“What insurance?”
“Said she had to take some measurements for a rebate or something.”
“Measurements of what?”
“Dunno,” said Skippy. “I told her to try back when you were here.”
“So she didn’t come in?”
“Nothing about insurance was on the list you gave me,” Skippy said, glancing at the sheet of paper, still on the counter. “She was like, okay, some other time. Then I got dressed and drove down to Dunkin’ Donuts. I was on my way back when I got pulled over.”
“For the taillights,” Roy said.
“Uh-unh,” said Skippy. “I went down to Auto Zone the day before and fixed ’em.”
“He stopped you for no reason?” Roy said.
“Happens all the time in this town, Mr., um…”
“With Freddy?”
“Who’s Freddy?”
“The cop who arrested you.”
“He’s one of the worst,” Skippy said. His eyes were livelier now; he looked a lot more believable.
“Did he ask to search the car?” Roy said.
“Yeah.”
“You could’ve said no.”
“But there was nothin’ in it—that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Skippy said. “I thought, you wanna waste your time, go ahead.”
“Then he opened the glove box.”
“And I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was one of those practical jokes.” Skippy’s eyes met Roy’s. “I hate practical jokes.”
“Me too,” Roy said.
“And Mr., um, Roy? I’ve never messed with guns and never would. What if something bad happens? You’re a loser forever.”
“So whose was it?” Roy said.
“No clue.”
“And how did it get there?”
Skippy shrugged. His leg, which had stopped jiggling, started up again.
Fourteen
“Turk?”
“Hey, Roy. You’re back? How’d it go?”
“Good.” He thought about it. “Very good.”
“Yeah?”
“The guy’s a genius. Dr. Chu.”
“What’d he do?”
“Gave me his cocktail.”
“How’d it taste?”
“Turk. It’s not a real cocktail. You take it from an IV.”
“Oh.”
“But I’m calling about Skippy.”
“Skippy?”
“Murph’s nephew—who I left in charge of the house.”
“What about him?”
Roy told Turk Skippy’s story.
“Lots of guns in the valley,” Turk said.
“There are?”
“This is a well-armed corner of the country.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“That’s you, Roy. You live in a rarefied world.”
“The hell I do.”
Silence. “Sorry. I just meant—”
“I want you to take this case,” Roy said.
“What case?”
“This gun bust, or whatever the hell it is.”
“C’mon, Roy,” Turk said. “It’s open-and-shut.”
“I admire your fighting spirit.”
Another silence.
“They’ve got some kind of vendetta against the kid,” Roy said. “He fixed his goddamn brake lights and they still pulled him over.”
“With a revolver in the glove box.”
“Maybe.”
“Where’s the maybe?” Turk said.
“Will you talk to him?”
“I’m not seeing the maybe.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” Roy said. “On my tab.”
“It’s not the money,” said Turk. “It’s the waste of money. I hear this kind of bullshit story every day. They always turn out the exact same—”
“Yes or no?”
A sigh. “Send the little peckerhead in.”
Skippy went on foot to see Turk. While he was gone, Roy brought in the chair, set it up in the corner of the big room where light flowed in from two angles. It shone on all the gluey parts—Roy had used enough to cause overflows at every joint—rendering the rest, the original chair, almost invisible. The title came to him: Autopsy. He gazed at it for a minute or two, feeling pleased with himself until a thought hit him: Got to start working faster, boy.
Silence. Where was he with that? Silence didn’t exist yet, the blurry attenuated image in his mind and the long silver cone lying on the floor of the big room, still far apart, almost unrelated. Roy found his pad, lying on the kitchen counter, brought the tip of the soft pencil down on the blank page. At that moment, he remembered the last time he’d tried sketching ideas for Silence and how he’d ended up with the facade of the Hobbes Institute. A sketch that should still be there: but the top page was blank. Had he taken it with him on the trip? No.
But not a certain no. Roy dumped out his travel bag, still unpacked. No sketch. He held the pad to the window, angled it, saw faint vertical indentations from the pilasters on the top page.
“I’ve got an interview next week,” Delia said.
“What kind of interview?”
“With a think tank.” She flipped through her appointment book. “Called the Hobbes Institute—ever heard of it?”
Roy shook his head. “I thought you liked your job.”
“I do,” she said. “They came to me—a guy named Tom Parish. Very bright. It sounds like they do interesting work.”
“Like what?”
“The same kind of things I’m doing now,” Delia said. “But more hands-on.”
“No harm in hearing what they have to say.”
Roy was still sitting there, on a stool in the light-filled corner, when Skippy returned.
“How did it go?”
Skippy came over, hands red from the cold. “Okay, I guess.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much. He wants you to call.”
“But about the case,” Roy said. “What did he tell you?”
“I could, um, go to jail.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Roy said.
Skippy just stood there. He didn’t argue, didn’t disagree, but he didn’t believe Roy, not for a second. If he’d ever had fight in him, there wasn’t much left.
Roy picked up the sketch pad. “I had a drawing on this,” he said. “The front of a building. Did you see it anywhere?”
“You think I stole it?” Skippy said, but without indignation in his voice; flat, detached, beaten.
