JG02 - Borderlines

by Archer Mayor

  Little old ladies have been known to summon homicidal instincts at just the wrong moment. Obviously, someone who whittles on her arm or leg every night is going to have a violent personality. Do borderlines kill? No more than other people.” After I hung up the phone, I pulled Julie Wingate’s picture from my pocket and studied it. That bland, sullen face merely looked back at me, unanswering.

  %177 I’d spent the day far from the center of action in this case, and yet elt now that new possibilities had been introduced like a truckload bricks at a building site; they weren’t part of any clearly defined ucture yet, but they had the makings of a firm foundation. Now Wingate’s death was the possible accumulation of years of nt-up anger.

  If Wingate had killed Fox and the others, and if Fox and lie had been lovers, Julie’s motivation for revenge was iron-clad. Wingate had told me his 9 mm had gone missing just about the e Julie left for college.

  Had that been a coverup, or had Julie stolen r father’s gun? Wingate’s recent purchase of the.38 certainly bolred that theory.

  But if Julie had the 9 mm, and killed her father in the ravine, why d she used a knife? And why had a 9-mm shell, with Wingate’s print, rned up in the fire-gutted house? And who were the other people in at ravine? I turned away from my desk and stared out the window. Edward rris controlled the lives of almost half the population of Gannet. Was behind all this? Did he use Julie to lure her father to a meeting, and en take over from there? That might explain Julie’s vanishing act; she ight be under lock and key somewhere. Or she might be dead.

  And what did Rennie have to do with any of it? And if he had been Iiberately framed, then by whom? And why?

  I rubbed my eyes with my palms. The problem was, that even with e additional facts I’d dug up on the Wingate family, we still didn’t ve enough information to draw any conclusions. The truckload of icks I’d visualized earlier were still jumbled in a useless pile.

  We needed more to go on-to find the missing pieces that might as a blueprint. I knew for a fact that Rennie was in the middle of I this for some reason I didn’t understand.

  It suddenly occurred to me there was at least one man from whom might get some answers.

  Pete Chaney’s place wasn’t hard to find. His store was advertised with a big Sign-PETE’s ~~~xET-right on Route I I 4 in East Burke. he place had the shopworn look of a local hangout, its outside walls pered with posters of local events, new and ancient, its entrance uttered with several sleeping dogs, the parking area half-filled with %178 pa~che~-up pickup Irucks. The mai’ke~ pare was ac~uany the

  ron1 o~ a residence, an aggravated hallway extending the breadth of the building, each wall jammed with sagging shelves of boxed and canned goods.

  Opposite the creaking front door, there was an ice-cream freezer with a counter behind it supporting the cash register, a large coffee maker, and a wide assortment of plastic-wrapped, inedible-looking doughnuts.

  There were several men in stained work clothes standing around the coffee machine chatting and drinking coffee, making passage to the rest of the place a challenge. Considering the instant but brief attention my entrance made, I mentally pitied any good-looking shy woman who might blunder in here unprepared.

  Behind the counter was a small, round man with an enormous nose and a single eyebrow, who greeted me with a friendly wave of a beefy hand. “Hi there, what can I do you for?” “You Pete Chaney?” One of the other men let out a whoop. “Watch it, Pete you’re in trouble now.” The others laughed as Chaney nodded, his smile fading. “I’m with the State Attorney’s office. I was wondering if we could haveachat.” More hoots followed that. “Better call your lawyer, Pete chats from those guys last from five to ten years.” Chaney made a face. “Sit on it, you clowns.” He gestured to me to follow. “We can talk back here.” He led me behind the counter to a door which opened to the rest of the house.

  We stepped into an evil-smelling, ill-lit den of sorts with a TV in one corner, a half-smashed coffee table listing in the middle of the room, and an assortment of stained, disemboweled stuffed furniture shoved up against the walls. There might have been a rug, or even a floor underfoot, but it was invisible under the layers of old newspapers, magazines, paper plates, discarded clothing, and various mysterious piles, the identification of which was impossible in the gloom.

  “Have a seat.” Chaney sank back into a sofa that damn near swallowed him whole.

