Trapline (17 page)

thirty-five:
wednesday evening

The old woman was
about the last person he was going to engage.
She had emerged from an old Buick a half-block from Glenwood Manor and ambled along the sidewalk. Each arm lugged a stuffed-full shopping bag. She stared at the sidewalk as she moved, her head bent over. She was the picture of someone minding her own business.

Bloom was expecting the big blow-off, maybe a grunt or “go away.” Instead, she set down her load as if she'd been hauling bricks, and smiled as if there was no difference between helping a reporter and helping a lost child. She had to be pushing seventy. She was small. She wore bifocals in heavy dark blue frames with a flourish Elton John might have designed. Her hair was pulled back and taut. Her eyes focused like a house cat eyeing a bird through a window. Her name was Marsha Painter.

“How well do you know this neighbor, the one who was arrested?” said Bloom.

“Being held,” said Painter. “That's what I heard. Not arrested. Being held for questioning.”

“So, how well?”

It was night. A streetlight gave him enough to see his notes and show her lined but pleasant face.

“About a year ago,” said Painter. She thought it through, wanting to be accurate. “My LeSabre wouldn't start. The battery went click, nothing. He helped me jump it and we got to talking. It didn't take much. Scratch the surface and off he'd go on how miserable he was with the government, the price of everything. I specifically remember him mentioning the crimes being committed by illegals and how they're ruining our country. As if Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, and Timothy McVeigh were all from Juarez, for crying out loud.”

It was such a great line, Bloom took extra care with his notes.

“That was it? The last time you saw him?”

“Yes.” Painter was emphatic. “I mean, to have a conversation. Saw him around every now and then.”

“Did he ever say anything else?”

Painter smiled. “I didn't want to engage.”

“You're sure it was the same person they're holding?”

“No question,” said Painter.

“What's his name?”

She inhaled, studied Bloom's eyes like a drill sergeant. “You're going to use my name?”

“I can talk to my editor,” said Bloom. “Might make an exception in this case.”

“What if he's a racist goofball and the police let him go, for some reason. If he comes back.”

“I don't have to use your name,” said Bloom. “At least, I won't use your name unless I call you back and get your permission on what we want to print.”

Marsha Painter pursed her lips, looked down, sighed. “He told me to call him Frank but his real name was Emmitt. Emmitt Kucharski. After the cops questioned me, I went and looked on his mailbox.”

Bloom couldn't imagine growing up with such a mouthful of a name. No wonder he went by Frank.

“How old? You know, roughly.”

“Mid-thirties. Might be pushing forty.”

“Big guy?”

“Oh no, the opposite. Slender, slight though he looked plenty strong too.”

“Were you at home, in the building, on the day of the shooting?”

“Right there,” said Painter. “I was half tempted to walk downtown and at least lay eyes on Mr. Lamott, even if I knew for a little old lady like me it would be a struggle. But I stayed home, let the great world spin on its own.”

“Did you see your neighbor that day? Was there anything that morning that made you feel something was unusual? Out of sorts?” Bloom didn't want to seem too over-eager or let her know she was a fountain of gold. “Did you hear the shots?”

Painter gave him a sideways look. The smile was gone.

“Easy now, big fella,” she said. “One question at a time. I've seen him before, like I said, but not recently.”

“How about since the morning Lamott was shot?”

Painter took a full breath, looked like she was working hard to keep her story straight.

“This is the part the police were most interested in, too.”

Bloom let her find her own way into it.

“I wonder if the police really want all this in the newspapers,” she said. “I guess I can kind of see why they asked me to not talk about it.”

Bloom opted for low-key and a touch of flattery. “I'm sure the police have a million leads.”

Painter pursed her lips, squinted. “I've got ice cream,” she said. “It's melting.”

Bloom waited.

Glenwood Manor had become a hub of police activity since the crime scene had shifted—or, more accurately, lurched—from the hillside to the rooftop. An all-white vehicle like an oversize UPS truck had become a fixture on the street. The van was a mobile crime lab, no doubt on loan from a rich-uncle law enforcement agency.

Bloom wanted Marsha Painter to think he had all night. Her feistiness wasn't a streak of her nature, it was her essence. Being concerned about her name's visibility gave credibility to the story, though of course he would want corroboration. Coogan would, too.

