Tough Customer: A Novel

by Sandra Brown

  Given its comic elements, the shooting of Ben Lofland possibly could have been written off as a squabble among former co-workers. No one had died. Lofland's condition wasn't even all that serious. There would have been some unpleasant legal ramifications to plow through, but after all was said and done, the incident would soon have been forgotten.

  But now, now, Oren Starks was wanted for the fatal shooting of a sixteen-year-old boy. Which was another kettle of fish altogether.

  What were the chances?

  Sneaking into a room in a disreputable motel had seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, there was a one-in-eight chance that room number eight would remain vacant. There had been seven others to choose from, for crying out loud!

  But no, that particular room had been given to Davis Coldare and his female companion.

  What were the chances that the Coldare kid would turn out to be an honor student, an all-star baseball player, a beloved son, friend, and student? If someone had to walk through that motel room door, why couldn't it have been a drug addict, a thief, a pedophile? Had that been the case, Oren Starks might have been hailed a hero for ridding the community of a menace.

  Instead, the citizenry and every law enforcement officer in the state were on the lookout for the heartless killer of a golden boy.

  What were the chances that the unnamed young woman who'd witnessed the shooting would remain levelheaded enough to later identify the shooter? It had been reported that she had picked out--unequivocally--Oren Starks's photo from a group. To add insult to injury, it had been that damn Delray Marketing employee photo that he'd always hated! The photograph on his driver's license was more flattering than that one. In it his forehead looked too high, his eyes too closely set, his chin undefined and weak.

  What were the chances that he would be forced to deal with a disaster that had been totally unforeseen and for which he had no contingency plan?

  The odds of all that happening were as slim as the odds for Mike Reader's neck to snap when Oren pushed him off the merry-go-round. The summer Oren turned nine years old had been a hot one in Beaumont, Texas. The wilting, record-breaking temperatures were keeping most kids indoors during midday. That's why Oren and Mike Reader were alone at the playground that fateful afternoon.

  When Oren parked his bike, he approached the other boy with caution and awe. Mike was a bully who outweighed Oren by thirty pounds and was a head taller. But for all his wariness, Oren welcomed this chance encounter, seeing it as an opportunity to make a good impression on a popular classmate. If Mike and Oren forged a friendship during the summer break, then in the fall, when school reconvened, Oren would be accepted into Mike's wide group of friends.

  But Mike was happy to see Oren there in the park only because he then had someone to torment. He invited Oren to join him on the merry-go-round. Oren cheerfully climbed on. But immediately Mike hopped off, gripped one of the metal bars, and, running full-out in the beaten-down track of the circumference, pushed the merry-go-round to go faster and faster until the landscape was a blur to Oren, who was holding on for dear life and whimpering in terror.

  Mike jumped back on and began mocking him. He made fun of him for not having a daddy, and when Oren yelled to him that his daddy had died, the boy laughed and jeered and said he was a mama's boy. He called him a queer, a weirdo, a wimp, a sissy who probably peed like a girl, like his mother, sitting down. Oren blubbered denials, but Mike Reader persisted and began chanting the taunt. He made a little song of it.

  The crude ditty was silenced when Oren mustered all his strength and, letting go of the bar he'd been clinging to, gave Mike Reader's chest a mighty push with both palms. Mike, caught off guard by Oren's courageous defiance, toppled backward off the spinning merry-go-round and landed in the hard-packed dirt. Oren heard the sound, like that of a stick being broken over someone's knee.

  Catching intermittent glimpses of Mike Reader, Oren stayed on the merry-go-round as it spun round and round until it came to a full stop. Only then did he get off and walk over to the boy lying lifeless on the ground. His bladder and bowel had emptied the instant he died, which Oren saw as poetic justice, considering the nature of his recent jeers.

  Oren wanted to linger over the boy's still body and gloat, but he quickly removed his shirt and used it to rub off any fingerprints his hands might have left on the merry-go-round. He brushed it over the imprints that the soles of his sneakers had made in the dirt. Satisfied that he'd eliminated all evidence of his having been there, he got on his bicycle and pedaled home as fast as he could before anyone saw him, keeping to the pavement so as not to leave tread tracks.

