“That place is abandoned now. Why’s it matter?”
Hud took a deep breath. “Look, there’s always been a direct connection between Chicago and this place. A lot of shady business went on at the Shamrocks, you know that. We all know that. But that business went away and was replaced with the business of drugs. Drugs were always here, but more for pleasure than feeding an epidemic like it is now. Charlie Sandburg told me that Leo Sherman was concerned about a turf war between the locals and an outfit out of Chicago. We need to find out who’s running that outfit. Who’s in that outfit. The Shamrocks and Tilt Evans are the only things I’ve run across that intersect with Chicago. It’s a long shot, but a path I think we need to go down.”
Lancet sighed heavily into the phone. “You realize it’s after hours for most places, don’t you.”
“The Internet never closes.”
Frustrated static. Silence. No immediate response.
Sloane was dividing her attention between driving and Hud. Moran was close behind them, with her lights off. A request from Sloane.
“I’ll see what I can dig up, but I gotta tell you, Matthews, I think you’re chasin’ rabbits in the dark,” Lancet said.
“I’ve chased a lot of rabbits in my life.”
“All right, I’ll get back to you, but it ain’t gonna be lickety-split, and Burke ain’t gonna be none too happy about me wastin’ time on the Internet.” And then click. The connection was lost, or cut, one or the other.
Hud pulled the phone away from his ear, looked at it to make sure it was still working, then stuffed it back into his pocket. “That guy is something else.”
“I told you he’d come around. You’ll get used to him.” Sloane’s eyes were fixed on the road now, trying to look past the headlights into the darkness, into what lay ahead of them. “You’ve said Leo Sherman was concerned about a turf war. I just thought about this. How would he know about that?”
“Good question. He probably came up on meth labs out in the woods, that kind of thing, and interacted with Burke in some capacity when it came to the drug situation around here. He was boots on the ground. Knew about what was going on around the lake more than anybody else. I bet you see a lot of things driving around checking fishing licenses. We could find out, but if Leo Sherman was the type of CO I think he was, then he would know. Trust me. He would know.”
“Right, of course. But what if it was something else? Something more personal than just doing his job? Maybe he found out another way?”
“Like what?”
“Like protecting his wife. Maybe he found out what she was doing, helping Pam Sizemore and who knows who else? What if this outside outfit didn’t like her presence, had found out about what she was doing? He was trying to save her. Leo Sherman was trying to save his wife just like Pam Sizemore was trying to save her kid from suffering. You were in the Sherman’s house. It was nice. They had a good life. Something worth protecting. Maybe Kaye Sherman got involved in something that was out of her league and she couldn’t get out on her own.”
“It makes sense.”
“And it makes sense that Jordan Rogers or Tom Tucker would know about Kaye Sherman’s involvement. Jordan would know.”
Hud stiffened in the seat and looked over at Sloane with recognition of what she was saying. “If Tom Tucker was the local dealer, the source that Chicago was trying to wipe out, then Jordan would be dealing with him.”
“The shooting was execution-style. Someone was afraid he was going to talk, break. They had to get rid of him, silence him like you said.”
Hud shook his head. “They knew each other. It was an ambush before it was an execution.”
“All right, I can see that. But then what? Afterward, that person came back to the bar, got into a scuffle with Tilt Evans for one reason or another. And now Tilt’s gone, too. All we have is some blood left behind. Like you said, Tilt most likely knew everything that was going in his bar. He was a risk, too. He might have had his own suspicions who the shooter was.”
“We need to find Tilt,” Hud said. “And like I said, Helen Burke’s house is the only place I can think of to start. Lancet might be right. We might be chasing rabbits down a hole.”
“Or you might be right,” Sloane said. “You might just be right.”
“I drove around the lake one last time before I left for college. I was alone, didn’t tell Gee where I was going. I had my cigarettes, a little bottle of whiskey, some good tunes, but I wasn’t feeling especially nostalgic. It was the end of summer, before Labor Day, a normal day on the lake. I think I was hoping for a miracle, that I’d find something before I had to leave.”
“I’m surprised.”
“By that?”
“By the fact that you were hoping for a miracle.”
“It didn’t come. There was no voice from the sky offering the answers I needed. I stopped at the Dip. I was going to confront Fred Myerson, accuse him of killing my mother, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
“What stopped you?”
“I had no proof. There were tons of people around. It would have been a crazy thing to do. I left and never went back.”
“What happened to him?”
“Cancer got him.”
“Another dead end.”
“It was a high probability that someone took the truth to their grave. Sometimes, I thought I could live with never knowing what happened to her.”
“But that never lasted?”
“No, it was only because I had no other choice. I had to live without knowing. I had to live without her.”
“Slow down,” Hud said, as Sloane was about to turn down the lane that would take them to the Burkes’ house.
“Why?”
Hud sighed. “We should at least do a visual of the Shamrocks as we go by, make sure the place is dark, quiet. We’ll come back to it after we make sure Helen is all right.”
“That’s probably not a bad idea.” Sloane brought the car to a crawl, and Moran followed suit behind them.
