Turned out the alarm wasn’t that current anyway. Nicholls had taken his time about it, gone in on foot late one night and gotten close enough to see the company decal advertising the security system. It was old and common enough that he was able to use one of the jamming devices he’d picked up in Florida over the winter.
He reminded himself to concentrate on what he was doing. The lock on the back door was taking too long, but for the scenario he had in mind to work he had to be careful not to leave any signs it had been forced. Once he finally got inside he took only a couple of steps before he made himself stand still and just listen. Ninety percent chance the old bastard was sound asleep upstairs but there were no guarantees. An ex-police chief would be likely to have weapons in the house no matter how old he was, and it was unlikely he’d forget how to use them. Just like riding a bicycle.
There were no lights on that Vince could see, and once his eyes adjusted to the darkness he could tell he was standing in a tiny mudroom just off the kitchen. He took a couple of tentative steps into the kitchen itself. He could make out just enough to see a door off to his left that led into a hallway leading to the front of the house. Vince started walking again, followed the hallway to a stairwell on his right. The steps were carpeted and it was easy to stay quiet on the way up.
There was a big open area at the top of the stairs, an old easy chair under a window near a small bookcase. There was a reading light near the bookcase but when he cautiously raised his head above floor level he could see the chair was unoccupied. He stopped and listened again, heard nothing. He got to the top of the stairs and stood still, looked down the hallway. There were two closed doors on each side and another one at the end. The one at the end was partly ajar and he could see the faint bloom of light at its corner.
In the end it was a letdown. He walked silently to the door and gently pushed it open, saw the old man dwarfed by a huge old double bed and its massive mahogany headboard. He was propped up almost to a sitting position on some overstuffed pillows, a couple of hardcover books on the blankets beside him. There was an ornate old-fashioned lamp and a half-empty glass on a nightstand. The guy had to be somewhere in his seventies, but he had a hard, gaunt face and wisps of snow white hair askew on a head that was mostly bald.
He sure as hell wasn’t senile. Vince thought he had been quiet but Harrison was already waking up. His eyes registered Vince standing there and while they widened slightly there wasn’t even a trace of fear. Instead he was already rolling awkwardly onto his side and reaching for the drawer in the bedside table, Vince rooted in place watching while everything congealed into slow motion. He snapped out of it barely in time, reached the side of the bed just as Harrison’s hand closed over the handgun. Vince had badly underestimated who he was dealing with. Harrison, old as he was, had gone from sleep to awareness in only a couple of seconds. Vince’s mistake had been in thinking it would be like the first one, that he’d have the time to remind Harrison of why he was there, what he’d done, why Vince was going to kill him, the whole evening wrap-up that played out on every fucking TV show and movie that had ever been made.
It was nothing like that. The old man was still trying to pull the revolver out of the drawer but Vince pulled Harrison’s arm straight back until it formed almost a right angle at the elbow. There was a split second when their eyes met and he could see that Harrison knew he was only a millimeter away from gone and then Vince pushed the muzzle inward, toward the old man’s right temple and wrapped his finger just a little tighter over Harrison’s. The gun went off and blew the far side of Harrison’s head all over the wall and the bedcovers.
The sudden explosive violence of it was almost too much. Vince gingerly withdrew his own finger from the cramped confines of the trigger guard, careful that Harrison’s stayed there and just as careful not to exert even the smallest amount of extra pressure on the man’s index finger. For all he knew the old bastard had a hair-trigger on the thing, and it would be hard to convince anyone that he’d committed suicide twice.
Vince had been gloved up, no prints, but if he got caught in the house none of that would matter. The GSR alone would be damning enough, no matter where he was. He had to get clear now and get cleaned up, but first he forced himself to look at the entire tableau, see if it looked right. Vince realized he was shaking, heading into shock, and he got himself the fuck out of there before he made things worse.
21
There are worse ways to go, Wagner thought, although it was sad that Harrison had lain there moldering in bed for at least two or three days before anyone had gotten curious about why he wasn’t around. That thought was a little too close to home so Wagner decided to think about something else.
It wasn’t surprising that the gunshot hadn’t raised any alarms with the neighbors. The windows had been closed and the house itself sat on a large lot screened by trees. Somebody probably had heard the shot, but gunshots were too easily mistaken for something else—the old reliable car backfire, some kid playing with firecrackers—anything plausible enough for neighbors to convince themselves that everything was all right in paradise and they could go back to sleep.
Chief Harrison—everyone, even Frank Stallings after he’d succeeded him, had always referred to him as ‘Chief’ even though the old man had retired from the Strothwood P.D. years ago—had gone out the hard way. Most of the left side of his head was gone, excised by the .357 round that had entered his right temple and blown blood and bone and brain tissue onto the pillows and bedclothes and the wall a couple of feet beyond.
It was an ugly scene but there was nothing shocking about it. Wagner had seen this before, too often. It had been an occupational hazard for cops long before anyone had come up with the acronym PTSD to describe it. It was the first time Wagner had seen it in Strothwood, but he could think of at least four times when he’d seen the same thing before he’d taken the job here.
