“No problem. I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes one way or the other. If he gets home in the meantime, leave me a message.” I took her number and hung up, happy to have something to do. Leaving a note for Edgar in case he showed up while I was out, I stepped on the Segway and traveled to Make-a-Manatee, indulging myself by speeding since there were no shoppers to run into.
The store’s darkened windows reflected a ghostly me as I approached. I slowed to a stop and got off in front of the grille, jerking on it. It gave a metallic rattle but stayed put. Locked. I shone my flashlight into the shop but saw nothing unusual or out of place. No body, for instance. I purred down the wing and around the corner to the service hall that ran behind the stores. The door leading to Make-a-Manatee was also locked and nothing caught my eye. In all likelihood, Mike Wachtel had stopped for a beer on the way home or to run an errand, and had forgotten to tell his wife. Still, I wanted to be thorough, to set Glenda Wachtel’s mind at ease, so I returned to the main hall and glided to the mall entrance, planning to check the parking lot.
Figuring that Wachtel parked as close as possible to his store, I exited into the chilly night air and scanned the lot. No cars. No injured man lying on the asphalt. The muffled whoosh of traffic drifted over from I-95, busy even at this hour. I turned toward the garage. Might as well check it while I was out here. The Segway stuttering over the asphalt, I approached the garage and angled up the ramp. Shadows dominated the echoing space, but I made out the silhouette of a sedan parked against the right-hand wall. Kicking myself for not asking Mrs. Wachtel what kind of car her husband drove, I approached it, automatically noting the make, model, and license plate as I drew nearer.
A feeling of unease settled over me, like someone had tossed a horsehair blanket over my shoulders, and I dismounted the Segway, wanting more mobility than the vehicle provided. Wishing I had a weapon, I stepped closer to the Pontiac. A slight sound, like a heavy exhalation, made me turn, but I saw nothing. Adrenaline keyed me up; hyperalert now, I illuminated the rear of the Pontiac with my flashlight beam. The light revealed dull green paint and showed an empty interior when I shone it through the rear window. No one inside, unless they were ducked down on the floor. I relaxed a tad, dropping my arm, and the beam skidded off the trunk to the concrete where red droplets gleamed wetly.
Blood. Fresh blood.
I caught my breath and quietly backed away from the car. When I was far enough away that no one could jump out of the car and take me by surprise, I sidestepped until I could see the driver’s side. A crumpled shape lay beside the door. My flashlight revealed Mike Wachtel, lying half on his stomach, cracked glasses askew on his face, cell phone stomped to bits just past his outstretched fingers, which were purple and swollen. His face looked like he’d gone three rounds with Mike Tyson, with blood leaking from his nose and split lip. The cast on his leg rested at a weird angle, and I suspected he’d broken the leg again. I dialed 911 for an ambulance as I approached the still figure.
Dropping to my knees beside him, I felt for a pulse on his neck and found one, reasonably strong under the circumstances. His skin was still healthily warm, so I figured he hadn’t been lying here in the cold garage for too long. I relayed that to the 911 operator, wishing I had a jacket or a blanket to drape over him to help ward off shock. I stood and looked in the car, spying a fleece jacket on the front passenger seat. Carefully easing the door open with my hand covered by my shirt hem to avoid smudging fingerprints, I leaned over and tugged the jacket toward me. Something in a pocket weighted it down, and I jerked it impatiently. The jacket clunked against the center console, knocking over an empty soda can, and then it was free, hanging heavy in my hand. What did Wachtel carry in his jacket—a shot-put ball? Jamming my hand into the pocket, I felt my fingers close around the familiar contours of a gun. Slowly, I withdrew it. A. 38. I laid it on the driver’s seat and tucked the jacket around Mike, who stirred and moaned but didn’t regain consciousness. Then I told the 911 dispatcher I was hanging up and called Glenda Wachtel to tell her I’d found her husband.
The ambulance, the police, and Mrs. Wachtel arrived simultaneously, just as Edgar called me on the radio to let me know he was in the security office. I explained the situation to him briefly, told him I was going to drive Mrs. Wachtel to the hospital, and asked him to fetch the Segway from the garage. The woman was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane and had clipped the door of her van on a support column when she pulled up; clearly, she shouldn’t be driving. She hovered near the EMTs as they treated Mike, bleating her husband’s name until one of the EMTs gently but firmly moved her out of the way.
I told a cop about the gun, and she immediately moved to secure it. Relieved, I put an arm around Mrs. Wachtel’s shoulders, feeling knobby bones beneath the thin cardigan she wore. She looked to be in her early to mid fifties, like Mike, with wiry brown hair flecked with gray and a sallow complexion. She had sunken eyes under heavy, scraggly brows, and a straight nose. “Come on, Mrs. Wachtel,” I said as the EMTs loaded Mike, strapped to a gurney, into the back of the ambulance. “Let me drive you to the hospital.” I eased the keys from her unresisting fingers, guided her to her Honda minivan, helped her buckle in, and trotted around to the driver’s side.
