by Brad Smith
‘There’s nothing to it,’ Dunbar said. ‘Keep in mind that Frances Rourke drove into Talbotville that night and withdrew nearly fifty thousand dollars in cash from the bank. How does that fit into this scatterbrained theory of a domestic dispute? The money was for the home invasion.’
Mathews nodded. ‘What about Walker pushing for the preliminary? I didn’t see that coming.’
‘I did actually,’ Dunbar said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, that was the only reason he called this meeting. The rest was just a smoke screen. It seems that Walker has visited Frances Rourke in the hospital. Or at least he has visited the medical staff treating her, asking questions. If she wakes up, she’s going to be a key witness for us. Even more so than Burns, because she was there for it all. And Walker does not want that. So he’s going to roll the dice with Burns.’
‘Well, it’s always nice to get the preliminary out of the way,’ Mathews said. ‘What about Carl Burns? Are you confident putting him on the stand?’
‘Did you hear how he ran Murdock to ground?’ Dunbar asked.
‘I did,’ Mathews said.
‘This guy is not going to cave.’
Mathews sat in silence for a moment. ‘What about the money? Walker said we can’t tie these guys to the cash. Why not? We know they paid the bikers off with the bills from the bank.’
‘We made a deal with Tommy Jakes. We had to guarantee him that his name isn’t connected to this. He doesn’t want to be the rat.’
‘He is a rat.’
‘But we made the deal,’ Dunbar said. ‘Without him we wouldn’t have Chino or Taylor in custody at this point and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. The price you pay.’
‘Things could change down the road,’ Pulford said.
‘How?’ Mathews asked.
‘The corruption charges against Ken Hubert,’ Pulford replied. ‘Once that shakes out, he’s going to testify that he was taking bribes from the Wild. Presumably he’ll also testify that that’s where he got the marked hundreds. So we put Tommy Jakes on the stand and ask him where he got the money. He says he got it from Chino and Bug, payment for an unnamed debt. He’s not ratting out anybody about any home invasion, he’s just answering a question. Like the good citizen he is.’
‘Right,’ Mathews said.
‘The thing is, that’s still in the investigation stage,’ Dunbar said. ‘We won’t have that testimony for the preliminary. But we should have it for the trial. Tommy’s not going to like it, but he’ll do it because he doesn’t want to go to jail for perjury.’
‘What about Walker’s nonsense about the fire?’ Pulford asked. ‘Is there something there we should worry about? How do we prove it was arson? Like he says – if it’s not arson, it’s not murder.’
‘We need Carl Burns to put these guys in the house,’ Mathews said. ‘If he can do that, nobody’s going to believe the fire was accidental.’
‘He can do it,’ Dunbar said.
‘All right,’ Mathews said, opening her laptop. ‘Let’s find a date.’
TWENTY-NINE
By the middle of a cold February Carl was becoming desperate for something to do. That fall, he’d noticed that the Ferguson was blowing blue smoke and using oil on the trips back and forth to the sugar shack and so, when the cabin was finished and ready for use, he had pulled the tractor into the machine shed and set about rebuilding the engine. There was an oil heater in the shop that would, on a good day, raise the temperature to about fifty degrees, which was fine for working. For all the use the tractor got, Carl could have let it go. A quart or two of oil a month was no expense. But it was winter and work on the farm had slowed. Frances was still in the coma. Carl would rebuild the engine.
He was honing the cylinders late in the morning when he heard a car pull up outside. He looked out the window to see Dunbar climbing out of a sedan, pulling his collar up against the wind. When he headed for the motorhome, Carl rapped sharply on the glass. The cop saw him in the window and started over.
‘You’re a jack-of-all-trades,’ he said when he saw what Carl was up to. The pistons from the engine were in a row on the work bench, the cylinder head clamped in a large vise. Carl had removed the valves earlier that morning and washed everything thoroughly with diesel oil. He had new rings and rod bearings on order from a dealer in Talbotville.