The recoil of the heavy revolver had thrown Harrison’s right arm slightly back and onto the pillows behind and beside him. His pajama sleeve had slipped down and exposed the forearm almost to the elbow. The gun was still in his hand. Blood and tissue had obscured some bruising around Harrison’s wrist and forearm but Wagner would have to wait until he got him cleaned up.
He sighed heavily, glanced around the room. A squat, heavy water glass sat on the nightstand beside an elaborately framed picture of Harrison’s late wife. It looked like she had been in her fifties at the time of the photo, still young enough that Wagner could see how beautiful she’d once been. She was smiling in the photo, and it looked like a natural expression for her. Somehow the old bastard must have made her happy. From what little Wagner knew of him he hadn’t done that anywhere else, had hung on well past his sell-by date and retired late in life.
Wagner had accepted the M.E.’s job in Strothwood only a couple of years before that, and the two men had never gotten along. Harrison was an old-school, hyper-conservative hardliner who’d worked his way up from driving a patrol car, had spent his entire career in Strothwood.
Frank Stallings had been Harrison’s successor, parachuted in over Brent Williams’ head, and once Wagner had gotten to know Frank he was even more puzzled about the appointment than he’d been when it was announced. Frank was much different than Harrison, even accounting for the disparity in their ages and backgrounds.
Wagner heard movement behind him and snapped out of it, realized he’d been staring at the picture. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the massive form of Jimmy Slade waiting patiently in the doorway.
“You can take him now, Jimmy.”
Jeff Wagner looked down at Harrison one more time. It occurred to him that someday he might be looking down at Frank Stallings in the same circumstances.
22
The heat in the room was smothering. The glare of the sun was gone but the smell of mildew hung in the air even though Vince had kept the windows open the night before. At least the ancient air conditioner had finally started to blow so
me cooler air. He wasn’t sure how long he could take its noise, but for now he went around and closed the windows back up, turned the corner into the kitchenette and got a couple of cold beers out of the fridge.
At first he’d been tempted to just get in the car and drive until its air conditioning kicked in, but driving around just to cool off would be stupid in a place where strangers were scrutinized as a matter of routine. Tommy had been right about that. Vince had heard enough stories anyway, guys inside who’d been stopped for something stupid like a busted tail light and then had their car tossed, priors checked, you name it. Something would get found–or placed. Probable cause was pretty elastic in a place like this.
Vince had decided to stay put. One bored redneck cop and you never knew what would happen. In a bigger city he wasn’t likely to get profiled—the car was late model, clean, no visible rust, no I HATE COPS decals—and Vince was white, clean-shaven, had spent some money on non-offensive suburban working guy clothes, no tattoos, neatly trimmed hair. Even in the limited time he’d spent around town he’d gotten the vibe. The only profile that really mattered was that you were new in town.
The people he wanted to find had made it easy for him. They were the type who’d never been adventurous enough or ambitious enough or smart enough to leave where they were born. They were all right there in Strothwood, where they started. He was probably sitting within ten miles of where they all lived.
That proximity was a double-edged sword, easy in one way, really hard—maybe fatally hard—in the other. He had more people to deal with and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life doing it. If they’d been spread a little more widely across the planet it would have been a lot better. What he had to do would attract attention, and from what Tommy had told him in prison you didn’t have to do much to attract attention in Strothwood. All you had to do was show up from somewhere else.
This would be the most important thing he’d ever do in his life, because he sure as hell hadn’t done anything so far. Sometimes he just wanted to get the whole thing over with, run wild and go Taliban on the bastards. It was an urge that so far he’d managed to control by reminding himself that he’d been inside for a long time after what had happened to Tommy, had somehow put in the minutes and hours and days and weeks knowing there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do.
Now he could, and he’d done the first two and gotten away clean. The enforced patience from his time inside had served him well, helped him control the sadness and the rage now that he was out. It had helped him plan what he was going to do, how it might all work without a lethal injection or life sentence at the end of it. Tommy wasn’t the only one who’d been robbed. Vince had lost time too, he was losing time now, and once in a while he’d catch himself looking up at an impossibly blue sky or breathing clean air and realizing that no matter what he did he didn’t want his own life to end too soon.
He’d been surprised that the women were still in town. He had two of them on his list—making a list, checking it twice—that fucking list had been the only thing that had kept him semi-sane after Tommy’s death. Tommy had gone inside, what, nine or ten years ago? A lot could happen in that time. They could have married, moved away, or both. They hadn’t.
Vince had spent most of his remaining sentence going back over every single fucking conversation he’d had with Tommy about what had happened, trying to dredge up names and events, who’d done what. He’d run it over and over again in his mind until he could spool the whole thing off as if it wasn’t Tommy’s memory but his own.
