The Price of Malice (16 page)

He managed to rest it against the car, making the latter lean even more, and to open the door. But then, he was stumped. He stood there, panting, hands on his hips, his face dripping with sweat, staring at the VW as if asking for help.

The cops by now surrounded him, and on a signal from Ron, they calmly closed in from three sides.

“Don’t know, Ray,” Ron said conversationally, emerging from the gloom. “That’s a real problem.”

Needham’s body stiffened, and for a moment, Les thought he might run for it, before Sheila added from a different direction, “Or maybe a couple.”

Ray whipped around, saw Lester as well, maintained a startled gazelle imitation for a second more, and then slumped in defeat.

“Fuck.”

They all circled Ray’s project for the evening, as if about to lend a hand. Ron asked Murphy, “You bring the camera?”

She held it up.

He reached out. “It’s your bust. You do the honors. I’ll take the pictures before we put this thing back. I doubt folks around here would appreciate our taking it into evidence.”

Spinney joined Ray Needham in the Municipal Center’s holding cells a couple of hours later. The thief had been processed, interviewed, and locked up, pending his appearance before a judge in the morning. He was lying on the plastic mattress of his cot, his fingers locked behind his head, staring at the ceiling, when Les rapped his knuckles against the bars of his door.

“Hi again.”

Ray slowly took his eyes off the ceiling, as if he’d been interrupted reading a good book, and fixed Lester with a stare. “Jesus. Don’t you ever sleep?”

Lester laughed. “You should talk.”

Needham shrugged. “I sleep days.”

“I can see why.” Les pulled up a chair and sat down on the other side of the bars. The rest of the cells were empty, so they had this part of the basement to themselves.

Spinney pointed upstairs. “They tell you what you’re facing?”

“With my history? Years. Fuckin’ manhole cover. ’Nother five minutes, I woulda left it there. Fuckin’ weighed a ton.”

Les agreed. “I know. I helped roll it back, remember?”

“Yeah. Well, life’s a bitch. Least you were getting paid.”

“Yeah,” Spinney said. “And by the state, too. I don’t work for these guys.”

Needham’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t think I knew you.”

Lester showed him his badge. “VBI—we only do major crimes.”

Ray studied him, reading behind the comment, before slowly saying, “Yeah.”

“Like murder,” Les suggested.

Ray remained quiet, but his hands unlaced from behind his neck, and his body lost its nonchalance.

“You hear about Wayne Castine?” Lester asked.

For a moment, he could see Ray’s breathing stop.

“I heard he died,” he finally said.

“You could say that,” Lester said lightly. “He was butchered, more like it, by someone he really irritated.”

“You don’t say.”

“Oh, yeah.” Spinney raised his eyebrows, apparently thinking of
something interesting. “Speaking of which, I heard you two had a falling out, just lately.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Ray said, an edge to his voice.

Les sat forward. “You thought about it, though. Not much of a gap between those two. Gotta do one to do the other.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Ray repeated, shifting to place his back against the wall.

“What made you so mad?” Spinney asked.

“Ripped me off, that’s all. It was a business deal. I didn’t like him, but I didn’t kill him.”

Lester smiled. “Yeah, so you say. Tell me about the business deal.”

“We got hold of some scrap metal, Wayne said he’d sell it, and he never split the profits.”

“Who’d he sell it to?”

“I don’t know. He said he didn’t, which is why he didn’t have the money to split, but I know he was lying. He just took it all and figured I could go fuck myself.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I went looking for him.” Ray also sat forward, eager to sell his message. “That part’s true. I was mad. I woulda torn him a new one, but I never found him. I’ll swear that on the Bible.”

He held up his hand. Lester nodded solemnly, if in fact unimpressed. The Bible usually came in too little, too late, in his experience.

“I read your rap sheet, Ray,” Lester explained. “You pound on people you don’t like.”

“Not this time.”

“You sent a couple to the hospital. Think you might’ve sent Wayne to his grave?”

Ray pressed his lips together before saying, “You prove it, then I did it, but you can’t do that. So, with all due respect, I gotta tell you to screw off.”

Lester nodded. “Respectfully noted. So, since you had nothing to do with his death, when did you last see Wayne?”

