Robert B Parker - Wilderness

by Wilderness(lit)

  Hood shook his head. They had followed Karl to his furniture store again and were sitting in the Bronco parked up the street, eating hamburgers and drinking coffee.

  "You'll have to pick one up," Hood said. "There's a good gun shop in Watertown."

  "What should I get?"

  "Tell them you want something like a Springfield 1903 A4 If you can get one, get it. If they don't have one, get something comparable. Tell them you want it for competition, and be sure it's got a scope. Any.go/og-type rifle with a scope will do. Remington, Savage, whatever."

  "Okay, I'll go down tomorrow." "You have an ID card? "Hood asked.

  "Yes, I got one when I bought that shotgun I keep."

  "That's all you need," Hood said.

  They finished the hamburgers. In the back of the Bronco a big fly with a green tail buzzed at the rear window, bumping it again and again.

  "Let's look at the alley," Hood said.

  "What's down there?"

  "How will we know if we don't look?" Hood said. "You have to know everything, Aaron. The layout of everything, where everyone's deployed, all the options." Newman nodded. "Okay," he said.

  They got out of the car and strolled down toward the alley that ran between the furniture store and a restaurant.

  "There's got to be some reason for an alley," Hood said. "There must be a door or a ventilator, or windows or something. Otherwise they'd just butt the buildings up together." His eyes moved back and forth across the mouth of the alley. He was moving on the balls of his feet and his fingers drummed very gently but steadily against his thighs.

  God, doesn't he love this, Newman thought.

  There were three rats in the alley; one was on the ground and two were in the trash barrel that sat outside the back door to the restaurant.

  The three rats scuttled away as Newman and Hood came down from the street. Besides the trash barrel there was nothing else in the alley.

  Opposite the restaurant door was an unmarked fire door with metal facing painted beige. Against the back wall of the alley there was an empty wine bottle leaning, and what might have been human feces in the corner.

  Hood reached the blank door into the furniture store. He put one hand quietly on the knob and turned. The door didn't open.

  "Locked," Hood said.

  Newman felt relief move through him along the nerve tracks. "Okay," he said. "Let's get out of this alley."

  Hood was looking up at the alley walls. "Wait a minute now," he said.

  "We haven't looked at everything. Maybe a window, a ledge, you don't know. You have to check everything out."

  "Why, Chris?" Newman said, "Why do you have to." Newman saw a darkness between him and the alley mouth. He looked at it. It was the enormous man from Karl's office. He stood perhaps three feet inside the alley, blocking it.

  Newman said, "Chris."

  Hood, his back turned to the man, looked over his shoulder. He said softly, "Yeah, I see. Don't touch your gun." The enormous man said nothing. He moved slowly down the alley toward them.

  Hood slid the P-g8 out of his shoulder holster. He was halfway behind Newman and the gesture was screened from the big man. Holding the gun at his side and behind his thigh, he turned. The big man kept coming.

  Newman felt weak. He knew he wasn't. He could bench-press more than two hundred pounds. He knew he was big and strong. But he felt the strength go out of him. His legs and arms felt limp, the muscles flaccid. He was tired. He faced toward the big man, his hands feeling awkward and out of place. Should he put them up like a prizefighter?

  Hold them waist high and half closed, ready for anything?

  The man was upon them. "What are you doing here," he said.

  The voice, Newman thought, Jesus what a scary voice. He tried to bunch the muscles in his shoulders to be ready.

  Hood stepped half a step forward and brought the Walther out from behind his leg. In a lateral karate-like movement he swung the gun up over the man's shoulder and hit him in the temple with the top of the barrel where the shells eject. It was so quick the big man never moved. The gun made a sound like a mallet hitting a grapefruit, and the man's knees buckled. Hood hit him again on the temple. The sound was squishier. And again. The man began to sag.

  Like a Peckinpah movie, for cris sake Newman thought. It was as if the man were too big to fall suddenly. And slowly, as if in slow motion, he went down and sprawled in the alley on his stomach. Blood showed at the temple in a small ooze, there was redness around it.

  Hood bent over and took the man's wallet from his left hip pocket. He pulled the man's wristwatch on its expandable bracelet off the nsan's left wrist. Then with a short jabbing motion of his right hand, the gun still in it, he gestured up the alley. "Go," he said.

  Newman first with Hood behind him ran up the alley. Newman didn't slow at the alley mouth but kept right on running. Hood was five steps behind as they reached the car.

  "Drive," Hood said, and Newman got behind the wheel, took the keys from over the visor, and started the car. They turned right on Causeway under the MBTA elevated, and left onto the Charlestown Bridge; in City Square, Newman went up the ramp onto Route 93 and headed north.

  "He didn't recognize me," Newman said.

  "No. Not without your deaf-mute getup," Hood said. "If he had I'd have killed him."

  "You sure he didn't?"

  "Yeah. I was watching his eyes; he didn't show any sign of recognizing you."

  "Lucky," Newman said.