No question part of it had been Tommy’s fault. Even Tommy admitted that for a smart guy he could be ridiculously guileless and trusting, especially when he was smitten with some girl. He’d met this one in Boston. She’d been a student at some kind of vocational college, and he’d been kicking around doing unskilled construction work and selling some grass on the side. Tommy had never gotten into it to the extent Vince had, kept his clientele to college students. He was only twenty-two at the time, young enough and articulate enough and charming enough to fit in. He’d been great with girls ever since he hit puberty, could’ve had nonstop one-nighters for as long as he wanted, but his emotions would always get in the way and fuck him up. He’d fall in love in, like, forty-eight hours, and it didn’t take much to set it off, a lot of the time just superficial shit that somebody else would just think gee, that was fun and then move on like a normal person. All it took with most of them was just one or two special, unique things, most of the time just physical, and he’d be off and running.
That’s exactly what had happened to him with this girl, a triple whammy of a spectacular body, an almost impossibly sweet disposition and a voracious appetite for sex that only revealed itself after they’d been out a few times. It led Tommy to believe that he alone had brought it out in her, and after a while he convinced himself that he had. She was two or three years younger than he was, from some little place he had never heard of, and it was easy for him to think of her as somehow innocent and naïve.
Listening to all this, sitting in a fucking barren exercise yard and years removed from any intimate contact with a woman, Vince had found himself alternately envious and pissed off. He was six years older than Tommy, had made his own mistakes with women to go along with the many other mistakes he’d made, but Tommy had raised fucking up with women to an art form.
Vince made an effort to stop thinking about it. He was still living inside his own head, the same fucking way he’d gotten through all the time inside. The only difference was that now, if he wanted to, he could get up from that fucking bed and walk out of that fucking room and get in the car and just go.
He wanted to. The only thing that stopped him was that if he did he’d leave everything unfinished, and that wouldn’t be right. The remote control was already on the bed and he turned it on, looked for something stupid to watch on television. He looked around the room – bare walls except for a couple of cheap landscape paintings that looked like they’d come from Wal-Mart, a so-called kitchenette he could just about turn around in, one easy chair in the corner near a dirty front window.
It occurred to him that he was locked up all over again.
23
“Can’t be easy,” Frank said.
“If it was easy,” Wagner shrugged, “anybody could do it. You do this kind of shit in this kind of town you find yourself cutting up people you know.”
They were sitting in Saunders’ bar. It was a nice afternoon, the sun was shining, and the place was virtually empty. Even the usual denizens of the place ventured outdoors once in a while. It was a Saturday and technically Wagner’s day off, but he’d ended up working late the night before. Now he’d made a determined effort to dress for what was left of his weekend, old khakis and a garishly florid, baggy short-sleeved shirt draped loosely on his skeletal frame. Frank stifled a grin. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d seen Jeff Wagner wearing anything other than some variation of a dark suit and tie. The effect was jarring. He looked like Count Dracula on vacation.
“Poor old bastard had been lying there a couple of days,” Wagner said. “I’m surprised anybody found him at all. He didn’t deserve that.”
Who the fuck does, Frank thought. He wasn’t that interested in the details, but for some reason Wagner seemed like he needed to talk. With Wagner that didn’t happen very often, and Wagner had heard Frank out often enough.
“So what’s on your mind?” he asked.
Wagner told him what he’d seen, about the bruising.
“.357,” he said. “Hell of a mess.”
Old-school wheel gun like the Colt Python Frank used. Heavy weapon with maybe enough recoil to wrench an old man’s wrist when it went off. Whether that would or could cause bruising was Wagner’s department, not his, and even Wagner didn’t sound too sure.
“Sketchy,” Frank said, “Anything else?”
“Not that I could see,” Wagner said, “but anything else isn’t my jo
b, is it?”
“Who found him?”
“Cleaning lady, comes in once a week.” Wagner knew what he was getting at. “From what Brent told me she took one look and called it in. Never got past the bedroom door.”
“Don’t blame her. Who was the next one in?”
“One of Brent’s new recruits.” Wagner searched for a name. “Hans or Franz, I can’t tell ’em apart.”
“That explains the bruises on Harrison’s wrist. The kid was probably checking for a pulse.”
“Funny,” Wagner said. He didn’t smile. “Anyway, you know the drill. It’s probably exactly what it looks like, but Brent told Cunningham what I told him and now they’re looking into it. Probably suicide, but Cunningham and Brent both know they don’t have much of a track record. It’s a CYA exercise.”
“I suppose the investigation is, uh, ongoing.”
“Very slowly, but yes,” Wagner said solemnly. “All avenues are being pursued.”
“They don’t have a clue.”
“Nope.”
24
Karl Jamieson had a story, even though little of it would be hard news by the time he got the paper out. Word of Harrison’s death had gotten around fast, but Ed Cunningham called him anyway.
“You heard about Harrison.”
There’d been no preamble at all, no pleasantries.
“I don’t think, “Cunningham said, “there’s anything to be gained by getting into the circumstances.”
It was easy to see why Ed Cunningham wanted a lid on it. Cunningham liked voters to think sunshine came out of his butt, and there wasn’t much sunshine in a lonely old man killing himself. Cunningham was either unaware or had forgotten that the Ledger rarely if ever mentioned ‘suicide’ as a cause of death where locals were concerned. That policy was an artifact of an older, more genteel time, but it happened to be one that Karl Jamieson agreed with, if only because suicide had touched his own family a generation ago.
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