Very Bad Men (21 page)

“I like it well enough,” he said. “And it pays the bills.”

She frowned. “What's that?”

“Claims processing.”

“Oh,” she said. “Right.” Her eyes lighted on the orange juice. He could see her making a decision.

She picked up the glass and drank. Orange juice dribbled down the front of her blouse. It seemed almost like an accident.

“Look what I've done,” she said, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Down the hall,” he said helpfully. She was already heading that way.

She passed out of his line of sight and he heard the door of the bathroom close, water running. He waited in the kitchen, decided to let her take her time. Let her look in the bedroom; there was nothing to see. A mattress, some clothes. The apartment of an untidy man, but not a dangerous one. Not a stealer of cats.

There was nothing to alarm her, he thought. His rifle was in the trunk of his car. And though he had no mirror handy he believed he looked passable. He had showered and washed his hair. He had on clean clothes. A drawing of him had been in the newspaper, but she might not have seen it. She was probably a student. How many students read the newspaper?

In any case, the drawing resembled him only vaguely. Among other things, it showed him with a hat and two days' stubble, and now he was hatless and clean-shaven. He didn't think she had recognized him. If she thought he was a killer, she would never have come in.

So she didn't think he was a killer. She thought he was someone who might have taken her cat. When she realized he hadn't, she would go back to her apartment and he could forget about her.

He heard footsteps and looked up to see her emerging from the hall, dabbing at her blouse with one of his towels.

“Everything all right?” he said.

She smiled shyly and nodded. “I should get out of your hair. I've troubled you enough.”

“Not at all.”

Folding the towel, she set it on the counter. Lark thought she would leave. Not yet.

“Maybe you need to get to work,” she said.

It took an effort to keep his expression friendly. Why was she still here?

“It's such a nice day,” he said. “I called in sick.”

“Are you?”

He considered idly how he might kill her. He still had the chef's knife he'd bought to use on Sutton Bell. It was in a drawer close by.

“Am I what?” he asked.

“Sick,” she said. “I noticed your hand. What happened?”

Both his hands rested lightly on the counter. He looked down at the left one, wrapped in its gauze. Maybe she recognized him after all. His wound had been reported in the paper.

The drawer with the chef's knife was within reach. He could picture the dark wooden handle. Out of the corner of his eye Lark saw the flyer she had given him. LOST CAT. The letters glowed like hot coals.

“It's not as bad as it looks,” he said. “I had an accident. Slicing apples. I sliced my palm instead.”

“Did it hurt?”

He gazed at her across the counter. She stood like his reflected image, her brown hands resting on the folded towel. On the back of one of them he saw two thin, curved lines. Cat scratches, a few days old.

“I didn't feel it,” he said. “Not at first.”

She's still suspicious,
he thought.
She wants to see underneath the gauze.

He brought his left hand up and contemplated the palm. “It's funny how that works sometimes, isn't it? You don't even feel it.”

Casually, as if the idea had just occurred to him, as if it were a natural thing to do, he peeled the tape from the gauze with the fingers of his right hand. He unwound the bandage and let it fall in a heap on the countertop.

He made sure she saw the back of his hand—smooth and unmarked—and then showed her the palm. The cut was short and straight and looked nothing like a cat scratch.

She made a sympathetic face when she saw it. “That looks painful.”

“It's getting better,” he said.

The shy smile returned and she seemed to decide, finally, that he was harmless. He thought for a moment that she would want to stay and talk some more.

Instead, she picked up her flyers—all but the one she had given him.

“Nice to meet you,” she said.

He nodded. “Same here.”

“You've got my number,” she said, “if you see Roscoe.”

It might have been his imagination, but something in the tone of her voice made him think she might not mind him calling even if he didn't see Roscoe.

“I've got it,” he said.

She went to the door and he went with her. Watched her cross the hall to her apartment.

Back in the kitchen he wrapped the gauze around his hand again. He opened the drawer and brushed his fingers over the handle of the knife.

He could go across the hall right now and knock, and she would answer. It would be easy.

The letters on the flyer—LOST CAT—had settled into a smooth blue-green, gently bobbing like a boat tied at a dock.

Lark remembered being hungry and thought about take-out Chinese. He closed the drawer, found his keys, and went out.

I
talked to Lucy Navarro again on Monday night, but before that I heard from Nick Dawtrey and the senator had his accident.

I'd left my card with Nick and told him to call me if he got the urge to ride his bike in circles around the Chippewa County sheriff's office again. I had filled him in about the man in plaid, but I knew he didn't want to let go of the idea that the cops were somehow behind his father's death, and that they had deliberately murdered his half brother Terry. I'd asked him to be patient, to wait and see what Elizabeth could find out.

He reached me on my cell phone at the
Gray Streets
office. His voice had the same tone I remembered, older than his fifteen years.

“I've been watching the sheriff, sport,” he said.

“Hello, Nick.”

“Walter Delacorte—he went shopping today. Bought paint and rollers. You think that means anything?”

“Probably not.”

I waited for him to tell me what he thought it meant, but he had already moved on.

“I heard Paul Rhiner came down your way, tried to shoot somebody else.”

“He didn't try to shoot anyone,” I said.

“I heard the Ann Arbor cops hauled him in, but then they let him go.”

“Elizabeth talked to him,” I said. “She thinks he's genuinely sorry about having to shoot Terry. She thinks it's eating away at him. He told her he only meant to wound your brother, not kill him.”

“And she believed him? What'd I tell you, sport? Your wife's a cop. She's gonna side with the other cops.”

“That's not the way it is, Nick—”

“He's back up here now. Rhiner. Got back yesterday and hasn't left his house. He lives alone, but somebody brought him sacks of food and bottles of booze. Left them on his porch. I'm not sure who.”

