JG02 - Borderlines

by Archer Mayor

  “You remember Joey, don’t you?” Buster asked her. She gave me a wisp of a smile and nodded. “Buster, I don’ understand.” “It may not be anything, Nadine. Some guy from out of town waG killed, and Rennie’s lighter was found with him.” I finished what Buster didn’t know. “We talked to Rennie, and h

  said he hasn’t seen that lighter for six months. Do you remember what happened to it?” “No… Who was murdered?” Her voice was so soft, it was hard to hear, especially with the clomping of feet in the rooms around us “Nobody you know,” said Buster. “The father of one of the kid’ in the Order.” “Bruce Wingate,”

  I said, watching her face for a reaction. Theri was none. “Did Rennie know him?” she asked. Buster squeezed her hand.

  “No-barely.” He was trying to shield her with a tenderness exceeding his usual soft touch with people in distress. I wondered what it was I didn’t know about their friendship. I hadn’t known Nadine when we were all growing up; she was from another town, and I’d only met her briefly during the few times I’d visited over the past thirty years or so. I’d heard about her accident-falling down a flight of stairs or something.

  It had happened almost ten years ago.

  I decided to let him take care of the sensitivities while I asked the questions, although his look showed me he wished I’d turn to dust on the spot. “A few nights ago, Rennie helped us rescue a guy who got in a fight with some people from the Natural Order.” “Yes. I remember.”

  “Well, that was Bruce Wingate. He’d followed his daughter to one of the Order houses, and was determined to go in and get her. Later he picked a fight with Rennie and ended up punching him. Did Rennie tell you any of that?” She dropped her eyes, as if admitting to a crime herself.

  “Yes-he was pretty angry.” “What did he say or do?” “He slammed a few doors and talked about it a bit, but you have to understand Rennie.” She reached out and touched my arm. “He wasn’t angry at… What did you say his name was?” “Bruce Wingate.” %135 “He was angry about more than just that. The slap was only a gger, sort of. He’s had fights before; they don’t mean as much as u’d think.

  They’re just a way for him to blow off steam.” “What else was he mad at?” She shook her head sadly. “Oh, everything in a way: the flatlands, the economy, how the town’s falling apart. If anything, he was ore frustrated with Greta than with Mr. Wingate. He kept saying e’s gotten obsessed about the Order, that she’s letting it ruin her life, d that she’s bringing everybody down with her.” “He took her problem that personally?” “They’re old, old friends.” Buster shifted his weight. I could tell he was becoming angry with e. “You don’t have to answer these questions, Nadine. You’ve got thing to do with all this.” She looked over her shoulder at the sound of a loud bang. A ooper across the room had dropped a picture off the shelf he was ecking.

  Buster stood up. “Hey, do you mind? This ain’t your house.” The trooper looked genuinely embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It zpped.” He carefully replaced it on the shelf a small framed photoaph of a grinning young man in mountain-climbing gear, with a coil rope slung over his shoulder.

  I brought it back over to her. “It’s fine no breakage.” “Thank you.”

  Nadine placed it on a small table next to her. hat’s my favorite picture of my brother-.” She pulled at Buster’s nd. “Sit down, Buster.

  I don’t mind all this. Maybe I can help ennie.” I smiled at her.

  “Thanks. When did you see Rennie last night?” She looked down at her lap and shook her head. “I never did. I ink I heard him very late, but I don’t know. Wednesday nights he ways plays cards with Pete Chaney.” I wondered why Rennie hadn’t told me that earlier. It was a stom-made alibi, for at least part of the evening. “Where does he ay?” “Pete lives in East Burke. He runs a small market there, out of the nt of his house. They play at his place. They’ve been doing it for ars.” “And that’s where he was?” “I think so.” “He didn’t come to bed when he got home?” “Well, we don’t… I mean, when he comes in late, he usually eps in the spare room. He doesn’t like to wake me.” “And that’s what he did last night? Slept in the spare room?” %136 “I think so. I didn’t see him this morning, either. I usually don’t.

  He gets up early… Always been an early riser, even before this.” She tapped the arm of the wheelchair.

