Homicide Related (37 page)

“Did you clean out all of Jeffie's stuff yet?” he said.

“I was going to do it today,” she said. “But I couldn't get started, you know?”

It sounded like she'd been crying again.

“Jeffie had a piece of paper in the top drawer of his dresser,” Dooley said. “It looks like it was ripped out of a newspaper. It has four numbers written on it. Can you do me a favor, Teresa? Go and get it and read me the numbers.”

“Okay.” She didn't ask how he knew what was in the top drawer of Jeffie's dresser. Dooley heard her put the phone down. He heard a shuffling sound, like she was walking across a bare floor in slippers. He heard a drawer being pulled out. Then more shuffling. “Four-two-eight-one,” she said. “What do they mean, Dooley?”

“I'm not sure yet, Teresa,” he said. “When I find out, I'll let you know.”

He ended the call and dialed the number on the screen again. This time when he got the automated voice system, he pressed four, two, eight, one.

“Hi. You've reached the voice mail for Ronald D. Malone,” a voice said. “I'm sorry I can't take your call right now, but if you leave a detailed message after the beep, I'll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Dooley hung up the phone.

The electronic buzzer over the door went off and Kevin came back into the store. He smiled when he saw Dooley put the phone down.

“See?” he said. “It's not so bad, is it?”

Twenty minutes later, Dooley's cell phone rang. He checked the readout. It was Beth's home phone number.

“I'm taking my break now,” Dooley said. He ducked out from behind the counter and answered his phone on the way to the door.

“I missed you,” Beth said. “I wish you weren't working tonight.”

“Me, too,” Dooley said. “When can I see you? After school tomorrow?”

“I have a debate. Don't worry, it's with another girls' school,” she said. “Meet me in front of the library after supper. Seven o'clock.”

“I'll be there,” he said.

Dooley stopped at a phone booth on his way home. He dug a slip of paper out of his wallet and stared at the phone number he had written on it. If Lorraine had written this number in her book, she'd done it sometime in the past six or seven months. She'd drawn a heart around it, too, and Gloria Thomas had said she'd had the impression that Lorraine was cleaning up her act for a man. Dooley told himself that he didn't care, that he didn't want to know. She was dead, and his uncle had been arrested for killing her. What difference did it make who she'd been seeing?

Except that it did. It mattered.

What if whoever she'd been cleaning up for was serious about her? What if he'd seen a Lorraine that Dooley himself had never seen? What if she really had been turning her life around? What if—?

He punched in the number. He had nothing to lose. Whoever was on the other end wouldn't be able to trace him. He didn't even have to say anything if he didn't want to. He could just listen, see what the guy sounded like. He could maybe get his name, look into him a little before he decided whether or not he wanted to take it any further.

The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. Then it kicked into voice mail.

Dooley listened to the voice mail message—no name, just Hi, sorry I missed your call, leave a message and I'll be sure to get right back to you. Linelle was right about cell phones. You couldn't tell who you were calling or even where you were calling. He didn't leave a message.

He didn't sleep that night. Couldn't. There was too much noise in his head, too much stuff going on. His uncle who wasn't really his uncle was in a cell somewhere, charged with killing Lorraine. His upright, uptight uncle, who had lied to him from the get-go. He'd known about Dooley the whole time. He'd known and yet he had never come around, not once. Why was that? Was it because he hated Lorraine for all the grief she had caused, or was there some other reason, like Randall seemed to think? He'd been paying her, too. A thousand a month, for a couple of years now. What was that all about?

Lorraine.

She was dead, and for the first time ever Dooley felt some regret with regard to her. Maybe it was because he was older. Maybe it was because he was straight. Maybe it was all that bullshit therapy that they made him sit through. But he felt—too late—that maybe he had a sliver of insight into her, not that it was going to do him any good. It was too late for that.

Because someone had killed her.

And then there was Jeffie. Also dead. After being tortured. Why? By whom?

He knew what the cops were thinking: Dooley's uncle knew Jeffie. Jeffie had drug connections. Dooley's uncle could have got the drugs from Jeffie that had ended up in Lorraine's arm. Dooley had even managed to develop his own theory on how that could have happened. Maybe his uncle had run into Jeffie down there while he was on his way to or from a meeting with Larry Quayle and Jeffie was contacting his pizza-number guy. Maybe his uncle had arranged to meet Jeffie there again that time he was supposed to have been at Larry Quayle's office but wasn't. Yeah. And he could see Jeffie assuming that this cop from his past worked there now, maybe in security. Theory: Dooley's uncle had bought drugs from Jeffie and then had offed him to get rid of any loose ends.