  I settled more gingerly on the edge of an armchair. I didn’t want to call for a winch later to help me to my feet. “You’ve spoken with the State Police a couple of times already.” “Yeah.” “Well, this is a followup.” He looked at me quizzically, but with very watchful eyes.

  “You guys don’t talk to each other?” “Your problem is we talk too well to each other.” I’d decided on the way here that bluffing was about the only trick left in my bag.

  %179 “I’m going to ask you roughly the same questions you’ve been ked before, but you’re going to give me totally different answers. ay?” His tongue quickly passed across his lips. “Why would I do that?” “Because you’ve been lying so far.” Chaney’s face darkened. Otherwise, he didn’t move. “One more thing: You have the right to remain silent, because anything you say might be used against you in a court of law.”

  His mouth fell open. “Am I under arrest?” I put my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “You’re that se. You want to talk?”

  “Sure, I got nothing to hide.” “Was Rennie here last Wednesday?” “No.”

  “Where was he?” “How would I know?” “Why did you claim he was here?”

  “He’s a friend. I thought it might help.” “Pete, you’re on a slippery bank, heading toward deep shit. Coverfor Rennie is stupid. He’s wanted on a murder charge now, which kes you a possible accessory. Covering yourself will just cause a lay that I’ll make sure you pay for.” “I didn’t actually say he was here last Wednesday.” “You said he was here Wednesdays. How about that? Is that e?” He turned his head and scratched an ear, crossed his arms, shuffled feet.

  “Was he ever here on a Wednesday night?” “No.” “So where was he?”

  “Around. It depended… sometimes on the weather, you know.” I stood up, grateful I could do it with a certain controlled violence, tead of having to ask for a rope out of the seat. “Okay, you want talk weather?

  Fine. Let’s close this place down and spend the next days talking about it somewhere less comfortable.” He looked up at me, his hands spread out and his eyes pleading. hat do you want? I’m talking; I’m telling you what I know.” “You’re giving me grunts and groans, playing twenty questions. on’t have the patience for that. You start talking now, or I’ll hand u more legal problems than you’ve ever dreamed of.” “He got his rocks off every Wednesday night, all right? He was king around on his wife and he got me to cover his ass in case anyone ed.” %180 “Who was he seeing?” “Hell, I don’t know. Different people.” “Give me some names.” “They don’t got names-not normal ones.” The effect of his words was like being hit with cold water. “Rennie was fooling around with women from the Order?” “Yeah.” A crucial and for me, a feared connection had just been made.

  Was this enough motive for Rennie to stab Bruce Wingate at the bottom of that ravine? I sat back down. “Did anyone else know his affairs?

  Anyone in the Order?” “Sarris knew.” “Sarris?” “Sure, he set it up.

  Rennie made a deal with him.” “What kind of deal?” “I don’t know exactly. Rennie wouldn’t tell me. He said he had something on The Elephant, something that could shut him down. Rennie told me he was set for life; any of those cunts he wanted he could have.” “Did you ever meet the women?” Chaney did his shuffle routine again instead of answering. I tried a friendlier, more companionable tone. “Rennie and I grew up together, Pete. He’s one of my oldest friends. Now right now, the state cops are crawling all over the place looking to nail him for that stabbing the other day. You think he did it?” “Murder a guy?

&n
bsp; No way.” “I don’t think he did, either,” I said with false conviction.

  “But we’re a minority, and unless I can find out who did, they’re going to nail him, and maybe you with him.” “That’s bullshit.” But he didn’t say it with much assurance. “You think so?” I stood up, my voice suddenly harsh. “Then let’s stop right now. You can deal with the State Police yourself.” He wearily motioned me to sit. “Yeah, he brought one of ‘em here.” “Why here?” “Maybe I told him I didn’t want to cover his tail when he was getting’ all the action. So he brought the first one over, like a peace offering.” “Who was she?” His voice went up a note. “How do I know? I sure wasn’t going’ to mess with her.” I was becoming impatient. “What the hell’s that mean? You were the one who asked for her.” %181 He glared at me sulkily. “She was a real nut into S&M. She liked be hit, had scars all over her, like she’d been in an accident. They d it and I watched for a while, but I finally threw ‘em out. Told ennie to keep ‘em all to himself.” “So there were others?”