“The cops will figure it out,” said Bloom. “But it's not a small coincidence. The shooting. Your neighbor. The fact that you haven't seen him lately.”

“Yes, but look how easy it is to convict in the papers before one single day in court. That poor guy in Atlanta who they thought bombed the Olympics? That French finance guy visiting New York they thought had raped the hotel maid.”

“Did he have friends?” said Bloom, more than a bit impressed with her memory for the wrongly prosecuted.

“Didn't see him enough to know.”

“Did you notice anything at all unusual?”

“You asked me that already.”

She smiled like a stern English teacher. Barely.

“And I don't think you told me,” said Bloom. He smiled back enough to say he wasn't being confrontational.

“It wasn't that day,” said Painter. “It was the day before.”

Bloom waited.

“I was up at some ungodly hour. Used to be able to sleep regular, but not anymore.”

“What time was it?” said Bloom.

Bloom took notes as she talked. He found himself oddly calm.

Five a.m. Maybe a train woke her up. Went for a walk. Us old folks don't sleep so well.

Usually I walk for an hour. Came back, it was still dark.

This guy Frank—Emmitt—is out front but he's down on the corner. Standing there. Doesn't see me. Streetlight. I can tell who it is.

He's impatient. Looking around. I go to my room, right on the corner, looking down. He's unloading all this stuff from a car. Car is in the middle of the street.

Painter took a breath. She was reliving the fact that she had seen the would-be killer. No doubt she had given the cops the same detail a dozen times. Now she had the highlights down cold.

Loading in cases of some sort. Two cases, maybe three. One looked like the right shape. A rifle case.

Some rifles snap together. You never know. Not duffle bags. These were cases. The look of equipment.

“And his friend?”

Painter paused again.

“Never forget him,” she said. “I sat for two hours telling the police artist yes or no over and over as he drew. And that face tattoo, like a scream to the world. One big tattoo. Hideous. Now, I must tend to my ice cream soup.”

Bloom watched her go.

Bloom hadn't been to church since the early days of high school, but journalism appeared to have its own god-like entities. Sometimes those gods dropped off an easy-to-open gift on your front door. They knocked gently and then left. You had to go open the door, unwrap the package and figure out what the gods wanted you to do.

Other times, and it only happened rarely, the journalism gods opened the front door and dropped the gift in your lap.

When you opened the gift, you felt like your bank account had magically doubled in size or that the prettiest and smartest girl had purposely waved you over to the bar for a chat, her phone number already scrawled on a napkin.

thirty-six:
wednesday, late night

The slow crunch of
tires on the dirt road cut through the night like a gong at a Buddhist monastery.

The sound was unnatural, grinding. A pair of yellow parking lights led the way and, as the vehicle came into view, the lights snapped
off. At the same moment, a light popped inside the cab, bringing shape and definition to the truck. The light came out of the driver's side window and it moved. A flashlight.

The beam stabbed the night, jerked around on the treetops and field and the clouds and came to rest on Allison's A-frame, several hundred yards to Trudy's left. The beam whipped across the open space and Trudy ducked and held still on the porch. The beam stopped on her door, three feet away.

And snapped off.

Trudy's heart tried to crawl its way up the back of her throat. She tightened her grip around the gun, the only one she kept from ex-husband George's cache. It was meant for bears, if needed.

Her mouth went dry. She sat up, but barely, and tucked herself down by the wicker chair on the front porch. She had an angle on the car. The parking lights snapped back on and the car turned toward her and stopped. Doors opened and the interior light popped on, enough to see two figures stand up, one from each side. The vehicle was a pickup or SUV.

The motor cut. The doors slammed.
Boom-boom.

Footsteps headed her way at a deliberate pace. A low mumble rippled across the night. The mumbler was male. Three or four words. The speaker was confident, relaxed.

Trudy moved her butt to the wicker, jabbed her elbows on her knees, perched the gun in two hands. The wicker chattered slightly. The gun shook in Trudy's hand and she realized now she was stuck. She should have headed inside at the first sign of their lights and started moving away, away, away. Here, she was cornered. Jumping back into the house now would be too noisy, too obvious.

Trudy risked a slow breath, tried to find a place back on the dial toward cool and calm. She flashed on Allison—what would she do? And then Jerry—where was he? And then realized these two walking up the road to her house might have had to go through Jerry to get here and she realized, suddenly, that Jerry might be hurt.