“What’s today?”

“Wednesday.”

Ray shut his eyes briefly. “Then it was . . . Friday . . . No, wait. Thursday. Thursday last. Out back of the bowling alley. That’s when he told me about the deal where he ripped me off after.”

“On Thursday, you met so he could
tell
you about the deal? You didn’t do it right then, too?”

Ray’s brow furrowed. “Sure we did. We met, we did the deal, he ripped me off, and I went lookin’ for him. That’s it.”

“When did you start looking?”

“Couple of days later. He said he had a fence.”

“How did you find out that fell through?”

“I called him.”

“At home?”

“Yeah.”

“And after he told you, you went over there and killed him.”

Ray’s mouth fell open. He dropped his hands into his lap and leaned his head against the cinder blocks behind him. “Fuck you,” he said tiredly.

Les laughed. “You telling me he stiffed you and you
didn’t
go over there? You really do take me for an asshole.”

Ray snapped forward and glared at him. “
I don’t know where he lived
,” he enunciated.

Lester pretended to think about that for a moment. “Really? Your business partner? I know where my fellow cops live.”

Ray became sullen. “Good for you. You think I whacked him, prove it.”

“You’re the one who was angry at the man, Ray. What were you doing Monday night?”

“Nuthin’.”

“That the best you can do?”

But Ray was done. He crossed his arms and stared up at the ceiling—a variation of his posture at the start of the conversation.

Lester got the hint. He stood up, waved, and said, “Get some sleep, Ray. It’s noisy in prison. I’ll see you later.”

“Whatever. You dumb fuck.”

Lester climbed the stairs, at last feeling his own fatigue. At the top, just outside dispatch, he met Ron Klesczewski.

“You get it all?” he asked.

Ron nodded. “Yup. Sound quality was good—everything. I already cut a CD for you.” He handed over a small envelope. “You think he did it?”

Les tilted his head to one side. “You think he didn’t?”

Ron smiled and crooked his finger. “Come in here.”

He led the way into dispatch, which had a standard array of radio consoles, TV monitors, tape and CD recorders. A woman was sitting at one of the two operator bays, talking to someone over her headset. Ron led the way to a CD player in the far corner.

“After Ray said he’d last seen Wayne on Thursday, I went back to some video footage we collected yesterday. Remember? Wayne had bought some fast food and thrown the receipts on the floor. To establish a timeline and see if he was with any kids, I had my guys pull the videos from all the stores on the receipts.”

He pushed a few buttons on a player. The small TV screen before them lit up and Lester saw the back of a clerk operating a cash register.
The camera was mounted up against the ceiling and showed everyone from a giant’s viewpoint. Seconds later, they watched Wayne Castine step up to the counter, lay down a sandwich and a soda and a bag of chips, along with a twenty-dollar bill.

Next to him was Ray Needham.

“That,” Ron explained, “was this Monday.”

Lester grunted. “And he was dead Tuesday morning. Cool.”

W
here are you?” Lyn’s voice asked over the cell phone.

Joe tried to see through the rain streaking the windshield. It was dark and the glass was old and slightly pitted, causing all points of light to flare.

He’d left the Interstate at Augusta, hoping the late hour would offset using Route 3 East instead of driving all the way to Bangor and then cutting south. Despite a downpour over the past hour, it still felt like a good decision, which mattered, given the urgency he’d heard in her voice three hours ago, and which remained still.

“I just left Searsport,” he finally said, reading a passing sign. “I’ve got to be only about ten miles away.”

“You’ll go over two bridges in a row,” she told him. “The first is over-the-top modern—a suspension bridge. It’s right next to an old metal one that hasn’t been demolished yet. The second is short and regular-looking. That one T-bones into Route 15. Take a left into Bucksport. You’ll see the motel on the left, not too far afterward.”

“Got it. See you soon. You’re still okay, right?”

“I’m fine, Joe,” she answered, her voice softer and calmer. “Thanks for coming so fast.”

