Too Close to Home (33 page)

THIRTY-NINE

I
SPOKE TO DEREK as he was getting in the truck the next morning, about to head off to pick up Drew and cut lawns for the day.

“Hey,” I said.

“It’s gonna be another hot one,” Derek said.

“Are you okay with this, back to work this soon, with Drew, without me? Because I was thinking, maybe it’s a mistake, throwing you back into things so fast, turning the business over to you, after all you’ve been through, being in jail and all.”

“It’s okay,” Derek said. “I think, like, maybe it’s the best thing. It gets my mind off stuff, you know?”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s what I was hoping.”

“How about you? What’s it like, driving that dickhead around again?”

I laughed. “It’s okay. I don’t know whether I’ve changed, or Randy has, but he’s not bothering me the way he used to. He’s still an asshole, no question, but I’m not letting him get under my skin. Maybe because he knows he’s only got me for a short while. I think you’ve got the better deal, working with Drew.”

“Yeah,” Derek said. “I’m trying not to be a jerk with him, like asking him any more about robbing banks or anything. I kind of just let him be, you know? I’m trying not to be too pushy.”

“That’s probably best,” I said.

“But the guy can really work. I can barely keep up with him.” He paused. “I better shove off.”

I don’t know whether it hit us both at the same time to do this, but we threw our arms around each other, gave each other a couple of pats on the back, and then he got in the truck and was gone.

As I watched the truck head up past the Langley house, it occurred to me that despite all the revelations of the last twenty-four hours, all the secrets revealed, I still didn’t know anything more about what had happened in that house the other night than I did before.

ELLEN CAME OUTSIDE a moment later, ready to go to Thackeray.

I put my hands along the tops of her arms and said, “You remember when we first learned about the Langleys being killed, you were ready to move away from here. Well, now I am, but for all sorts of different reasons. You’ve got a great résumé, you should be able to find work almost anywhere. Wherever you can find something, I’ll find something.”

“I don’t know,” Ellen said.

“Conrad has no hold over you anymore. If anyone’s holding the trump card now, it’s you. For what Illeana had done to us. Because you didn’t identify her brother.”

“I got to thinking in the middle of the night,” Ellen said. “About the gun.”

“The gun?”

“The one they found that night, when Mortie and Illeana’s brother Lester came to see us, right by the car Lester was driving. If that really was the gun that was used to kill the Langleys, what if . . .”

“What if what?”

“What if, somehow, I let Lester and his buddy get away with that? What if, to protect all these secrets, what if that means the Langleys’ killers go free?”

“But it sounded to me like Illeana didn’t bring her brother into this until after she heard me talking to Conrad about the missing computer, and the disc Derek had. And that was well after the Langleys had been killed.”

“That’s true.”

“Maybe Drew was mistaken, thinking he saw Lester drop the gun out of the car. It was dark, we were all pretty rattled.”

Ellen thought a moment. “God, I hope I did the right thing, at the lineup. You wake up in the morning, you start seeing things differently.”

“Let’s try things the way they are now,” I said. “We lay low, we ride this out.”

“I don’t know,” Ellen said softly. “I don’t know what to do.” She looked into my eyes. “Maybe you’re right. We should start over. Someplace else.”

I took her into my arms. “Let’s talk about it tonight.”

“Okay,” she said, and while holding me continued, “Everywhere I look, I’m reminded of tragedies and horrible choices. The Langley house, your shed, Promise Falls, the college. I want to get away from all of it before anything else bad happens.”

“Nothing else is going to happen,” I said. “Nothing else is going to happen.”

THERE WAS NO RUSH to head down to city hall. Randall Finley was keeping his schedule pretty light for the day, and those things he did have on it were various committee meetings that were held in the building. So he didn’t need my services till later. He was saving up his strength for his big early-evening announcement that he was going to run for Congress.

I figured I would head in about midday, maybe take a run out to the Walcott Hotel, on the west side of town, where Finley’s campaign strategists had hired a hall and were decorating the place with streamers and signs and laying out booze and snacks.

So I was able to do something I rarely do around the house, which was putter about, drink some coffee, take my time reading the paper. But of course, whenever such an opportunity presents itself, something usually comes along to ruin it.

