The Trojan Colt (12 page)

Fishbein's wasn't doing much business when I pulled up. There was an old gent with a cane and an oxygen bottle arguing with the pharmacist about something, and a boy who wouldn't be shaving for another four years trying to convince the cashier he really was old enough to buy a pack of Marlboros.

Nan was restocking some shelves, but she stopped the second she saw me approaching.

“Have you found him?” she asked eagerly.

I shook my head. “No, I'm still looking.”

“I told you everything I know the last time you were here,” she said.

“I know.”

“Then why are you back?” she asked. “Why aren't you out looking for him?”

“Where do you think I should look?” I replied.

“How do I know?” she said. “You're the cop.”

“The detective,” I corrected her.

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Anyway, I need to know more about Tony—what he liked, what he ate, where he went to relax, anything at all you can tell me.”

“He liked hamburgers,” answered Nan. “Oh, and pizza. Always the same: it had to have sausage and mushrooms and nothing else, or he wouldn't eat it.”

“Did he drink?”

“You mean, like alcohol?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Once in a while a beer, never anything more than that. Even before he got the Trojan colt he always had expensive horses in his care at his other jobs, and he never wanted to screw up—pardon my language—by forgetting to feed them or do whatever he was supposed to do because he was drunk.”

“Sounds like the young man I met,” I said. “Is there anything else you can tell me—anything at all? Did he bowl? Go to the movies much? Anything you can remember?”

She shook her head. “He was devoted to whatever horse that was in his care. I mean, hell, if the horse coughed once or took one bad step, he'd call to tell me he wouldn't be picking me up after work and I'd have to take the bus home.”

“Shit!” I muttered.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I'm an idiot!” I said. “He drove you home?”

“Yes. Or to dinner.”

“In his own car?”

“Who else's?” she replied with a frown.

“I mean that,” I persisted. “It was his car, not his parents'?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what kind it was?”

“A light-blue Plymouth, from 1997 or 1998, I think. Very old, anyway.”

“Two doors or four?”

“Two. And with lots of rust on it. Why?”

“It's another lead,” I said. “If I can find his car, maybe he'll be with it.”

“He bought it about a year ago, when his last one died,” she replied. “It was even older.”

“You wouldn't know the license number?”

She shook her head. “He said if Tyrone set a sales record, he was going to get a vanity plate with Tyrone's name on it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you, Nan.”

“I hope whatever I said was useful.”

“You and me both,” I told her.

I went out to the car and drove back to the police station.

“We're going to start charging you rent,” said Bernice with a smile as I walked in.

“If you'll loan it to me,” I said, returning her smile. “Either of my boys in?”

“Lou's still here for another half hour or so,” she replied. “Drew's not due in for another hour, but he's usually fifteen or twenty minutes early.”

“Thanks,” I said, walking to Berger's office.

He looked up from a pile of papers. “One of us looks happy,” he said. “What have you got?”

“Nothing yet,” I said. “If I told you that Tony Sanders owned a beat-up octogenarian Plymouth, could you hunt up the license plate?”

“Sure,” he said, turning to his computer and tapping in a sentence or two. Then he turned back to me. “The license bureau should have something back to me in a couple of minutes. Maybe a little longer, since I don't know his legal address.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Nan—his girlfriend—thinks it's a Plymouth, but she didn't know the model and wasn't sure about the year.”

“No problem,” responded Berger. “If it's carrying a Kentucky plate, we'll have all the information when they send me the number.”

“Good,” I said. “If I didn't know better, I'd say the kid was hiding—and doing a damned good job of it.”

“Why would he hide?”

“Why would he disappear? He loved his work and he had a good-looking girlfriend.”

“Maybe he was unhappy because he was about to lose the Trojan colt.”

I shook my head. “He loves the horses, but I don't think he loved the horse, if you see what I mean.”

“I see it,” replied Berger. “The question is: Did he see it?”

“I spent a couple of days with him,” I said. “He struck me as a young man who had his head screwed on right.”

His computer beeped, and he turned to look at the screen, where a message was coming in. He stared at it, frowned, and reached for his phone. He punched out three numbers, which implied that it was an inter-department call, waited for a minute, then said: “Hello. This is Lou Berger . . . yeah, I got your message. I just wanted to call to confirm it. Will you read it aloud to me?” He waited a moment, still frowning, then said, “Thanks,” and hung up the phone.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We had some rain last night,” he began. “Did it hit you before you got to your motel?”

“Yeah, I drove back through it,” I said.

“It rained two or three more times during the night.”

“Okay, it rained,” I said. “What does that have to do with the license plate?”

“We found it and the car,” Berger said. “A 1998 Plymouth Prowler.”

He was still frowning.

“What else?” I said.

“It was parked at a Kroger supermarket over near Leestown Road. Been there for a couple of days. No one minded. Happens all the time at stores with big parking lots, like Kroger and Walmart. Guy's taking a plane trip and doesn't want to pay airport parking, so he parks there and has a friend drop him at the terminal. They probably wouldn't have reported it for another week, but they were worried because the top was down and it was getting rained on.”

“Where's Leestown Road?” I asked.

He shook his head sadly. “Not near any friend he's got, not near the blonde's apartment, not near any farm he's ever worked at.”