  To this day it was believed that Mike Reader's death had been a tragic childhood accident.

  Ever since that summer afternoon, Oren had wanted to kill all the other people in his life who treated him cruelly. He'd longed to give anyone who persecuted him the just deserts that Mike Reader had got. But he'd always talked himself out of it because most offenders weren't worth the risk of getting caught.

  But Berry Malone's treachery was in a league of its own. Therefore his reprisal must be.

  He had vowed to see her dead, and he would. But his original plan had gone awry, and, now, if he wasn't very clever, he'd be arrested for shooting that Coldare kid and Berry would go on living with impunity. Which was untenable and unacceptable.

  There was one fortunate aspect to this catastrophe: Oren Starks was accustomed to coping with bad luck because he'd had so much practice at it. For instance, he knew to avoid panic. Hand-wringing over something gone wrong was a surefire way to expose one's guilt.

  The day Mike Reader died, Oren had returned home, watched TV, ate his dinner of fish sticks and mac-and-cheese, had his bath, behaved normally, and no one, not even his own mother, had ever guessed that he'd been the cause of the tragedy that had taken place only two blocks from his house. When he'd heard the sirens of a police car and an ambulance screaming through his neighborhood, his only reaction had been to adjust the volume on the TV.

  The Coldare kid was dead, and he would remain dead. Oren had no choice but to accept it and handle it. He must remain calm. He must not act rashly. Problem solving was his forte. The more complicated a puzzle was, the better he liked it. It took patience and ingenuity to work oneself out of an intricate maze.

  There was a way out of this muddle. He simply had to find it.

  Of course, if the worst-case scenario came about, he had a fail-safe escape hatch already in place. But for the present, he was facing an unexpected wall. His only recourse was to backtrack. Bitterly, he accepted that, to ensure success, sacrifices must be made.

  To that end, it wasn't absolutely necessary that Ben Lofland die.

  The man had had the bejesus scared out of him and had been made to look like a fool for being caught with his pants down, literally. While this wasn't the severe punishment Lofland deserved, Oren resolved that it was satisfaction enough.

  Berry, however, must die. There was no other option. He'd be satisfied with nothing less than death for her.

  But how to bring it about? Everyone near her was on high alert. Oren's name and face had been widely broadcast. Any man even remotely resembling him would be arrested on sight if not shot outright by a trigger-happy vigilante. In which case, hiding was an acceptable course of action.

  But hiding was unproductive and, frankly, boring. And the worst effect of hiding and taking no action whatsoever was that Berry remained alive. On the other hand, if he was seen--

  And with that thought, the solution came to him suddenly.

  Create confusion. Yes, yes! He would confound them. With cleverness, good timing, and a little luck--and wasn't he due some?--Berry and those protecting her would soon be scratching their heads, trying to make sense of the impossible.

  The prospect of that filled Oren with glee.

  CHAPTER

  16

  KISSING BERRY.

  The world was going to hell in a handbasket--Ski Nyland's corner of
it was in the express lane--and he couldn't concentrate on how to slow down that descent for thinking about kissing Berry. Elbowing their way to the forefront of his mind were thoughts of how well her long, lean body had fit his, how delicious her mouth had tasted, and others much more stirring.

  He couldn't indulge them any more than he could take off and go fishing today, or catch up on two nights' worth of sleep.

  From Caroline's lake house, he drove directly to his. He shaved, took a cold shower, and by the time he'd dressed in fresh clothes, his coffeemaker had brewed him a full pot. He poured the coffee into a thermal container with a drinking spout. He spread a thick layer of peanut butter onto a piece of stale bread, folded it in half, and consumed it as he left his house and got back into his SUV. The coffee tasted good and acrid, so hot it scalded his tongue.

  His tongue, which had mated with Berry's.