This time, it was Barry’s unmarked car coming down the lane. It wasn’t possible to view Barry Duckworth’s arrival without feeling apprehensive. I was walking across the grass as he was getting out of his car. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied.

“Is this going to be bad news?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Just in the neighborhood.”

“You’re never just in the neighborhood.”

“How you doin’ today?”

“It’s been a long week, Barry. For you, too, I suppose.”

“That was quite something last night,” he said. He had to be referring, of course, to Ellen’s failure to identify Lester Tiffin at the lineup. “I figured, once she saw that tattoo, we’d have that thing nailed.”

I just shrugged. Maybe Ellen was going to change her story, but it needed to come from her, not from me.

He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know, Jim. I think something’s going on. I think if the two of you aren’t covering up for somebody, then at least Ellen is. And that’s not very helpful to me.”

“Sorry, Barry. Some of the things you did to us in the last week weren’t very helpful, either.”

He let out a long sigh. “I don’t want to get into a pissing match with you, Jim. I just want to figure out what the fuck is going on. Three people get killed up the lane here, you and Ellen get terrorized by a couple of thugs, your old buddy Lance ends up dead. That’s a lotta shit, and I can’t help but think it’s all connected.”

“What about the gun?” I asked him. “The one that was found just up there.”

“Yeah, it was used to kill the Langleys.”

“Did it have Lester Tiffin’s fingerprints on it?”

Barry just looked at me. It was as good as saying no.

“Is it possible,” I said, “that that gun had been out there all this time, that somehow your guys missed finding it when they were searching the property after the Langleys were killed?”

“Not possible,” Barry said.

“I remember reading about this case,” I said, “up in Canada, they were searching the house of this serial killer. They sent in a team and tore the house apart looking for evidence, pulled up the floorboards, took off drywall, didn’t find a thing. Then, the killer’s lawyer waltzes in after the search is done and, based on a tip from his client, pulls out a videotape from behind an overhead light fixture. The guy videotaped his killings.”

“You’re making a point?” Barry said.

“I’m just saying, even the best cops sometimes miss stuff.”

Barry was still shaking his head. “If that’s true, and that gun had been sitting there since the Langleys got killed, tell me how it managed to get itself over to Lance’s place and shoot him.”

I said, “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Same weapon. Pretty neat trick, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’m not done with this thing, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it whether you and your wife want to cooperate or not.”

“I got it,” I said.

“And despite the fact I think you’re holding out on me, I’ve done you another favor.”

“What?”

“You asked me to check out that name. That girl. Sherry Underwood.”

“Right,” I said. “You did that?”

“I did. She’s dead. She died about a month ago. In the hospital.”

“What happened to her?”

Barry shrugged. “Sick. Drug abuse, HIV, malnutrition, the whole shooting match. Died of heart failure.”

I felt my shoulders sagging. “Oh,” I said. “She was just a kid.”

“Welcome to my world,” Barry said. He got back into his car, put down the window, and said, “Don’t jerk me around, Jim.”

I DROVE THE MAYOR’S Grand Marquis into town around one. There was a boxful of pamphlets and press kits that needed to go out to the Walcott, so I volunteered to do that. Not because I wanted to help with his campaign, but because I needed something to do. And I was still getting paid by the hour. Randy didn’t need to be taken anyplace until late afternoon, when he was going to pop into a Rotary Club dinner and say a few words before going to his press conference.

I opened up a press kit and glanced through a copy of the mayor’s prepared speech. It was a cobbling together of every platitude, cliché, and empty promise ever uttered by an aspiring politician. Finley would probably do well with it. There were a few shots at special interest groups, unions in particular, which would play well to Randall Finley’s constituency, but they were a bit held back compared to things he’d said about Promise Falls’s municipal workers over the years, whom he had often characterized as, basically, dog fuckers. But now that he was running for Congress, Randy must have felt he couldn’t totally alienate organized labor. You could say a few negative things about a working guy’s union, but still count on his support so long as you made your opponent look like a Commie-loving pansy.