“Well, he sure as hell didn't take a plane anywhere,” I said. “Kid didn't have two cents to rub together.”

“Could he have borrowed it?”

“From a couple of friends who haven't seen him in over a week, or a girl who's worried sick about him and has no idea where he is?” I replied. “I doubt it like all hell.”

“So he probably didn't run away, and he hasn't thought to pick up his car,” said Berger, and I could see that he was thinking the same thing I was.

“Okay,” I said. “I need answers to two questions. The first is what the hell he was doing at or near that Kroger. There have to be closer ones if all he wanted was to buy some food.”

“And the second?”

“Who wanted him dead and why?”

“You think?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think. And you?”

“Makes sense.” He leaned back on his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “We'll help you any way we can, Eli, and of course we'll kept this quiet until we officially know for a fact that he's dead.” He grimaced. “But it feels right.”

I sighed heavily. “Yeah, it does.”

“Well, I guess we're about to find out how good a detective you are,” he said. “You've eliminated Horatio Jimenez. That leaves just three hundred thousand suspects and a body—if there's a body.”

“Damn,” I said. “I had to be a detective. Hell, I could be pitching for the Reds right now.”

“You were a ballplayer?” he asked.

“No.”

He frowned. “Then I don't understand.”

I flashed him a totally humorless smile. “How much harder could it be than this?”

They towed the car into their garage in less than an hour, and I stopped by to look it over. Not that I expected to find anything useful.

It was a 1998 Prowler, pretty beat up. The left front bumper had been caved in by another car, not enough to affect the wheel, but fixing it would have cost more than the car was worth on the market. Air-conditioning wasn't working. Tony (or a previous owner) had torn the seat belts out and knew enough about cars so that there were no annoying flashing lights or beeping sounds because the belts weren't fastened. There was a CD player and a ton of the junk that passes for music these days. And the car had logged 262,407 miles and was still running.

The top was down, which is the only way it would have been reported in less than a week or two. I checked the mechanism, and it was working. I remembered back to the night he vanished. It was clearly going to rain, probably had already sprinkled some, which meant Tony didn't figure to be wherever he was for long or he'd have put the top up.

My next stop was Mill Creek, where I had Standish get one of Bigelow's house flunkies to print out the addresses of everyone who'd worked for him for the past half year. I didn't know my way around Lexington very well, so I headed back to the station, showed the list to MacDonald, who'd shown up while I was gone, and asked him to put a mark next to anyone who lived within a few blocks of the Kroger lot, on the assumption that since he had a car, Tony wouldn't have walked more than two or three blocks from where he left it.

“Are you sure this is the entire list?” asked MacDonald after he'd studied it.

“I'm sure it's the entire list that they gave me,” I replied. “I can't swear that it's complete or accurate, but I assume it is, because it'd be so easy to prove he left something off.”

He handed the paper back to me. “I hate to tell you this, Eli, but not a single address on this list is within walking distance of the Kroger where he left the car.”

I frowned. “Are you sure?”

He nodded. “I'm not a stranger to Lexington.”

“It doesn't make any sense,” I muttered. “The kid was worried. He told his girl, he told me. I've got a feeling he's dead. He was somewhere between worried and scared the night he vanished. Why the hell did he drive to that particular lot, when none of his friends lived near there, Standish and Bigelow live on the farm, his parents are on the other side of town, so who the hell's left?”

“I ran a check on him last night,” offered MacDonald. “No arrests, one speeding ticket a year ago, as far as we know he never ran with a gang.”

“Why there?” I persisted. “If he thought his life was in danger, and he couldn't confide in anyone, he had a car—so why didn't he just take off and put five hundred miles between himself and Lexington by sunrise?” I paused, trying to come up with an answer. “I don't suppose there's a bus station anywhere near there?”

MacDonald shook his head. “Sorry, but no.”

“Maybe I'd better drive over there and take a look for myself,” I said.

“What are you looking for?”

I sighed. “Damned if I know,” I admitted. “But that's where he thought to run or hide, so that's where I should at least look around.” Then I got an idea. “Before I go, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure,” said MacDonald. “What is it?”

“Find out if Tony had a credit card.”

“Give me half a minute,” he said. He activated his computer, and soon his fingers were flying over the keys. I envied him. I could barely type my name back in high school, I didn't get any better when I was with the Chicago police force, and I finally decided that computers and I were, if not mortal enemies, then at least destined never to be friends or partners.

“Okay,” he said, looking up.

“Okay what?” I asked.

“Tony didn't have a credit card.”

“Shit!” I said. “Then there's no way to find out if he bought anything at Kroger's.”

“They're a supermarket, Eli,” he said with a smile. “They don't sell bullets.”

“If he bought some food and didn't take it out to his car, he was clearly walking it to wherever he went next,” I said. “It would mean he did know someone within walking distance.”

MacDonald nodded his head. “You got a point,” he agreed. “You don't bring food to guys who are threatening your life.”

“I might as well get started.”

“It's evening.”

“A lot of the Cincinnati Krogers are open around the clock,” I said. “Maybe this one is, too. Besides, it's still a few hours before midnight, even if it closes.”

He shook his head. “You're not going to learn anything at the Kroger,” he said. “But if you wander around the neighborhood in the dark, it won't be long before someone reports you to the police.”