“Of course not,” Roy said. “It’s not even worth anything. I’m just asking if you saw it.”
Skippy shook his head. “Can I go now?”
“Go where?”
“Upstairs. Unless you want me to leave.”
“Skippy,” Roy said, “what’s happened to you?”
“Huh?”
Roy could still see himself at Skippy’s age, at least dimly. Had he ever been like this, so defeated? He’d had hockey; and his mom. “At home. At school. With your friends.”
“Nothin’,” Skippy said. “Can I go upstairs?”
Roy nodded. Skippy trudged out of the big room and up the stairs. Then came the muffled thump of him falling on the spare-room bed. Among other differences, some probably unknowable, they had different kinds of moms.
“Turk? What’s the story?”
“The usual,” Turk said.
“You told him he was going to jail?”
“No point in sugarcoating. Not with the clients—I learned that long ago.”
“But he’s a kid.”
“Lucky for him,” Turk said. “That means juvie up in Colchester and he’ll be out in three years, max.”
“Can’t you make a deal?” Roy said.
“Only if he cooperates,” Turk said.
“Cooperates how?”
“By giving up his source—where he got the gun,” said Turk. “And he flat-out refuses. End of story.”
“Refuses why?”
“His
reason or the real reason?”
“His reason,” Roy said.
“He claims ignorance of how it got in his car,” Turk said.
“What if it’s the truth?”
“Never is,” Turk said. “I touched base with Freddy. Looks like the kid got himself caught in the middle of a turf war.”
“What turf war?”
“Seems we’ve got two separate drug gangs in the valley, both dabbling in stolen guns,” Turk said. “The kid bought from one gang. The other gang called it in.”
“Lost me,” Roy said.
“With the idea of making happen precisely what did happen,” Turk said.
“I still don’t get it.”
“An anonymous call came into the station, Roy. That’s why they pulled the kid over.”
“Anonymous call?”
“Five minutes before they busted him,” Turk said. “A total setup, with the expectation he’d cough up his source in a plea deal, of course. Using the cops as a cat’s-paw, if you get the idea, take all the business for themselves. Kind of clever for these parts.”
“But if the call was anonymous,” Roy said, “what makes Freddy so sure?”
“He’s a smart cop, believe it or not,” Turk said. “And a tough one.”
Freddy was neither of those things on the ice. “I just don’t see why—”
“Roy? Freddy doesn’t want to screw this kid. He names a name and the whole mess goes away.”
Roy went upstairs. Skippy was lying on the bed in the spare room. He sat up when Roy came in.
“You want me to split?” he said.
“No,” said Roy. “I want to get to the bottom of this.”
“All I know is what I said.”
“So there’s no name you can give up?”
“Think I wouldn’t if I could?” said Skippy.
“I actually think you might not,” Roy said. His legs felt tired all of a sudden, like he’d been on snowshoes the whole day; he leaned against the desk. Skippy lay back down, gazed at the ceiling.
“Sorry about the shoveling,” Skippy said. “Didn’t get it done.”
“Hard to,” said Roy, “from inside a cell.”
Skippy flinched, just a little—if Roy hadn’t been watching closely he’d have missed it—but the meaning was clear: the reality of Skippy’s future had hit him, maybe for the first time.
“We know their theory,” Roy said. “What’s yours?”
“My theory? Of like what happened?”
Roy nodded.
Skippy’s eyes met his. “Somebody put the thing in the glove box. Must of.”
“Like who?”
Skippy shrugged.
“Do you have any enemies?” Roy said.
“Enemies?”
“Anyone you’ve been in a fight with, owe money to, that kind of thing.”
“I got in a fight with Billy Cordero a couple months ago.”
“Yeah?”
“But he beat the crap out of me,” Skippy said. Long pause. Then he said, “So that’s no help.”
Roy laughed. After a moment or two, Skippy started laughing, too.
“I should have beaten the crap out of him instead,” Skippy said. “Then we’d have a good theory.”
They laughed together, long and hard, like something hilarious had just happened.
“Um, Roy?” Skippy said. “Your nose is bleeding again.”
They went outside. Skippy showed Roy where his car had been parked, right in front of the garage.
“Locked?” Roy said.
Skippy shook his head. “Locks were already busted when I bought it.”
They got in the truck, drove to Dunkin’ Donuts and then back as far as the spot where Freddy had pulled Skippy over, just past Dee Dee’s Beauty Salon.
“Wish that insurance lady had come by sooner,” Skippy said.
“Why?”
“’Cause the call came in five minutes before I got busted, right?” Skippy said. “So if the insurance lady had like woke me up even ten minutes earlier, I’d of been home safe with my doughnut.”
“True,” Roy said, just catching that home safe, “but that’s not really…”
“Not really what?”
But Roy wasn’t listening, had already started scrolling through the numbers on his phone. He came to his insurance agent.
“Hi, Mr. Valois,” said the insurance agent. “How can I help you?”
“What’s this rebate about?” he said.
“Rebate?”
“The one that involves taking measurements,” Roy said. “A woman came out the other day.”