‘What’s going on?’ Carl asked.
‘We have a date for the preliminary,’ Dunbar told him. ‘It starts a week from today.’
‘That was quick.’
‘The defense is pushing for it.’
Carl nodded, absently running his fingertips inside a cylinder, feeling for ridges from the old rings. ‘How will it work?’
‘Should be pretty cut and dried,’ Dunbar said. ‘I’ve been on the force thirty-one years and I can only remember one case that never made it past the preliminary stage. And that was because the primary witness skipped the country. It’s basically a formality. All we need is for you to testify that they were in the farmhouse that night. Demanding the money. Committing the assaults.’
‘What if they have somebody lie for them?’ Carl asked. ‘Maybe one of their buddies, saying they were someplace else that night? What happens then?’
Dunbar shook his head to dismiss the notion. ‘I suppose if the Pope were to show up and testify that Murdock and Carter were with him at the Vatican the night in question, we would have a problem. As it is, your testimony is all we’ll need to hold this over for trial. And even if someone did testify that they were elsewhere that night, Murdock would still have to explain why his truck was parked a quarter mile away.’
‘What about Taylor?’ Carl asked. ‘I can’t ID him.’
‘He’ll have a separate preliminary. This is just for Murdock and Carter. They have joint representation so we’ll do the two of them together.’
‘You say it’s Walker who’s pushing it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because he doesn’t want to wait for Frances to wake up,’ Carl said.
‘That’s my take on it,’ Dunbar said. ‘He doesn’t want her on that stand. He doesn’t want you on the stand either but there’s nothing he can do about that. You can have a mountain of forensic evidence and circumstantial evidence and all kinds of other things, but there is nothing as powerful as an eyewitness.’
‘So Walker will try to discredit me?’
‘He’ll try. He’ll bring up your past and make allusions about this and that. But your job is easy, Carl. All you have to do is tell the truth.’
Carl nodded.
‘I’m going to let you get back to work,’ Dunbar said. As he opened the door to go, he stopped. ‘What is the latest on Frances anyway?’
‘They’ve decided to do surgery,’ Carl said. ‘I’m waiting to hear when.’
He heard that afternoon. He worked on the tractor until one o’clock and cleaned up and drove to Rose City to the hospital. The two doctors, Harkness and Amuz, met him in the corridor outside Frances’s room.
‘We were about to call you,’ Amuz said.
They took Carl into a consultation room and told him they had decided on a course of treatment. They would do surgery on the coming Monday, to remove the remaining fluid from the brain. They would then do a CAT scan to try to determine if there was damage there they hadn’t been able to see with the previous scans. They were making no promises but they felt that something needed to be done. The patient was making no progress.
‘Big week coming up,’ Carl had told Frances later, sitting by her bed.
He stayed longer than usual, holding her hand and not saying much. Her fingers and wrists were small and fragile in his rough palm. He thought about how strong she had been, how capable in nearly everything she did. In the fields, in the kitchen, in bed. She had been Carl’s equal in every way, other than those in which she was more than that. And they were many. She had more compassion than he did, more sympathy. She was much more patient. Maybe that patience was helping her now. Like Rufus had s
aid, Frances would wake up when she was bloody well ready to wake up. On top of everything else, she was smarter than Carl. The only time he had ever questioned her intelligence was when she had told him she loved him.
Maybe next week she would tell him that again.
When he got into his truck in the hospital parking lot, the cell phone he’d left on the seat was ringing. It was Rufus.
‘I’ve finally heard back from the insurance company,’ he said. ‘Looks as if they’re going to give you the green light.’
Things happen in threes.
‘I’m in the city,’ Carl said. ‘I’ll stop at your office on my way home.’
‘Well, let me know if anyone’s there,’ Rufus said. ‘I’m heading to Archer’s.’
Which was where Carl found him, perched on a bar stool, already into his second pint of ale. Carl ordered a beer and a sandwich. With all that had been going on, he hadn’t bothered to eat lunch.