There were no lights on in any of the small cottages, just like Hud had expected. But even in the thick darkness of night, without any help from the stars or moon, it was easy to see that something was there that shouldn’t have been. A car sat in the parking lot, and when Sloane swung in behind it, there was no mistaking it. It was Burke’s car.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The world beyond Sloane’s Crown Vic was covered in nervous darkness and filled with the fog of uncertainty. Hud and Sloane had both tried to raise a response from Burke, one on the radio, the other on the cell phone. Neither of them received an answer. They stared at each other, lost, reluctant to step outside the car, though Hud knew that if the shooter wanted to strike, it wouldn’t matter. There would be no missing this time. The roof of Hud’s mouth felt like it was going to cave in. Burke was out there somewhere.
Hud took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. “Call Lancet, get as much backup here as you can. Tell them to come quietly. This isn’t the Charge of the Light Brigade.” He hesitated, then said, “This might not turn out well. Are you ready for that?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Sloane’s eyes were vague and distant. “Do you think you’re going out there alone?”
Hud nodded. “I think you need to stay close to the radio.”
“I have the handheld.”
“You’ll broadcast to every ear that might be listening. You know how voices carry across the lake in the night air. Besides, I know this place. I mean, it’s different, doesn’t look the same as it did when I was a kid, but I know it. I spent a lot of time around here. I wore a path between the shop and Burke’s house.”
“We all spent time around here, Hud.” There was something in Sloane’s voice that didn’t match up with what she said. Resentment, melancholy, nostalgia, something that he didn’t have time to decipher.
“You’re right; I just have a hard time remembering you as a little girl dressed up all frilly and prissy.”
“I wasn’t allowed to play like a boy.”
“But now you can.”
“If you say so.” Sloane sighed, looked at the ceiling of the car. “You’re right. I’ll stay back, keep an eye and ear out, but not for long. I don’t like being a sitting duck.”
Hud palmed the .45 in his other hand. “Let me know if you hear from Burke.”
She nodded as he pushed out of the car and headed toward Moran’s cruiser. Sloane didn’t say a word, no call me if you need me, nothing. All she had to offer was a stare that turned into an uncomfortable glare. Hud thought he was keeping her safe.
“So why did you agree to talk to me?”
“Because I knew you’d ask the right questions.”
The air was cold and a slight wind pushed off the lake. His ears were tuned to high alert, listening for any sound out of place: a snap of a twig, a round being chambered, someone breathing heavily, a chirping October cricket. All sounds he’d heard before, but now they would mean more. He felt like he was walking out of one setup and into another. This situation had felt bad, twisted, like something was out of place, from the moment he’d seen Burke’s Crown Vic. There’d been no radio communication, no contact from the chief that Hud had heard since they’d left the Tom Tucker crime scene, but he’d been in the bar looking for Tilt, on a path of his own. He hadn’t needed Burke, and Burke hadn’t needed him.
As Hud moved toward Moran’s cruiser stealthily, familiar images flittered through his mind. Blood on the floor. Tilt dancing with Burke’s mother. A little boy screaming for his dead mother to return. None of which seemed connected or have anything to do with anything . . . but yet, Hud wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t be. Not now that there was no sign of Burke. Where are you?
Moran rolled down the window as Hud stopped and crouched next to the door. “You look better than the last time I saw you,” Moran said.
“I need you to go down to the house and check on Mrs. Burke,” Hud said.
She looked at him with confusion that quickly transformed to annoyance, then faded away into duty-bound resignation. Nothing came from her pursed lips. At least she knew how to pick her fights. Hopefully, her other kickboxing skills wouldn’t have to be put to the test. “All right,” Moran said. “What am I looking for?”
“You know the bartender at the Demmie?”
“Tilt Evans? Yeah, everybody knows Tilt. The world’s greatest skier, except no one has ever seen him ski.”
“I have. He was really good back in the day.” Muscles weakened, bones became brittle, and youthful arrogance settles into tension and fear. Hud was tempted to give Moran a life lesson, but he knew he not only lacked the time but the authority. It wouldn’t matter what he said to her.
“All right, if you say so,” she said.
“Keep an eye out for him. Goldie Flowers, too. Make sure Helen Burke’s safe. She’s probably going to wonder what the hell is going on when you show up at her door. Just keep her occupied until you hear from us. She’s like Burke. Her bark’s bigger than her bite. For some reason, I hope Burke’s there, too. Though I can’t figure out why he’d leave his car here.”
Moran nodded. “Me, either. I’m a little worried.” Her mouth twisted up like she wanted to say something else, but she restrained herself. She put the cruiser in gear and inched out of the parking lot and down the lane toward Burke’s childhood home in total darkness. Only the interior glowed. The deputy looked as if she was trapped inside a hard brown-and-tan bubble. They both knew it didn’t offer any protection. Just the opposite. It had been a target once and mostly likely would be again at some point.
