by Larry Crane
On the first floor of the building, he found the door marked Building Manager and pressed the buzzer. She was heavy and blonde, with black roots at her crown. She stood in the doorway in a yellow robe, saying nothing. She leaned against the jamb, arms folded.
“Hello, ma’am, I’m Detective Mike Bialystock, Fort Lee Police,” Lou said, gambling that she wouldn’t want ID. “The girl out there is unidentified. Someone said she came out of 24-D. Can you tell me who owns it?”
“I’m not allowed to let that information out. I’m sorry.”
“Look, a young lady lost her life out there. We need to know who she is.”
“I guess it’s not going to hurt anyone if I tell you.”
“Of course not.”
“They’ve had the apartment for a couple of years. They don’t spend much time in it, though. Just whenever it strikes their fancy, I guess.”
“Who are they?”
“Well, it’s in the mother’s name but his daughter uses it mostly.”
“What’s the name?”
“ Buck. Ms. P. Buck. I sure hope that’s not her daughter out there.”
“What would her name be?”
“She carries her mother’s maiden name. Ashley something or other.”
“I want to thank you very much. This is helpful.”
“She seemed like such a nice young girl.”
“Thanks again. If we need more help, we’ll be in touch.”
Lou turned and started for the door, but then turned back. The woman was just closing the door to her apartment.
“One more thing,” he said. “Ashley’s last name, is it O’Reilly or something like that? O’Connor? Compton? Corcoran...?”
The woman stood looking at him, scratching the top of her head with one finger. “Corcoran? It’s something like that.”
“Okay. Thanks again,” he said. Ashley Corcoran, Sydney’s college roommate—a name from Turkey Mountain.
Lou heard the faint sound of traffic. When he stopped and listened hard, he could hear it to the south of him. A small crowd stood back thirty feet from the still-smoldering car. Several police vehicles were at the scene and cops were talking to people. Lou made a wide arc around the lot and worked his way clear of the area, heading south.
Two blocks from the explosion, the houses were dark and quiet. Residents would read about it in the morning paper. The night air shot a chill through him and he shoved his hands into his pockets. His face was greasy and covered with stubble. His weariness emerged as dull pain in the back of his knees and dryness behind his eyelids. The pain in his thigh had become an old friend. It was mild enough, as long as he didn’t stretch it out. The approach to the George Washington Bridge was just below him, on the other side of a high, wire fence. He turned west and walked parallel to the road. About a half mile ahead, a red, white, and blue Mobil sign illuminated the night sky.
“I’d like to rent one of your vans,” Lou said, shuddering involuntarily in the warmth of the gas station office.
“The guy who handles that isn’t here,” said the kid with pimples, slouching with his feet on the desk.
“There can’t be much to it, just filling out the agreement,” Lou said.
“They never told me how to do that.”
“Look, the boss is going to be tickled pink that you took it on yourself to drum up some business.”
“Sorry, mister. I just can’t do it.”
“All right, goddammit. I can’t wait around here for you. Where are the goddamned keys?” He spotted a set hanging from a pegboard and snatched them. “These them? Now, I’m taking 5-3-1 K-O-F.”
The kid stood up fast, reaching for the keys, but there was something in Lou’s eyes to make him back off. As Lou headed for the door, the kid backed away until he ran into the Coke machine. “You better not take it,” he yelled feebly.
The van started easily. As Lou pulled past the pumps, he saw the kid on the telephone. He roared out onto the highway, pressed the accelerator to the floor.
He branched on to Route 4 and continued west to Route 17. The van was old and drafty. It made a lot of noise, and he couldn’t find the heater. He kept his eye on the rearview mirror, but the roads were completely deserted. He flicked on the brights and leaned hard against the steering wheel. Waves of weariness washed over his him. He drove under the overpass to Glen Rock; past the Fashion Center where the Pierson Brown office hunkered in the middle of furniture and clothing stores; all the way to Suffern, where he turned off onto Route 202, and then headed west along the Ramapo River.
The road was unlit and full of curves. Lou rubbed at his eyes to keep them from closing. About two miles from the turnoff, he saw the tennis courts dimly on the right. A sign on the left side of the road read Ramapo College. He turned at the traffic signal, wound past a large building on the right, and continued on beside a line of sixty-foot evergreens. He spotted a parking lot, pulled in, and killed the lights and the engine. Almost immediately, despite the chill in his bones, he felt the weariness taking over. Sitting upright, he was asleep in seconds.
Lou awoke before dawn with a giant stiffness in his neck that extended up onto the back of his head. His thigh was throbbing. He fumbled for the ignition, cranked the engine, and groped for the interior light switch. He found the heater knob and flipped it on. It took a full fifteen minutes for the engine to warm enough to beat back the chill air filling the van. It only took two minutes for him to fall back asleep; his head slumped against the steering wheel.
