I got that. And I was starting to get that Cobb realized that the only way to keep those things from happening was for there to be another suspect. And with Wendell Claiborne’s consorting with prostitutes and Ike Groves’s long history as a pimp, the connection, however dubious, was there. And, of course, all of it was complicated by the fact that Cobb could not tell Landry who the real killer of Wendell Claiborne was. He’d done what he felt he had to do, using the resources he had.
Cobb was as tough a person as I’d ever known, but he was also a decent, at times gentle man who loved his family and was passionate about his work both as a former homicide detective and now as a PI. And I could see it would be a while before he’d be able to put the loss of respect that Landry had professed behind him.
I got the sense that he wanted to be alone, and I headed off to see if I could get a line on where Terry Maughan was living. I returned to the neighbourhood where he’d lived as a teen and where he’d lived again recently. I hit pizza places, a couple of Tim Hortons, more convenience stores, and gas bars — all to no avail. And I tried the former Maughan neighbours — only three nearby houses had people at home and all of them were too recently arrived in the area to have known the Maughans. As dark was beginning to settle in, I stopped to fill up at a Fas Gas on 37th Street. Because it was a little farther away from the neighbourhood I was focused on, I wasn’t going to bother showing the attendant the photo of Maughan.
But when I got inside, the guy manning the till — his name tag told me he was Vihaan — was pretty chatty. After we had both lamented the bitter cold and shared where we’d rather be when the thermometer flirted with minus twenty-five — his chosen destination was Vancouver; mine was Hawaii — I decided to show him the photo.
He looked at it and nodded right away. “Oh, yes. I know him, he stops here often, fills up, always buys one of those.” He pointed at the large Kit Kat chocolate bars that were on a small rack right below me.
“You know his name?”
A shrug. “No, he never has said it and he pays at the pump with a debit card.”
“What’s he drive, did you notice?”
“Not always the same vehicle — sometimes a van, I think a company truck, writing on the side, and he also has a quite old, very rusted SUV, blue and white, I don’t know what kind.”
“The van, you remember what the business name was?”
Another shrug. “I did not pay attention.”
“When was the last time he came by, do you remember?”
“A few weeks, maybe.” Vihaan hesitated. “Why do you want to know all this?”
I had something ready should that question be asked. “I’m on the committee for our school reunion — we’re supposed to spread the word to people we went to school with. If this is the same guy, his name is Terry Maughan, but nobody seems to know his address and I’d really like to make sure he’s on the invitation list, you know?”
“Yes.” Vihaan nodded and smiled. “Well, it shouldn’t be so hard. He told me a few months ago that he had bought his old house — not so very far from here. I remember that because I never heard of that before, someone buying for a second time a house they lived in before.”
“You mean … wait, did he say if it was the house he’d grown up in?”
“Yes, I think so. He said it was his parents’ house a long time ago and it was for sale and he bought it. You’re his friend, so you must know the house.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know the house. Thanks, Vihaan.” I grabbed a package of gum and threw a twenty on the counter to pay for it. When he’d run it through the till, I declined the change.
“That’s for you, my friend. You’ve made my day.”
“Thank you,” Vihaan said.
As I started for the door, he called out, “Wait. Money!”
I turned back to him. “What? Oh, I paid at the pump.”
“No, his name … I think maybe his name is Money. I just remembered that. One time only he said to me, we were out of the Kit Kat bars and he said, that’s no good, you better have them next time I come in here. You look after Money and Money will look after you. I told him I didn’t understand look after money, but he said, ‘No, not money — I’m Money.’ He pointed at himself then.”
I didn’t understand it either, not at first, then I said. “Are you sure he didn’t say Monny? You look after Monny and Monny will look after you?”
“Monny … Money.” Another shrug. “There is no difference.”
“You might be right. Except that Monny just might be a nickname for someone with the last name Maughan. Anyway, thanks a lot, Vihaan, you’ve been a huge help.”