Hud stood back and watched the cruiser disappear, get swallowed up by the darkness, then scuttled to the closest Shamrock cottage armed with the .45 in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
Up close, it was easy to see that time had been more unkind to the resort than Hud had originally thought. There were ten cottages, all the same, ten-by-twenty at the most, with clapboard siding that had at one time been painted a bright green; the color of an Irish shamrock reaching for the sun. But the paint had faded, peeled, or been completely worn away by nature’s relentless fury. Some of the windows and doors were completely off their hinges, open, clattering in the wind, allowing animals and other vagrant creatures to come and go as they pleased. The Shams would have been a perfect place to hide a meth lab. The downside to the choice of the location was the closeness to Helen Burke’s house and her watchful eye. Anyone with any sense at all would have found another place to cook their drugs.
Hud worked his way along the cottages, sweeping in doors and checking open windows as he went. Occasionally, he would look over his shoulder to check on Sloane, make sure she was still there, watching over him, waiting to jump into action if she were needed. Her presence gave him a little bit of false confidence.
October was the gateway to the season of decay, but nothing had prepared him for the rotten smells he encountered. The air was doused with the aroma of slow death, flesh disintegrating one cell at a time, in no hurry to become one with the soil underneath it. Even the wind couldn’t combat or push away the rot.
Hud didn’t linger in any one place too long. The smell was worse than any morgue that he’d ever been in. The intensity of the experience nearly gagged him, made him turn away. He hadn’t seen one sign of Burke since he’d started looking.
By the time he’d reached the last cottage, Hud had started to doubt that Burke was there. At least not alive, capable of making any noise.
If it weren’t for the presence of the chief’s Crown Vic, Hud would have thought that he’d set himself, and everyone else, on a wild goose chase. But the car was there, and there was no explanation or clue as to Burke’s whereabouts—unless he was home with his mother. It was the only hope that Hud had left.
After sweeping the last cottage with a quick burst of light, Hud determined that it was vacant too. Plaster peeled off the walls, the stuffing had been pulled out of the furniture and made into a nest of some kind in the not so distant past. There was no sign of a human, living or dead. He stopped, sighing, to gather his thoughts. The next thing to do, after checking Burke’s car, was to have Sloane radio Moran and see if Burke was at his mother’s house.
Resigned and relieved, Hud started for Burke’s vehicle, replaying in his head everything that had happened since they’d left the Demmie and arrived at the Shamrocks. He glanced up at Sloane watching over him, and stopped just out of the shadow of the last cottage. “We all spent time around here, Hud.” Sloane had said. He had never been able to place her at Burke’s house, and he had no memory of her father or mother, either, for that matter. But it all made sense: her mother was protective, wanted her to be a girl, kept her away from the boys. And her father was a cop, too, part of the club with Burke’s father’s gang. Her father would have known everybody on the county force even though he wasn’t on it. They all worked together.
And then the questions began to flood into Hud’s mind. Did Sloane’s father know my mother? Was Burke’s father just an affair? And perhaps Sloane’s father was the man who was going to change everything. He was married. In the mix. Did he party at the Demmie with the rest of the upper crust? Did he drive a black car? And most importantly, what did Tina Sloane really know, if anything, about his mother?
Two things happened almost simultaneously as Hud stood there trying to find footing in his thoughts: Sloane flashed her headlights on and off, attempting to get his attention, and Hud’s cell phone hummed in his pocket.
He had the ringer turned off. He figured the phone call was probably Sloane, but hoped that it was from Burke. His stomach roiled like a storm had just cut loose, and his face throbbed from the blow of the oar. Pain and a week’s worth of blood and madness washed over him, and he was certain that, no matter what happened, he would never be able to relieve himself of the stench of the murders. They had changed him, shown him a side of his home that he didn’t know existed. He wished for the happy place of his memory that didn�
��t exist anymore. It wasn’t just the Ferris wheel that threatened to crumble into the lake and disappear; everything did. Even him.
Hud stared at the Crown Vic, the flashing headlights, and reached for his phone. It wasn’t Burke or Sloane. It was Lancet.
“Hey,” Hud said as softly as he could.
“You all right?”
“Just in the middle of looking for Burke.”
“Anything?”
“Not a sign of him, but Moran’s down at the house. I hope he’s there.”
“I haven’t heard anything, either. I’m worried.”
Sloane flashed her lights again, only this time closer together, more emphatic. She was getting impatient. Hud had the phone cupped to his ear, his back to the car, so no one could see that he was on the phone. “So, what’s up?” he said.
“Look, I came across something that I think you need to know. It’s troubling.”
“What?”
“You sent me on that information chase to Chicago . . . and I think I found something. More than something.”
“Okay.”
“Look, I have some friends in Chicago, and I called in a few favors, did a little digging on the Internet, like you said, but I got some access to some county records that you probably couldn’t have gotten to before now. Things have changed.”
Hud tried to listen past the gloating in Pete Lancet’s voice. There was something else there, too; a quiver, nervousness. “We need a break.”
“Not this kind,” Lancet said. “I was able to break through the wall that was hiding the shell corporation, the one that owned the Shamrocks. It’s been condemned recently by the county, and because of that I was able to use that information to track down the origin of ownership. There were two names. Two recognizable names. Burke’s dad was one of them. He was part owner of the Shamrocks from the mid-1960s, and the other name was . . .”
Where I Can See You Page 23