  “Hell, yes. He dumped that one later, but he was hooked. I told m I wasn’t interested anymore.” Chaney looked half-embarrassed by e admission. There was a lull in the conversation as Pete Chaney studied his rty knuckles. I felt weighed down inside. Part of my early enthusiasm this case, I suddenly realized, stemmed from my desire to establish ennie’s innocence. Subconsciously perhaps, I’d seen myself as the odigal returning, showing my affection for the town of Gannet by eeing one of its prominent citizens from scandal.

  Reluctantly, I pulled the xerox copy of Julie Wingate’s picture from my pocket and showed it to Chaney. “That the woman?” He peered at it in the gloomy light. “Yeah, I think so. She looks little fatter here.

  There wasn’t much to her when I saw her.” He shook head.

  “Did you ever see her again?” “Not her or anyone else. Rennie took me at my word and never ought any of ‘em around again.” “How long ago was all this?” “I don’t know-a while.” “A month? A year?” “Half a year.”

  “Are you sure he dumped her?” “That’s what he said. He had his pick. No need to get hung up on e of ‘em.” “And how did this little cover work, the Wednesday night thing?” “Usually he took them to the firehouse in Gannet. That way, if someone called him here, I could say he was taking a shit and would II right back, or something like that, and then I’d call him at the ehouse and let him know.” “That happen often?” “Not too much-sometimes.” “And he always went to the firehouse? What about if they had a e all of a sudden?” “Didn’t matter. He had a deal set up in the attic. A mattress on e floor, pillows, stuff like that. If the siren went off, he’d just stay put. ever happened anyway.” I made a face. “I know that attic-must have been hotter than hell the summer.”

  %182 “He said it was sexy. Anyway, he had a fan set up in the back window, where you couldn’t see it from the street. Before he figured out about the attic, he used to go out in the woods-he had a spot.”

  “Where?” “Offthe end of Lemon Road. There’s a kind of rock point that sticks out of the mountainside. You gotta go through the woods a few hundred feet to reach it it’s like a picnic rock. Nobody knows about it.” “You do.” “It used to be hangout of mine. I told him about it when he was Iookin’ for a place to get laid. At the beginning I took my phone off the hook and claimed it was out of order, or I took a message and then said I forgot to give it to him. It didn’t happen ‘cept once in a blue moon.

  He didn’t really even need the attic deal and me calling him up. I just think it made him feel smart, that he had all the angles covered…

  Asshole.” I stood up, feeling like hell. It was almost as if the Rennie I knew had died a long time ago. How could he have done that to Nadine? I was struck by a sense of bewildered loss. “You’ve helped yourself a lot with this, Pete. The police or I or somebody will come back and get it all down for the record later.” He didn’t look too pleased at the prospect. I paused as I headed for the door. “What about your end? What did you get out of it?” He was still sitting there, like a fat egg on a pillow, his hands in his lap. He seemed as bereft as I was. He shook his head. “I didn’t get shit out of it none of it was worth it. We used to play cards together way back. He was a good guy. But all this stuff ruined everything. I hardly knew him anymore.” It gave me little satisfaction to have finally solved the riddle of Rennie’s involvement with Bruce Wingate that there’d been something more than a brief flare-up between the two of them. Had Rennie’s affair with Julie continued without Pete Chaney’s knowledge?

  Maybe Rennie had taken care of Wingate as a favor to Julie. And what did Rennie have on Sarris that Sarris would kowtow to him in the first %183 lace? Maybe Rennie was innocent of Wingate’s murder and Sarris set im up-killing two birds with one stone, as it were. Much as I’d been isillusioned by Rennie’s behavior, I still hoped the latter scenario ight be closer to the truth.

  I was walking into State Police barracks to file the report on my hat with Chaney when Mel Hamilton met me in the lobby. “I just alled your office your secretary said you were headed this way. You ight like to come along.” “What’s up?” I handed the report to the receptionist.

  “They found Rennie Wilson’s truck west of Hartwellville on emon Road.

  They think whoever was in the truck headed off into e bush. I’m having Fish and Game send a tracker to meet em.