  “How about after work? He said he left work around six-thirty and got home about seven to change. Did you see him then?” Again, she looked elsewhere and sighed. “No. I wish I had. I’m not being very helpful, am I?” “Were you in the house?” “Oh, yes. I was in the bedroom. At seven, I would have been watching television and knitting, like always, but it makes a lot of noise.” “The television?” “The knitting machine,”

  Buster growled. The “you jerk” went unheard, if not unnoticed.

  “You didn’t have dinner together?” I asked. “Oh, no. But that’s not unusual-Rennie eats out a lot.” She shook her head suddenly. “This is coming out all wrong, Joe. It makes it sound like we never see each other, or care for each other. We do, but differently from other people. That was true even before this blasted thing.” She thumped the chair’s arm. “People are always looking at it, thinking they know everything.” I wondered how many times that was true of other couples whose lives centered around a wheelchair. “Joe.” I looked up. Spinney was standing near a back hallway. He motioned to me.

  “Sorry, Nadine. I’ll be right back.” “Don’t hurry,” Buster muttered.

  “What’s up?” I asked Spinney in the hallway. “Follow me.” He led the way down the hallway through the kitchen, to a small mudroom beyond. A narrow, cluttered, stalesmelling bedroom lay off to one side by the back door. It was as incongruous with the rest of the house’s interior as spilled garbage on a clean floor, and obviously Rennie’s home away from home. The room’s location made it clear why Nadine hadn’t heard Rennie come home, if he had come home. Smith and several troopers were also in the room.

  “Take a look at these.” Spinney bent down and picked up a pair of work boots, already encased in a plastic bag.

  “A match?” Smith opened an envelope he’d pulled from his coat pocket.

  Inside were a handful of Polaroid pictures, all of footprints found at the scene. They were not “offlcial”-those were taken by the crime lab with %137 rger, fancier cameras and would yield sharper results-but they rved an immediate purpose. Smith selected one and showed it to me.

  I compared it to the tread I could see through the plastic. They right down to a stone caught between two of the Iugs that showed as a dent in the photo. Furthermore, I could make out circular stains the boots that looked a lot like dried blood. I let out a heavy sigh. “Where’d you find them?” Spinney pointed to the top shelf of the one closet in the room. uried in back, under this.” He held up a shirt. “It’s ‘plain view’ culpatory evidence, along with a pair of pants, too.” He spread them th out on the bed, the shirt above the pants, like flat paper-doll othes. There was a single red-brown spot bridging where the shirt ould have met the pants, and several more splotches descending the ght leg.

  The pattern was consistent with Dr. Hoard’s hypothesis that e killer kneed Wingate in the groin to double him over, and then ifed him from overhead.

  “Your friend’s in deep shit,” Smith muttered. “I realize that.” As usual, his voice had been utterly without tonation, which technically made his comment a mere statement of ct. But the utter lack of sympathy angered me, especially when I knew was right. Not wanting to count myself as one of the people roping ennie in tighter and tighter, I chose to dislike Smith all the more for relentless, lifeless enthusiasm.

  “I’m afraid that’s not all.” Spinney led me back into the kitchen d showed me a large carving knife, lying on the counter. I bent over-not touching it-and looked carefully. There was me clotted material caught between the blade and the wooden hane.

  “Look at the tip.” About an eighth of an inch had been broken off recently, by the ea
rn of the metal. I was grateful Smith wasn’t at my side to gloat out that, too. To him, these were rewards, sought-after pieces of the zzle. To me, they spelled heartbreak and doom, the tearing of a fabric cherished most of my life.

  They also hit a rebellious chord deep inside. The more I found out out Rennie, the more I realized how much he’d changed since our e together.

  Time had obviously ground him down considerably, aking him drink to excess, become moody and pessimistic, neglectful his wife. But that was hardly unique to him-even Buster was a adow of his former self, albeit still a benevolent one. What I couldn’t Iieve was that the same person who had risked his life a few days ago tering a burning building in an attempt to save others would stab a %138 man six times with a kitchen knife because of a punch in the face.

  Unless there was something more I didn’t know about his relationship with Wingate. I played dumb and shrugged at the broken tip. “So?”