‘So I called the rep again,’ Rufus said. ‘And after the usual runaround I got off the phone and called his boss, a man named Strome. I explained to him that you were, by proxy, in charge of the situation until Frances returns. When he began his double-talk I pulled a number out of the air, the amount I told him it would cost him down the road for temporary accommodations for you and Frances due to his company dragging their feet. I admired his petulant silence so much that I threw another number at him for good measure, this one a punitive amount for deliberately dragging this out.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Goodbye, basically,’ Rufus said. ‘But he called back an hour later and said everything had been cleared. He blamed it all on a vague clerical error somewhere in head office. Standard procedure, I should think. The blaming, that is, not the error itself, which probably never occurred.’
Carl’s roast beef sandwich arrived and he had a bite. ‘How quick will they start?’
‘He said for you to go ahead and hire someone to come in and clean up the debris on site. When that is done, they’ll dig the new basement and begin construction. You will have to decide on plans, you realize.’
‘We’ll build the same house,’ Carl said. ‘I’ve drawn it all out myself, the rooms and dimensions as best I can remember. I just need to take them someplace and have blueprints made.’
‘There’s a place in town,’ Rufus said.
Carl had another bite and talked around the sandwich. ‘Frances is going to have surgery on Monday.’
‘She is?’
Carl nodded. ‘And the preliminary starts on Wednesday.’
‘Well now,’ Rufus said. ‘I assumed that would be a couple of months away at least.’
‘Walker is pushing it.’
‘How do you feel about that?’ Rufus asked.
‘I feel good, Rufus,’ Carl said after thinking a moment. ‘I feel good about all of it.’
Walker met with Chino and Bug at the jail on Thursday afternoon and told them about the upcoming preliminary. Bug spoke first.
‘We don’t got to testify, do we?’
‘No,’ Walker said. ‘You won’t be testifying. Not ever.’
Chino looked at Bug disdainfully, then pointed his chin toward Walker’s briefcase. ‘So what have they got?’
‘So far, an eyewitness and not much else,’ Walker said. ‘I need to ask you again. Do either of you guys have anybody who can put you someplace else that night? Have you been thinking about it?’
‘I already told the cops I was home watching the football alone,’ Bug said. He looked at Chino. ‘Like we said.’
‘We didn’t say fuck all, dummy,’ Chino told him. He looked at Walker. ‘I don’t have nobody. Nobody the judge is gonna like, anyway. Why are they pushing it up?’
‘I’m pushing it,’ Walker said.
‘Why?’
‘Because at this point their case is thin,’ Walker said. ‘The woman’s still unconscious and as far as I know the Indian isn’t talking. If he’d given evidence, they would have to share it with me.’
‘We see him every day,’ Chino said. ‘He don’t talk to anybody.’
Walker nodded. ‘So I want to do this now. If I can get Carl Burns to recant on anything he’s said so far – and I mean anything – then we have a chance of walking out of there next week. I have seen it happen on occasion. The right judge and a shaky witness can produce wonders. If nothing else, I’m going to find out what kind of witness he is. Maybe he’s the weak link.’
Chino laughed. ‘Bug didn’t think so, the day Burns caught up to him.’
‘In the alley and on the stand are two different things.’ Walker hesitated. ‘How should I put this? If by chance Burns comes face to face with the people who were in the house that night, he’s going to be nervous. Maybe even scared shitless. I want to see what he’s made of.’
‘Go for it,’ Chino said.
‘I intend to,’ Walker said, rising. ‘I’ll see you boys next week in court.’
The guard let him out and Chino and Bug were left sitting there for a time, Chino staring across the room at the door Walker had used to exit. Bug watched Chino. After five minutes another guard came in to take them back to the cells.
‘I need to make a phone call,’ Chino told him.
Digger came around that night during visiting hours. He didn’t exactly dress for the occasion, wearing dirty baggy jeans and a T-shirt that was torn and soiled. When he sat across from Chino, he smelled. Chino wondered if the man ever used the bathtub at the house. It was a wonder the guards even let him in.
