A Tap on the Window (22 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT

“You
didn’t tell Quinn to have my car taken in?”

Augie shook his head. “I did not. You’re a lot of things, Cal. Dickhead, asshole, a conceited fuck if I ever met one. And the stupidest son of a bitch I know at the moment, trying to scare these kids the way you did. But you didn’t kill that girl.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it. Why would Quinn do that? I’d understand one of my officers bringing in a car to have it searched. They don’t need my approval for that. The question is why he would have said I wanted it done.”

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

“I saw Quinn while I was cooling my heels in the cell, before the lineup,” I said. “He might be in the building.”

Augie picked up a phone. “Where’s Quinn?” He waited a few seconds. “When did he go off shift?” He looked at me and mouthed “ten minutes.” He hung for another moment, then said, “Get him at home or on his cell. I want to talk to him.”

He pressed a button, then said, “Get me the compound.” Another moment on hold, then, “Chief Perry here. You got an Accord, was brought in last night, belongs to Calvin Weaver? Yeah, that’s the one . . . Uh-huh . . . Uh-huh . . . Okay. He’s coming to pick it up. I would ask that you extend him every courtesy.”

He hung up.

“No one’s even touched it,” Augie said. “They were awaiting further instructions.”

“I guess I’ll be on my way, then,” I said.

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to keep looking for Claire,” I said.

“You don’t think maybe it’s time for you to take a step back? You nearly got yourself charged. Maybe you should count your blessings and go home for a while.”

“I told the mayor I’d stay on this for—”

It was like I’d poked a bear with a sharp stick. “Hold on,” Augie said. “Tell me you’re not actually working for that son of a bitch.”

“Sorry, Augie. You so pissed with him you don’t think he’s entitled to get his daughter back?”

He waved an angry hand at me. “We’re already looking for her. We’ve got a whole load of questions for her about this game she and Hanna Rodomski were playing.”

“I’ll try not to get in your people’s way,” I said. “Although that may be difficult, given the campaign of harassment you’ve been conducting against Sanders.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” Bellowing.

“I’m talking about having cruisers parked on his street, watching him, trying to intimidate him. Cops frisking his daughter. Sanders is convinced you’ve even got his phone tapped.”

“That’s the biggest crock of horseshit I’ve ever heard.”

“Sanders blames you and all your surveillance for his daughter having to go to such lengths to get out of town without being noticed.”

His cheeks were getting red. I was reminded of a boiler on the brink of exploding.

“All bullshit,” Augie said.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “When you go to a public meeting and tell the mayor your officers have never violated anyone’s rights, I know that’s a lie, and so does everyone in the room, but no one really cares, because everyone here is happy for you to treat the Constitution like it’s toilet paper. So what if you run roughshod over a bunch of punks from Buffalo? But if I know you’re lying then, how am I supposed to know whether you’re telling me the truth now?”

“I need my head read, helping you out.”

I moved toward the door. “What I’m doing has nothing to do with you or Sanders or any of the bad blood between you. I just want to find Claire. Once I do, maybe we can figure out who killed Hanna.”

Augie blinked, and a smile formed in the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t you know?”

“Don’t I know what?”

“We made an arrest this morning.”

“You’ve charged someone with Hanna’s murder? Who?”

“The boyfriend.”

“Sean Skilling?”

“Yup.”

I let my arm fall away from the doorknob. “The kid’s got an alibi. One of your own people pulled him over for running a stop sign.”

“I asked around,” Augie said. “There’s no record of a ticket.”

“I told you, they didn’t write him a ticket. He got a warning.”

“What do you want from me, Cal?” Augie said. “I asked around—no one remembers pulling that kid over in his Ranger.”

“My gut says he didn’t do it.”

“Would your gut feel any different if it knew Hanna’s jeans and panties were found under the seat of his pickup truck?”

THIRTY-NINE

Augie
arranged for me to reclaim my phone at reception on my way out. There were three messages. Two from Donna, who’d evidently gotten word that I was in some kind of trouble, and one from the manager of the landscaping company. Before making callbacks, I got a cab to take me back to where I’d left Donna’s car on the shoulder of the road when Brindle and Haines had picked me up. Then I trekked back to the police department and parked the car in the lot.

