by Brad Smith
Carl would check it out in the morning. He had a lot to do, if he could put his mind to it. He opened another beer and waited for sleep.
EIGHTEEN
Saturday morning Billy drove over to Chum’s Service Center in Milton. He’d stopped at the Savoy Hotel Friday afternoon for a beer and Hog Simpson had told him over a game of eight-ball that Chum’s was looking for a mechanic. Billy pulled on to the side lot a little past nine. There were at least a dozen vehicles parked there, customers’ cars, he assumed. The garage itself had four bays and three hoists. The business had been around since Billy could remember.
There was a woman wearing blue overalls at the front desk when he walked in. When he told her what he was there for she looked him up and down and then went out into the garage to tell somebody. Five minutes later a man came out, heavyset with gray hair, wearing a windbreaker. The woman never returned. Billy saw her later when he was leaving, standing under a van on a hoist, draining the transmission.
‘Come in here,’ the man said, indicating a small office to the side. He never introduced himself. Billy wondered if he was Chum.
‘Name?’ the man asked when they were seated.
‘William Taylor.’
‘You licensed?’
‘No.’
The man changed somewhat. ‘No apprenticeship or anything?’
‘Not really,’ Billy said. ‘I’m good with cars.’
The man looked at Billy for a moment, as if wondering why he was even there. ‘Most of the stuff we do nowadays involves computers. You need some training.’
‘I can learn.’
‘That doesn’t make you unique. Where do you live anyway?’
‘Tareytown.’
‘Family?’
‘Girlfriend, and I got a boy. He’s two.’
‘And you’re not working now?’
‘No.’
The man got to his feet. The interview was over. When he reached the doorway he had a thought and turned back. ‘You do any brake work?’
Billy nodded. ‘Quite a bit.’
‘Leave your name and number on the pad on the desk. Anything comes up, I’ll call you.’
Cheryl went in at noon and worked until eight that night. Billy fed Seth leftover mac and cheese from the night before and afterward the two of them took a walk in the woods beside the park across the road. There was a creek there, running through the trees down to the river, and they liked to hike up the stream, looking in the water for frogs and minnows. Sometimes they would see bigger fish, bass and crappie, coming up from the river.
There was an ancient wooden bridge farther up the creek, constructed of oak timbers and cedar planks, the structure mostly collapsed now. Today Billy and Seth sat on the span crossing the creek and dangled their feet above the water.
‘Frog,’ the boy shouted, pointing.
There was a small leopard frog squatting in the mud along the bank, its back shiny, front feet twitching.
‘Catch him,’ Seth said. He began to pull off his rubber boots.
‘The water’s too cold today,’ Billy said.
‘I want to catch him,’ the boy pouted.
‘He’s getting ready to go to sleep for the winter,’ Billy said.
‘He’s going to sleep?’
‘He sleeps all winter long.’
‘No, he doesn’t.’
‘He does. We’ll come back in the spring and see him. We’ll see tadpoles too. Remember the tadpoles?’
‘Little and wiggly,’ Seth said.
They spent a couple of hours in the woods, walking further upstream where the water was shallow enough that they could wade across in their boots. They spooked a horned owl from some pine trees and Seth asked a couple dozen questions about the bird. Where did he live? Why did he hoot? What did he eat?
When they got back to the house Billy put Seth down for a nap and then opened a beer and sat in the living room, thinking of the money they would owe at the end of the month. They had enough to meet the rent but they were going to be short on both the electrical and telephone. Billy was supposed to replace some brake lines on a Mustang next week but other than that he had nothing lined up.
He stopped thinking about it, for a while at least. He opened a second beer and watched part of a movie. It was a Western, made in the 1950s, where the Indians spoke perfect and awkward English. The white men are as many as the stars in the sky.
Billy fell asleep on the couch. When he woke up he wondered if he would ever hear from Chum’s Service Center.
