“Okay,” Drew said. “It was dark, like now, but the car was parked just up here, about three car lengths in from the road, you know?”
Barry was nodding. The cop had a big flashlight and was shining it ahead. Drew pointed out to the highway. “I had to leave my car up there because I couldn’t get past it.”
I squinted into the darkness where Drew was pointing, saw a car up there, looked like an older Ford Taurus, maybe a Mercury Sable.
Drew stopped walking. “I think it was right about here.”
“And the car,” Barry said. “It was nose in?”
“That’s right.”
“So when our dead guy’s buddy got in, it would have been over here, on the right side of the lane.” The cop shone his light in that area.
“Yup,” said Drew. The cop’s light had picked up a small flag that I was guessing had been used to mark where the gun was found. “What’s that?” Drew asked.
Barry said, “That’s where our friend dropped his gun. Son of a bitch.”
TWENTY-NINE
THE POLICE WEREN’T DONE with us until nearly one in the morning, and ordinarily I might consider that a bit late to call someone, but when Ellen suggested getting in touch with Natalie Bondurant to tell her about what had happened, and how these recent events might help Derek, I said, “Do it.”
If Natalie was upset at our having disturbed her, she gave no indication. “I want to know what evidence they get out of that gun,” she said. “Pronto.”
Despite what we’d been through, we slept better that night than we might have expected. I think we were able to sleep because we felt, for the first time since Derek’s arrest, that there was hope.
“I’m all over this today,” Ellen said at breakfast. “I’m going down to see Natalie, I’m going to see if I can get in to talk to Derek.”
I felt comforted, seeing Drew standing at the curb outside his mother’s house when I turned down his street. Clearly, Barry had not changed his mind through the night, and Drew had not been taken into custody.
“Hey,” I said as he climbed into the truck.
“Morning,” he said.
“How are you?” I asked.
“Tired,” he said. “Later, that detective? I was getting in my car to go and he asked all his questions all over again. A couple of times.”
“Things okay?”
“I think he was finally satisfied that we were all telling the truth.”
“You okay otherwise?” It seemed a somewhat foolish question. He’d killed someone the night before. Even though his actions had been justified, taking the life of another person, it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing I’d be able to shake off.
“I wondered if you’d actually come this morning,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because of my record,” Drew said. “Because you found out I’d been in prison.”
“I’d be a real asshole, after what you did for me and Ellen last night, to bail on you.”
He nodded, stared straight ahead beyond the windshield. “How about you?” he asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. I felt a need to try to connect with Drew, to draw him out more. I sensed this sadness in him. “It can’t be easy, coming out of jail, starting over again.”
Drew nodded. “It’s kind of like being born. You’re thrown into the world, not really ready. No job, no money, no way to get around.”
“At least there’s your mom.”
Another nod. “Yeah. And I ran into an old buddy, guy named Lyle, he’s letting me borrow a car. You can’t manage without a car.”
I said, “You mentioned last night that you’d had a kid. That you needed money.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“But not anymore? Was it a custody thing?”
“No,” he said. “Died.”
What do you say? “That’s rough” was the best I could think to come up with. “I can’t imagine, losing a child. When did it happen?”
“Not that long ago. Another few weeks she’d have been eighteen. It’s with me all the time. I figure it always will be.”
“What about her mother?”
Drew shook his head. “Not on the scene. Not for a long time. She was a flake. She fucked off years ago.”
“So when you were in prison, who looked after her? Your mother?”
He glanced at me. “Yeah. My mother. That’s why now, with her getting older, I feel I owe it to her to help her out.”
“Sure,” I said. I waited a beat. “What happened?”
“Huh?”
“To your daughter?”
Drew pushed his tongue around inside his cheek. Finally, he said, “She got sick. She didn’t get help from people when she needed it.”
“Doctors,” I said. “They missed something?” He shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it. I guessed that it was too painful to do so, and that my questions had become too personal. “Sorry, man,” I said, and dropped it.
Our first house of the day belonged to Walter Burgess, Brett Stockwell’s retired high school English teacher. It was my first time here since he’d asked me to take on his property.
He came out to greet me, while his companion, Trey Watson, watched us through the screen door.
“Hello,” Burgess said. “Anything you need to know from me before you get started?”
“Not really,” I said. “Just if you have any requests.”
“Just watch out for the tomato plants up against the house around back. Trey’ll have a fit if something happens to them.”
“Don’t worry.”
He cleared his throat, like he was working up to something. “A lot’s happened to your family since you dropped by the other day.”
“Yeah,” I said. Certainly Derek’s situation was well known. The incident at our house the night before hadn’t quite become common knowledge yet.
“I’m sorry for your troubles,” he said. “When you were here before, you were asking about Brett. You said there was a book. On an old computer of his.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you sort that all out?”
“Not really.”