Then I phoned Donna.

“Your car’s where you usually leave it,” I said.

“I called you twice.”

“I was indisposed.”

“Which was why I called. I’d heard you were in the building. And not in one of the rooms where they hold community meetings.”

“Yeah, but it’s sorted out. How’d you hear?”

“Kate heard it from Marvin, and she told me. I called Augie, but by that time you were out.”

“He intervened.”

“They didn’t find something in the car, did they?” Donna said.

“No, it was something else.”

A pause. “Something else?”

“Yeah. I guess I’ve been pressing my luck. Something came back and bit me in the ass.”

“How’d Augie get you out of this?”

“I’ll tell you all about it later. Really.”

“Sure.” Her voice sounded flat.

“What is it?”

“Last night doesn’t mean everything’s okay,” she said.

“I know.”

* * *

The
lockup where they were holding my Honda was a large parking lot surrounded by high chain-link fencing with a nasty string of barbed wire running along the top. In the office I found a short woman, working away at the crossword, who was expecting me. She retrieved my keys and led me into the compound past decommissioned cruisers, cars that had been in accidents, and a few untouched vehicles like my own.

Once we’d found it, the woman shoved a clipboard at me and said, “You have to sign here.” I did. She handed over the keys, told me to have a nice day, and said to beep the horn when I reached the gate and she’d open it.

I didn’t just get behind the wheel and drive off. I popped the trunk, where I kept those tools of my trade. The laptop, an orange traffic vest, a matching hard hat. Among other things.

Nothing appeared to have been touched.

I went through the glove compartment and had the sense nothing in there had been fiddled with, either. As Augie’d said, no one had touched the car yet.

Even so, I was surprised to see Hanna’s wig still in the car, on the floor in front of the backseat. Maybe it didn’t constitute evidence, since Hanna wasn’t wearing it at the time of her death, but it was all part and parcel of what had happened to her.

There was no shortage of other things to puzzle over. Why did Quinn tell Haines and Brindle to tow my car in? If he thought it should be searched for evidence, why lay it off on the chief?

And Sean Skilling arrested in Hanna’s murder?

I got behind the wheel. I inserted the key, started the engine, gave the pedal a couple of taps and listened to the engine rev. I got out my phone and listened to the message from the lawn service guy.

“Bill Hooper here, returning your call.”

He’d called an hour and a half ago. I tapped his number with my thumb to call him right back.

“You’ve reached Bill Hooper. I can’t take your call right now, but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Phone tag time.

When I reached the gate I tapped the horn, prompting the woman to hit the button and open it without so much as looking up from her crossword puzzle.

Sean could have been lying about a Griffon cop pulling him over. But then, if the incident never happened, what kept Sean from getting to Patchett’s in time to pick Claire up and deliver her to Iggy’s? The kid, at least in the short time I’d spent with him, didn’t impress me as a very good liar, or a killer.

But they’d found Hanna’s missing clothing in his truck. Not good. Not good at—

I blame distraction for what happened next. I pulled out of the police station parking lot and nearly hit a black Escalade. Hard to miss, given that the thing was big enough to have orbiting moons. The truck swerved and the man behind the wheel shot me the finger.

I slammed on the brakes, hard enough to make the tires squeal.

I should have seen it. But I just didn’t.

I took a second to collect myself and let the Escalade get a block ahead. Gave the brake pedal a couple of soft, reassuring taps, then continued on my way.

There was someone I’d been meaning to pay a visit to, but just hadn’t had a chance to get around to it. I had a feeling this person was not going to be very happy to see me.

I figured there was a good chance he wasn’t even out of bed yet.

When I got to the house I was looking for, I found a red Mustang convertible, top up, parked in the driveway. There was no BMW there, which told me Annette Ravelson was at work.

Just as well. I didn’t want her around when I talked to her son, Roman. I could still feel the dull thud in my head where he’d hit me at Patchett’s.

