The Deader the Better (37 page)

Eleven-twenty. I had laces in my sneakers and a belt holding up my
pants. Two of the other guys in the lineup now looked human. We did
the lineup cha-cha for the fans behind the one-way glass. Step up,
step back, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight. Back to the cell.
But still wearing my civvies, so I felt pretty good about the
situation. Noon. Straight up. I was busting the desk sergeant’s
balls. Making him double-check every piece of my personal be longings
before I would sign the receipt. Just about the time I’d finished
stuffing everything back into my pockets, the sergeant’s eyes grew
wide; he closed the window with a bang and double-timed it out of
sight. I looked over my shoulder. Captain William Heffernen. Hat on
even tighter than usual. Hands locked behind his back. Parade rest.

“I’ve got a district judge standing outside waiting for your
release, Leo. Why is that?” I reckoned how maybe it was charisma.
Billy was not amused.

“I’ve worked in the same district with the honorable Wayne
Bigelow for twenty years, and in all that time, he’s never said
more than twenty words to me. Now all of a sudden we’re on a
first-name basis and he calls me every two hours for a progress
report about you.”

“Judge Bigelow and I are socially acquainted,” I said. He
leaned back against the pale green concrete blocks. He had me in a
bind. Billy had a bullshit meter second to none, and we both knew it.
On the other hand, there was no slack in him. He wasn’t going to
wink at or ignore anything. Not jaywalking, not littering, not a
thing. I had to be careful. I was still pondering my options when he
said, “I hear you and Rebecca are having some problems.”

If he was trying to push me off balance, he damn near succeeded. I
felt the blood rise to my face. “I didn’t realize my life was an
open book,” I said.

“We talk,” he said.

I squeezed the words, “That’s more than I can say,”

through my teeth and then broke up a wonderfully strained silence
by asking, “She know I’m in here?” He moved his chin about an
inch…up and down.

Billy gave me a break and changed the subject back to something
easier to discuss—like murder. “I’m going to ask you a
question, Leo, and I want an answer.” He could tell he had my
attention. “Have they got a bad cop in Stevens Falls?”

Having Billy Heffernen ask you about a bad cop was like having
your significant other ask you if her butt looks big in a certain
pair of slacks. One of those conversations pretty much destined to go
nowhere pleasant.

I hedged. “What gives you that idea?”

“The way you sat here all night until you could send your lawyer
after your alibi on his own.” He didn’t wait for me to comment.
“And the way this whole thing shakes down. It stinks to high
heaven. One minute somebody hands us a case where we’ve got you
dead to rights, and the next minute it comes apart. That’s TV, Leo.
The movies. That’s not how the job goes.”

“You’re going to hate what I’ve got to say.”

No expression whatsoever. “Well.”

“Hand’s dirty as hell. Hand and Deputy Russell for sure.”

He blew air out through his nose. “How—” he started.

“I can’t give you any details, Billy. But I’m telling
you…he’s dirty.”

He read me chapter and verse about withholding evidence. I tried
not to look bored. “How about, instead of threats, a little quid
pro quo?” I said.

“Like?”

“Like you tell me what you found out about Bendixon and Hand.”

He stared at me for a moment and then brought several sheets of
paper out from behind his back. “Hand had no previous law
enforcement experience whatsoever. The closest he ever came to the
police was in when he was charged with negligent homicide in the
death of one Alfred Klugeman.” He looked up. I kept my face still
and my mouth shut.

“Seems the old guy refused to move from a building that had been
sold out from under him. Hand worked security for the real estate
company.” Billy turned the page over. “According to witnesses,
Klugeman was trying to elude Hand when he and his wheelchair went
down twenty concrete stairs and broke his neck in three places.” He
snapped the pages with his fingers. “You read between the lines on
the rest of it and it says they didn’t have much of a case against
Hand. The company settled out of court with the family. Hand got the
gate along with everybody else connected with the acquisition. Top to
bottom. No severance, no pension. No nothing.”

“Bendixon?”

“Vehicular negligence. Last August. DWI. Blew a twopoint-three.
Lady in the other car lost a leg. Judge ruled he was too old for a
state facility. He’s on home detention.” I pulled my notepad from
my pocket. He read me the address.

