Simple (37 page)

“O-kay,” said Old Reliable, and he left the doorway.

Todd said, “Speaking of working all hours … suppose your sweet gardener had to borrow your truck—not for a big tree, but there's a bureau I bought from some old folks who will sell it from under me if I don't get it. A couple of hours at most.”

“I need my truck.”

“You'll have it in the morning. That's a promise.”

“Oh, Christ.” She went into the house for a moment and came back to open the door and throw a key at him. “Put the key through the mail slot when you get back.”

“I get it. I'll buy you dinner.”

“The truck's out front. There are bungee cords in the back.”

So. It was done. Phase one.

He got into the truck, adjusted the seat and mirror, and tucked the bag under the driver's seat. Then he pulled away only to turn the corner and park again. He went into Silky's for some food and drink. And to put in time until there was enough deep middle-of-the-night darkness to drop off some garbage at Cal's place.

*   *   *

“THIS IS WEIRD,”
Colleen was saying on the phone to Potocki. “He gets into the truck, messes around, then goes half a block, parks, goes to Silky's bar. I don't know who owns the truck, but he has a key to it. And, more importantly, whoever does also has a black car. I took the numbers.”

“Let me have them. You keep him in sight.”

She recited the plate numbers to him. “I can't go into Silky's. He knows me. The only one of us he hasn't seen is you. I can keep an eye on the truck, sort of.”

“Do that. Be back to you in a minute.”

What sense could she make of this? Was this the erratic behavior Christie was hoping for?

There was no place to park, so she had to keep circling. It was maddening. Finally she parked in the Giant Eagle lot and walked to the street. She had to hope the dusk helped to muffle her presence. She went as far up the street as she could while still keeping the truck in sight.

After what felt like a long time, her phone buzzed. “Yeah.”

“Both the truck and the car belong to Fredericka Lorris. No priors. Anything on your end?”

“Nothing, nothing. I'm not up close.”

“Lose him if you have to. Stay hidden.”

“I'm pretending to shop.” She dawdled for a time at the Rite Aid. She was forced to buy ice cream at the creamery and to eat it slowly, not that she ever minded dessert before dinner. She also killed a lot of time at the bank ATM and in the Giant Eagle lot before anything happened.

At a few minutes after ten, Todd Simon came out of the bar. She hurried to her car. Soon enough they were headed back the way they'd come, back to Simon's house.

Nothing. All this and nothing.

*   *   *

CAL STUDIES THE BAND
on his leg. It's about an inch wide, metal covered in plastic, and it has a pager device on it. He's allowed to take a shower—that is interesting. For a bath—he never takes baths, so it's okay—he's supposed to hang his leg out of the tub. How amazing technology is, that this little thing knows how to connect to the box attached to his telephone, that this combination of devices knows how to call a guy who sits at a desk in a center and will raise hell if Cal leaves his house. He can't even go an inch past his front door, the man who set it up told him. Not an inch. The machine knows.

He starts the shower water running and strips his clothes off. He hasn't taken a long shower since he left home on August 13. He goes to the kitchen for a plastic grocery bag and nervously tries to tie it onto his leg. Then he worries that the plastic will somehow make it worse, trap water and set off the alarm—as if the band needs to breathe—and so he removes it. In the end the shower is briefer than he wants, and during most of it, he has stuck one leg out anyway.

Still, by the time the shower is turned off, he feels cleaner than he has for weeks.

His mother helped him change his sheets. Everything is fresh.

He is allowed to watch television. It seems strange—he clicks through the available channels, but can't get interested in anything—sitting around watching TV reminds him too much of jail. He's going to have to do something
inside
his house to keep from going nuts. Paint his own walls—they're not bad, but okay, he can do that. Learn to cook. Yes, he can get interested in that. Get a chess set and teach himself to play. What else?

