Death Benefits (25 page)

“Find anything?”

“A shotgun up on that shelf, and a pistol in a compartment in the headboard of the bed.”

“No paper, huh?” said Stillman. “We’d better go.”

Walker got to his feet and walked to the stairs with him. “What about you?”

“Not a lot of surprises. He had quite a bit of money. You can see that from the furniture, the way his house has been remodeled. Damned if I know where a dime of it is, though. He didn’t leave anything that we could use to find it. His little den has a desk in it, but he seems to have used the place mostly to read magazines, watch TV, and talk on the phone.”

“You mean there’s no paper around at all?”

“Sure there is. Birth certificate, deed to the house, pink slip for his car, bills—water, power, heating-oil company, credit cards. That was a disappointment, because he hasn’t been using them on his travels. He’s got another set somewhere besides the one he had on him in Florida. The phone bills don’t have any long-distance calls on them. I don’t think I missed much. I even found his spare set of keys.”

They were at the cellar stairs. Stillman started down, but Walker said, “We can’t give up like this.”

“We’re not. I plugged bugs into the phone jacks upstairs and down. And, of course, I took the keys,” said Stillman. “I’m looking forward to the luxury of opening a lock with the actual key.”

“But we can’t come back. Pretty soon the cops in Miami or the FBI will identify him and announce it. His buddies will come and clean this place out.”

“Then we’ll pick it up on the bugs. That’s another luxury I’m looking forward to,” Stillman said. “The minute they get started I pick up the phone and call the cops to come get them. And you know what? Whoever comes in to look for incriminating evidence about themselves will experience a moment of intense pleasure just before they hear the sirens. Because this guy didn’t have any.”

29

Walker could already see his shadow on the pavement, a fantastic elongation of his silhouette that stretched across the road, stepping into the shadow of the Explorer that was nearly a square. He started the engine as soon as he could get inside.

Stillman said, “Very slowly, just the way we came.”

Walker eased the transmission into gear and rolled off the shoulder to get the Explorer moving, then very gradually accelerated in the direction it had been aimed when he had parked. He concentrated on keeping the engine running just above idle and the speed low enough so he could coast to a stop at each corner.

Stillman said, “Go down this street, turn onto Main just before the river, then head for the highway. I think we’ll have breakfast in that last town we went through on the way.”

“South Haverley? Why South Haverley?”

“It looked a little bigger and livelier than Coulter, even an hour ago. I’d rather not hang around here doing nothing while we wait for something to open up.”

Walker turned onto Main and headed out of town. This time, when he came to an intersection, he stopped only long enough to be sure he wouldn’t be accused of running the stop sign. Now there were lights on in a few of the houses, and twice he saw police cars. One was cruising along a parallel street in the same direction he was going, and the other had stationed itself on a quiet block just off Main, in the time-honored way of traffic cops waiting for speeders.

When he had crossed the bridge across the river and was driving between the open fields again, he kept staring into his rearview mirror.

“What are you looking for?” asked Stillman. “Cops?”

Walker glanced at him. “It’s not entirely out of the question, is it? We did just pull off one of our many unsuccessful burglaries.”

“Relax,” said Stillman. “I saw two patrol cars on the way out, and if anybody had reported anything, they would have collared us then. And it wasn’t entirely unsuccessful.”

“No?”

“No. We know James Scully was one of them, and we know he wasn’t the one who’s been moving all those insurance claims from your company.”

“You could tell that?”

“I told you he wasn’t in the habit of making long-distance phone calls—none at all last month, when there might have been a lot of conversation with people who were getting started on scams in Pasadena, Miami, and God knows where else. After seeing his place, we know he had plenty of spending money, but it was the sort of money that a guy who does high-risk work might get as pay. And he didn’t have the kinds of things that the money guy will have.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Office supplies. Pens, calculators, computers, airline timetables, maps. His friends might have gotten in and out already and removed incriminating paper. They would have no reason to get rid of paper clips. The magazines I found all had subscriber’s address labels, so they were his—all guns and naked women.” Stillman paused. “I’d say that Scully was pretty much what he seemed to be the night we met him: the sort of guy you tell, ‘Go get Walker and Stillman,’ and he goes out to get Walker and Stillman.”

“So now we’re stuck again.”

“Temporarily becalmed,” said Stillman. “If the other guy in Florida was a sort of relative, it’s possible he lived nearby—maybe in Coulter, or in one of these other little towns around here.” He let his eyes rest on Walker for only a half-second before he said, “Let’s find some breakfast.”

