by Dan Simmons
Bingo, thought Kurtz. He couldn’t believe he’d found the connection this easily. And he couldn’t believe that Gonzaga and Farino Ferrara didn’t know about this. He squinted at Rigby. “Why are you telling me this?”
She smiled her Cathy Rigby smile at him. “It’s classified information, Joe. Only a handful of us at the department knows anything about it. Kemper and I were briefed by the Feds only last week, because of the O’Toole shooting.”
“All the more reason to ask you why you’re telling me this,” said Kurtz. “You suddenly on my side here, Rigby?”
“Fuck your side,” she said and set down the coffee cup. “I’m a cop, remember? Believe it or not, I want to solve Peg O’Toole’s shooting as much as you do. Especially if it ties in with rumors we’re hearing of junkies and heroin users disappearing in Lackawanna and elsewhere.”
Again, Kurtz didn’t blink or allow a facial muscle to twitch. He said, “Well, for now, I just want to find whether this Cloud Nine is real or not. Any suggestions?”
“We could drive through the hills around town,” said Rigby. “Look for roller coasters or Ferris wheels or something sticking up above the bare trees.”
“I have to be back in Buffalo tonight,” said Kurtz. To meet a woman coming across the Canadian border and ask her why her fiancé shot me. “Have any smarter suggestions?”
“We could go to the library,” said Rigby. “Small town librarians know everything.”
“It’s Sunday,” said Kurtz. “Library’s closed.”
“Well, I could wander into the Neola police department or sheriff’s office, flash my badge, and say I was following up on a tip and ask them about Cloud Nine,” said Rigby.
Kurtz was getting more and more suspicious about all this helpful assistance. He said, “Who will I be? Your partner?”
“You’ll be absent,” said Rigby. She dug out money for the check. “You go into the local sheriff’s office with those raccoon eyes or wearing those sunglasses, with your scalp all carved up like that, they’ll throw us both in jail on general principles.”
“All right. Shall I meet you back at the car in an hour?”
“Give me ninety minutes,” said Rigby. “I have to go find a doughnut place open. You don’t go ask local cops for help, even on directions, without bearing gifts.”
They’d noticed the green signs for the police station, only a block east of Main, and Rigby decided to walk. She said that she didn’t want to lose all credibility by having someone see her being dropped off in that rusted piece of Ford crap Kurtz was driving. Kurtz watched her disappear around the corner, her short hair still being stirred by the strong wind from the west and her corduroy jacket blowing, and then he opened the Pinto’s trunk. The .38 was there, hidden under the spare tire, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He pulled the still-sealed pint of Jack Daniel’s out of its hiding place and slipped it in the pocket of his leather jacket. Then, pulling his collar up against the gusting wind, he headed off down Main Street in search of a park.
Even in an absurdly prosperous town like Neola, there had to be a place where the winos hung out, and Kurtz found it after about fifteen minutes of walking. The two old men and the stoned boy with long, greasy hair were sitting down by the river on a stretch of dirt and grass out of sight of the park’s jogging path. The men were working on a bottle of Thunderbird and they squinted suspiciously as Kurtz settled himself on a nearby stump. Their eyes grew a film of greediness over the suspicion when he took out the sealed pint. Only the greediness disappeared when Kurtz said that he wanted to talk and passed the pint over.
The oldest man—and the only one who talked—was named Adam. The other old man, according to Adam, was Jake. The stoned boy—who was focusing on something just below the treetops—evidently didn’t deserve an introduction. And although Jake did not speak, at every question and before every answer, old Adam looked to Jake—who made no visible sign but who seemed to pass along permission or denial telepathically—before Adam spoke.
Kurtz shot the shit for fifteen minutes or so. He confirmed Rigby’s assumption that everyone in Neola either worked for the Major’s South-East Asia Trading Company or benefitted from the money from it or was afraid of someone who did work for it. He also confirmed the details of the 1977 shooting at the high school that had put eighteen-year-old Sean Michael O’Toole in the state asylum.