He climbs into bed, fully expecting to lie there, eyes wide open, as he tries to figure out how his life ended up this way—what it all means, why anyone would believe he would have hurt that poor young woman. As he thinks about her, he realizes he never knew her well enough to know if she was simply friendly with everyone or if she liked him. She might have been faking it, he thinks now. She always followed some friendly chatter with an abrupt dismissal. He sees her more and more clearly. She wanted a job done well, not to mention quickly and cheaply, so she needed to keep the worker on her side. He doesn't hate her for it.

He's surprised to feel himself giving in to a deep, long sleep. Sleep gives him no choice; it tugs him downward. His leg could send out eight alarms right now and he wouldn't care.

*   *   *

IT'S JUST MIDNIGHT.
Christie gingerly opens each of the two bags in Cal's yard to find, to his great relief, clean garbage—dried coffee grounds, food packaging, torn mail envelopes. Nothing much in bag one. In bag two, some clothing being thrown out. That's more suspicious. He takes the whole bag, walks across the street and into the church by the utility door he and Dolan are using. Dolan is perched on the second floor in an office area, looking out the window.

“You find something?”

“Nah. Clothes we should keep, in case we need them in future to test for DNA. Still, throwing clothes away is a bit strange.”

“People do it, though.”

“Okay. You ought to go home, get some rest.”

“You staying a little longer?”

Christie shifted uncomfortably. “I might be a bit longer. If I can stay awake.”

“Marina won't like it.”

“She's good. Really good. She likes teaching, and she pretty much has a good role snagged in a production they're doing. She's happy.”

“Excellent. I found a radio. Sit here. We can listen to music.”

Christie laughed and settled as well as he could on an institutional metal chair. His phone rang. It was Colleen reporting.

He hung up. “Does she have anything?” Dolan asked.

“The black car.
A
black car. I'm thinking back. The man leaves his car, uses a black car, night of August 13. Tonight, leaves his car, uses a truck. Why? He doesn't want to be identified by vehicle. Something is going to happen.”

“I'm with you.”

Christie leaned forward, to the window. The radio behind him was playing jazz—something familiar, something Marina had in her collection. “What is this?” he asked.

“Miles. It's Miles.”

He stared out at the black night. He was going to need an expert entomologist if Todd Simon's DNA matched the mosquito's meal.

Dolan looked at him. “Want to talk?”

“Just junk rolling around in my head right now. I want to get this guy. I want him.”

“I get that.”

The night wears on. He imagines a trial in which he presents evidence. He holds up a black dot. “This is my witness,” he says. The black dot is a mosquito, plus the now dried blood that constituted its last dinner. Everybody laughs at him.

“How do we know the mosquito didn't just happen to fly in?” he's asked by the defense.

“From Regent Square? That's asking a lot of the little thing,” he quips.

“But the suspect followed her home in the early evening. Can you prove he was not bitten in his car and that then the mosquito followed the young woman into her house and died?”

“It was smashed. Somebody hit it.”

“Isn't it possible that she hit it? She saw it before it got to her.”

“Then she would have had a blood spot.”

“How's it going?” Dolan asks.

“Take a nap. Then I will.”

*   *   *

AGAIN WEARING A
pair of
gloves, Simon removes the two photos that are tucked in the secondary bill compartment of the wallet.

He almost cries out. It's as if the photos have given off something electric. For a moment he feels she can see him, standing in his own living room, looking at her. In the one—it's Cassie alone, a glamour pose—she smiles, head over one shoulder, leaning forward. To think she carried this photo of herself with her. Liked to look at herself all right. The other—four girls hugging each other, all gorgeous, laughing—suggests she liked her sisters enough to carry them with her, too, every day. Or maybe, he thinks, with a welcome return of cynicism, she particularly liked the way she looked in that photo. He carries the photos gingerly to his bedroom and puts them down on the floor while he extracts from his closet a shoe box, way in the back, under other shoe boxes. In it is an old pair of dress shoes that have always hurt his feet. He peels off the innersole and fits the photos between the two soles. Breathing heavily, he puts the shoes back, the lid on, the box behind and under the other boxes.