Walker began to breathe more evenly as soon as he was back on the Old Concord Road. There were other cars on the highway now, and the bright summer sunlight seemed to lend not exactly benevolence, but at least reality to the world. What he could see now included long views of trees and fields and hills, not just a section of pavement lit by the funnel-shaped beams of his headlights surrounded by vague shapes and shadows. There were flowers growing in patches here and there, and being able to see the detail and complexity of their forms made him less uneasy. Approaching traffic now resolved itself into sequences of cars, and not just the glare of headlights brightening and then disappearing. It even made him feel better that two of the first six cars had out-of-state license plates. This was tourist season, and the uncomfortable feeling he’d had that he and Stillman were the only strangers disappeared.

They found a restaurant just outside South Haverley that had been built to look like an enlarged farmhouse. A few of the dozen cars in the parking lot had plates from Massachusetts, New York, or Vermont. When he pulled into a space and got out of the Explorer, he noticed that the muscles of his shoulders and neck were stiff from the tension of the night and morning, then remembered that he had been awake for twenty-four hours.

They sat beside a window that looked out on the highway, ordered steak and eggs for breakfast, and then watched the traffic continue to build while they ate. When Stillman was signing the charge slip, Walker let himself return to thoughts of the immediate future. They got back into the Explorer and Walker started the engine, moved to the edge of the highway, and signaled for a left turn while he waited for an opening in the traffic.

“You know where we’re going?” Stillman asked.

“What choice do we have?” said Walker. “The case is in Coulter.”

They drove back to the sign that said
COULTER
and made the turn. There were two cars ahead of them on the road that sliced between the hills and onto the flat plain beyond, and as each turned to the right, Walker stared at the occupants. The first car held a couple in late middle age and the second a younger couple with children in the back seat.

Walker drove more confidently over the covered bridge this time, and across the fields to the town. Coulter looked different in full daylight. There were people on the street, cars parked in front of the old-fashioned commercial buildings. The public library was not open yet, but there were lights on inside, and two little girls were on the front steps with stacks of books beside them, watching two slightly older boys playing catch with a baseball on the lawn.

They went on past the old church, and Walker could see the blue sign ahead that said
POLICE
.

Stillman seemed to read his mind. “Keep going. I want to see it.”

It was a wide, single-story modern building made of tan bricks that didn’t match the reddish color of the older buildings in the area. Walker’s second glance made it look even better. The town was about half the size of Wallerton, the little place in Illinois where Ellen Snyder had been murdered. There, the police station had been about half as big, and much older.

“Pull around the corner, and we’ll park on the side street,” said Stillman. When they got out and walked back toward Main, Stillman nudged Walker. “Look at the parking lot.”

Walker looked at the row of police cars. “Looks like sixteen,” he said.

“I guess we didn’t have to worry about car thieves,” said Stillman. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Walker’s impression of the place began to grow more specific now that his slower pace let him see details. The town had been laid out in the eighteenth century, when there had been a hope that cities designed on a rational plan would stay that way, and this one had. The streets were on a regular grid. Main Street ran down the middle of town from the bridge, with two parallel streets on each side of it: Federal and New Hampshire on the left, and Constitution and Coulter on the right. The cross streets began with Washington, set right above the river on the first high ground. Then came Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Grant. Walker suspected that Grant Street had been changed from something else, because all the houses on the street seemed to be older than the Civil War. It had probably been a tree, because this was where the names of trees began: Sycamore, Oak, Maple, Birch, Hemlock, and Cherry. The streets all ended in fences that separated the town from old pastures.

The houses were nearly all of the older varieties—wooden ones that seemed to belong in the late eighteenth century, and brick ones with Victorian-style porches and elaborate wooden trim. A few were nearly new, but they were built to the scale of older times, when a family might include eight children and a couple of maiden aunts. As they walked up another street, and another, Walker’s impression was confirmed. “It’s a pretty prosperous place.”

“Yeah,” said Stillman. “I suppose the houses don’t tell the whole story. Most of them are a few generations old, when the money could have come from something we can’t see anymore because they sold it—lumber, or granite, maybe. Real estate has got to be cheap around here.”

“They take care of the place, though,” said Walker. “About a third of these houses look as though they’ve just been painted.” They walked back the way they had come.

A few minutes later, at the next intersection, Walker noticed something at the end of Grant Street that looked different. It was a long, one-story building that appeared to be the work of the same architect who had built the police station. It was plain, tan brick with only tiny windows at the top, just below the roof. The parking lot beside it seemed to be full.