“I told you you’d hate it.”

He snorted. “I’d rather it was you,” he said on his way out.

Behind me the window banged open. The desk sergeant handed me a
receipt for my car. “You give that across the street and the
officer will return your car.” Bang. Twelve-ten. Rebirth. I
squeezed out the door, squinting in the bright light. Jed, Constance
Hart, the Honorable Wayne Bigelow. Arm in arm, no less.

The judge clapped me on the shoulder. “For a while there, boy, I
thought you were going to make me look bad.” Jed offered his thanks
to the judge. Constance Hart gave me a hug and whispered that Misty
was coming home for the weekend.

Jed and I stood and watched as they meandered across the street
toward the courthouse. “Nice job,” I said to Jed.

“It was touch and go there for a while.”

“Whitey needed convincing?”

He shook his head. “Oh no. Mr. Hunley was quite willing, even
anxious to give you an alibi for the time in question. The question
was whether or not the authorities were going to consider him to be a
credible witness. Without his mother’s cooperation, I’m not sure
we’d be having this conversation.”

“His mother?”

“Picked your car out of the parking lot and you out of a
lineup.”

I recalled the sound of the dishwater slapping onto the ground and
the moment of eye contact before she turned for the house.

“Said she knew it was after three, because Ricki Lake had
already started.”

And the satellite dish by the side of the house.

“You’re not allowed to leave the state,” Jed said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

We shook hands and then hugged. “What now?” he asked.

“I’m going to see an old man about a dog.”

“LANDED AT NORMANDY BEACH, YOU KNOW.”

“Really.”

“Was with Waverly Wray at Sainte-Mère-Église. Stopped the
whole damn German Army, we did.” He pinned me with his milky eyes,
as if daring me to dispute his claim. “Stopped’em cold. Turned
the whole damn tide, right there.”

Ben Bendixon was as bald as an egg. The dome shiny and freckled
here and there with liver spots. He wore a white plastic transmitter
on a left ankle so thin I was pretty sure he could pull his foot out
of the thing if he chose. Must be how the cops kept track of his home
imprisonment. “Fought the krauts building to building. Tanks’d
blow a hole in the garden walls and we’d move from one to another.”

I promised the granddaughter I wouldn’t mention the accident.
Seems he’d gotten shitfaced, run a stop sign and Tboned a woman
from Vancouver, BC, who was down in the States visiting her sister.
She’d lost a leg. Ben lost everything else. His insurance, his
license, his freedom, and, according to his granddaughter, most of
his will to live. She said he hadn’t done much in the past eight
months but sit upstairs in his room and rock and stare out the
window. The way she figured it, if he was physically capable of
killing himself, he would. But he wasn’t, so she let him sit and
rock and stare.

“Fought ’em over the rooftops and alleys.” He gave a
toothless grin. “Stayed in the same cellars at night sometimes.

Too damn cold to be fightin’ at night. They stayed on their
side. We stayed on ours. In the morning, it was back to the war.”

“I wanted to ask you about J.D. Springer,” I said. He shook
his head. “He wasn’t there. Didn’t serve with no Springer.”

Before I could respond, the old man continued. “You don’t
forget the guys you served with. No sir. Ain’t nothing in the rest
of your life as real as those guys.”

His ancient eyes again dared me to disagree. “The guys you
fought with…hell, you cain’t never trust nobody like that again.”

“Yes sir,” I tried.

“Ain’t no sir. No spit and polish. Just a rifle grunt.”

“I meant the young guy you sold the homestead to.”

He slapped his knees with his leathery palms. “The Springer
boy,” he said. “Hell of a fisherman, that boy. Knew his damn
rivers.”

We’d gotten this far a couple of times before. Right up to the
point where he remembered who J.D. was…and then he’d go fishing
in his own river, back fifty years to the beaches and hedgerows of
France, and I’d have to start over.

“He’s dead,” I said this time.

He slapped his knees again. “Hell, they’re mostly all dead
now. Those that ain’t just waiting for their time to come.”

“The fisherman’s dead,” I tried.

For the first time since I’d entered the room, he stopped
rocking. Behind the cataracts, I imagined his eyes rolling like a
slot machine. Unless I was mistaken, we were about to make another
extended foray into the past.

