“We had the wrong damn rich kid,” I said.
“What?”
“Paul Brooks, Joe. What if he killed her?”
“I don’t see how you’re getting there.”
“The night that girl was killed, Matt Jefferson called his father, who called Fenton Brooks.”
“To check on the kid’s story. To see what was happening.”
“Who told us that?”
He made a nod of concession. “Paul Brooks did.”
“Right. And a day after those phone calls, Matt changed his story and implicated Doran. Maybe that wasn’t about clearing himself. Maybe he did see somebody up there, but it wasn’t Doran. It was the son of his dad’s richest client.”
“That’s a big jump.”
“Matt wrote the prosecutor and told him he was refusing to come back and testify. Why do that, why risk attracting that sort of attention, if he’d killed her? His dad would have coached him better than that. If it was just about saving his own ass, he would have waited quietly and with his fingers crossed that the plea bargain bid would work. When he moved back to Indiana, he cut off communication with his dad. Maybe he wasn’t running away, though. Not from what we thought. Maybe he was running away from the guilt and cut off his dad because of what he’d convinced him to do.”
“A big jump,” Joe said again, and then, when I didn’t respond, “but they’d have the money. No doubt about that. Paul Brooks would have that sort of money.”
“And Gaglionci was tied into everything that happened with Doran. He was a key player in that. If anyone could have figured out how to work Brooks against Jefferson and make money off it, he’d be the guy.”
The room went quiet again. Thor was impassive, but Reed watched us with interest, some of the fear replaced with fascination.
“Get out of here,” I told Joe. “Go move the car, and watch for one of them to show. You won’t recognize Gaglionci, but let us know if you see anyone who even looks close. We can deal with the rest of this after we get Amy back.”
He opened the door and went out and then it was just Thor, Reed, and me in the apartment. I walked up to the door and sat on the floor beside it with my back against the wall and my gun in my lap, feeling the way you do after everything you’ve known to be true is shattered.
An hour passed, then two, and nobody showed. Joe called three times with false alarms. I began to wonder if we’d blown it, if Gaglionci had smelled the trap and pulled out. I stayed against the wall, shifting position occasionally, but always close to the door. Reed—now dressed and with the blood washed off his face in case we needed him to show himself—was still down in the living room, where we could see him clearly. Thor was standing on the other side of the door. He didn’t sit, didn’t pace, didn’t even stretch. Just stood there.
The wait was brutal for me. Throughout the day, I’d found temporary solace in moments of confrontation, of action, the tasks at hand allowing me to stop thinking about what could happen if I failed. Amy had always been in my mind, even as I lay on the floor at Cujo’s with a chain whipping down at my head, but in the pressure of those moments she existed as a goal, a reminder of why I had to get back up off the floor. During the waiting, though, she became a fear again. The empty minutes ticked by, and I began to imagine things I did not want to consider, to see all the awful possibilities that disappeared in the immediacy of action.
It had been nearly two and a half hours when Joe called again.
“There’s another one pulling into the garage. Little sports car. A Mazda, I think.”
“All right.”
I disconnected, went back into the apartment, and repeated the information to Thor, who didn’t so much as nod in response. Several minutes passed, and just when I’d begun to think that the Mazda visitor was another false alarm, Thor said, “Elevator.”
I frowned at him and rose to a crouch, listening. I hadn’t heard anything. A few seconds went by, and then there was a chime as the elevator reached the penthouse floor. I don’t know what Thor had heard before that, but he was right.
The intercom buzzed, and I pointed at Reed. He hurried across the floor, his feet slapping off the ceramic tiles, and punched a button on the intercom.
“Yes?”
“Let me in.” The voice was garbled; maybe Gaglionci again, maybe not. Reed looked at me, and I nodded. He hit another button, and I heard the lock slide back in the door in the hall. I’d decided—at Thor’s recommendation—to leave the entryway empty and wait for them inside the apartment.