“You shouldn't be spying on Rhiner. Or Delacorte. This isn't a game—”

“Don't worry 'bout me, sport. Nobody saw me.”

“You need to stop.”

I heard his breath over the line. “I'll stop as soon as you can tell me what really happened to my father and Terry. You find anything out yet?” His voice made it
anytheen
.

I stood by my office window and thought about my conversation with Lucy Navarro. About her meeting with Terry Dawtrey and what Terry had told her about Callie Spencer. I could tell Nick about it, but it would only feed his suspicions.

He listened to my silence and said, “That's what I thought.”

“Things take time,” I said.

His laugh sounded bitter. “No kidding. Maybe you tell that to Kyle Scudder. They still think he killed my father. My mother, she went to Sault Sainte Marie today, talked to Kyle's lawyer. Lawyer talked to the prosecutor, but the prosecutor says he won't drop the charges. Kyle's lawyer filed a motion to dismiss, but he says it'll take time. Everything takes time.”

“It does.”

“My mother spent all afternoon on the phone, calling everybody she can think of. I don't know what she expects to do. Maybe have a protest march or something.”

“Maybe that'll help.”

“You're killing me, sport.”
Killeen
.

“Listen,” I said. “You need to let your mother and the lawyer handle things. And stay away from the cops in Sault Sainte Marie.”

“If I don't keep watch on the cops, who's gonna find out the truth? You really think your wife's gonna do it?”

“Yes.”

The line went quiet for a few seconds, but then I heard his voice.

“Tell her to hurry up.”

 

 

AFTER I GOT OFF the phone with Nick, I spent an hour updating the
Gray Streets
subscription list. The magazine was supposed to have a secretary to deal with things like that, but the old one had left in the spring and I hadn't replaced her yet.

Around five-thirty a couple of the magazine's interns wandered through. At one time all the interns were students from the university's English department, but lately I've been branching out. One of them was a computer science major. Another studied history and wanted to be a playwright. I sent them each off with an armload of manuscripts from the slush pile. Maybe one of them would find a gem. Probably not.

By the time they left, the glazier I'd hired to replace the broken glass in the hallway door had finished the job. I wrote him a check for a sum that made me think I'd chosen the wrong line of work, and he packed his tools and went away.

When I left
Gray Streets,
I stopped at Whole Foods and picked up grilled shrimp and red peppers and zucchini. I had them warming in the oven when Elizabeth got home. She and I were on our own; Sarah had gone to a friend's for dinner.

We ate in the backyard, lounging in Adirondack chairs, watching the low clouds turn golden in the western sky. Afterward, we got out the clippers and trimmed a wisteria vine that had begun to send tendrils over the fence and into the neighbor's yard. From there we went at the hedges on either side of the house, and soon the ground was strewn with branches that would need to be bagged and hauled to the curb.

I went to the garage to look for bags, and when I returned Elizabeth had her cell phone to her ear. She said something I didn't catch, and then, “I'm leaving now.”

I watched her close the phone. “Work?” I said.

“Traffic accident.”

“And they need you there? How bad is it?”

“It's not a question of how bad, it's a question of who.”

 

 

SENATOR JOHN CASTERBRIDGE sat on the grass beneath an oak tree. Legs crossed, forearms resting on his knees. His car, a Mercury Grand Marquis, rested askew in the street nearby. Third Street, near the intersection with Jefferson.

Elizabeth parked half a block away. She cut the engine, left the windows rolled down. Without turning to me she said, “Technically, you ought to stay here.”

She got out and I trailed behind her. In the center of the intersection sat a patrol car with its lights whirling silently. As she approached it, a uniformed cop stepped over to meet her. A young guy named Fielder.

They spent a few minutes going over what had happened. The senator had been driving south on Third. Another driver—a twenty-year-old in a Jeep—had been heading east on Jefferson. The intersection was a four-way stop. The senator had entered it first, but the Jeep had run through a moment later, striking the rear fender of the senator's Mercury and spinning the car a hundred and eighty degrees.

We could see the Jeep a little way up Jefferson, two wheels in the street and the other two up over the curb.

“We've got witnesses,” Fielder said, indicating a young couple who stood nearby. The woman rocked a stroller back and forth, trying to entertain a toddler with curly red hair.

“Family out for a walk,” Fielder said. “The husband wasn't paying attention, but the wife says she saw the senator's car come to a stop before entering the intersection. Says the kid in the Jeep barreled on through.”

“Anyone hurt?” asked Elizabeth.

“The driver of the Jeep had some abrasions from his air bag. EMTs took him to the hospital. The senator refused to be looked at. Says he's fine. He seems all right—physically.”

Elizabeth lifted her eyebrows, waiting for Fielder to explain.

“He wants to be on his way,” Fielder said. “Says he's on an errand. A matter of life and death. I tried to find out more, but he says it's top secret and I don't need to know.”

“Do you think he's been drinking?” Elizabeth asked.

Fielder shook his head. “I didn't smell anything on him. But something's not right. Dispatch is trying to get in touch with his son.”

Elizabeth looked off at the senator sitting in the grass. The leaves of the oak tree fluttered in the air above him.

“All right,” she said. “I'll talk to him.”

I stayed by the patrol car with Fielder while Elizabeth crossed the street and joined the senator beneath the oak. He got up when she approached. He seemed steady enough on his feet.

The sky had dulled to blue and black. The whirling lights of the patrol car lent an air of unreality to the scene. A few people came out onto their porches. The couple with the stroller seemed to grow impatient, and Fielder went over to talk to them.