  The trip was fast and lugubrious. Hamilton took a patrol car so e could use his blue lights and siren as necessary. He also had to use is headlights, although it was still midafternoon. The air was misty, reasing the road and reducing visibility, and the clouds hung so low at the hilltops vanished from view. The light was gray and dull, and dden patches of ground mist lingered menacingly in odd places, as dropped by accident from the bruised and glowering sky. It suited y mood and helped color my expectations of what we might find in e vicinity of Rennie’s truck. During the trip, I filled Hamilton in on hat I’d discovered at Pete Chaney’s. Lemon Road doesn’t really lead anywhere.

  It branches off Radar oad out of Hartwellville, starts out paved, turns to dirt, and then just eters out on the heavily wooded slope of East Haven Mountain. It’s of very long, has only a house or two at its start, and leaves the pression of some half-forgotten municipal project whose planners n out of both ambition and funds. Rennie’s truck was parked at the d, its right wheels in a shallow ditch and its body half-covered with oken branches and dead leaves, a camouflage job either half-corneted or half-cleared away.

  Spinney’s unmarked sedan and a patrol car were parked in a line the opposite side of the road. We pulled in behind them to lessen e number of extraneous tire marks in the dirt. A trooper I didn’t ow was standing nervously near the pickup, his right hand picking the yellow stripe that ran down the outside seam of his dark green iform pants; Spinney was stretched out on the hood of his car, his ck against the windshield. He snapped a salute from that position as amilton and I got out of our car. I could tell from Hamilton’s expresn he wasn’t pleased with the informality. %184 Obviously, even Spinney got the message. He slid off the car and gave a boyish smile to both of us. “Car hood was keeping me warm.” Hamilton smiled back and placed his hand on the car, warm vapor escaping from his mouth as he spoke. “I hadn’t thought of that. Fish and Game ought to be here pretty soon; you come up with anythiznew?” “Not here. We looked in the truck without disturbing anything, but there’s nothing unusual. You can see where the grass has been flattened leading into the woods. I didn’t want to risk messing things up.” Hamilton nodded. “No, no. I think that’s right. How long do you think the truck’s been here?” “Hard to tell. Engine was cold; there was frost on the windshield. A blind guess would be last night sometime, but that’s mostly because I figure Joe saw him last around 2300 hours and he must have driven here soon after.” The lieutenant nodded again and shivered slightly.

  “Cold,” he muttered, and wandered over to the truck, greeting the trooper as he passed.

  “Yo
u get any sleep?” I said.

  “Some-still feel like shit, though. You figure this mess out yet?” “No, but it prompted me to talk to Pete Chaney again.” I gave Spinney the abbreviated version.

  Hamilton came back as I finished. “Makes you wonder how many other people are involved in this case.” I laughed at that, but without any humor. I was just grateful that both of them had restrained from saying, “I told you so.” My conversation with Chaney put Rennie right in the middle of this case: He wasn’t the framed local bystander anymore, even in my own mind. While there still wasn’t proof he’d killed Bruce Wingate, it wasn’t so farfetched to assume Rennie might’ve had a serious personal grudge.

  My bitter ruminations were interrupted by a muffled, grinding, metallic sound from down the road.

  “That must be Fish and Game.” A somewhat battered Ford 150 four-wheel drive lumbered up the road and stopped behind my car. The Fish and Game emblem-what hadn’t been scratched off by too many encounters with brush and low branches-was emblazoned on the door. A man in a dark green unIform with black epaulettes and breast-pocket flaps piped in scarlet stepped out onto the road. He was somewhere in his forties, tall, very lean and muscular, and wore a.357 Magnum on his belt. Looking at him, I felt like Elmer Fudd next to a young Burt Lancaster. He nodded %185 us, looking around briefly, seemingly cataloging the scene in his ind.

  Then, still not having said a word, he walked silently and graceIly up to us and shook hands, barely murmuring his greeting. His eep-set blue eyes, contrasting with a tan face and dark brown hair, ere startlingly sharp. If I hadn’t seen him drive up, I would have ought him capable of just appearing from the woods, much like the eer that were pictured on both his shoulder patches. Hamilton made the introductions. “This is Lieutenant John ishop. He’s been with Fish and Game for over twenty years and is Probably one of the best trackers they have.” Bishop shook his head slightly, downplaying the compliment. hat’ve you got?”