I was kneeling against the wall, Thor standing opposite me, when the knob turned and the door swung open. Thor stepped around it in a combat stance, and Andy Doran walked into the room, saw the Glock pistol pointed at his heart, and said, “Well, shit, ” just before I rose up behind him and hit him in the back of the head with the butt of my gun.
39
Nowhere to go, Doran,” I said. “Might as well relax, get comfortable.”
He’d landed on the tile floor on his face and stayed down, his body still but his feet shuffling as if they were trying to move away from the rest of him. I leaned down and found his gun in the shoulder holster under his jacket, took it out, and handed it to Thor, who stuck it in his waistband. It took Doran a few seconds, but he rolled over, his eyes tight with pain, and stared at us, groggy but sizing the situation up. He got into a sitting position with an effort, then slipped a hand up to his head and felt the spot behind his ear where I’d hit him with the gun.
“I owed you one,” I said. “More than one.”
He moved his arm against his body, and I knew he was feeling for the Colt Commander, noting its absence. Nodding to himself, he slid backward until he was supported by the wall. We didn’t stop him. There was blood on his lip, a souvenir from bouncing his face off the floor, and he tasted it with the tip of his tongue.
“Where is she?” I said.
He tasted the blood and didn’t answer. Thor was standing quietly, flicking his knife blade open and shut with his thumb. It made that soft snick noise over and over, and Doran had trouble keeping his eyes off it.
“You’re not walking out of this room unless you tell us, Doran. You really ready to make that sort of sacrifice for a guy like Tommy Gaglionci?”
Doran turned to look at me. The soft flesh under his eye was already red and starting to swell. He didn’t speak.
“Give me one honest answer,” I said. “Just one, Doran. You give me this, and I think I can explain some things that you’re going to be damn interested in. Did Gaglionci kill Jefferson?”
He rubbed the back of his skull and turned to Thor, watched that knife blade slipping open and closed, open and closed. Didn’t say a word.
“All right,” I said. “So you’re loyal to him. That’s nice, man. I’ll throw a different one at you. Did Gaglionci kill Donny Ward?”
His eyes came up fast and sharp, looked at me but he stayed silent.
“Yeah, Doran, Ward was murdered. Last night. There’s a warrant out right now for the guy who the police think killed him. That guy is me. Problem is, I didn’t kill Donny. I don’t think you did, either. I’m pretty sure your partner did. Got an idea why he did that, other than taking the opportunity to set me up?”
Doran just returned his stare to Thor’s knife and licked at the blood on his lips.
“Because the cops had already been to see Donny, and Gaglionci couldn’t let that continue,” I said. “Donny Ward could identify him as the guy who sent you to prison. Gaglionci went to see Donny, shot his dog and threatened his daughter and offered him a stack of cash, all to make sure he denied your alibi.”
That one got his eyes off Thor’s knife and back on me. He tilted his head, and the blood that dripped off his lip was forgotten for the moment.
“The summer you were arrested, Alex Jefferson came to him,” I pointed at Reed, “and asked for someone to help him handle some unpleasant tasks. Sort of tasks the police tend to be interested in. This guy hooked him up wit
h Gaglionci, who then went to see Donny Ward and came into the Heath family’s house masquerading as a detective the day before cops found the girl’s underwear in your trailer. When you broke out and put the pressure on Jefferson, he went right back to Gaglionci. And you’re right—he hired him to kill you. But Gaglionci’s not your partner, Doran. He sent you to prison once, and he’s probably hoping to do it again.”
I pointed at Reed, “Tell him how much money you moved for Gaglionci on October twentieth.”
“Five hundred thousand.” Reed looked sick. He’d just taken the least pleasant of gambles—giving up a killer like Gaglionci to keep one like Thor happy.
“You hear that?” I said, turning back to Doran. “Half a million. That’s how much your partner is sitting on. How many dollars of that have you seen, huh? How many?”
“Not one dime.”