I rang the bell. After ten seconds, I rang it again. Then I banged on the door. When a minute had gone by, I tried the doorbell again, but this time I held my thumb on it. Inside the house, the chime rang relentlessly.

I could hold out as long as he could.

After about five minutes of this, I heard someone inside the house shout groggily. “Okay, okay! Fuck! I’m coming.”

I kept my thumb on the button. I heard a dead bolt turn. The second the door swung open, I got my foot in, thinking that once Roman saw me, he’d try to slam it shut.

He did.

The door hit the side of my shoe, bouncing back and catching Roman’s toes.

“Shitfuckshitfuckshitfuck!” he screamed, hopped, and stumbled backward.

I stepped into the house and closed the door behind me. Roman, dressed only in a pair of boxer shorts with little red hearts all over them, was collapsed on the broadloom, holding his left foot in both hands, whimpering.

“Hi, Roman,” I said. “How’s it hanging?”

FORTY

The
man wonders who was at the door. He’s always curious when he hears a knock, or the doorbell upstairs. It’s been so long since he’s had a chance to talk to anyone. At least, anyone other than his wife and their son.

The man sits up in bed to listen. Maybe he’ll be able to hear voices. He doesn’t even have a radio or a TV down here. There haven’t been any unfamiliar voices in so long.

Well, other than that one visitor, just the other week. But he’d had so few words to say. Ran off in such a hurry. Scared to death, probably.

The man barely had time to ask for help. Or toss over his notebook. He figured if his visitor needed proof, the book would do it.

But all this time’s gone by, and no one’s come. Still, anytime he hears someone at the door, he wonders, and hopes.

In the meantime, he spends most of his time in bed. Sometimes he gets himself into the chair, wheels himself around. But where’s he going to go? What’s the point?

So he just stays in bed and reads magazines.

And sleeps.

And dreams.

About going out.

FORTY-ONE

“You
fucking broke my toes, man!”

I knelt down and had a look. “Try to wiggle them.”

Roman Ravelson wiggled his toes.

“I don’t think they’re broken,” I said. “But then again, I don’t hold a medical degree.”

I offered my hand to help him get up, but instead he crawled two feet over to the stairs and used them to pull himself to a standing position. His skin was milky white, like he’d spent the last few years in a cave. Maybe he only came out at night. There was a little roll of fat over the elastic of his boxers, and sheet creases in his pudgy cheeks.

“Did I get you up?” I asked.

“I was out late,” he said. “You should leave. If you don’t leave, I’m gonna call my mom.”

I got out my cell. “Want to use my phone? You can tell her how you practically knocked me out last night.”

“That Sean—Jesus—I was trying to help him and he gives me up just like that. My mom told me you said to say hi. You wanted to fuck with my head, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “Your dad home?” I recalled Annette saying Kent Ravelson was out of town.

Roman blinked a couple of times, like he was kick-starting his eyes. “He’s—my dad’s away or something.”

“When’s he coming back?”

The young man shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t keep track of him.”

“You want to put on a shirt or anything? I’ve got a few questions.”

Roman sighed. “Fuck. Follow me.”

He started trudging upstairs. I followed him to the second floor, down the hall, and into his bedroom. Bumping his toes with the door appeared not to have crippled him for life.

His room was decorated hurricane-style. Bed unmade, clothes all over the floor. Magazines, video games, everything arranged helter-skelter. The walls were plastered with movie posters.
28 Days Later
,
The Walking Dead
,
Shaun of the Dead
,
Night of the Living Dead
,
Dance of the Dead
,
Zombieland
,
Dawn of the Dead
.

I was definitely picking up a theme here.

On the floor next to the bed, atop a pile of clothes, was an open laptop. Roman picked it up, looking for something to wear. The motion made the screen, which had been asleep, come to life. I caught a glimpse of text, arranged in what looked like play format.

A script.

He tossed the laptop on the bed, found a black T-shirt he liked, and pulled it on. It was a couple of sizes too small and just barely covered his stomach. Across the front it read
.

I pointed to it. “I don’t know that place. It’s not from around here.”