He stands, a little dizzy, then collapses at the edge of his bed. Putting the photos away like that, he feels as if he buried her—again, the fourth time. He gets rid of her, but she has a way of springing back. She
was
 … willful. And sure of herself. And uppity. How shallow life is, that because nature handed her physical beauty, she should have such power. Connolly fell for it. He, Todd, would have bedded her in a second, but she saw him as nothing more than a middle-aged party grunt. Did she and Mickey talk about him that way as they lay in bed?

He pulls himself to his feet. Work to do. He promised Haigh he would make this go away.

Still wearing gloves, he takes a supermarket bag to the basement, where he fills it with cleaning rags. He rehearses in his mind: Open the Ziploc, which now holds the phone and wallet, dump those things in among the rags. Then somehow wait until 4:00, 4:30
A.M.
Phase two: Drop the bag at Cal's place. Phase three: Get to a pay phone and make a neighbor's complaint. Phase four: Wait until 5:30 when garbage pickup begins and use his throwaway phones to call Cassie's phone. The phone number is committed to memory, but he recites it like a mantra hundreds of times as he works. Through the bag he presses the
ON
button. A small melody and then … one bar, no, two. God bless Verizon. It's possible the battery will give out. It's possible nobody will hear it. But it's phase four of tonight's plan.

And if tonight doesn't work, he has the two photos for next week.

He climbs up from the basement and then up to his second floor, where he lies on his bed, fully clothed and shod. Who else? Nobody else could plan as he plans, fix it as he's fixing it. Haigh owes him, all right. What they always say, when somebody does the impossible, is “a million bucks and a trip to Hawaii,” which is funny because he forgets to spend money—those dress shoes must be twenty years old—and he never takes vacations. For him a vacation from the panic and grind is a night with the likes of Rita or Freddie or Carola. Usually, the next morning he's ready to work again.

TWELVE

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26

EVERYBODY FELL
asleep
.
Lights were out everywhere, the moon was a slender crescent, people were sleeping … Colleen was in the back of the van with Potocki. His arms went around her and they both nodded off.

Christie was lying on the floor of the church, having his turn at a nap. Dolan was at the window, his head hanging to the side in spite of the caffeine and his usual toughness.

Colleen was the first to come awake. “Oh, my God. The truck is gone. Let's go.”

Potocki instantly began climbing to the driver's seat. “Where? When?”

“I think he just turned the corner. A sound woke me up. Get me to my car.”

“There's no time. We're taking the van.”

“It blows our cover.”

“I know, I know. I'll stay way, way behind.”

And he did.

They saw the truck go to the parkway, which was good news since at any hour of the night there would be other cars to help mask them. “It's up to us,” she said, though she was sure Potocki was thinking the same thing. Boss told her he and Dolan were going home at midnight. They'd confiscated some garbage and felt they needed to conserve energy for watching tomorrow and tomorrow night.

Colleen couldn't help thinking that if Potocki hadn't been holding her, she might have stayed awake. And if he hadn't wanted to protect her, he might have taken her to her own car, which could have gotten closer to the truck. They'd screwed up. Oh, man, they needed to make this right. They needed to catch Todd red-handed at whatever he was up to. The white truck that belonged to Fredericka Lorris pulled off at the Oakland exit, and about twelve seconds later, they did, too.

They saw Simon, blocks ahead, turn onto Parkview. Potocki said, “It could be Cassie's place he's headed for. It could be Cal's place.”

When they got to Parkview the white truck was no longer in sight. They rattled along, and when they passed an almost invisible alley, Colleen said, “He took that!” Potocki stopped, backed up, and navigated the narrow alley that led to the alley that ran behind Cassie's place and Iris Mender's place and that was totally bordered on the other side by Sestili's Nursery. The alley had a street name: Edgehill Street.

Colleen was right. Way up ahead on Child Street, the truck turned to the right, exiting that street. They could no longer see it. Simon had already passed both Cassie's place and Cal's place.

Potocki drove fast but slowed at Cal's place, where there were no lights on. The garbage was out—two bags. “Let me out,” Colleen said. “Then follow him.”