“That’s what I imagined. And it came in the day after Jefferson died. The day after he killed Jefferson.”
“Who paid him?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I’ve got an idea. If I’m right, then the guy who paid him is the one who should have done your prison sentence.”
“Jefferson’s kid.”
I shook my head.
“Who?”
“I’ll give you that when you give me Amy. But it’s obvious that somebody paid him to do it. You didn’t see the cash, you didn’t get your revenge. You just got suckered. Throughout all of this, when has he taken a risk? He’s put you out there, made you take the heat, and if he can’t make me go down for all of this, he’ll see that you do. That’s the only reason you’re still around. You gave him someone to put into the field, to deal with me and watch the cops and now to put your fingerprint on his money. That’s how it’s going to work out. He’s kidnapped a woman and sent you into a trap because of it. Still feel like covering for him?”
Doran was looking at the floor, quiet, taking it all in. I didn’t have time to let him think, though. It was too late for that.
“This is the guy you’re protecting,” I said. “He sent you to prison. You don’t have to believe me, don’t have to buy a word of it. But I do have to get Amy back.”
I held my hand out to Thor and pointed at his knife. He gave me a curious glance, then passed the knife to me. The grip was warm from his hand. No trace of Reed’s blood left on the blade, though. He’d wiped it clean.
“We’ll stay here a long time if we have to, Doran. I’ll do all the things to you that you wanted to do to Jefferson. I’ll do those things, and I’ll tell myself it’s justified because of Amy, the same way you told yourself it was justified because of Monica Heath. I’ll convince myself, easy as you did, and maybe it’ll work out better for me.”
Doran raised his head. “We’ll get her out, and then you’ll tell me.”
“What?”
“We’ll get your girlfriend back, I’ll deal with Gaglionci, and then you’ll tell me who paid him. I need to know that. I will know that. Because if this thing is ending tonight, I’m going to be the one who finishes it.”
We left the apartment with Doran walking free. Before he opened the door, Thor folded his knife and put it in his pocket, scratched the side of his nose with a gloved finger, and stared at Reed.
“You made good decisions today,” he said. “Better than the other decisions you have made recently. You will have to make another one now. We are leaving, and you have many choices of recourse over what happened today. I would recommend choosing to forget I ever walked through your door.”
Reed nodded.
“I do not want to see you again,” Thor said. “I do not want you to even speak my name.”
“I won’t.”
“Another good decision,” Thor said.
Joe was waiting for us in the garage. He had the Taurus back inside, watched us approach with Doran, and nodded at the car next to my truck, a little Mazda RX-8 sports car.
“This is what he drove in. He was alone, too.”
“Good.”
“You know where she is?”
“With Gaglionci. Somewhere out by Geneva. Doran’s going to take us there.”
He’d told us that much up in Reed’s apartment—that Gaglionci waited for him near Geneva, in a place he’d found weeks earlier. He refused to offer more, saying only that he would show us himself.
Joe frowned. “Why doesn’t he tell us where she is first?”
“He won’t.”
“I’m not going to tell you now, have you on the phone getting a hundred cops down here,” Doran said. “You want to do that, you can, but you’re going to waste time. You don’t have a lot of time, either. Gaglionci knows how long it should take me to get back. Waste an hour or two, he’ll know something’s gone wrong, and he’ll react. He’s not the sort of guy you want to force into reactions.”
I nodded. Doran wasn’t lying about the risk of panicking Gaglionci.
“All right. You’ll take us there. Joe will drive, and you’re going to sit behind him.”
I pointed at Thor. I’d been careful never to use his name in front of Doran.
“He’ll be beside you. Move one inch more than he wants to see, and you’ll find it to be a very painful experience.”
Thor was frowning.
“What?” I asked.
He nodded at the RX-8. “Gaglionci is expecting this car to return. He will not look at it the same way as your car. It is not a threatening vehicle to him.”
A damn fine point.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, we’ll take the car. It may let us get closer.”