  Hood looked at the contents of the man's wallet. "Not much," Hood said. "Two hundred and twenty-eight dollars, and a Massachusetts driver's license. His name is Tate. Gordon Tate. His address is the same as Karl's. He was born in 1940."

  Newman took in a deep breath and blew it out. "That was one of the guys from Karl's office, you know. The same one that tied up Janet." "I know," Hood said. "One thing, Aaron. You shouldn't have run right out of the alley like you did. You come to an alley mouth you stop and see what's out there. Then you move."

  Newman was silent as the Bronco rolled through Somerville toward Medford. "I was scared, Chris. I guess I wasn't thinking."

  Hood shrugged. Some powerboats rode at anchor in the Mystic River, narrower here by half than it was only a few miles closer to the sea where the bridge arched over it and the cargo ships sailed up it to the pallet docks.

  "I wasn't much help to you in the alley, Chris," Newman said.

  They went up slightly onto an overpass that crossed the river. "It takes learning, Aaron," Hood said. "You got a little combat experience today, that's all. Wasn't much you needed to do. You spotted him first."

  "Why'd you tell me not to touch my gun?"

  "Didn't want to spook them if we could help it. Shooting might bring cops, or bad guys with guns. I don't know. Kill that guy and maybe Karl would get nervous and be too hard to hit. I just wanted to get by without the guns if we could."

  Newman nodded.

  "Guy was too cocky," Hood said. "Big huge guys like that are sometimes. Doesn't occur to them that they can be taken. He got too close. Should have had his gun out. Shouldn't have gone down an alley with two guys if he didn't. We're not his size, but we're not midgets.

  He should have noticed that."

  "I don't know if not being a midget outside makes any difference," Newman said. "Not if you're a midget inside."

  Newman was staring straight ahead as he drove. Hood looked at him and sucked on the inside of his cheeks and said nothing.

  CHAPTER 14.

  Lieutenant Murray Vincent sat in his office at 1010 Commonwealth Avenue and fingered a thick collection of computer print-out sheets. He sat square in his chair with both feet flat on the floor and the computer sheets on his spare neat desk. As he went through them he moved his eyes methodically down the names on the sheets, turned a sheet, read the names, turned a sheet, read the names. Occasionally he stopped and went back reading more data on a name he recognized. He did this for an hour and eight minutes. Then he yelled through the
open door, "Bobby." A uniformed State Trooper appeared in the door. "Corporal Croft is out on a detail, sir. Sheet says he'll be back in about half an hour."

  "Send him in when he gets here," Vincent said.

  In half an hour Croft came into Vincent's office.

  Vincent said, "Close the door, Bobby."

  Croft did. Then he sat in a straight chair beside Vincent's desk.

  Vincent handed him a multifold print-out sheet, folded over. There was a name marked in blue pencil. "That a familiar name to you?" Vincent said.

  Croft read, "Aaron Newman. Sure. He's the guy that saw Karl kill the broad in Smithfield and then got scared off." "It appears," Vincent said, "that Newman has purchased a firearm."

  "Un-huh?"

  "Whyn't you look into it, Bobby."

  "You think he's still involved with Karl?"

  "Whyn't you look into it and see. See exactly what he purchased, and see if you can figure out why. But don't talk to Newman without first talking to me. Okay?"

  "How'd you happen to see this listing?" Croft said.

  "I try to thumb through them all each week," Vincent said. He made a small smile.

  "All the firearm purchases in the state? Every week?"

  "I just sort of scan them."

  "No wonder you're a lieutenant and I'm a corporal."

  "I take the Commonwealth's money," Vincent said, "I do the Commonwealth's work." "Amazing," Croft said. "A-fucking-ma zing "Bob, stop dazzling me with your vocabulary. Go find out about Newman and his gun. Maybe there's something in it for us."

  Croft nodded. He took the folded computer sheet and went out.

  Vincent took a brown paper bag out of the bottom right desk-drawer.

  From it he took a meatloaf sandwich with mayonnaise and lettuce, a nectarine, a Santa Rosa plum, half a dill pickle carefully wrapped in foil, two blue-checkered paper napkins, and a wedge-shaped plastic container in which there was a slice of homemade cherry pie. Taped neatly to the pie container with a piece of Scotch tape was a plastic fork. He spread a paper towel on his desk and carefully arranged his lunch on it. Then he took a big blue and white Thermos bottle from the same drawer and took off the cap. He poured skimmed milk into the cap and ate his lunch. He drank some milk and patted his mouth dry with the napkin and opened the pie container. On top of the pie was a small piece of paper with a heart and three kisses drawn on it. He smiled and put the paper in his desk drawer and ate the pie. When he was through he wrapped the plum and nectarine pits, along with the napkins and the plastic fork, in the foil from his pickle. He threw the foil away. He got up and went to the washroom and rinsed out the Thermos and the pie container. He washed his hands and face and went back to his desk. He put the Thermos and the pie container in the paper bag from which his lunch had come, put the bag away in the bottom right drawer of his desk. He took a toothpick from his shirt pocket and cleaned his teeth. Then he took a file folder from his in-basket and opened it and began to make notations in the margin with a blue pencil.