In the Wild clubhouse down the road from the bar, Tommy Jakes sat watching the NASCAR race on the big screen. The newspaper was on the table beside him, folded to the page he’d just read. Tommy was drinking Buffalo Trace. Across the room Joni was cooking chicken wings in the deep fryer, bringing them over a half dozen at a time, each serving in a different sauce. Honey garlic, buffalo style, ranch. So far Tommy liked the chipotle the best. When he’d had enough, she came to sit with him. She’d been smoking weed and drinking vodka on the rocks all afternoon and she was loose and easy, her lipstick smeared. She smelled like pot and hot sauce.
‘Come here,’ Tommy said, pulling her toward him and kissing her. ‘You taste good, baby.’
‘I’m horny,’ she said. ‘Take me in the back and taste me proper.’
‘After the race.’
‘Fucking asshole,’ she said, flopping on to the couch beside him. ‘There’s guys would jump at that offer.’
‘There’s guys who have.’
‘Fuck you. Get your wife to cook wings for you.’
Tommy reached over and slid his hand beneath her skirt. ‘I’m not with her. I’m with you.’
Joni smiled and drank from her glass. She could drink a lot of vodka. Tommy kept his hand on her thigh while he turned back to the race. It was under a yellow again. It was going to take a half hour to run the last five laps.
Bones walked in a few minutes later. He looked at Tommy and Joni, sitting cozy side by side on the couch, and walked over to the bar for a glass. He poured a couple of ounces from the bottle beside Tommy and had a drink.
‘How did it go with the councilor the other day anyway?’ Tommy asked.
Bones shrugged. ‘He’s always the same.’ He tipped back the rock glass again. ‘He’s getting careless though.’
‘Careless how?’
‘Wanted me to hand him the envelope right there in the bar at Angelo’s,’ Bones said. ‘Place is half full of people. He thinks he’s Teflon or something.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Told him I’d be waiting in the parking lot,’ Bones said. ‘You want the money, walk your ass outside.’
‘And he did?’
‘Yeah. Made me wait for twenty minutes, as if he’s teaching me a lesson. One of these days I’m going to put his head through a wall.’
‘Wait until he’s out of office,’ Tommy said.
‘Another thing,’ Bones said. ‘When he got out of the car, he asked if I knew a good lawyer. Like he was joking, but maybe not. What’s that about?’
‘Fucked if I know,’ Tommy said, dismissing it. ‘What about our boy Tonto – you find him?’
Bones nodded as he finished the bourbon. He’d needed a drink. ‘Wasn’t easy. He doesn’t live on the rez.’
‘No?’
‘He lives over in Tareytown.’
‘What’s he got to say?’ Tommy took his hand out from under Joni’s skirt and reached for the remote to turn the volume down.
‘He doesn’t say a hell of a lot of anything. But he’s not interested.’
‘You tell him that Chino is out of the picture?’
‘Yeah,’ Bones said. ‘First he claimed he didn’t know Chino. Or the other one neither. I had to explain things to him, brought up Monty and Stoddard and all that. He still didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘That’s a positive,’ Tommy said. ‘Man knows to keep his mouth shut. He finally admit that he made the trip?’
‘Yeah,
and he never got paid.’
Tommy looked up. ‘Chino stiffed him?’
‘So he claims.’
Tommy laughed. ‘So Chino’s telling us the Indian ripped him off and really it’s the other way around. Fucking Chino – how did he ever live this long?’
Bones poured more bourbon in his glass and then came over to sit in the leather recliner. He had a drink, looking up at the race.
‘Did you ask him about the money from before?’ Tommy asked. ‘Where it went?’
‘At first he said he didn’t know shit,’ Bones said. ‘I pressed him on it some. We were out behind his house and he didn’t like me being there. Had a wife and kid in the house and I could tell he just wanted me to leave. So I suggested we go inside and talk.’
‘And?’
‘He loosened up,’ Bones said. ‘According to him, Chino lost the money at the casino that night.’
Tommy thought about it. ‘Yeah, I could see that happening. Chino’s got problems in that area. Which is why Johnny K sent him my way to begin with.’