“That fucking Sean was a crazy fucking kid,” said Adam. He wiped the mouth of the bottle and handed the pint to Kurtz, who took a small sip, wiped the mouth, and handed it to Jake.
“Did you know him?”
“Everybody in the fucking town fucking knew him,” said Adam, taking the bottle back from Jake. “Fucking Major’s fucking kid—like a fucking prince. Little fucking bastard shot and killed my Ellen.”
“Ellen?” said Kurtz. Arlene’s research had reported that the O’Toole kid had gone to the high school with a .30-.06 one morning and killed two fellow students—both male—a gym teacher, and an assistant principal.
“Fucking Ellen Stevens,” slurred the old man. “My fucking girlfriend. She was the fucking girl’s gym teacher. Best fucking lay I ever had.”
Kurtz nodded, sipped some of the disappearing whiskey, wiped the mouth, and handed it on to Jake. The stoned boy’s eyes were glazed and fixed.
“Anybody ever say why he did it? This Sean Michael O’Toole?”
“Because he fucking wanted to,” said Adam. “Because he fucking knew that he was the fucking Major’s fucking son. Because he’d fucking got away with everything—until Ellen gave him fucking detention that fucking week because the little fuck had drilled a hole in the wall of the girl’s locker room and was fucking peeping at Ellen’s fucking girls. That fucking old bastard the Major has run Neola since fuck knows when, and his fucking kid didn’t know that he couldn’t shoot and kill four fucking people and fucking get away with it You got another fucking pint, Joe?”
“No, sorry.”
“That’s all right. We got another fucking bottle.” Adam showed a smile consisting of three teeth on top and two on the bottom and pulled the Thunderbird wine out from behind his stump.
“Whatever happened to the kid?” said Kurtz. “Sean Michael?”
Adam hesitated and looked to Jake. Jake did not so much as blink. Adam evidently got the message. “Fucking psycho went up to that big fucking nuthouse in Rochester. They say he got fucking burned up a few years later, but we don’t fucking believe it.”
“No?”
“Fuck no,” grinned Adam, checking with Jake before going on. “Little kids in the town’ve seen him—seen him wandering the woods and backyards at night, all scarred up from his burns, wearing a fucking baseball cap. And Jake here seen him, too.”
“No shit?” Kurtz said conversationally. He turned expectantly to Jake, but the other old man just stared unblinkingly, took the Thunderbird from Adam, and helped himself to a swig.
Adam turned his head as if he was listening to Jake, but Jake’s expression was as gray and expressionless as the October sky.
“Oh, yeah,” added Adam, “Jake reminds me that the kids in town used to see the Artful Dodger’s ghost mostly around Halloween. That’s when the Dodger would bring Cloud Nine alive again—at least for one night—All Hallow’s Eve. I ain’t never seen it myself, but kids I knew over the years used to say that the Dodger come back with a bunch of other ghosts from the other side and would ride all them dead rides up Cloud Nine one last time.”
“The Dodger?” said Kurtz. “Cloud Nine?”
“When they was all kids, according to my dead Ellen, they used to fucking call that fucking O’Toole kid ‘the Artful Dodger.’” replied Adam. “You know, from that fucking Charles Dickens book. Fucking Oliver Twist.”
“The Artful Dodger,” repeated Kurtz.
“Fucking aye,” said Adam. “Or sometimes just ‘Dodger,’ you know, ’cause he was all the time wearing that fucking Dodger cap…not the L.A. cap, but the old fucking Brooklyn one.”
Kurtz nodded. “What was that you were saying about something called Cloud Nine?”
Adam lowered the bottle and looked at Jake for a long minute. Finally Adam said, not to Kurtz but to the silent old man, “Why the fuck not? Why should we do that fucking Major a favor?”
Jake said nothing, showed nothing.
Adam turned and shrugged. “Jake don’t want me to tell you, Joe. Sorry.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause Jake knows that everyone who fucking goes up there in the last twenty fucking years or so to fucking find Cloud Nine gets their ass shot off, and Jake fucking likes you.”
