Unfinished Business (9 page)

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Grimaldi said. “I’m doing
my job.”

“Thanks for doing your job well.”

She didn’t respond to that. “I’ll see you at
six-thirty at the TBI. Call me if anything happens before
then.”

I said I would. And added, before she could
hang up, “I don’t suppose you’ve checked whether anyone Rafe put
away has been released in the last few days or weeks? He spent ten
years undercover. He must have been responsible for sending a lot
of people to prison. Some of them might hold a grudge.”

“Oh,” Grimaldi said, “I’m sure many of them
do. And I’ll do that. I know that anyone I was involved in
arresting hasn’t gone anywhere. After Mr. Lamont escaped this
winter, I put the fear of God into everyone in the penal system. If
anyone I’ve ever arrested so much as moves toward the exit, I hear
about it. But if I wasn’t involved in the case, I wouldn’t
necessarily know. So that’s a good thought. I’ll look into it.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll let you know what I find out.” She
hung up without giving me time to respond.

There was a moment of silence while I
dropped the phone back into my bag. Then—

“The Harley?” Dix asked. He was watching me
in the rearview mirror, with one eye on the road.

I nodded. “They found it in a shed behind
the bar where Rafe was last night.”

“That’s not good,” Dix said.

I shook my head. “It makes it less likely
that he left of his own free will. He wouldn’t just walk off and
leave the Harley sitting there.”

“Maybe he decided to hitchhike,” Mother
suggested, her tone of voice implying that he was the type of
person who would.

“I suppose he might have,” I agreed, more to
work it through in my own head than because I believed it. “There’s
a truck stop half a mile down the road from Gabe’s, on the other
side of the interstate. He could have walked there and found a
ride.”

Mother nodded.

“But why would he? He had a vehicle of his
own. And if he didn’t want to ride the bike out of town, he could
at least have driven to the truck stop. Why walk along the road for
half a mile when he didn’t have to? In the dark, with cars flying
by, there was a good chance someone would run him down before he
made it fifty feet down the road.”

Mother had no answer for that.

“And if he was concerned enough for the bike
to roll it into the shed, he would have been concerned enough not
to leave it there at all. The TBI is only a five minute ride from
Gabe’s. The house is even less. And the bike would have been safer
in either place.”

“Perhaps he ran out of gas,” Mother
said.

Huh. I suppose he might have. Although if he
was that low on fuel when he got to Gabe’s, I would have expected
him to take care of it before he went inside. He wouldn’t want to
deal with it at eleven o’clock at night.

But maybe someone siphoned off the gas while
he was inside Gabe’s. And when he came out, the bike wouldn’t
start. So he rolled it into the shed where it would be safe,
until...

But no. If the gas tank was dry, he wouldn’t
have to worry about anyone stealing the bike. If it had started,
Rafe would have left on it. And anyway, he wouldn’t have started
walking down the road. He’d have gone inside and asked Wendell or
one of the rookies for a ride to the nearest gas station. These
were TBI agents. They didn’t take stupid chances. Or at least not
those kinds of stupid chances. If someone had siphoned off the gas
and left Rafe stranded, he would have wondered why. He certainly
wouldn’t have done something like start walking down the side of
the road on his own in the dark.

Still, I’d make sure to ask Grimaldi to have
the forensic techs check the tank. Just in case there was something
to Mother’s suggestion.

“Anything else?” Dix wanted to know.

I shook my head. “We’re meeting Wendell and
the rookies at the TBI at six-thirty. And Grimaldi’s checking to
see whether any of the people Rafe put in prison is newly released
and looking for revenge.”

Dix nodded.

“For now, I guess we just wait and see what
happens.”

“Easier said than done,” Dix muttered, and
that was certainly true. I settled back into the seat and watched
the trees flash by outside the car, and thought unpleasant
thoughts.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigations is located in Inglewood, a
mile or two north of Mrs. Jenkins’s house. It’s a big brick
building with lots of windows, and a roof bristling with antennae.
To get there, you have to drive up Gass Boulevard, past the medical
examiner’s office, which is always unpleasant. Not because there’s
anything to see. It’s just a low-slung brick building with no
identifying marks. Unless you happen to know what
Center for
Forensic Medicine
means, it could be anything at all. But I’ve
been there a couple of times, and neither were happy occasions.
These days, I feel slightly sick just looking at the outside of the
building.