I stepped outside and for a while was barely aware of the cold. Were we finally getting close to answers that had eluded Cobb and me and everyone else for so long? Answers about the Kennedy killing? And maybe even the murder of Faith Unruh?
I shivered. Maybe it was the cold, or maybe it was realization that the night before I had been skulking around the house that Terry Maughan might once again be living in.
Terry Maughan.
Monny.
I got back in the Accord, started it, and cranked the heat. I called Cobb and got his voicemail. “Hey, I might have found Terry Maughan. Call me when you get this. And if I’m right, every time you pass a Fas Gas from now on, give ’em a tip of the hat.”
I was hoping an upbeat message and maybe even a breakthrough might raise his spirits.
I pulled out of the gas bar lot and headed back in the direction of what was once the Maughan residence. And might be again. I circled the block a couple of times, drove down the street the blue-sided bungalow sat on, once in either direction, slowing both times as I passed in front of the house, peering at what looked like as lifeless a place as it had been the previous night.
I parked down the street for a while, waiting for Cobb to call back. Still no sign of life around the house, nobody coming or going on foot or in a vehicle. I decided to check it out once more, see if maybe I could find something that would confirm that it was Terry Maughan’s house and that he was still living there, even if he wasn’t around right now.
I walked quickly; it was too damn cold to dawdle. Except I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I got there. If it was Terry Maughan and he answered the door, what then? I looked again, no lights on, decided to check the mailbox again. There was a flyer this time, no name on it. I looked around and decided to try the yard — maybe one of the windows back there wasn’t covered and I could get a look inside.
I had to pass the garage on my way, and just for the hell of it, I tried lifting the overhead door, expecting it to be locked, as it was the night before. But this time it yielded easily. I pulled it only far enough to get a look inside. And there on the near side, right in front of me, was a dirty white van. I straightened, looked around and lifted the door a little more, just enough to let me inside to have a look at the side of the van. There was enough light from the nearest streetlamp to give me a bit of a look around. The far side space was empty, so I guessed that Maughan was out in the Blazer.
I eased my way along the van and peered through the semi-light at the writing on the side — I could just make out the words — Foothills Furnace Maintenance. I stepped back and looked around the garage, but couldn’t make out much more than shadowy shapes. But one set of shapes interested me. What looked like a pile of tires up toward the far corner of the garage. I moved in that direction, pausing with each step to make sure I didn’t bang a shin on some piece of wayward machinery. Or kick something over and make a bunch of noise.
I got to the tires — there were four of them — and I tried to get a look, at the same time running my hands over them to determine if I could tell what vehicle they might have been from. I guessed they didn’t belong to the van. Too big and awfully wide. Meaning that if they belonged to the Blazer, they might be the ones that had driven repeatedly over the helpless body of Marlon Kennedy until the last vestige of life had been crushed out of hi
m. I bent over them, hoping to get a better idea of what brand they were, but it was too dark.
Suddenly, I heard a noise behind me and froze, hoping it was the wind from outside moving something around. I heard it again, closer now, and started to straighten and turn. I wasn’t fast enough. Pain detonated in my head — pain I’d known only once before, when an opposing pitcher had run a ninety-eight-mile-an-hour fastball off my right cheek and temple. But this wasn’t a fastball. The result, however, was much the same: a heavy, black curtain of swirling darkness settled over me, and I slid to the floor.
TWENTY
I woke up with a headache that registered 8.5 on the Richter scale, a horrific ringing in my ears, and the taste of blood in my mouth. Even in my less than solid mental state, I knew I was in serious trouble.
“Well, well … I was beginning to wonder if I’d hit you too hard. Welcome back.”
I looked up and saw a face I knew, the face from the photo — Terry Maughan. I tried without success to make my mouth work. The blood in my throat choked out the sound. I was lying on my side in the back seat of a vehicle, I guessed the Chevy Blazer. I looked around and saw that I was sharing the space with various fast-food remnants, a small gas can, and at least a couple of old furnace filters.