“He will go with you and your partner,” Thor said, pointing at Doran. “I will take this car and follow. If we are all in the same vehicle, he may try to cause an accident. By following, I will make sure that if he does that, he dies.”
Doran looked at Thor as if he were impressed. Doran had been a soldier, but he’d probably never had a sergeant who was more coldly efficient than Thor.
“You heard him,” I said to Doran. “Give him the keys.”
He took the keys out of his pocket, tossed them to Thor, and then got into the passenger seat of Joe’s car when I waved my gun at him. I holstered my gun, and Joe withdrew his Smith & Wesson with one hand and his keys with the other.
“You drive,” he said. “I’ll get in back and watch him.”
I was surprised for a moment, and then I understood: He had one good arm, and if Doran attempted to disrupt anyone’s driving, it would be easier with Joe than with me. Neither Joe nor Thor had any trust in Doran’s good intentions. I got behind the wheel of the Taurus, and Joe climbed in the backseat, sitting behind Doran, with his gun out. We left the garage with Thor following in Gaglionci’s car.
“This place you’re taking us,” I said to Doran. “You’ve been there since you broke out?”
“Yes.”
“Pretty secure place, then.”
“Empty place. Has been for years. A sort of campground for motor homes. It’s been closed a long time. There are some old cabins. Used to be a lake there, but the state breached the dam because it was going to fail. That’s been years ago.”
I was surprised he’d offered that much, but it didn’t help me a whole lot. I could get on the phone and tell the cops to find an old RV camp near Geneva and blanket it with a SWAT team, but before they got that in place, I’d be there.
“How’d you find Gaglionci?” I asked.
“Jefferson sent him to do the first money drop. He told me what the real deal was, that Jefferson had paid him to kill me. Said he thought Jefferson was too rich for me to settle for just fifty grand anyhow.”
“That’s what you asked for?”
“I told him fifty grand would buy his son one extra week of life.”
“You were serious? You would have killed his son?”
Doran was quiet for a moment.
“Maybe,” he said. “I thought about it a lot. All the time. I mean, I did his sentence, you know? And he killed Monica. End of the day, that’s
what it was really about. Nobody had answered for her yet. But would I have killed him, really, if Jefferson had done what I asked, not brought Gaglionci into it? Maybe not. I think if I had that money in my pocket . . . maybe not.”
“It was Gaglionci’s idea to partner up and go for more?”
“Yeah. I didn’t know how much Jefferson was worth. He did.”
“You ever see any of that fifty grand?”
“None. He told me it was what he’d been paid to kill me and that he was keeping it. Told me we’d get a hell of a lot more than that.”
“He did. Left you out, though, and all that fifty grand went to was setting me up. How’d he get my prints on it?”
“I did that. The night I grabbed you off the street. He’d told me what to do, just put the bills in your hands and work them around once you were out. Easy trick.”
Easy trick, easy answer, and somehow I still hadn’t thought of it.
“Who is that guy, anyhow?” Doran said, pointing in the rearview mirror at Thor.
“Someone I’ve worked with, time to time.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Sure, Perry. You’re a PI. That guy’s a warrior. I’ve seen a few before.”
“And Gaglionci?” I said.
His eyes moved to me, then back to the dark road unfolding ahead of us.
“Yeah.”
40
I told Doran I wanted to stop a mile or two before we reached the place where Gaglionci waited. For the remainder of the drive, off the highway and down winding country roads lined with trees, I worried that he wouldn’t tell me where to stop—that the story about the campground had been a lie, that he’d approach Gaglionci and signal him somehow, and we’d be exposed before we even knew we’d arrived. Instead, Doran instructed me to pull off the road in a gravel turnaround circle that seemed to be part of a farm.
“It’s maybe another half mile. There’s a gravel road off to the left. Big sign in front, and a gate, made up to look like some sort of a ranch, something Wild West. There’s an old trailer that was the office, and then a bunch of concrete pads where people parked the motor homes.”
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