There were half a dozen people out at the Walcott getting things ready, and they tried to rope me into putting up streamers, but I begged off, saying the mayor wanted me downtown, ready to take him anywhere at a moment’s notice. Taping up streamers demanded a level of enthusiasm I could not bring to bear.

I took the Grand Marquis to the car wash, then headed back to city hall and parked out front. I read the paper till around five, when Randy got into the backseat so I could drive him to the Rotary event.

“So, Randy,” I said, “you nervous about tonight?”

“What do I have to be nervous about?” he asked. “They’re going to eat me up.”

As I was pulling up to the Holiday Inn, and Randy was waiting for me to run around and open the door for him, my cell rang. “I’ll see you in there in a minute,” I said, forcing him to open the door on his own. He could use the exercise, I figured.

“Hi,” Ellen said. “You heard from Derek?”

“No,” I said, glancing at the clock on the dash. It was 5:05 p.m. “Why would I hear from Derek?”

“No reason,” she said. “He’s just usually back here before five. I wondered if he was running late or anything. He didn’t leave a message, so I thought maybe he’d been in touch with you.”

“Nope,” I said, feeling only slightly uneasy. “Didn’t you call him?”

“I tried his cell but it went straight to message.”

“Maybe he’s in a bad area, or forgot to charge it up,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry. Look, we honored our side of the deal with Illeana’s people. I’m sure everything’s okay. I’ve gotta go into the Holiday Inn. Randy’s doing the Rotary before his other thing.”

“Okay, talk to you later.”

Randy wasn’t having dinner with the Rotarians, but offering some greetings before they sat down to theirs. It was a kind of pre-announcement announcement. A few jokes, a bit of electioneering, and when he took questions from the audience he dodged the ones about his political intentions with “I think you’ll have the answer to that question in a couple of hours.”

He got a nice round of applause. Not quite as enthusiastic as he was hoping for, though. “The fuck was their problem?” he said, walking down the hall with me back to the car. “I thought I killed in there.”

“Tough room,” I said, and this time, feeling generous, I opened the car door for him.

He was settling into the back when my cell rang again. “Still no sign of him,” Ellen said. I could hear the edge in her voice.

I looked at the clock again. It was six. “Still no luck with his cell?”

“Nothing.”

“You know what the job’s like,” I said, trying to be positive. “There’s any number of things that could hold them up. Tractor breaks down, they run out of gas, and if they’re running the machinery, Derek’s not going to be able to hear the phone anyway.”

“I know. I just, I don’t know. What if those people, what if they changed their mind? What if they still want revenge for what Drew did?”

“Have you got the phone book there?”

“Hang on . . . Okay, I’ve got it.”

“Look up Lockus. That’s Drew’s last name. He hasn’t got a cell, but his mother must have a phone. Try the house, see if Derek’s already dropped him off.”

“Just a sec . . . There’s no Lockus,” she said.

“The house is on Stonywood,” I said.

“There’s nothing.”

“Well, shit. So his mother’s name is either different from his, or she’s got an unlisted number.”

“Hey, Cutter,” the mayor said from the backseat. “We going to just sit here or what?”

I held up my hand, asking for silence. I was trying to think what day it was, then said, “Okay, I know the houses they’d be hitting today, the ones Derek and I would do in the afternoon. I’ll swing by them, see if they’re there, and I’ll get back to you.”

“Thanks,” Ellen said.

I closed the phone, turned to Randy, and said, “What have you got between now and seven?”

“Jeez, Cutter, I was thinking maybe I’d find someone, get me a blowjob. What do you think I want to do? Let’s go back to the office, I’m gonna have a stiff drink, then we’ll head over to the Walcott around ten to seven, make my big entrance.”

“I’ve got to do a couple of things. Why don’t you just sit back and relax and I’ll give you a tour of Promise Falls.”

“What is this, Cutter? A joke?”

“Randy, just chill out. It’s important. My son hasn’t shown up.”

Randall Finley sighed. “So what? He’s probably jumping some teenage pussy. Isn’t that what happens when guys get released from jail?”

I already had the car in drive and was heading in the opposite direction of downtown. We tried to organize our clients by neighborhood, do the north side one day, the south another, and so forth, instead of crisscrossing Promise Falls every day. This particular day, we did properties mostly in the northeast.