Maughan’s leering face was looking at me over the back of the front seat. I tried to sit up, but quickly realized that wouldn’t be possible, since my hands were tied behind my back.
“I figured we’d meet up sometime, but I didn’t think it would be this easy,” he said. “You are one dumb son of a bitch, you know that?”
I still couldn’t get my voice to quite work so I nodded. He was right. And leaving my cellphone in the car while I’d prowled around Maughan’s garage put the exclamation mark on the point. There would be no clever manoeuvring of bound hands to somehow turn on the phone and have Cobb or someone listen in.
I croaked out a word, coughed, swallowed, and tried again. “I know you killed Kennedy … did you also murder Faith Unruh?”
Maughan chuckled. “Cut right to the chase, eh? Probably a good idea, as you haven’t got much time. Actually, I didn’t, but I know who did.”
He laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d heard in a while.
“As soon as I heard about it, I knew he’d killed her. He’d done a couple of presentations at the school the week before — had Faith up there at the front of the class helping every time I turned around. I could tell he was thinking about doin’ the dirty, and like I said, when I heard she’d been killed, I knew exactly what had happened. But for a pretty good cop, the old man was kind of a fuckup as a criminal. Got into trouble a few times for boinking the suspects. Hell, this time he didn’t even get the ol’ peter out of his pants. Turned out little Faith was a scrapper, popped him one in the nose, he bled like a stuck pig and I’m guessing that’s what caused him to lose it. Then panic set in and he got the fuck out of there. I guess you can understand he didn’t share all the details with me, even when I told him I knew he’d killed her. But I’ll give him credit — he didn’t try to lie about it — just told me he’d made a mistake and was going to get help and begged me not to tell anyone.”
“Admirable,” I said.
He laughed hard at that.
“Admirable? Not so much. But do you know how fucking awesome it is being a kid who knows the old man’s worst secret? There wasn’t a whole lot of No, Terry, you can’t do that, No, Terry you can’t have that after we had our little talk. I kept thinking they’d figure it out, and maybe they did, but they didn’t have enough to put him away. As bad as he fucked up, he was awful lucky. He covered her up with a four by eight piece of plywood and then hauled ass out of there. He got back to the station, no sooner walked in than he caught a suspicious-death call — headed out, did the homicide investigator bit on that one, but made sure he’d be around to be part of the Unruh investigation. Got to the crime scene that he was pretty damn familiar with, conveniently cut himself, contaminated the shit out of the DNA that would have had his signature all over it.”
“And it was him who made the panties go away.”
“Yeah, there was blood on them and he was afraid it might be his — made sure they never got to the lab. So there it is — our dirty little family secret that’s going to stay a secret because that famous back alley is about to add another page to its … um … interesting history.”
“Why have you kept the secret all this time? Why would you give a shit if people knew what he did?”
“Kind of gets in the way of my career path when the old man’s a known killer, you know what I mean?”
“You still think you’re going to be a cop?”
He turned serious at that. “You better fucking believe it.”
My mind was a lot clearer now. I tried moving around, seeing if whatever he’d used to bind my hands was at all loose. It wasn’t and he laughed again. “Yeah, that won’t work. Cullen. That’s your name, isn’t it? I saw you on the tapes sneaking around back there. I must have been driving you assholes crazy with all the stuff I did to make it look like something was going on in the alley. I laughed my ass off over that. Then I did a little checking — your vehicle when you stayed at Kennedy’s place was a giveaway. I’ve been a couple of jumps ahead of you all the way.”
“Yeah, you’re a smart guy, Monny. Too bad you’re not smart enough to pass the written cop test. But hey, I hear they’re looking for forty-year-old illiterate guys. So hang in there.”
He reached over and punched me hard on the side of the face. I decided it might be best to keep my mouth shut.
“Let’s go, asshole. It’s time I tested this new set of tires.”