“I’ll take my chances,” said Kurtz. He took two twenties out of his billfold.
“Fucking liquor stores ain’t open today,” Adam said mournfully.
“But I bet you know somewhere else you could get some good stuff,” said Kurtz.
Adam looked at Jake. “Yeah,” be said at last.
He told Kurtz about the Major building an amusement park in the hills and gave Kurtz the directions. He warned him to stay away until after Halloween, after the ghost of the Artful Dodger and his pals had their last rides on the abandoned Ferris wheel and little train and dodge-em cars up there. “Wait ’til mid-November,” said old Adam. “The Dodger ghost don’t come around much in November according to the kids. And the other ghosts only join him on Halloween.”
Kurtz stood to go, but then asked. “Do you know why just on Halloween?”
“Fuck yes I know,” said old Adam. “Back when the Major was still running fucking Cloud Nine, Halloween was the last night it was open before shutting down all fucking winter. The last night was fucking free. It was the one time when everyone in the fucking town went up to that fucking amusement park—sometimes it was almost too fucking cold to ride the fucking rides—and the Major always had a big fucking parade with his fucking son on a fucking float—that little weasel, the Artful Dodger, riding up there and waving like the fucking queen of fucking England. Halloween. It was the fucking brat’s birthday.”
Kurtz looked over to see if the stoned kid was paying any attention, and noticed for the first time that the boy had gone, slipped away into the trees along the river. It was as if he’d never been there.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Kurtz’s plan was to take the Pinto, check out Cloud Nine, and get back to downtown Neola before Rigby King finished her schmoozing with the local sheriff’s department. But she was sitting in the car when he walked back to the downtown block where he’d left it.
Shit, he thought. “Hey, Boo,” he said. It was an old joke and he’d almost—not quite—forgotten the origin of it back at Father Baker’s Friday Movie Night.
“Hey, Boo,” she said back. She didn’t sound happy. “You find your talkative drunks?”
“Yeah,” said Kurtz. “I thought you needed at least ninety minutes to break the ice with your local cops.”
“I could’ve spent ninety days here and they weren’t going to tell me anything,” said Rigby. “They wouldn’t even acknowledge that your goddamned amusement park ever existed. To listen to the Sheriff and his deputies, they never heard of Major O’Toole and barely’ve heard about his company that seems to rule the roost here.”
“Which means that they’re all on the Major’s payroll,” said Kurtz.
Rigby shrugged. “That’s hard to believe, but that’s what it sounds like. Unless they’re all just cretinous small-town cowturds too stupid and too suspicious of an outside police officer to tell the truth.”
“Why would they be suspicious of a B.P.D. detective?”
“Well, no peace officer likes some wiseass coming in from the outside—but I’m not some FBI puke trying to take over some local investigation. I just told them the truth—that we’re investigating the shooting of Major O’Toole’s niece up in Buffalo and I came down here on my day off to pick up any loose information.”
“But they didn’t have any loose information,” said Kurtz.
“They were tight as a proctologist’s dog’s asshole.”
Kurtz thought about that for a second.
“So,” said Rigby, “you find out where your Cloud Nine is?”
“Yeah,” Kurtz said. He was trying to figure out some way he could convince her to stay behind while he went up there. He couldn’t. He put the Pinto in gear and headed out of town.
They’d just crossed the Allegheny River marking the south edge of town when Kurtz’s phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Joe,” said Arlene, “someone just signed on to Peg O’Toole’s account using her computer.”
“Just a second,” said Kurtz. He pulled the car into a turnout and got out. “Go ahead.”
“Someone signed on from her computer at the Justice Center.”
“Are you at the office?”
“No, home. But I’d set the software to copy me at both machines.”
“Did you get O’Toole’s password?”
“Sure. But whoever signed on using her machine did so to delete all of her e-mail.”
“Did he have time to do it?”
“No. I copied it all to my hard drive before he deleted it. I think he took time to check what was there first.”
“Good,” said Kurtz. “Why would whoever this is use her machine to sign on for her e-mail if he had the password? Why not do it and erase her mail from his own computer?”