  At two-forty Bobby Croft came back into his office and sat down in the straight chair. He took a small notebook out of his inside coat pocket, leafed through it until he found what he wanted, and then looked up at Vincent.

  "Ready, Lieutenant?"

  Vincent nodded.

  "Newman bought a Springfield '03 bolt-action with a scope and a box of.30/06 ammunition. Told the clerk he wanted it for competition."

  "Hmm-um."

  "Then I went over the BPL and looked Newman up in Who's Who and Contemporary Authors. No mention of competitive shooting. I called his publisher and asked them if they knew anything about Newman shooting competitively. Said I was doing a story on writers who shoot and hunt for a Chicago magazine. Woman in the PR department said he gave no indication on his author's biog sheet of competitive shooting.

  No mention of hunting or woodsman ship or anything remotely like it.

  Said she'd heard him say at lunch he wasn't an outdoorsman. Ridiculed people who were, she said."

  "Hmm-um."

  "So why's he want the long-range rifle with the scope? I mean, your Springfield '03 isn't the first gun you think of when you go to buy a rifle."

  "They were sniper guns in Korea," Vincent said.

  "Too long ago for me, Murray. I'll have to trust your word on that." "They were," Vincent said. "Bolt-action, a lot slower than the Mi's for rapid firing, but for sniping they were perfect. You don't need rapid fire for sniping, and they had good range and didn't jam."

  "So why does Newman want a sniper rifle? If you wanted something for protection, that's not what you'd get. You'd get a shotgun or a carbine, something like that."

  "Right. It's not a common hunting weapon either. Not with the scope." "Clerk in the gun shop says he made a point of the scope and the range."

  "Man buys a sniper gun," Vincent said, "probably wants to snipe."

  "Croft put the notebook away in his coat pocket and leaned back in the straight chair and put his hands behind his head and looked at Vincent.

  "You think he wants to shoot Karl?"

  "You got a better guess?"

  "You think he's got the balls?"

  "No, but maybe I'm wrong. It's too big a coincidence. Guy sees Karl do murder. Guy goes to testify. Guy gets frightened off. Guy buys sniper rifle." Vincent spread his hands out, palms up. "What else?"

  "He might have the balls," Croft said. "He asked what I'd do if my family were threatened. I told him I wasn't sure. I'd have to be in the spot." "I know what I'd do," Vincent said.

  "I told him that too," Croft said.

  "What'd you tell him I'd do?" "I said you'd blow the guy away."

  Vincent nodded.

  "Maybe he's going to. It's the way a guy like him would go. Long distance so you don't get blood on your jogging shoes."

  "He's not a bad guy, Murray," Croft said. "He didn't like getting scared off. It bothered him."

  "It should."

  "Murray, not everyone is like you. You been doing this, how long, twenty-something years?"

  "Twenty-six," Vincent said.

  "You're used to guys with guns. You don't have any nerves. This guy's a writer. Biggest showdown he's had in twenty-six years is whether his serve hit the net or not, you know? He might have the balls."

  "I hope so."

  "So what do we do?"

  "Nothing."

  "Murray, we have some reason to think that a man might commit murder."

  "Nothing," Vincent said.

  "Yeah, okay, I won't get hysterical if Adolph Karl gets aced. He can use it. So can the Commonwealth. But what about Newman? He gets mixed up with Karl, a guy like that, they'll mangle him."

  "Maybe, and maybe we'll catch them at it. Then we'll have Karl."

  "You are a cold bastard, if you'll pardon my saying so, Lieutenant, sir."

  "Newman could have given this to us. He didn't. He wants to do it himself, he takes his chances. If he gets Karl, that's good for us, and him. He gets blown up trying, maybe we can make Karl on that. We don't lose either way."

  "Suppose he's lucky and gets Karl. Then what? We put him in the house of blue lights for the rest of his life?"

  "Maybe we don't," Vincent said.

  "One good turn deserves another?" Croft's face was tight.

  "Something like that, Bobby. We can't lose on this one."

  "Yeah, well, I take the Commonwealth's money," Croft said, "I do the Commonwealth's work." He got up and left.

  CHAPTER 15.

  "So why did you take the watch and wallet," Janet Newman asked.

  "Make it look like robbery," Newman answered.

  She nodded. "The big one," she said. "Do you think you killed him?"

  Hood shook his head.

  "I wish you had," she said. "I remember him looking at me."

  Newman felt his insides tighten like a fist.

  "It's too bad they spotted us, though," Hood said. "It will make things tougher."

  "I think it was a mistake to go d
own that alley," Newman said.

  Hood shrugged.

  "We didn't learn anything useful," Newman said.

  "Couldn't know till we went and looked," Hood said. "It's important to know." "Why?" Newman said. "Why is it so important? I think we're taking a lot of risks following Karl around."

  "There's risks in anything worth doing, Aaron," Hood said.