Anyway, we passed the ME’s office and
crested the hill before pulling into the parking lot outside the
TBI. Wendell had cleared us through, so all we had to do was show
identification and turn our pockets and purses inside out, before
we were allowed inside. Mother looked deeply perturbed at having a
ham-fisted security guard pawing through her purse, but since Dix
and I didn’t complain, there wasn’t anything she could say or do
about it.

This trip had proven to be educational for
my mother in a myriad of ways. I just hoped she was learning
something from everything that had happened.

Grimaldi was already there when we arrived,
and so were Wendell and the three rookies.

The boys looked about like I had expected.
One black, one white, one Hispanic. All three were around twenty,
and none of them looked like choir boys. If I’d met either in a
dark alley—or for that matter on a deserted sidewalk in broad
daylight—I’d have walked the other way, and fast.

“Jamal Atkins,” Wendell said, nodding to the
black kid. “Clayton Norris. José Garcia.”

That last one sounded to me a lot like John
Smith, but what do I know? “Nice to meet you.”

The boys all nodded.

“I’m Rafe’s girlfriend. This is my brother
and my mother. They came up for the wedding that didn’t
happen.”

Jamal opened his mouth. “That’s bogus,
man.”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t bogus at all. He
didn’t show up.”

Jamal refrained from rolling his eyes, but
only barely. “That’s what I’m saying, man.”

Right. It was probably best not to point out
that I wasn’t a man. Clearly, I couldn’t take anything Jamal said
literally.

“Sorry,” Clayton added, while José
nodded.

They were about as different as they could
be from one another. Jamal must be as tall as Rafe, and looked like
he weighed thirty or forty pounds less. He was a beanpole of a kid,
whose pants undoubtedly hung below his butt when he stood up. José
was a fireplug: shorter than me, with a sullen pout and
overdeveloped shoulders under a snug-fitting T-shirt. And Clayton
looked like a skinhead, with fair hair buzzed short, a nose ring,
and tattoos all up and down his arms.

Nobody in his right mind would have looked
at either of them and thought ‘undercover agent.’ Which was the
point, I guess.

“Now that we’re here,” Grimaldi said, “we
can get started.”

She went over everything she’d already told
me on the phone, and ended with, “The techs did not find any usable
fingerprints on the handles of the bike. Mr. Collier’s are all over
the bike, of course, but on the handle they’re smudged. We’re
assuming someone else moved the bike into the shed.”

She paused a moment to let that piece of
information sink in before she continued. “At this point, we’re
trying to ascertain who that someone was, and when it happened. And
of course what happened to Mr. Collier after he left the bar.”

“I was already gone by then,” José spoke up,
with a glance at Wendell, maybe to make sure it was OK to speak. “I
left first. Ten-thirty, maybe.” He shrugged. “I live in Antioch.
It’s a long drive.”

It was. Or at least a lot longer than
Rafe’s, who only had a few minutes to go to reach home.

“The rest of us stayed,” Jamal offered.
“Clay and I were playing pool. Rafe and Mr. Craig were talking.
Then Rafe said he was gonna go, and Mr. Craig came to join us.”

Clayton nodded. “We hung out until the game
was over, and then we left, too. Twenty after, maybe?”

He glanced at the other two. Wendell and
Jamal both nodded. “About that,” Jamal said.

“Was there anything going on in the parking
lot when you got outside?”

They all shook their heads. “We woulda
stopped it,” Jamal said, with a cocky grin.

“Was Mr. Collier’s bike in the lot?”

They glanced at one another. “I didn’t see
it,” Clayton said. Jamal shook his head.

“We got there at the same time,” Wendell
told us. “I parked in the slot next to him. When I came out to
leave, the bike was gone. If it hadn’t been, I woulda known
something was wrong.”

Grimaldi nodded. So did I. “And he didn’t
come back inside the bar? To say he had run out of gas, or
anything?”

They all shook their heads.