Or worse.

She cocked the gun.

The sound, in this setting, was like a car crash.

“What the—”

The words gave away the distance—close.

Silence.

Trudy aimed high and to the left, pulled the trigger. Her body jerked, the recoil rippled every muscle in her arm and shoulder. Her ears ignited with a high-pitched whine.

She counted to four, aimed high and pulled the trigger again.

This time she was up and at her door, heading inside as the echo faded.

She flashed the light on and Alfredo was already up, eyes ready to kill if needed.

Trudy pointed at his boots as if she had always pointed at everything with the barrel of a gun. He scooped up his boots and she flipped the overhead light back off, her breath coming now in inefficient bursts. She yanked on his wrist with her free hand. They ran through the house in the dark, headed to the back door by the greenhouse.

Twenty yards of clearing separated the house from the woods. She ran expecting a tackle. Her eyes screamed for a scrap of light. She reached the first line of trees, her hand gripping Alfredo's wrist.

She squatted, pulled him down alongside.

“Your boots,” she whispered. “
Los botas
.”

They waited.

The shots weren't enough. Trudy knew it.

Two shapes. Two presences. Right there. Closer to the house, but there. Trudy heard a step. Two.
Three-four.
One bumped into something, a metallic ring. The pole for her clothes line.

“Fuck me.” Like a growl.

The
ping
hung in the air.

The back door opened and they were both inside.

She hoped.

Trudy jerked Alfredo again by the wrist and started up around to the front, staying clear of the house. A light flashed on in the corner of her view. Alfredo stayed close.

She hoped there wasn't a third who had stayed with the car.

It was possible they faced a long night. It wouldn't take her visitors long to figure out she wasn't in the house and she could have gone one of 360 directions, all pretty good cover in the night. It was her turf, her advantage.

Their vehicle was a presence, a hint of a shape.

She slowed, eyes straining, free hand up. She let Alfredo go, but he hovered close.

Her hand found the car—SUV.

If there was a third inside, she and Alfredo were dead meat.

Trudy took a breath.

The sound behind the house was an angry slam of the door, ten times the needed force. No words could be plucked from the general guttural wrath.

Time was fleeting, but that depended on whether her visitors thought their prey sought refuge in the woods.

More low grumbles and curses, but they were from the far side of the house.

Trudy turned the gun around in her hand, held it by the barrel, found the smooth plastic casing of the tail light and gave it a firm whack.

Another.

Her finger felt the jagged sharp plastic where she had hammered.

“
Vámonos
,” she whispered.

She flipped aside the scrap of plastic.

She led the way up the slope on the far side of the pickup from the house. Trudy climbed for two long minutes and stopped, her chest tight from panic and exertion. Alfredo sat next to her, put an arm around her shoulders.

Alfredo was already Zen-like frozen, a cool customer. Waiting roadside at night and wondering about the intentions of strangers wasn't a new experience.

The driver side door on the SUV snapped open and the light caught the driver's general size—large—and a flash of dark shirt. The cab of the vehicle obscured his face. The driver climbed in and the light snapped off for a second before the passenger's side opened.

This guy was in no rush. He stood looking back across the truck at the house. He was heavy set too, or at least bulky. He looked to be shorter than the driver.

“Fucking, fuckin' A,” he said. “They've gotta come back.”

Trudy couldn't hear the response, but the passenger wasn't in charge. The light caught his thick neck and nearly chinless profile. If it came down to a foot race, Trudy wasn't worried. But now that she had put bullets between them, she doubted it would come down to speed or stamina.

“You know—”

The car door slammed with an odd sound like the frame was bent.
The motor came to life and the truck started a three-point turn until the headlights pointed back the way they had come.

“Now,” said Trudy.

She led the race back to the house.

Keys. Handbag.

They hadn't tossed the place. They weren't after stuff. They were only after Alfredo. The cats were stirred up, but okay.

Back outside, the SUV's tail lights were far ahead, climbing a low rise. Trudy would close the gap between them when they got closer to Dotsero and once they were on the highway. In a half-hour or so, she'd be right on their tail, the busted light leading the way.

“I know,” said Trudy to Alfredo. She kept her eyes on the dimly lit road. “Oldest trick in the book.”