They sat off in the corner, Chino leaning forward, his voice low, eyes on the guards behind the glass. It took a fair amount of convincing to get Digger on board. It was a risky move, with Digger’s record and reputation. At first Chino wanted Digger to do the job as a favor, in return for living in Chino’s house. But Digger wasn’t going for that, not with the stakes involved, so Chino had no choice but to offer money. He started at a thousand dollars and kept upping the number. Digger finally nodded when they got to five grand.
‘How do I get paid?’ He gestured at their surroundings. ‘You in here.’
‘That dipshit Walker is holding money for me,’ Chino said. ‘I’ll get him to pay you. After, not before.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Walker, my lawyer,’ Chino said.
Digger pouted like a child. ‘How the fuck you gonna tell your lawyer about this?’
‘I’m not telling him anything. Just to give you the money.’
‘Like he ain’t gonna ask?’
Chino took a moment. ‘My hog sitting in the yard. I’ll say I bought it from you and there’s been five owing on it for a while. None of his fucking business anyway.’
‘I guess,’ Digger said. He was still having doubts, more about the job at hand than whatever the lawyer was going to think. ‘But he better pay.’
‘He will,’ Chino said. ‘You can’t drag your heels on this, Digger. This has got to be done this weekend. That going to be a problem?’
‘No,’ Digger said reluctantly. ‘I already got what I need stashed.’
‘OK.’ Chino stood up.
Digger remained seated, looking at the table top. ‘I don’t like this, Chino.’
‘You don’t have to like it,’ Chino said. ‘You just have to do it.’
THIRTY
Dunbar and Pulford found Carl in the machine shed, putting the carburetor on the Ferguson. It was just past eleven on Sunday morning. Carl had waited until ten o’clock to phone Dunbar, not wanting to bother him too early on his day off. Dunbar had called the station and arranged for a team before picking Pulford up on his way out of the city. When they got to the farm, they had walked around what was left of Carl’s truck before heading over to the shed. Carl had already told Dunbar the story but told it again for Pulford’s benefit.
‘And what time was it?’ she asked.
‘Just after three.’
‘And you didn’t hear anything beforehand?’
Carl shook hi
s head. ‘I don’t sleep all that well but I never heard anything. The wind was up, making a racket.’
‘The first thing you heard was the explosion,’ Pulford suggested.
‘I did hear that,’ Carl said.
He pulled a jacket on and the three of them went outside for another look. The truck was parked in the drive, a hundred feet or so from the motorhome. The doors were blown open and the paint blackened. The interior was scorched. The glass was melted in place and one of the side mirrors was propped against the front tire of the motorhome where it had landed, still intact. The hood was partially raised, the hinges bent. The smell of burned fabric and cordite hung in the cold morning air.
Pulford indicated the charred seats, flecked with foam. ‘Did you call the fire department?’
‘No,’ Carl said. ‘I had a fire extinguisher in the RV.’
Dunbar knelt down and looked under the truck. ‘There’s your bomb.’
Carl crouched as well. He saw the ruptured remains of a length of steel pipe, maybe two feet long. It was blown completely apart.
‘We’ll leave it for the team,’ Dunbar said, straightening up. ‘They’re on the way. They’ll want to check for prints but they won’t find any.’
Pulford stood huddled in her leather jacket, looking at the destroyed truck. After a moment, she turned to Carl.
‘Any idea who might have done this?’
‘Yeah, I have an idea,’ Carl replied. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I meant other than the obvious.’ She elaborated. ‘Anybody else who might want to send you a message?’
‘No,’ Carl said. ‘You keep beating that drum, though.’
‘I’m not beating any drum. It’s called doing my job.’
Dunbar interceded. ‘I don’t think we’re looking at much of a mystery here. We might not know who did it but we know who’s behind it. The preliminary is three days away.’