He gave me a “duh” look. “It’s the pub where they’re trapped in
Shaun of the Dead.
You’ve seen it, right? It’s only one of the best zombie movies ever made. It’s scary, but it’s also funny as fuck.”

“Sorry,” I said. Now I pointed to the laptop. “You writing a zombie movie?”

“Maybe,” Roman said.

“What’s it about? Haven’t zombies been, forgive me, kind of done to death?”

“You just have to find a new angle. I’ve got one.”

I waited.

Roman took a breath. “Okay, most zombies, it happens because of a plague or an experiment or something like that. But what if people were turned into zombies by aliens? A mash up of two different genres. My hero is this guy named Tim who knows what the aliens are doing and tries to stop them.”

I nodded. It sounded dumb to me, but when had dumbness ever kept an idea from being turned into a movie?

“You might have something there,” I conceded. “You got a regular job, Roman?”

“This is my job. I’m a screenwriter.”

“So, then, how much do you make, I don’t know, on a weekly basis, writing your scripts?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “It’s not like some job stocking shelves in a fucking grocery store where you get some stupid paycheck at the end of the week. You write a script, and then you shop it around and sell it. So you don’t make money for a long time, but then you could get, you know, a few hundred thousand or a million or something.”

I nodded. “Oh, okay. I don’t understand how Hollywood works. So how many scripts have you sold?”

“I’ve had some nibbles,” Roman said. “I had an e-mail the other day from Steven Spielberg’s office.”

“No shit?” I said. “When’s your meeting?”

“Okay, the e-mail wasn’t exactly—it was more like thanks for your inquiry, but— Did you just come here to bust my balls?” he asked. Wouldn’t have been hard, given what he was wearing. “’Cause if you’re here about who gave shit to Scott, I swear to you, it wasn’t me.”

“I’m not here about that,” I said. “You’re more into beverages. That’s what supports you while you write your scripts.”

He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, busted. I buy beer and drive around and sell it. Big deal. I’m a fuckin’ terrorist.”

“You had Sean and Hanna doing the deliveries for you, didn’t you? Is that why you were out last night, because they weren’t exactly available?”

“I didn’t know anything about that. I called Hanna earlier and got no answer, and when I called Sean he didn’t pick up, either. Fuck, I didn’t know she was dead or anything.”

“Did you know they’ve arrested Sean for it?”

His mouth dropped open. He plopped down on the side of the bed. Quietly, he said, “No way. Sean’s my friend. There’s no way he’d do that.” Roman shook his head in disbelief. “Sean was really into Hanna. Really loved her. Son of a bitch.”

“If Sean didn’t do it, who do you think did?”

He shrugged. “I can’t think of
anybody
who’d do something like that. That’s just—that’s fucked-up, man.”

I moved some rumpled jeans off a computer chair over by the desk and sat down. I noticed a phone sitting on the desk.

“Did you like Hanna?”

“Oh yeah, sure, she was nice. I mean, she kind of pissed me off sometimes. She was late with money she owed me. But, you know, it was no big deal.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’d buy, like, two dozen cases of beer, load it into Sean’s Ranger, right? And they’d go around delivering. Sean drives, Hanna looks after the money. And there’s a markup, right? So at the end of an evening, or a weekend, Hanna’s got enough to pay me back everything they owe me, and still have money left over. We’d usually meet up the next day.”

“But sometimes she didn’t have it?”

Roman rolled his eyes. “If she passed the mall on the way to see me, sometimes she’d get distracted. Buy herself something. And a couple times, people tried to pay her in something other than cash. I am strictly a cash operation, you know?”

“What do you mean? You’re not telling me some kids want to write you a check.”

Another eye roll. If he did it again they might get stuck looking at his brain.

“No, no, like, if someone didn’t have enough cash, they’d hand over some weed or something to Hanna. I had to lay down the law on that one. I don’t want that stuff.”

“Hanna ever owe other people money besides you?”

“Beats me. Not that I know of. I don’t know why you’re asking me so many questions about how I make a few bucks. Nobody cares about that, and it’s got nothin’ to do with what happened to Hanna.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, like maybe he was trying to stop himself from crying. “I’m tellin’ ya, there’s no way Sean woulda done that to her.”