  Working the case would act as a shock absorber to the erotic sensations assailing him. He doubted they would disappear, but keeping his mind focused on catching Oren Starks would prevent them from being as jolting as they'd been there in Caroline King's kitchen.

  And, anyway, personal concerns seemed obscenely selfish today, when the Coldare boy's killer was at large.

  As he drove toward the motel, where he intended to grill the owner again, he called Sheriff Drummond at home. Mrs. Drummond answered, told Ski the sheriff was in the shower but said she would give him the message as soon as he was available.

  He called the office. Andy was manning the phone. Ski told him where he was headed and asked to be notified immediately if anyone checked in with an update.

  By the time he had drunk all the coffee left in his thermal mug, his cell phone was ringing. He answered without checking the readout. "Good morning, Sheriff Drummond."

  "Not the sheriff, Ski. It's Stevens. I found the car."

  The motel sign with the raccoon on it was in sight, but Ski executed a tight U-turn, which caused his tires to smoke on the pavement. He was five miles from where Deputy Stevens had discovered a maroon Toyota. Ski drove the distance with the lights behind his grille and on his light bar flashing. It was Sunday morning, so there weren't too many other vehicles on the road, which helped put him there in a matter of minutes.

  The other deputy was standing beside the driver's door of the Toyota. As Ski got out of his SUV, he called to him, "You're sure there are no footprints?"

  "None on this side, Ski, or I wouldn't be standing here."

  The deputy had fifteen years' seniority over Ski, but he was a laid-back guy and seemed not to have taken offense when, during their brief cell phone conversation, Ski had urged him repeatedly to avoid destroying tracks or compromising evidence.

  "Wish I could have told you I'd found him asleep behind the wheel," Stevens said when Ski reached him.

  "Wish you could have, too."

  "I'd like a piece of this sum'bitch."

  "Get in line."

  Placing his hands on his knees, Ski leaned down and looked through the driver's window into the car. He saw nothing either on the front seats or in the back, and nothing on the floorboards. The key was still in the ignition. Starks hadn't planned on coming back.

  "How'd he get out without making a footprint?"

  "Other side," Stevens said.

  Ski walked around the hood in order to avoid stepping on the tire treads imprinted into the soft soil of the shoulder behind the car, which Stevens had had the good sense not to disturb when he approached in his patrol car. They'd need those to compare with the ones found near the lake house and the motel.

  Ski studied the footprints. Starks had left a full right one when he stepped out, then a full left that was slightly deeper and more distinct than the right, then a partial right footprint where he'd walked into tall weeds.

  From there, the trail became decidedly more obscure. Starks had had endless options for places in which to hide and directions in which to go. Directly ahead was an open field fifty yards deep that was railroad frontage. It stretched along the tracks in both directions for as far as one could see.

  Across the tracks was a similar open area that bled into an industrial section on the outer edge of downtown Merritt. There were assorted warehouses, a trucking company, a distribution center for paper products, a work glove factory.

  More worrisome to Ski than the businesses in daily operation were the abandoned buildings of failed enterprises. Several multistoried, sprawling structures stood in various states of disrepair, providing countless nooks and crannies in which a man could hide. Beyond that industrial area were the middle school campus and a city park with a municipal swimming pool and athletic fields for soccer and baseball.

  Davis Coldare had played his final game on that diamond last Monday night.

  Ski swore, using a particularly foul phrase he'd learned in the Army. Stevens stood by, wisely saying nothing, shifting his chaw from one cheek to the other.

  Behind them, on the other side of the street from the deserted Toyota, was a row of houses. Basically on the fringe of a lower-middle-class, blue-collar neighborhood, the frame houses were seventy years old at best, owned by breadwinners who toiled hard to make ends meet. One of the houses had a log-hauling rig parked in the front yard.

  "Talked to any of the residents?" Ski asked.

  Stevens shook his head. "Didn't want to leave the car, have somebody come by and screw up the tracks. But nobody's come or gone since I got here."