He turned back to the front and we drove off, moving fast. He turned the stereo up loud, maybe so he wouldn’t have to listen to me. I worked hard at the bonds that held me and had the same lack of success I’d had earlier. I reasoned that if we were starting out from near his house, we were only a couple of minutes from the alley where Kennedy had died and where I was scheduled to be the next victim.
Then Maughan turned the stereo down and slowed the vehicle to a crawl. I could see he was looking around, his head on a swivel, making sure there weren’t people hanging out to witness what was about to happen. The ride got bumpier; I guessed we were in the alley. A few more seconds ticked off and we rolled to a stop. One last look around, then Maughan leaned over the back seat, grabbed my hair with one hand, and with the other forced some kind of dirty cloth into my mouth. Having reduced to next to useless my last line of defence, he threw the driver’s side door open, climbed out, jerked the back door open and grabbed me by the shirt. He was bigger and stronger than I’d thought he would be, and he hauled me out of the back seat with ease, dragged me around the other side of the vehicle to where the trash can platform stood and forced me to the ground. He had a rope and he pulled it noose-like around my neck and wrapped the free end around the platform’s two-by-six posts.
“Good night, piece of shit,” he growled. “Oh wait, I almost forgot.” He reached in his pocket, pulled out a pocket knife and bent to make one more mark on the platform. He straightened and grinned at me. But he’d made a mistake. He was close enough that I could get in one kick. I did, behind the knee, and it took him down.
Problem was, that’s all I had. My hands bound, and now with my neck in the noose, I couldn’t follow up the kick with anything useful. All it got me was one more punch in the face, this one stunning me a little.
I sensed him leaving and closing the back door of the Blazer; he got into the driver’s seat and backed the car up, maybe twenty feet or so. Ready.
I heard the roar of the accelerator and saw the lights of Blazer coming at me. He was behind me: it was my head he’d crush first, and I knew that I was seconds from my last moments on this earth, visions of Jill, Kyla, and Donna the last pictures my mind’s eye would see.
Maybe it was reflex, but I squeezed as far to my right, as close to the platform as I could get, and realiz
ed there was a tiny space under the platform. I wiggled and squirmed as hard as I could and got at least some of me underneath it.
Some but not all. My left leg was still sticking out and the pain was beyond terrible as first one tire, then the other rolled over it. Even with the noise of the engine, I heard the snap of breaking bones. I wanted to scream, tried to scream, but couldn’t.
The Blazer came to a stop just past me and Maughan jumped out again, ran to where I was still partly under the platform, reached down and dragged me clear of it.
“Nice try, I’ll give you that. But I’ll bet you can’t do that again.”
I knew he was right. I needed both legs to squirm my way back under and I no longer had that capability. It was over, and we both knew it.
He didn’t try for a cool exit line, just walked quickly back to the Blazer and climbed back in. Wanting it over with.
I tried; I actually tried to make my body repeat what it had done before, this time with one leg useless and crushed. It was no good. I closed my eyes and tensed, heard the roar of the engine again, waited for the inevitable.
Maybe it was because my eyes were squeezed shut that I didn’t see the headlights. But I suddenly realized the Blazer was moving away from me. Toward the other end of the alley, where a second set of headlights had now appeared.
I was dimly aware of brakes squealing, gravel being thrown from beneath spinning tires, vehicle doors being opened and slammed shut, and finally what sounded like gunshots. Then voices, familiar ones.
“Christ, I almost ran over him myself,” one of the voices said. “Just saw him at the last second.”
The owner of that voice leaned over me. It was McNasty. Beside him Cobb’s concerned face peered at me as he reached down to pull the cloth from my mouth and gently remove the noose.
“Hang in there, buddy, you’re okay, an ambulance is on its way. We got him.”
“Is he still alive?”
Cobb looked over his shoulder, then back at me. “I don’t know. Jean-Luc’s with him.”
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