Daylight intruded. Now it was too hot in the van. His head felt swollen. He gagged on the dryness in his throat and mouth. He shut off the ignition, groped for the window crank, and caught a glimpse of his face in the side view mirror. His eyes were threaded red and his eyelids looked inflamed and sore. He saw deep bags and furrows he didn’t know he had. He opened the door and stumbled out. It was chilly in the shadows of the tall evergreens. He sat on the front bumper with his face in his hands.
“If I were you, I’d move the vehicle.” It was a middle-aged man in overalls. “I’m just on the grounds crew, but if Security catches you in this area...”
“Oh, sorry,” Lou said, straightening up. “I’ve been on the road. I’m looking for my... uh... my niece.”
“You could move over there to student parking.”
“I guess she’s a sophomore. Would she be staying in one of the dorms?”
“If you’re looking for a student, you should be asking at the registrar’s office. That would be in the administration building, over there. They open at nine. You might catch someone over there now, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“Well, okay. I guess there’s not much else I can do until they open.”
“Been on the road long?”
“From North Carolina. I drove all the way from Winston-Salem last night. I guess I’m a little disreputable looking.”
“This area here is reserved for staff.”
Lou thanked the man and then drove off toward the student lot. He parked, got out, and walked the gravel path that led to the administration building. The main door was open. He entered, walked a long hall to the Registrar’s office, and poked his head in the open door.
“Anybody home?”
A young man at a computer sat behind a high counter. “Only us hackers,” he said.
“I’m trying to locate a student named Ashley Corcoran,” Lou said, smiling through the stiffness he felt in his face.
“I’m not really staff,” the guy said. “I work here part time.
“I wonder if you could help me?”
“Depends. I can’t be disclosing stuff.”
“Well this isn’t Top Secret or anything. I’m just trying to find my niece. Her mother is sick and she needs to know,” Lou lied.
“Well, that takes a password that I don’t have. Sorry.”
“You could probably get around that.
“Maybe, but I can’t be doing that shit if I want to keep this gig.”
“It’s
totally harmless. There’s no way it can come back on you.”
“Still…”
“Okay, I had to ask. I understand. Thanks anyway.” Lou turned to leave.
“Give me the name again.”
“Ashley Corcoran.”
“Class?”
“I don’t really know that. I’m sorry.”
The guy assaulted the keyboard with a flurry of strokes punctuated with a pause and another flurry—two, three four of those. Then he leaned in close to the screen.
“Corcoran, A. Sophomore. Seymour,” he read.
“Seymour?”
“That’s a residence hall. Let’s see...” Another flurry. “She’s moved out of Seymour, lives on Lake Drive, Bear Swamp Lake. Shit, I shouldn’t be doing this.”
“A lake?”
“Bear Swamp. Go out to 202, make a left, and go all the way out to the Camp Yaw Paw turnoff. It’s about a mile and a half. Once you get on that road, just keep going until you see the signs.”
“Thanks,” Lou said. “I appreciate the trouble. I don’t suppose you could use this,” he added, folding two twenties together before handing them over.
“Fuck—bribery now”, the guy said sliding the bills into his shirt pocket.
The sun had taken some of the chill off the morning. The engine started easily and the heater put out right from the start. Lou found the turnoff and eased the van over a rickety bridge that spanned the Ramapo River. The water at this spot was shallow and white as it splashed over the boulders that lined the riverbed. He approached a tubular steel swinging gate. It was open. The road was a single lane strip of thin blacktop that paralleled a fast running, feeder stream. High, rock-strewn hills blotted out the sky on either side of the road.
Lou took it slow around the blind corners and eased by the jutting boulders and potholes. A rock and mortar structure lay in ruins beside the stream where the road passed over on a wooden bridge. It was nearly nine o’clock. He halfway expected to meet Ashley coming straight at him over a blind rise, racing to make her first class of the day.
At a fork in the road, a sign pointed off to the left for Boy Scout Camp Yaw Paw and to the right for Bear Swamp Lake. Lou parked the van off the road beside a water tank. He walked down the gravel road past wooden bungalows on either side, all but one boarded up for the season. A dog frolicked at the end of the lake. He saw the car beside a bungalow with peeling paint, set off by itself.
The front door had windows on the upper half with white curtains over them. He rapped hard on the glass. He reached to his breast pocket and toggled the Toshiba on.
From somewhere inside he heard, “Hold on!” He pushed the door and it swung slowly on its hinges. He waited a moment, poked his head in. The room was bare except for a TV, a sagging couch, and a wall shelf overflowing with paperback books.