Stillman noticed it too. “I wonder what that is.”

They walked down the street toward the building, until Walker could make out the stainless-steel letters attached to the brick facade. “ ‘New Mill Systems,’ ” he read.

“Just some kind of business,” said Stillman. “Let’s go back.”

They returned to Main Street. The town didn’t look any different from the other small, old places in the area. The single church had a stone set at the corner of it with the date 1787. The library had opened now, and Walker could see through the glass doors that the girls had already made their way past the librarian’s desk to an alcove full of tall, brightly colored books that had to be the children’s section. The boys had disappeared. As he passed, a pretty young woman with serious-looking glasses came from behind a counter and knelt on the floor beside one of the girls.

People passed by or went into the twenty-five or thirty buildings on Main, and Walker could see that they had little curiosity about a pair of tourists. But when they went into a coffee shop, the elderly man who waited on them said, “You haven’t been in before, have you?” He was staring at Walker.

“No,” said Stillman. He pointed to his Danish pastry. “If this is any good, you might see more of us.”

The old man looked at Walker. “You,” he said.

Walker froze.

“You look a lot like the Ellisons. I’ll bet you’re here to visit.”

“Do I?” said Walker. “No relation that I know of. We’re just here exploring.”

Stillman seemed eager to keep the old man talking. “How about you? Have you lived in town long?”

“Long? I was born here.”

“Really,” said Stillman. “That reminds me. I was going to ask somebody, so I’ll ask you. I didn’t notice a hospital.”

The old man shook his head. “Never had one. In the old days, the doctor would come out to your house. I was born a couple of blocks from here. No more, though. Now, if your wife is due, you drive her to Keene.”

“The world’s a different place,” said Stillman regretfully.

“You can miss those days if you want,” said the old man. “I sure don’t. I got a pacemaker.” He pointed to his chest. He noticed that a young man and woman had stood up from their table and were bringing their bill to the counter. He stepped around the other side to meet them.

Stillman spent the next few minutes eating his pastry and looking around him. Walker could tell he was trying to make eye contact with the people nearby. There were three well-dressed women in their thirties who looked like lawyers, a pair of boys in their late teens who were drinking some kind of whipped fruit concoction, and a pair of men about Stillman’s age who seemed to be sitting together to share a newspaper. Stillman seemed to have no luck, so he stood up and gave the old man his bill and some money.

As he pocketed his change, he said, “I was wondering. The place a couple of blocks over—New Mill Systems. What do they do there?”

“Do?” The old man looked confused, then a little embarrassed. “Oh, some high-tech stuff. It’s way beyond me. I can’t program my VCR.” His eyes seemed to stray from Stillman’s face and dart over his shoulder.

When Walker turned, he couldn’t pick out anyone who was paying attention. The three women were leaning forward talking and laughing, the two middle-aged men were still engrossed in their newspaper, and the boys were just standing up to come toward the counter too. Maybe that had been what had distracted the old man, Walker decided. Teenaged boys were always closely watched.

He followed Stillman into a drugstore and watched him go up the aisles picking out a small bottle of sunscreen and a pack of chewing gum. The only employee in the store was a man in a white coat who was at least as old as the man in the coffee shop, sweeping the floor. He put aside his broom, went behind the counter, and took Stillman’s money.

Stillman smiled and said, “Is this the only drugstore in town?”

“Yes,” said the man. “Got a big drug habit?”

“No,” said Stillman happily. “I was looking for those Dr. Scholl’s pads for inside your shoes, and I didn’t see any.”

The man pointed, his hand shaking a little. “Over there. That aisle.”

Stillman followed his gesture, then came back with a flat package that he tossed on the counter. “Thanks,” he said. Then he added, “I wonder if you could give me directions to New Mill Systems?”

The man’s brow furrowed a little and he looked up in the air for a second, as though he were trying to place the name. Then he said, “That way up Main, turn left at Grant, and you’ll already be there. You a salesman or something?”

“Sore feet gave me away, huh?” said Stillman. “Maybe you can help me. What is it they make?”

The old man shook his head. “Something to do with computers. I hear it’s mostly government contracts, though, so they may not even let you in.” He went back to his broom.

Later, at the end of a side street, they found another large, modern building; this one had
COULTER SCHOOL
emblazoned on a sign. It was summer, so Walker wasn’t surprised to see that the building was deserted and the windows dark. He could see that it must have been built to accommodate all of the town’s children. One side of the building had a small playground with swing sets and monkey bars and slides, but at the other end there were full-scale athletic fields.