  “Smith called Burlington just now to see if Hillstrom had gotten far enough into the autopsy yet to make a possible connection. She found a blade tip-same size-stuck in the spine. The Iab’ll have to prove it, but it sounds right.” His voice was solicitous, like a doctor’s with bad news. Smith came out of the small bedroom carrying several plastic bags.

  “All right, pack up the knife. I think we’re out of here. What did you get out of the wife?” “She didn’t see him or hear him all night. She did say, though, that every Wednesday night, for the last several years, he’s gone to play cards with a guy named Pete Chaney in East Burke; he runs a small grocery out of his house.” “Good, good.” Smith wrote the name down in his notebook. He checked his watch. “We better get out of here. Hamilton wants a powwow with everybody in an hour.” “Him too?”

  Spinney jerked his thumb at me. It was the first time the subject of my tagging along had actually come up for discussion. So far, I’d just managed to lay low and avoid the matter. For once, I’d wished Spinney had put a cork in it.

  Smith looked at us both with obvious distaste, almost as if by bringing the subject up, we d ruined the delicate shelter under which he’d allowed us to operate. Now he could no longer pretend I wasn’t what I was. “The State’s Attorney’s office will get a full report.” Buster was still holding Nadine’s hand when we returned to the living room.

  “It looks like they’re about to wrap up here. I’m sorry for the intrusion, Nadine.” She shook her head. “That’s all right, Joe. I know it’s your job.

  Did you… find anything?” “Odds and ends. We won’t know anything until we can look at them closer, and even then, they may not mean anything. There’s a lot of this that goes on in an investigation like this. Most of it doesn’t mean a thing.” She nodded. “Thank you.” “You will give us a call if you see Rennie again, though, won’t you?

  He and I ought to talk. I’m staying at Buster’s.” “Of course.” I gave her shoulder a squeeze and straightened. “By the way, does Rennie ever go without a belt?” %139 “Not wear a belt?” “Yeah.” “Oh, no. He always wears one.” She gave that ghost of a smile ain.

  “With his tummy, he has to.” I smiled back, but for other reasons.

  I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on the table. I was Potter’s office, having completed another couple of hours of paperork with the meticulously accurate Flo Ginty. She was gone now, I as alone, and the office was dark, except from the single lamp on my sk, just the way I liked it. I pulled the phone onto my lap and dialed Beverly Hillstrom’s mber, reading it off a scrap of paper I had tacked to the wall in front me.

  “I was wondering when I’d hear from you,” she said after we’d changed greetings. “I take it you’d like a rundown on Bruce Winte.” “If it’s not too inconvenient.” “Not at all. It was a transverse Iaceration of the carotid-from that one, he would have been dead within a minute. But he also had a good sh in the aorta, a severed spinal cord, and a variety of other less ectacular injuries.” “And he’d been kicked in the scrotum, like Hoard thought?” “Oh, yes, and not tenderly, either. The testicles were quite enrged.” “Lending weight to the theory that he was stabbed after being ubled over.” “That’s correct.” I mulled that over for a couple of seconds and then changed bjects. “So tell me about feathers.”

  I heard her chuckle at the other end of the phone line. “I thought at would attract your attention.” I could hear soft classical music in the background. “Was the ather you found ingested, inhaled, or just placed there?” There was a long pause. “I honestly can’t say. The neck was %

  140 burned entirely through, and the feather was just below that point of total incineration-near the top of the trachea, but also bridging the esophagus.” “Could it have been carried to the spot by a bullet?” She thought a bit. “Possibly. If so, it’s the only sign of a bullet we’ve got. The soft tissue was too damaged for me to find any of the usual traces. Why would a feather be involved?” “The killer might have held a pillow over the gun. We found another feather at the top of the stairs.

  Also, their clothing is insulated with goose down-a bullet could have carried a feather from there into the body.” I looked at a small pad on my desk where I’d scribbled some notes. By the way, did you hear whether the crime lab made a match between your knife tip and their knife?” “Yes, they did. I hung up on them just before you called.” “And I suppose the dimensions they gave you of the knife fit the wounds.”

  “Yes.” I chewed on that for a while. I wasn’t surprised, but it was hard to accept.