“What do you want?” It came from the kitchen in back.
“Telephone man!” he bellowed. “We got a call that the Buck residence had something wrong.”
“You got the right place, but there’s nothing wrong with the phone,” she said. She was a short, buxom girl dressed in jeans and a Ramapo sweatshirt. She wore her hair in a long braid that fell over one shoulder. Yes. The same Ashley he’d met in Buck’s office. She was staring at him from the kitchen door.
“You always just walk in on people? But you might as well check it anyway. Go right through there. It’s in the corner.” She pointed across the hall to a bedroom.
He snatched up the phone expertly and laid it against his shoulder while he dialed a number. “Hank,” he said into the dead receiver, “I’m out at the Buck residence.” He looked all around the room, out through the door. It was obvious that she was alone in the house. Probably shared it with a couple of others, judging from the clothes he saw hanging in the closet.
“Hey!” he shouted, “You’re right. There’s nothing wrong with this phone.”
He heard nothing. He put down the instrument and walked out to the kitchen. She was gone. The back door was wide open. He ran for it and stumbled out onto the porch, tripping over a brown bag full of garbage.
She was not by the car. No one was on the road. He searched in all directions around the house. Then he spotted her on the embankment near the water tower, scrambling through the underbrush, reeling badly. He broke into a painful run and caught her halfway up the bank with a final lunge and grab at her ankle.
She went down in a heap. They struggled, gasping, until he was able to grab her braid and twist it in a bronco rope twist. She screamed but lay still. He pulled her to her feet by the braid and marched her headfirst back through the kitchen door to the sink. With his right hand, he reached for the drawer, pulled out the sharpest knife he could get hold of, and spun her around.
“I don’t have time to play games with you!”
He arched her back over the edge of the sink, pinning her there holding the knife in her eyes. Slowly, he brought the blade around to the back of her head, sawed off the braid, dangled it in her face. Her eyes went huge, like Raggedy Ann’s.
“I’ll give you anything. What do you want?”
“Answers,” he said, his face two inches from hers.
“My money’s in the bag over there,” she motioned with her eyes.
Lou grabbed the front of her sweatshirt, spun her back around, and shoved her hard into the living room, booting her butt with all the force he could muster in his one good leg. She reeled across the room and slammed into the wall beneath the wall shelf. The books crashed to the floor around her.
“Don’t fuck with me. You know who I am,” he screamed, walking toward the girl cringing on the floor.
“Speak!” he screeched.
“Please! Don’t hit me. Don’t hit me.”
“Who am I?”
“I met you at Mom’s office.
“Get up,” he said.
She stood slowly and huddled against the wall. “Stanfield and Copeland, where are they?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I don’t know. Please.”
Lou grabbed the girl by the sweatshirt, at the shoulder, and manhandled her into the kitchen. He shoved her into one of the chrome chairs. She slumped onto the table, burying her face in her arms. He stayed behind her.
“Since you know who I am, you know what’s going on. You’ve got one minute to get it all out on the table.”
The girl was sniveling and wiping her nose with her sleeve.
“I’m sorry. If you’re hurt, I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.”
He bumped the back of the chair, prompting her to speak.
“They said nobody could get hurt. I wanted to be involved with the election. Mom said they needed a girl for something. But not me. I mentioned Sydney.”
She started blubbering, her head buried in her sleeves and her shoulders heaving. Lou jabbed her with his knee. She squirmed in the chair.
“It’s all my fault. At first it was just that lunatic Red and his men. Then they got Sydney into it. And you. I’m sorry. I never knew this could happen. Where’s Sydney? I haven’t heard anything from her since it all started.”
“Who are these guys?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Lou came up fast behind the chair and kicked it, hard, out from the under the girl. She sprawled on the floor, covering her head with her arms. “You little bitch!” he screamed. “Don’t tell me some goddam smooth talkers turned you into a murderer! What happened?” He grabbed the scruff of her neck and jammed her back into the chair.
Now Ashley Corcoran blubbered tears that ran down her cheeks and into her mouth. It was a full minute before she could make herself understood.
“They went berserk. They said the plan went bad.”
“So they had to get rid of some people, including your mother.”
“No! They never said anything about getting rid of anybody. But they wouldn’t go away. Now Mom’s dead a
nd they’re coming after me. I know it!”
“Do they know about this place?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I have to get out of here. Please. Please.”
“Shut up,” he said. She burrowed her face into her hands and sobbed uncontrollably. “Listen... listen to me. Are there any other people in the houses around here?” She shook her head without lifting her eyes.