He hung up and concentrated on the road. As promised, he soon saw emerge from the gloom a ghostly, spotlighted span to his right—its twin towers like obelisks, linked by a gleaming web of steel cables—accompanied by its older, peeling, stalwart, traditional predecessor, mere feet off to one side. This was the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, famous for its architectural innovation, and near the site of two unheralded naval battles, where the British twice creamed the Americans, during the Revolution and the War of 1812. As Joe crossed the soaring bridge, he glanced left and saw the harbor village of Bucksport, barely a mile off, gleaming through a curtain of rain. Almost there.

He had no idea what was coming. Lyn had called him, close to midnight, and told him she was in trouble. She was in Maine, she’d said, had met a guy who’d maybe sicced some people onto her—or maybe not—but, in any case, she was worried that she’d really stepped into it this time.

He’d asked her if she felt unsafe, to which she’d answered that while she was scared, she couldn’t call the cops, since she had nothing to give them.

It had still been enough for him. Finally stirring from her weeks of emotional catatonia, Lyn had chosen to act. Maybe something had happened in Gloucester; maybe someone had spoken to her of her father and brother. Joe didn’t know and didn’t care. Despite Lyn’s fear on the phone, he was oddly content that something had finally dislodged the status quo.

And he was pleased she’d called him for help.

The irony was that he could ill afford such chivalry, or the time it was costing him. Things were building in the Castine investigation.
Ron’s crew and his own were compiling suspects. The logistics of processing them effectively would be tricky and sensitive, the penalties being people either “lawyering up” prematurely or fleeing and/or destroying evidence.

But he was torn. His squad was experienced, competent, and skillful, while his feelings for Lyn were growing by the day. Besides—to his ear—her crisis sounded like the more pressing of the two.

He crossed the second bridge, turned left, located the motel, and rolled to a stop in the parking lot.

Almost immediately, a pale shadow appeared in his side window, as Lyn rapped her knuckles against the glass.

He opened the door and wrapped his arms around her. She was trembling.

“God, Joe. It’s good to see you.”

He rubbed her back and kissed her cheek. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Let’s get out of the rain and you can tell me what’s going on.”

She led the way inside, to a room on the other side of the building, where the motel’s appeal was immediately revealed. Facing him across the room was a large window overlooking the dark Penobscot Narrows and the modern bridge he’d just crossed in the murky distance. In addition, to the right, also spotlighted and spectral in the rain, was the restored Fort Knox, uselessly built in the mid-1840s against any future British drubbings.

“Pretty,” he muttered.

She closed the door, bolted it, and came up beside him. The lights were out in the room, allowing the scenery to dominate.

“It is,” she agreed. “Gives me a little peace in the middle of all this.”

He turned to her. “Which is what, exactly?”

She sat at a small table under the window, so they could talk and
enjoy the view at the same time. He joined her, sitting opposite, recognizing her need for at least a semblance of order and normalcy.

Slowly, occasionally correcting herself or retracing her steps, Lyn detailed her recent activities, from her first misgivings to her meeting with Harry Martin to her conversation at Brandhorst’s office, and finally to her discovery that her room had been searched, or at least visited.

Joe mostly listened, asking questions only rarely, until he was sure she was done.

After which, he got up, leaned across the table, and kissed her. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

She smiled as he sat back down. “I am now. I don’t know what to do, though.”

“Okay,” he offered. “Let’s talk about that, if you’re up to it.”

Her eyes widened. “God, yes. I’m scared, but excited, too, you know? I feel like I really stirred something up. That’s got to be good, right?”

“Tricky, but sure,” he agreed. “Why not?”

Privately, however, he was less enthusiastic. Her approach up to now had been totally unorthodox—appealing, perhaps, but without controls.

“Okay,” he began. “First off, you were right when you said you had nothing to give the cops. I could ask for a favor and have Brandhorst’s record run, but that would be only marginally kosher, and probably not useful. I’d prefer to keep my powder dry until we’ve got something meatier on him, or maybe found out why he’s so interested in you.”

He held up a finger, adding, “Assuming he’s even connected to the visit to your motel room. It sounds right, but we shouldn’t shut any doors prematurely.”

She was nodding. “All right. But what’s my next move? Should I go back to his office like I said, and pretend I didn’t notice about the room?”