  “That’s not good news?” She asked tentatively. “Well, it is what it is. It puts a friend of mine into pretty hot water.” “I’m sorry to hear that. There was one last thing about Bruce Wingate that I thought you might like to know he’d brushed his teeth just before he died.” “How long before?” Like the feather, it was one of those tiny tidbits that were either uselessly distracting, or on which an entire case could hinge.

  “A half hour at the most. I discovered it because he had a small smudge of something white at the corner of his mouth, which I had analyzed.”

  “That’s interesting,” I muttered. “I thought you might like that.”

  “Well, it means one of two things: Either Wingate brushed his teeth before he went to bed every night, which means he died about a half hour after that, or he brushed them especially because he was meeting someone he wanted to favorably impress.” “Someone he thought he might stand close to, or even kiss,” Hillstrom added.

  I was silent for a moment. That opened up possibilities I hadn’t considered. “You’re very good at this.” She chuckled.

  %141 We talked about Wingate and Fox a bit more, going over known aterial, looking for possible new avenues, and then finally gave it up.

  I turned off the light after I hung up and just sat there in the dark, ming it over again and again in my mind.

  Bruce Wingate fights with Fox, loses, and takes it out on Rennie.

  hen what? Fox and the entire household die in a presumably accidenI fire, only Fox is dead before smoke gets in his lungs, the woman and zds are on the other side of a locked door, a spent 9-mm cartridge is und at the top of the stairs, and Bruce Wingate admits later to having ned a gun of the same caliber.

  Then, the next day, Wingate takes an inconclusive lie detector test d won’t let his wife take one at all. Conclusion? The Wingates are up to their chins in this. Only ingate is now dead. Who could have set up a meeting with Bruce ingate and killed him? And why were there so many footprints found the scene? If Rennie did kill Wingate, who were the other two people? And what motivation did Rennie have to do in Wingate?

  I had difficult time believing it was because of a punch in the mouth.

  I shook my head, remembering Smith’s satisfaction at finding the ots, the clothes, and the knife. I also recalled the sour feeling in my when I’d heard him tell the troops to pick up Rennie for Wingate’s urder.

  Just as well I didn’t get an invite to their little powwow might ave raised more questions than they wa
nted to hear. I knew Spinney wasn’t entirely happy with what they had against ennie, and for all I knew, maybe Smith wasn’t either. He didn’t like e. I was Potter’s man and an outsider to boot. But his going by the ook with Rennie didn’t mean he was ignoring other possibilities. You ab at what you can in this game, nailing down what loose ends you’ve before going after new ones. Smith was a cold piece of work, it was ue, but it was a piece that seemed to work well, without cutting rners.

  So who else wanted Wingate dead? Sarris? If Wingate did torch e building, revenge might certainly be due. Of course, Sarris would probably have someone else do it, which then brought up the possibility any one of dozens of men. Or women, for that matter, as Hoard had ointed out. Certainly the fact that there were as many as three people resent when Wingate was killed argued in favor of Sarris and his oup.

  Then there was the mysterious Julie Wingate, the reason Bruce d Ellie had come up in the first place. Was their relationship so far ne that she’d murder her own father? She could have mailed the note her father, arranging a rendezvous, and then killed him when he %142 showed up.

  Could Ellie and Julie have been in cahoots? Ellie’s sleeping pill story was almost certainly a lie. Bruce Wingate was no charmer; maybe this was an elaborate scheme for the two women to finally get rid of him, the ultimate in mother-daughter bonding. But if so, why leave the envelope in the wastepaper basket?

  I laughed at myself in the dark. Jesus. Besides, none of those theories explained why all the evidence pointed at Rennie. Good old Rennie, with your ass in a crack. What have you been up to?

  I thought back for the umpteenth time to our teenage years. You never do know what your friends will become. Charles Manson no doubt once played tag and pigged out on Hershey’s kisses. But I had always thought Rennie and a dozen other people I’d known would grow up pretty much as they had. They’d move around a little, they’d grow fat and bald, but they wouldn’t offer too many surprises. And that’s the way it had turned out-except, apparently, for Rennie.