‘But then how does Chino come up with the cash two days later? That’s the mystery.’
‘Maybe not.’ Tommy picked up the newspaper and handed it over to Bones, showing the page in question. ‘Remember that fire out along the river last week? The cops are releasing more info. It wasn’t just a home invasion, Bones. It was a robbery. Three suspects. They got descriptions of two of them. Read it.’
Bones read the paper as he drank the whisky. ‘You think it was them?’ he asked, looking over at Tommy. ‘It doesn’t say how much they got.’
‘I’m goddamn sure it was them,’ Tommy said. ‘Look at the timing. Thursday they say they lost the money, Friday they pull off this robbery arson deal and Saturday Chino shows with the cash. And the descriptions fit.’
Bones considered it. ‘What about the new bills?’
Tommy shrugged. ‘Sounds as if this farm was a business, organic food and whatever. Could be they deal in cash sometimes.’
‘Fifty grand worth?’
Tommy waved his hand. ‘Doesn’t matter about the bills. What matters is that this changes the conversation with our Indian buddy. The cops didn’t mention an Indian but I have to figure he was the third party.’
Bones put the paper aside. ‘How do you want to do this?’
‘Let me think about it,’ Tommy said after a moment. ‘There was a dead girl in that fire. Doesn’t matter who lit the match, you’re talking capital murder for all three of them. And the other two would roll over on the Indian in a heartbeat.’
‘You want me to talk to him again?’
‘I might go this time,’ Tommy said. ‘Relax and watch the race. I’d go right now but I made a promise to this woman here.’
‘Yes, you did,’ Joni said.
‘I always keep a promise,’ Tommy said. He had a drink before glancing at Bones. ‘I might just mention that to the Indian.’
Dunbar got up early and by the time Martha came downstairs he had breakfast ready. Saturday mornings he liked a good old-fashioned breakfast. Eggs and home fries and either sausage or ham, with lots of coffee and toast and preserves. He had become a bit of an egg snob in recent years, after reading an article about the inhumane treatment of laying hens in factory farms. Dunbar hadn’t bought eggs in a supermarket since. He and Martha usually hit the farmers’ market in the city once a week, or bought from the roadside stalls outside the city.
Dunbar suspected it was a sign of approaching old age, his concern for unknown hens on unknown farms. In his younger years, an egg was just an egg. But he’d noticed that his heart was getting softer with the years. A couple of weeks ago he’d struck a squirrel with the squad car while driving past Oakland Park and it had bothered him all day long. He wondered if any of his peers felt the same way. He didn’t know and he wouldn’t broach the matter with them. How could he?
Martha came down the stairs as he was scrambling the eggs, dressed in jeans and a Bahamas T-shirt she’d bought on their vacation the previous winter. It was cool in the house and she was pulling on a sweater as she came into the kitchen to sit at the counter. Dunbar served the breakfast as she sipped her coffee. It was the one morning in the week when he cooked and he knew that she luxuriated in it.
‘We have frost,’ he told her.
‘Oh?’ She glanced out the window to the back yard.
‘Your basil is done.’
‘No.’
Dunbar nodded, sitting down opposite her. ‘I saw it when I went out for the paper. The flowers out front too.’
‘I was going to pick the basil and dry it.’
‘A day late,’ Dunbar told her as he tucked into the meal.
They ate in silence for a time. Oliver came in and jumped up on the stool beside Martha. He sat there, whiskers flicking, as if contemplating making the move to the countertop. He knew better, though. After a while he thumped to the floor and walked over to his dish by the back door. He looked at his food for a few seconds before flopping on his side, where he began a cleaning of his face with his paws.
Martha poured more coffee for herself. Replacing the pot, she noticed the empty egg carton there and picked it up.
‘Look.’ She turned the carton to show Dunbar what was written. ‘I knew that name sounded familiar.’
‘River Valley Farm,’ he read. He took a moment. ‘That’s right. We bought these at the farmers’ market a couple of weeks ago.’