But then why did they want to test Dooley for DNA? That must mean that they'd eliminated his uncle as Jeffie's killer.

Or had they?

What if they'd found two specimens—his uncle's and someone else's? He thought about all the questions Randall had asked him. What if they thought that Dooley had been in on it with his uncle?

Dooley shook his head. That couldn't be right. Even assuming he could imagine his uncle killing Jeffie—or anyone else, for that matter—he couldn't imagine him doing it with someone else. Why take the risk?

Jesus, listen to yourself, Dooley.

Someone killed Jeffie.

Maybe the guys he owed money to.

Or … What about those pictures?

The non-existent pictures—the ones Jeffie said he wished he'd taken.

Think, Dooley.

Jeffie had said he'd seen his downtown guy out behind Jay-Zee's. He'd said the guy had been with someone, but he hadn't said who. He'd said the guy hadn't seen him. He'd said he wished he'd taken pictures. And he'd been dancing around out there on the sidewalk the whole time he was telling it, jazzed, excited about getting Dooley's money back and even more—enough to move back down east. This had been on Monday—the day
after
he'd seen something on TV. According to Teresa, he'd been watching the news. The late news. What on earth had he seen on the late news to make him dance like that?

Dooley had watched the news late that Sunday night. But the only thing he remembered about it was Lorraine's face and that he'd been glad that Beth wasn't around to make the connection between that and the woman she'd seen outside Dooley's school.

Jeannie had also seen Lorraine's face that night and heard her name. It had reminded her that she felt like strangling Dooley's uncle.

But what about Jeffie?

Jeffie had seen something, too, something to do with his downtown guy, his guy in the gold building. Jeffie had seen an opportunity. What?

How could a person sleep with all those questions, all those fears, running through his head?

But he did. He must have, because he woke with a jolt. It had been right there the whole time, practically staring him in the face. He spent an hour staring at his ceiling, his heart racing, trying to decide what to do. Finally he got up, pulled out a notebook, and started to write.

Twenty

D
ooley was up early the next morning—too early. Offices don't open until nine o'clock. By nine o'clock, Dooley would be on his way from homeroom to the first class of the day. Either that or he'd get marked late, and Mr. Rektor would be on him about it if he did, ready to make a federal case of it. He thought about asking Jeannie for a late note, but to do that, he'd either have to tell her the truth—which was far too complicated and, anyway, he didn't want to have to explain all about Jeffie, especially since she'd helped Teresa—or he'd have to lie. Dooley didn't want to start lying to Jeannie.

He stuffed a thick envelope into his backpack and headed off to school, making one stop on the way at a doughnut shop where he fed two quarters into a pay phone and tried the number in the self-help book again—and ended up again in voice mail.

At five to ten, in the five-minute period between classes, Dooley stepped out onto the playing field behind the school and called the phone number for the company that sounded like a law firm in the gold building downtown. He punched in the four-digit extension number and, shit, found himself in Ronald D. Malone's voice mail. He tried again. Voice mail again. And again. Still voice mail. Fuck, fuck, fuck. One last time.

“Ron Malone,” said the same rich, smooth voice that was on the voice mail message—a voice that bothered Dooley because there was something familiar about it. “How can I help you?”

Dooley drew in a deep breath.

“Hello?” Ron Malone said.

“Yeah, hi,” Dooley said.

“May I ask who this is?”

“Jeffrey Eccles,” Dooley said.

There was silence on the other end of the phone, just a second or two, but enough that when Ron Malone said, “I'm sorry, but I don't know any Jeffrey Eccles,” Dooley was pretty sure he was lying.

“Sure you do,” Dooley said. “We did some business.”

“Look, I don't know who you are or why you're calling—”

“I can give the pictures to you or I can give them to the police,” Dooley said.

“Pictures?” Ron Malone said, confused or managing to sound that way. “I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about.”

Jesus, did he or didn't he? Was Dooley wrong about the ridiculously easy-to-remember phone number? Had Jeffie being doing business with someone else who worked in that building? All those companies with all those offices, Dooley bet there was someone else, maybe two or more people, who worked for different companies in the building and had different phone numbers but the same four-digit extension. He could think of only one way to find out.