“I don’t think whoever it was had the password, Joe. I think he—I don’t think it’s a woman, do you?—I think he used some software to hack it on her machine and signed on immediately.”
“It’s Sunday,” said Kurtz. “The offices would be closed there. It makes sense. What about the e-mails?”
“She only saved a week’s worth at a time,” said Arlene, “and they’re all parole business stuff, except for one letter to her boyfriend.”
“Brian Kennedy?”
“Yes. It was e-mailed to his security company e-mail address in New York, and was time-stamped about ten minutes before your appointment with her.”
“What do they say? His and hers?”
“She only saved her own mail to file, Joe. Do you want me to fax you a copy?”
“I’m busy now.” He had taken several paces away from the Pinto, and now he looked back to where Rigby was frowning at him from the passenger seat. “Just tell me.”
“Her e-mail just said, and I quote—‘Brian, I understand your reasons for asking me to wait, but I’m going to look into this lead this afternoon. If you come on Friday as usual, I’ll tell you all about it then. Love, Peg.’”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“And she sent it just before I met with her?”
“Ten minutes before, according to the time stamp.”
“Then she must have been leaving work early that afternoon for a reason. Nothing else in the mail that we can use?”
“Nothing.” There was the hiss and crackle of cell static. Then Arlene said, “Anything else you want me to do today, Joe?”
“Yeah. Track down the home address and phone number of the former director of the Rochester nuthouse. I want to call him or talk to him in person.”
“All right Are you in town now? The connection’s lousy.”
“No, I’m on the road for a few more hours. I’ll call you when I get back to the office. Good work.”
He folded the phone and got back in behind the wheel.
“Your stockbroker?” said Rigby.
“Yeah. He thinks I should sell when the market opens tomorrow. Dump everything.”
“Always a good idea,” said the cop.
They drove a mile beyond the river, turned left on a county road for three-fourths of a mile, turned right onto an unmarked gravel road, and then turned left again onto two strips of dirt that ran steeply uphill.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going, Joe?”
Kurtz concentrated on keeping the Pinto moving uphill through the trees, around
occasional bends that gave them glimpses of the valley, river, and distant town, and then south around the mountain until the dirt track ended at an old wooden roadblock.
“End of the line,” said Rigby.
“This is how old Adam described it,” said Kurtz.
“Old Adam?”
“Never mind.” Kurtz got out of the car, looked uphill toward where the overgrown remnants of the two-rut road continued, and began walking slowly uphill. Various faded signs on the barricade announced private land and warned against trespassing. He went around behind the Pinto, pulled a lumpy old nylon backpack from the trunk, and walked past the barricade.
“You’re shitting me,” called Rigby from beside the car. “Joe Kurtz is going for a hike?”
“Stay in the car if you want,” called Kurtz. “I’m just going to walk up here a bit and see if I can see anything.”
“Stay here and miss seeing Joe Kurtz go for a hike?” said Rigby, jogging uphill to catch up. “No way in hell.”
Shit, thought Kurtz, and not for the first time that day.
They followed the dirt track two hundred yards or so up the hill through the bare and blowing trees until they were stopped by a fence. No old and rotting wood barricade here—the fence was nine feet tall, made of mesh-link steel, and had rows of unrusted concertina razor-wire atop it. Here the yellow no-trespassing signs were new and plastic and warned that the owners were authorized to use deadly force to repel trespassers.
“Authorized by who?” said Rigby, panting slightly.
Kurtz took a short-handled pair of wire cutters from the pack.
“Whoa!” said Rigby. “You’re not going to do this.”
Kurtz answered by testing to make sure the fence wasn’t electrified and then snipping a three-foot-high line of links. He began working horizontally.
“God damn it, Joe. You’re going to get us both arrested. Hell, I should arrest you. You’re probably packing, too.”
He was. He still had the .38 in his belt at the back, under his leather jacket.
“Go on back to the car, Rigby. I’ll just be a few minutes. I just want to look at this place. You said yourself that I’m not a thief.”