‘It wasn’t from Frances Rourke, though,’ Martha said. ‘I would have recognized her from the TV show.’
‘It was a kid that day,’ Dunbar remembered. ‘A girl.’
As he said it, he realized that it might have been the girl who was killed in the fire. He knew that Martha was thinking the same. She pushed the carton aside and poured cream into her cup.
‘What’s going on with that anyway?’ she asked. She almost never did that. She knew that most of the time he’d rather not discuss things. Especially things of a certain nature.
‘Not a whole lot,’ he admitted. ‘We basically have nothing so far. The girl’s parents were here for a couple of days. They had all sorts of questions we couldn’t answer. They went back to British Columbia last night.’
‘I suppose with the fire, there’s no evidence,’ Martha said.
Dunbar took a forkful of eggs and nodded. ‘We have to assume that was the reason for the fire. Whatever they did, they wanted it covered up. No fingerprints.’ He paused, not looking at his wife. ‘And no DNA.’
‘Do you think the women were sexually assaulted?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Dunbar said. ‘It’s a possibility, based on what Carl Burns saw before they threw him down the stairs. He said that one of the thugs was manhandling the young woman. Maybe there was more. He asked if Frances Rourke had been raped.’
Martha shook her head.
‘They were pretty loaded,’ Dunbar said. ‘Two of them anyway. Sounds as if the third was some kind of sentry. He tried to keep the other two in check, according to Burns. It was almost as if he didn’t want to be there.’
‘But that’s just what Burns assumed,’ Martha said. ‘He wouldn’t be used to these types.’
‘No, he’s been around,’ Dunbar said.
Martha ate the last of her breakfast. ‘What’s the prognosis on Frances Rourke?’
‘She’s still in the coma. No response.’
‘How is Burns doing? I suspect he’s catatonic.’
‘No,’ Dunbar said. ‘But he might be in a bit of denial.’
Martha got up and carried her plate to the sink. She began to clean the mess always created by Dunbar when in cooking mode.
‘Leave that,’ he said. ‘Come and drink your coffee with me.’
She did as he asked.
‘How are you going to find the people who did it?’ she asked as she sat down.
‘I don’t know. If it turns out that it was completely random, it will be tough. We need somebody to talk. And so far, nobody’s sayi
ng anything. There’s nearly fifty thousand dollars out there that doesn’t seem to be moving.’
‘Why would they target that farm?’
‘I wish we knew,’ Dunbar said. ‘It might help with the investigation. The place is kind of in the public eye, because of the TV show. Maybe that’s all it was, these people thinking it was a place they could score.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘My partner thinks there’s more to it.’
‘Such as?’
Dunbar shrugged. ‘Carl Burns has done time. She thinks there’s something there that’s connected. I’m not so sure.’
‘Burns shot Mayor Sanderson, didn’t he? Wasn’t he protecting his daughter?’
‘Yeah,’ Dunbar said. ‘He saved her. I’m sure he thinks he should have done the same in this case. He didn’t, and I get the sense that it’s weighing on the man. But what could he have done? These guys are bad. As bad as I’ve ever seen.’
‘You’ll get them.’
‘I hope so,’ Dunbar said. ‘And when we do, I hope Burns can ID them. Because without him, we have nothing.’
NINETEEN
Carl fell into a routine of sorts. He was up early and ate cereal and drank coffee, then did whatever jobs needed doing around the farm. The chicks he and Frances had started had doubled in size already and needed tending. There were the larger hens to feed and eggs to gather. Manure to shovel and bedding to spread. All with one arm. They were well past the first frost and everything had been harvested and stored in the warehouse and barns. A truck left daily with the online orders; Norah and the part-timer Josh took care of that.
Around nine each morning Carl got on the phone. He called the insurance company first, asking when they would send a bulldozer to clean up what was left of the farmhouse. They were being difficult. The policy – and the property itself – were both in the name of Frances Rourke and they kept insisting that they speak to her. They couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of a person being in a coma.