“First I’ve heard of it. Can you hang on? I’ll check with the underwriter.” Ten or twenty seconds went by. The agent came back on the line. “Nope,” he said. “Nothing like that’s going on. Did you let her in?”
“No.”
“Whew, thank goodness,” he said. “So many scam artists nowadays, can’t be too careful.”
Roy clicked off, turned to Skippy. “What did this insurance lady look like?”
“I should of let her in?”
Roy got impatient, couldn’t help himself. “Just what did she look like?”
Skippy bit his lip. “Um,” he said, “well, she was black for one thing.”
“Black?”
“Not dark black, more light-skinned—kind of like the Corderos.”
“She was one of the Corderos?”
“Oh, no,” Skippy said. “Nothing like the Corderos. Just that kind of skin. But she talked like you.”
“Like me?”
“Educated,” Skippy said. “Like from college. And she was tall, with straight hair, real shiny.”
“What did you say?” Roy’s voice rose.
“The part about tall and straight hair?” said Skippy. “Real shiny?”
Roy tried to bring his voice back to normal range. “Could you draw her face for me?” He had to be sure, and that meant something visual.
“Draw?” said Skippy. He looked confused, almost shocked. “I don’t know how.”
“Just give it a try,” Roy said.
“How come?” said Skippy. “You think this has something to do with, like…”
They drove back to the barn. Roy handed Skippy the sketch pad and the soft pencil. Skippy, tongue between his lips, hunched over the page, made a few tentative marks. Skippy was right: he didn’t know how to draw. But in the end he did the job anyway—Roy wasn’t surprised—and so accurately around the high forehead and elegant neck that his attempt at glossy straight hair wasn’t necessary. It was Lenore from Wine, Inc., beyond doubt; the woman who’d somehow hurt him with her grip.
Lenore? In Ethan Valley? Trying to get into his house? Trying and succeeding, even if that meant setting up a sixteen-year-old kid: What could possibly justify that?
Roy searched his house, quickly, but from top to bottom. He found no sign that anyone had been searching ahead of him, and nothing was missing except that unfinished sketch of the Hobbes Institute. A miniaturist’s version of the real situation, Roy thought: the Institute itself was missing, too.
“Roy? Are you feeling okay?”
Fifteen
“I want the best defense money can buy,” Roy said.
“You’re talking about the kid’s gun charge?” said Turk. They sat in his office, overlooking the green; a crow landed on the snowy top of Neanderthal Number Nineteen.
“He didn’t do it,” Roy said.
“Someone planted the gun?”
“Yes.”
“One of the gangs?” Turk said. “And the kid was the real target, for reasons unknown? Pretty expensive ploy—they’d be sacrificing the gun, a six-hundred-dollar item.”
“It wasn’t one of the gangs,” Roy said.
“No?” said Turk. “Who, then?”
Roy took out Skippy’s drawing, handed it to Turk. “Her,” he said.
Turk put on his reading glasses. “One of the Corderos?” he said.
“This isn’t a Cordero,�
�� Roy said. “Her name’s Lenore. She’s supposedly a clerk or manager in a wineshop in D.C.”
“I don’t get it,” Turk said. “What’s her relationship to the kid?”
“No relationship,” Roy said. “She needed uninterrupted time in the house, that’s all.”
“Your house?” Roy nodded.
“She’s an art thief?”
“A thief, anyway,” Roy said. “Among other things.”
“What did she take?”
“A sketch.”
“One of yours?”
“Yes.”
“How much is it worth, rough estimate?” said Turk, reaching for a pen.
“Nothing,” Roy said. “Not monetarily. It’s more like…evidence, I guess you’d say.”
“Evidence of what?”
“This all goes back to Delia,” Roy said.
Turk glanced at Skippy’s drawing. “This woman knew her when you were in D.C.?”
“No,” Roy said, but as soon as the word was out, thought: can’t be sure of that. Lenore was probably about the same age Delia would have been now. “This is all about the Hobbes Institute.”
“What’s that?”
“The outfit Delia worked for.”
“Yeah?” said Turk. “I always thought she worked for the government.”
“You did?”
“What’s so weird about that?” Turk said. “They must hire economists by the thousands.”
“I didn’t say it was weird.”
“You’re looking weird.”
“I’m surprised, that’s all,” Roy said.
“About what?”
“That she never mentioned her work to you.”
“Actually, she did,” said Turk. “She told me she hated it.”
Roy shook his head. “She must have been joking. Delia was dedicated to her job.”
“Maybe,” Turk said. “But I remember this one occasion distinctly—that night we got snowed in at the warming hut.”
“Winter carnival?”
“Yeah,” Turk said.
Roy remembered. One of the last winter carnivals in Ethan Valley: the selectmen commissioned a study to see whether it made economic sense for the town and canceled it soon after. He and Delia, Turk, Turk’s wife at the time, and a few other people snowshoeing on the back side of the mountain got caught in a blizzard. This was before Ski America came in, before any cutting on the back side. There was just one steep and twisting path—probably going back to the Indians—that hooked up with the Appalachian Trail, and at the T stood the warming hut. They’d fired up the woodstove, shared what food they had—a surprising amount—and there’d even been a wineskin to pass around.
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