“That’s why I have to find Claire,” I said. “She may know what really happened. But you weren’t exactly helpful to her father on the phone last night.”

He blinked. “What—how do you—”

“We talked this morning. You said, quote, you didn’t fuckin’ know and didn’t fuckin’ care, unquote, where she was.”

“Okay, you have to know a coupla things. One, my mom did not tell me Hanna was dead before she made me call him. And two, that guy Sanders never liked me. He never thought I was good enough for Claire.”

Point, Sanders
.

“How long did you and Claire go out?” I ran my finger along the edge of the cell phone sitting on the desk.

“Like, four months or so, till, like, July.” His lips compressed. “Till she met Dennis.”

Now we’d reached the main reason for my visit. “Tell me about Dennis.”

“Well, his last name is Mullavey, and he’s a black guy, and he’s from someplace like Syracuse or Schenectady.”

“Those are very different places.”

He shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. He was supersmooth, you know. Thought he was real cool.”

I picked up the phone.

“Leave that alone,” Roman said.

“You take pictures with this?” I asked.

“Every phone takes pictures. How old are you?”

“This the one you used to take the picture of your cock you sent to Claire?”

“What did you say?”

“Is this the photo app here?”

He shot forward and grabbed the phone from my hand. I didn’t make any effort to hang on to it.

“Is that what makes you cool, Roman? Texting hard-on pics?”

Roman stood before me, almost shaking.

“Claire and I would goof around sometimes, that’s all. Just having some fun.”

“She send you naked pictures of herself?”

“Claire’s a little more uptight about that kind of thing. But she thought it was funny.”

“Even after she’d broken things off with you?” I asked. “Did she think it was funny to get a reminder of what she was missing? Did Dennis find out about that picture? Did he come after you for it? Did something happen between you two that made him leave town in a hurry?”

“No!” Roman said. “Nothing like that happened. This is bullshit, bringing up this stuff. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Okay,” I said understandingly. “Just tell me what
did
happen. Tell me about Dennis.”

“I hardly ever even met the guy. I know he had a stupid job cutting grass for the summer.”

“With Hooper’s?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Driving around in one of those orange trucks.”

“So what happened?”

“She started seeing him, while she was still seeing me, right? But I could tell something was wrong, because she was getting all cool, you know? And then she gives me the whole it’s-not-you-it’s-me thing, and next thing I know she’s seeing Mullavey. I wanted to fucking bash his brains in, you know, but Sean, he talked me out of doing anything stupid like that, and I never would have anyway. You think these kinds of things, but you never actually do them.”

“But then Claire and Dennis broke up all of a sudden.”

“Yeah,” Roman said. “Like, from what Sean told me, one day he just quits his job and goes back home. Like, maybe one day he realized cutting grass was boring. He breaks it off with Claire. At the time, I thought it kind of looked good on her. Like now she’d know how it feels.”

“You try to get back with her? With anything more tempting than your dick shot?”

Roman hesitated. “I, you know, I called her a few times. I admit that.”

“You do anything more?”

“Like, what do you mean?”

“Did you start following her around? Stalking her?”

Another shrug. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“But you followed her?”

“I just wanted to talk to her, that’s all. Because I think we had a good thing going on. She wouldn’t answer my calls, so what was I supposed to do?”

“That your Mustang out front?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Your parents bought that for you?”

“Yeah, so?”

“What’s your dad drive?”

“What the hell? Why are you asking?”

“Just tell me.”

“He’s got a BMW. Him and my mom both got ’em.”

BMW didn’t make a pickup truck. But I was betting Ravelson Furniture had one or two for deliveries. Roman could have borrowed one.

“Do you know why Dennis broke things off with Claire?”

“Man, I don’t even think Claire knew the reason, from what I hear. My guess is, he was just a total douche.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that would explain it. Roman, you know Claire, you went out with her. Where would she go? If she was scared, or just wanted to get away from everybody, where would she hide out? Aside from her mom’s place in Toronto.”

He thought, then said, “I got nuthin’.”

I got out of the computer chair. “Good luck with your meeting with Steven.”