killer lunch bag.'

‘Isn't it? Look, it has my initials embroidered on the side.'

‘Like there was probably going to be another one just like it in here?'

‘Right. She has one of those sewing machines with a chip in it that thinks clearer than I do. She sews on it like it's some kind of a sacrament. Bakes. Cans stuff out of the garden.' He rolled his eyes up. ‘I'm going to get fat.'

‘I'm happy for you, Ray.'

‘Thanks. We're already saving up to get married.'

‘So you'll be eating in here till you get enough for tuxedo rentals and flowers, huh? Does this mean I get to work you right through your lunch hour from now on?'

‘Oh, listen, I wouldn't want to intrude on your quiet time.'

‘Right. And of course I was just kidding. But as long as you're here, and we've talked about your social life about as much as I can stand, why don't you tell me how your phone calls went – you find any pawnshops in other states?'

‘Not yet, but I started Amos looking for some. And his opposite number in Chicago says there's a weekend flea market he's had his eye on for some time. It seems to have too much new electronics gear. We're beginning to consider that they must do some kind of round-robin shipping to avoid selling the stolen goods close to home.'

‘I bet they pay for the transportation costs by smuggling illegals in some of the boxes. Tell me, did Andy go to the grow house yet?'

‘Yeah, he's over there. Soon as he's had a look around the place, he's going to the Court House to get everything they've got on the owner of the house.'

‘And he'll look for leftover clothing while he's there?'

‘I asked him to, yeah.'

‘Did you make the deal for Gloria to come out and help?'

‘The judge OK'd it, but the nurse at the detox center says she's too sick right now to go anywhere.' He sighed. ‘I guess that's a rough road, meth withdrawal.'

‘Yes. If Andy finds anything over there, I'd like to take it to Darrell Betts this afternoon and ask him about the possibility of a trace.'

‘Oh? Hang on, I'll call Andy.' He held a conversation that made him wince and put down his pickle. Then he put the call on hold and turned toward me. ‘He found a T-shirt behind the refrigerator that he says smells like horse sweat, and a very odd sock hanging from a rafter in the garage, up in the dark so BCA missed it. You want them?'

‘Yeah. Ask him to drop them off before he goes to the Court House.'

I went back to work feeling that nice little undercurrent of excitement that you get when maybe your very own clever idea is going to work out.

Rosie breezed into my office, all pink and pleased with herself. She had just parted from Ricky Anderson's father, who was headed home to talk to his son. ‘The guide from the nature trip told me Ricky pretended to be very surprised to find a friend sitting on the hood of his car at a crossroad about two miles out of town. Said Ricky's not a good actor. They held a brief powwow, Ricky and his friend, during which the guide believes a parcel changed hands. And after that, Ricky held up the ride twice for piss calls. During the lunch break he disappeared and kept everybody waiting fifteen minutes, wouldn't say where he'd been. He was on the nod all afternoon, nearly fell off his horse a couple of times. Right after dinner he disappeared again, was gone a long time, and wouldn't talk to anybody when he came back. So the next morning, when the group made its first rendezvous with the supply truck, the guide took away Ricky's horse and sent him home on the truck.'

‘Did you make a plan with his dad?'

‘Dad's going to get the friend's name and call me. After that, the three Andersons are going to map out Ricky's future. Naturally, Dad thinks he's going to check Ricky into rehab and put an end to all this nonsense.'

‘Yeah.' We spared about thirty seconds for the sad little silence that summarizes all we know about how to help an addict. ‘You think he'll get the name?'

‘Oh, yes. He's breathing fire.'

‘OK,'I said, ‘put it in the log, all you learned today, including the name Ricky Anderson gives up. Julie and Chris are on to something from the employee lists. Soon as they get back, we'll see if their information dovetails with yours.'

‘Wouldn't that be sweet?' She paused in my doorway. ‘I'm losing track. Is all this getting us any closer to the guys who killed the man in the grow garage?'

‘Hell, Rosie,' Andy Pitman said, looming up suddenly in the space behind her, ‘if those guys smell like these two pieces of shit' – he held up two plastic baggies, tagged and labeled – ‘you don't want to get any closer than you are right now.'

I took Andy's baggies along in my pickup when I went to Central School, where Darrell's K-9 team was schooling dogs for their narcotics package. Two men in blue were in the parking lot with their dogs, encouraging them to sniff through a couple of cars. They told me Darrell was inside with the group that was searching cupboards in one of the home rooms. ‘Just go through that door and follow the noise, you'll find them. We're the only ones in the building right now.'

I found them with no trouble, three men in the hall with big dogs on leashes. I didn't know any of them, so I showed my badge and asked for Darrell. ‘He's inside there, working his dog right now,' the tallest one said.

‘They said I might be able to talk to him between practices,' I said. ‘You think that's possible?

‘Sure. If you can wait a few minutes, he can talk to you when he's done.' He motioned toward the open doorway, where a fourth man and his dog were intently watching what was happening inside. ‘You want to watch? It's kind of interesting how we do this.' He really wants me to see it, I thought – he had that same intense pride in the work that I had glimpsed before with Darrell.

‘You can stand right there by Dan, he's our trainer,' the tall man said. The trainer had a shaved head as shiny as glazed porcelain.

I said, ‘Hey Dan, I'm Jake,' and he shook my hand quickly before turning back to watch. Beyond him, inside the long room full of desks, Darrell was urging Sam to stick his big nose into cupboards and smell the chalk. Or no, he was showing him how much fun it was to find his white ball, his chew-toy that he loved so much, and how he could find it again if he would just look into this . . . Oh, look at this, the toy right here in this box, right alongside a packet of— Was that meth? He wasn't going to give meth to his dog, was he? But no, Sam didn't give a hoot about the meth, it was his precious chew-toy he was so glad to find. And Darrell was telling him again what a very good dog he was to find it.