“We didn’t see him after he walked out,”
Jamal said. Clayton nodded.

Grimaldi turned to José. “You left earlier
than the others. Where did you park relative to Mr. Collier’s
bike?”

“Couple spaces down,” José said.

“Did you have to pass it to get to your own
car?”

José nodded.

“Can you remember if it was there?”

José scrunched up his face. “Pretty sure. I
mean, if it wasn’t, I’da noticed, you know? Cause I knew Rafe was
gonna need it to go home.”

“Can you remember what it was parked next
to?”

“Mr. Craig’s ride,” José said, glancing at
Wendell. “Black Lincoln Town Car.”

Wendell nodded. So did I. I’d taken a ride
or two in that car last August. Although I hadn’t realized it was
Wendell’s personal car that Rafe had borrowed.

“And on the other side?”

José scrunched up his face. “Van,” he said.
“Dark blue? A Chevy?”

“Windows?” Grimaldi asked.

José shook his head, his eyes still closed.
Clayton and Jamal exchanged a glance and a smirk. “Cargo van,” José
said. “Maybe ten years old. Dirt on the bottom.”

“License plate?”

“Dirty,” José said. “I see a one, a N or a
H. Eight, or could be a B.”

“Does anyone else remember seeing the
van?”

Everyone shook their heads. “It was gone
when I came out,” Wendell said. “Both the spaces next to my car
were empty.”

That seemed to take care of that, then.

“You want I should go run the plate?” he
added.

“In a minute. I have a couple of questions
about an old case first.”

Wendell nodded. “How about you boys see what
you can make of the cargo van? Run the partial, see what you come
up with.”

They all three nodded, and ambled out,
arguing about who should man the computer. Neither of them wanted
to, it seemed. The last thing I heard before the door closed behind
them was Jamal’s voice. “Rock, paper, scissors?”

Wendell rolled his eyes. “They’re good boys.
And they’ll make good agents. We just gotta knock some of the sass
outta them first.”

“They were helpful,” I said, scooting my
butt around on the hard chair. “Do you think José was right about
the van? And the license plate?”

“The boy’s got a damn near photographic
memory,” Wendell answered, “so yeah, likely he was. Good asset.” He
grinned.

Rafe’s got a good memory for details, too.
I’m sure you learn to cultivate one when your life might depend on
it someday.

“I’ve been looking into prison releases,”
Grimaldi said, and put a file on the table. “Anything connected to
Mr. Collier or Hector Gonzales. Anyone who might be holding a
grudge.”

Behind me, I could hear Mother whisper to
Dix. “Who is Hector Gonzales?”

Wendell nodded. “He put away a lot of
people. Some of’em are likely out by now, and could be looking for
a bit of their own back.”

“A criminal,” Dix whispered back. “He ran a
gang. One with cells all over the Southeast. Collier broke it up
last year.”

“I found four,” Grimaldi said. “One was
released two years ago, and has managed to keep his nose clean. Two
were released last year, but one is back behind bars. And one was
released last month.”

Wendell reached for the folder.

“Why would anyone wait a year or more to
come after Rafe?” I wanted to know. “He isn’t hard to find. And
last year he was still part of Hector’s gang.”

“That’s why it may have taken someone all
this time,” Grimaldi explained. “Last year, he was still with the
gang. Until we put it about that he died. That was September,
wasn’t it? Or October?”

I nodded.

“By now, it’s become common knowledge that
not only isn’t he dead, but he was an undercover informant all
along. Someone who didn’t suspect him a year ago might have learned
better now.”

True. “So who are these people?”

“That’s the problem.” Grimaldi sounded
grumpy. “The one who’s back in prison would have been my first
choice. He has a violent background. The other two don’t. They were
just petty crooks who got swept up with the rest of the petty
crooks while Collier worked his way toward the center of the gang.
They served their year or two in prison for theft or possession of
stolen property or whatever, and now they’re staying mostly on the
straight and narrow. One has a wife and a new baby and a job in a
warehouse, and the other drives an eighteen-wheeler. He isn’t even
supposed to be in town this week.”

“A couple of years in prison can change
someone,” I said. “Even if they weren’t violent before, they could
be now.”