Burgess nodded. “That was pretty much it, though? What was on the computer?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “I never actually saw it. What makes you ask?”
He shook his head like it didn’t really matter. “Trey, he was just curious, that’s all. So I thought I would ask. But it’s nothing.”
Something twigged in the back of my mind. Something Derek had said in passing when he first told me that he’d noticed the computer was missing from Adam’s room, and what was on it. He’d said there’d been letters to some teacher Brett had had back in high school.
“Letters,” I said.
“Pardon?” Burgess said.
“There were letters on the computer. To a teacher.”
Burgess took a breath. “Were they to me? What did they say?”
“I don’t know. You think they were to you?”
He ran his tongue over his lips nervously. “It’s possible. He wrote a few to me back then. They were . . . he seemed a bit infatuated with me, if you want to know the truth.” He shook his head, trying to dismiss the whole thing. “I’m sure it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Trey worries about these sorts of things. It hardly matters now. It’s not like I have a job to lose anymore.” He licked his lips again. “If you should happen to run across them, would you let me know?”
“I’ll keep my eye out,” I said.
He thanked me and went back into the house. I went over to Drew, mentioned to him about the tomato plants, and we got started. I took the tractor, cut the front and back yards, while Drew tackled the tight areas with the mower.
When we were done and packing things away, I thought Walter Burgess might come back out again, even if to say nothing more than he was happy with the job, but the front door never opened. Drew and I got in the truck.
“What’s their story?”
Drew asked as we pulled away from the curb.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I could tell they were a couple of pansies, and I don’t have anything against that.”
“Sure.”
“But they were really going at it in there.”
“Go on.”
“I’d stopped the trimmer for a few seconds, had to get some more line out of it, and you were far enough away on the Deere, in the backyard, I think, so you weren’t making that much of a racket, and the two of them were bickering away in there like all get-out.”
“Really,” I said, turning the A/C fan up a notch. “About what?”
“At first, it was just random shit, how the one, not the one who came out and said hello to us, but the other one, he was going on about the tomato plants and whether we’d been warned about them or not, and then they started getting into other shit, and then the one with the plants said, ‘Maybe you’d be happier with some of your boy toys instead of me.’ And something like ‘You can’t be too careful, these things can come back and bite you in the ass.’”
“He said that?”
“Yeah.”
“So what did Walter—the one who came out and saw us—what did Walter have to say about that?”
“He said the other guy was overreacting, then he told him to go fuck himself.”
I fiddled a little more with the A/C. “Everybody’s got a lot of shit on their plate,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Drew. “No kidding.”
WE WERE PULLING UP to our second property of the day when my cell rang. I wasn’t expecting to hear any news from Ellen this early, but you never knew. I flipped open the phone without looking to see who was calling.
“Hello?” I said.
“Has something else happened between you and Lance?” a man asked. It took me a second to realize the mayor was on the other end.
“What are you talking about, Randy?” I said.
“Look, you two guys, you need to cut this shit out,” the mayor shouted into the phone. “He came back to work late yesterday after he got his face stitched, said he was okay to drive, but then last night, he’s supposed to run me up to some fucking fund-raising thing at the hospital and he doesn’t show. And he hasn’t shown up this morning.”
“So why you calling me, Randy? You asking me to drop what I’m doing and drive you around today? I can pick you up in my truck, but you’ll have to ride in the back with the tractor.”
“Always a fucking comedian,” he said. “I just want to know if you know where he is. I’ve called his house, his cell, called a couple of other people who know him, nobody’s seen him.”
“Why would you think I’d know?”
“I wanted to know whether you’d had another run-in with him. If you punched his ticket, let me know and I can stop expecting him.”
“I didn’t punch his ticket, Randy,” I said.
“So you haven’t seen him? Not since you paid him a visit yesterday?”
“That’s right,” I said. Unless that had been him the night before, working with Mortie. But I didn’t think it was Lance then, and I didn’t think it was Lance now. Besides, those dots didn’t connect, did they? And if that dark-haired guy had been Lance, wouldn’t he have found some excuse to kick the shit out of me? Me, tied to a chair, unable to fight back? Lance wouldn’t have been able to resist a target like that any more than I would have, had the roles been reversed.
“This isn’t like Lance,” Mayor Finley said. “I mean, he’s an asshole, I know that, but he’s generally a reliable asshole.”
“I wish I could help you, Randy,” I said. “But I’ve got work to do.”
“Where are you?”
“What?”
“In your truck. Right now. Where are you?”
“I’m on the north side. On Bethune.”
“Shit, that’s not far from where Lance lives. Drop by his place, see if he’s there.”
“Randy, are you kidding me?”
“You know where he lives, right?”
I did. When we both worked for Finley, I’d occasionally pick him up or drop him off with the mayor’s Grand Marquis.
“Forget it, Randy. Send some other errand boy.”