“Shot him down just the way they shot your dog,” I said
quickly.

He rocked harder now. Chewing his gums and picking at his pants
with his long yellow fingernails. “My fault,” he said.

“Shoulda just let the sons a bitches kill me.”

“Who?”

“That Hand fella.”

“Why would he do a thing like that?”

“Wouldn’t sell out. Said if’n I give it to my grandkids,
they’d come and get them, too.” A tear ran down his stubbled
cheek. Then another. “Kilt my dog just to make his point,”

he said. He wiped at the tear but missed.

“So you sold out to J.D.”

“Be damned if those sons a bitches was gonna get my place.”

“They won’t,” I assured him.

He took a shuddering breath and seemed to calm himself.

“Seemed damn strange. Tryin’ to kill each other all day and
then trying to keep each other warm all night, so’s we could go at
it again in the morning.”

I RECEIVED A SITTING OVATION. CARL, ROBBY, FLOYD, Boris, Kurtis
and Narva all packed into the RV. All monitors off but one. Watching
Oprah. The incessant rain pounding on the metal roof. Carl read my
mind. “Nobody home at City Hall,” he said. “We’re running on
sound activation.” I turned my attention to Narva.

“I thought you had a class,” I said.

She showed both palms. “Could I miss this?” she said.

“Besides, they took a vote and said I could be a criminal, too.”

“Democracy een action,” Boris said.

Floyd shook his head. Made a buzzer sound. “
En-
nnnggg
…Language barrier,” he said. “We voted that she
was
criminal, not that she could
be
a criminal.”

“What I do is illegal,” she protested.

“If it ain’t,” Carl growled, “it oughta be.” He put a
hand on top of his head. “You oughta see what she did to Tressman.”

“Got some great stuff since you been gone,” Robby said.

“We ready for thermonuclear destruction?” I said hopefully.

“Fuck no,” said Robby. He looked over at Narva. “Excuse my
French.”

She waved him off. “It’s a verb I’m familiar with,” she
assured him. “What’s the holdup?”

“Your girlfriend won’t get lost. She’s been camped out in
the Chamber of Commerce office since ten this morning.”

“Who, by the way,” Narva said, “I saw at the courthouse
yesterday afternoon.” She whistled, shook her right hand like a
chimp. “A looker…for a woman of her advanced age, that is.”

“What advanced age is that?” I demanded. She smiled and said,
“Never mind.”

“Miss Haynes is making her promo tape for next week,” I said.

“I need daylight,” Robby said. “It’s not flashlight work
and Kurtis says the place has nothing to cover the windows.”

“No curtains, no shades, no nothing,” Kurtis said.

“You gotta get her the hell out of there,” Carl said.

“And keep her out of there for a couple of hours,” said Robby.

“Either that or we wait till tomorrow, and I’ve spent about as
much time in this shithole as I’m gonna,” Carl said.

“You’re right,” I said. “We’ve worn out our welcome.”

“Shouldn’t be hard,” Floyd said. “That girl’s got a
bigtime hard-on for our boy Leo here.” He looked over at Narva. “I
mean, like, you know…figuratively, rather than, like…you
know…anything…”

“You were right the first time,” she said. “Haven’t you
ever looked at the…,” she began, then stopped. “Is he
blushing?”

she asked. “He’s blushing, isn’t he?”

“Either that or he’s been boiled,” offered Kurtis. Much to
his displeasure, we all agreed that Floyd was indeed a tad more
rubicund than normal. “Hot in here,” he mumbled as he stepped out
into the thundering rain. I wagged a finger at Narva. A girlish laugh
escaped her throat.

“I’m always amazed about how men can be so totally fixated
over something about which they generally know so little.” She
giggled again. Kurtis joined in. Boris opted for the typhoon, closing
the door behind himself. I did the only sane thing and changed the
subject. “What did you find in the records?”

She pulled her planner from her purse, walked her long fingernails
to the back of the book. “Like you figured, Gretchen Peabody of the
hundred and sixty-five acres is none other than the late
mother-in-law of our late friend Polster.”

“The mayor’s not involved in the scam,” Carl said.

“Really?”

Carl nodded. “Tressman, Weston and Polster call each other every
five minutes, but nobody calls Her Honor.”