  By now three other deputies had converged on the site. As they approached, Ski cautioned them to watch where they stepped so the scene wouldn't be corrupted. "I'll shoot any one of you who compromises a trace of evidence." He was only half joking.

  He assigned one of them to conduct a door-to-door of the houses, to ask if anybody had seen the man who'd left the Toyota parked on their street. If anyone had information, they were to be brought to Ski immediately.

  Then he went to stand in the center of the street and, hands on hips, did a slow three-sixty survey of the entire area, hoping to see something that would give him a clue as to where Starks had gone when he'd hobbled from the car. Was he miles away by now, or close? Chances were he was watching Ski from his hiding place, perhaps from the cloudy window of one of the vacant warehouses.

  Ski wondered if Starks had abandoned the car here for a specific reason, but he was betting not. There were no other tire tracks indicating that Starks had been met here and picked up. Ski figured he'd driven this far from the motel before being struck with the full impact of what he'd done. He'd feared his car might have been seen, possibly by someone driving past the motel when the fatal gunshot was fired. Maybe he thought Lisa Arnold had seen the direction he'd taken when he fled.

  Whatever had gone through Starks's mind--and God only knew--he was rational enough to realize he had to ditch the car and take his chances on foot. He probably thought this was as good a spot as any. There were no streetlights in this part of town. It was a street traveled by only the handful of families who lived on it, and it was doubtful they had a neighborhood crime watch.

  Starks had walked away from the car in stocking feet. That was something to Ski's advantage.

  He turned to Stevens. "You're the best print man in the department. Get what you can from the car. Go over it with a fine-tooth comb."

  "Sure thing, Ski," he said and walked toward his car to get his fingerprinting kit.

  Addressing the other deputies, Ski said, "I'll call in more reserves, but start without them. Stay with Starks's trail through the field as far as you can. See if you can pick it up on the other side of the railroad tracks. All those abandoned buildings, start at the bottom of each one and work your way up. Look for anything recently disturbed. I want every inch of them searched. If anyone finds something, they're not to touch it. Call me immediately. Tell the others when they get here."

  They nodded.

  "Andy's on phone duty. I'll get him to track down the owners of those businesses and secure permission for you to go insid
e. I want them checked for break-ins, jimmied alarm systems, anything and everything out of the ordinary. Same goes for the middle school campus. I want frequent updates. Anything seen, heard, or discovered, I want to know immediately. Anything, got it?"

  "Sure, Ski. Where are you going?"

  "To talk to the boss."

  His phone had rung twice, but he'd ignored it, knowing it was probably Sheriff Drummond returning his call. Now, he depressed the button to dial the sheriff's home number. Drummond picked up on the first ring. "Ski?"

  "Morning, sir. I need a minute of your time."

  "Is it about the Coldare boy? His granddad and I are in Rotary together. Terrible thing. Tragic. You're sure it was Starks?"

  "Yes, sir. I've got a positive ID. I can be at your house in five minutes."

  "We're trying to make the eleven o'clock worship service."

  "I promise not to keep you long."

  Ski didn't give him a chance to argue before disconnecting. When he arrived at the sheriff's home, Mrs. Drummond was already sitting in the front seat of their Lincoln Town Car with the motor running. The sheriff was waiting at the end of his driveway, dressed in his Sunday best, Bible in one hand, Stetson in the other.

  Ski pushed the gearshift into Park but left his SUV idling as he got out. "I hate to hold you up, sir, so I'll get straight to the point."

  "No apology necessary, Ski. Starks shot a good kid in cold blood. That goes beyond wounding a man in a love triangle showdown. What do you need?"

  "Your authorization."

  "For?"

  "Dogs."

  "Hey, it's Andy, right?"

  Dodge, who had exchanged names with the young deputy the night before, strolled into the sheriff's department and over to the desk where Andy was seated. Fortune was with him. Andy was the only one there, and since he'd seen Dodge in Ski's company the night before, he didn't question Dodge's walking in like he owned the place.