“Now you listen up, Cutter. You waltzed into city hall yesterday and assaulted a municipal employee. And to the best of my knowledge, no one called the cops on you. Not me, not even Lance. So there’s a favor you owe me. On top of that, if that dumb fuck passed out last night because of some sort of delayed concussion or something, thanks to you, then—”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll drop by his place. But if he’s there and blows my brains out, I’m gonna be pissed with you.”
“Thanks. Call me.”
The mayor hung up. More than two years since I’d left his employ, and it seemed as though I’d had more conversations with him the last week than I’d had working for him on a daily basis.
“What are we doing?” Drew asked.
“Making a stop along the way,” I said.
I turned right off Bethune onto Raven, climbed it to Mountainside, hung a left. Lance lived on the second floor of a two-story apartment, accessed by an outside stairwell. I pulled the truck and trailer up to the curb, noticed Lance’s Mustang in the alleyway.
“Hey,” I said to Drew, “that look anything like the car you saw that guy drive off in last night?”
He seemed surprised to be asked, then said, “No. It wasn’t like that. I told the cop. It was a Buick or something, a four-door.”
I’d forgotten. “Right,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I got out, climbed the steps to the apartment door, banged on it.
I tried peering through the door’s window, but there was a curtain in the way. I banged again, then spotted a doorbell button and leaned on it. I wasn’t raising anyone.
I came back down the stairs, got out my cell, phoned Randy back.
“The car’s here, but he’s not answering,” I said.
“Did you try the door?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I did not try the door. I’m not barging in there. Lance’d love that, me busting down the door to his place. He’s probably in there with a shotgun.”
“Jesus, Cutter, the way your mind works.”
“Randy, do you have any idea what the last twenty-four hours have been like for me?”
“No,” he said. “What? Something happen?”
I just shook my head. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime. After you lose your bid for Congress, have some time on your hands. Then—”
“Excuse me.”
There was a short Chinese man in a flowered shirt and shorts standing next to me. I said, “Huh?”
“Were you just upstairs?” he said, pointing up to Lance’s apartment.
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, no. I knocked but no one’s home.”
“Something’s leaking up there,” the little man said. “I live below. Something’s coming through the floor.”
Into the phone, I said to Randall Finley, “Hang on.” Then, to the short man, “Show me.”
He led me into the unit directly below Lance’s and pointed to the ceiling. There was a dark circle, about four inches in diameter.
“Not there yesterday,” the man said.
“You got a chair or something I can stand on?” I asked him.
He brought a stepstool from the kitchen and opened it up under the spot. “Whatever it is,” he said, “landlord’s going to have to pay to get it fixed. I called him, left a message, then you show up. I don’t want a spot on my ceiling like that. Looks like hell.”
“You hear anything funny up there?” I asked him, mounting the stool.
“I was out last night,” he said. He smiled. “Dancing. I watch those TV shows, I decide I want to learn to dance.”
“Great,” I said. I reached up, touched the spot with the tip of my index finger. I brought it up close to my eye, lightly rubbed it with my thumb, felt the texture.
“What is it?”
the man asked. “Is it oil?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not oil.” I put the cell phone to my ear again. “You still there, Randy?”
“Yeah. What the fuck, you forget about me?”
“Randy, you better send the cops over. Might want to think about looking for another driver while you’re at it.”
THIRTY
THIS WAS NO DEATH by watering can. “One shot,” said Barry. “Right through the heart, looks like.”
“Fuck me,” said the mayor.
Randall Finley and Barry Duckworth were looking down at Lance, who lay facedown on the floor, dressed in nothing more than a pair of boxers and a white T-shirt. I got a good look at his arms. No tattoos. The blood had pooled under him and gradually soaked through the floorboards and down to the unit below.
I was hanging back by the door. I’d seen a dead body recently, so Lance’s corpse was no novelty.
Barry told the uniformed cops hanging around to start knocking on doors. The man downstairs might not have heard anything, but someone else might have.
“If someone did hear a shot,” I said, “why didn’t they call the police?”
Barry gave me a tired look. “Nobody ever calls the cops when they hear one shot. They go, hey, what was that? Listen for a second shot, when that doesn’t happen, they think, must have been a car, they go back to watching TV.”
That did sound like the world we lived in.
“You got any idea who might have done this?” Barry asked me.
“No,” I said. “But it won’t be long before you find out he and I weren’t getting along. We’d had a couple of run-ins this week. One of them at city hall.”
“That a fact?” Barry asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I seem to be running into you all the time now. That seem odd to you?”
“A bit.”
“You hang around, okay?”
“Sure. I’m just going down to my truck.”
I’d already spoken to Drew once, after I’d concluded it was blood leaking down through the floor into the apartment below, told him we were going to be stuck here awhile. When I went down to see him again, he was leaning up against the truck.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
Too Close to Home Page 27