Mrs. Wachtel sat silently for most of the drive, and I worried she was in shock. I cast a glance at her stony profile and noted her hands clenching and unclenching on the fabric of her sweatpants. She muttered something as we pulled into the hospital parking lot.
“Pardon me?” I said.
“Damn you, damn you, damn you,” she said again, apparently to herself, or maybe to her husband. “You promised!”
I opened my door, but the woman sat unmoving on her side of the car. “Mrs. Wachtel? We’re here.”
“I’m not going through this again. I’ve got the kids to think about.” Scrunch, open, scrunch, open went the hands on her sweatpants.
I leaned in and touched her shoulder. She jumped and jerked her head to stare at me. It took a half second for her eyes to focus on my face. “We’re at the hospital,” I said.
“Oh.” She fumbled with the seat belt, finally got it off, and stepped out of the car. I steered her toward Emergency where the ambulance had already off-loaded Mike Wachtel and was preparing to depart. The automatic doors shushed open in front of us, and we entered a waiting room where only one woman was curious enough to turn and look at us. Several other people slumped on molded plastic seats. Harsh lights reflected off linoleum floors and the screen of a wall-mounted television playing a Gilligan’s Island rerun. The odors of vomit and Lysol suggested the ER hadn’t been this quiet all evening. Marching Glenda Wachtel to the intake desk, I asked for Mike, saying, “This is his wife.”
“Exam room three,” the nurse said, flicking an assessing gaze over Glenda. Apparently deciding the woman wasn’t going to collapse on the spot, she asked, “Do you have an insurance card?”
Blinking several times, Glenda seemed to come back to herself. “Yes.” She slid the card out of her wallet and handed it to the nurse. “I’m sorry,” Glenda said, turning to me. “What was your name again?”
“EJ Ferris,” I told her. “Don’t worry about it—you’ve had quite a shock.”
“I need to see Mike.” Glenda started down the hall to the left, sneakered feet squeaking on the linoleum.
She was going the wrong way. I knew this not because I was an expert on the hospital’s layout, but because there was a uniformed police officer standing outside the door of a room to my right. I’d bet a week’s pay that was exam room three. I summoned Glenda back by calling her name softly and pointing. “Oh my God,” she said when her gaze lighted on the policeman. “He won’t arrest Mike, will he?”
I stared at her. “Arrest Mike? Your husband was the victim of a crime. Why would the police arrest him?”
“You’re right,” Glenda said hurriedly. “I don’t know what I’m thinking.” She raked both her hands through her hair, sucked in a deep breath, and approach
ed the cop. She said something to him, and he stepped aside so she could enter the room.
The cop approached me. Young and sandy haired, he spoke with an Oklahoma twang. “Mrs. Wachtel tells me you found the victim and called 911?”
When I nodded, he asked me the usual questions, taking careful notes of my answers, most of which were “no.” No, I didn’t see anyone else in the garage. No, I didn’t see any other vehicles. No, I didn’t know Mike Wachtel well and had no idea if he had any enemies. No, the mall hadn’t been having any trouble with muggings. “You think it was a mugging?” I asked.
“His wallet was missing,” the officer said, tucking his notebook away. “In my experience”—which was maybe two months at the most, based on how young he looked—“that spells mugging.”
“Um,” I said noncommittally. I might have agreed with him if it weren’t for the strange way Glenda Wachtel had acted on the way over here; the gun in Mike’s jacket, which suggested he knew he needed protection; and the fact that it looked like someone, or a pair of someones, had worked Mike over pretty good. It was possible he’d annoyed a mugger by refusing to hand over his wallet, but the way his face had been pulped made me suspect a more personal motive. “We might have something on the mall’s cameras,” I told him.
When the cop strode away, I poked my head into exam room three just in time to see Glenda Wachtel sling her purse at Mike, saying, “Don’t ‘honey’ me.”
Luckily, the purse was small and bounced off the side of the gurney instead of knocking into the now mangled and cracked cast encasing Mike’s leg. His eyes were open, although the lids sagged with pain or medication, and he stretched one hand toward her. When he caught sight of me, his mouth fell open and his hand dropped.
I held up Glenda’s keys. “I just wanted to give these back to you,” I said apologetically, feeling awkward about interrupting. “I’ll catch a taxi back to the mall unless you need me?”
“What are you—?” Mike’s speech was slurred by his swollen lips. He looked from his wife to me and back again.
“Thanks,” Glenda said, reaching for the keys. Perhaps realizing she’d sounded rudely abrupt, she said, “Really, thank you. You’ve been very kind.” Unshed tears glittered in her eyes and she looked down, studying the linoleum as if it had a treasure map engraved on it.
I felt like there should be more I could do, but it was clear from the awkward silence that neither of the Wachtels wanted me around. I left through the ER door, happy to wait outside for my taxi in the chilly but fresh air.
The taxi dropped me beside my car in the Fernglen lot, but instead of driving home, as any sane person would at almost midnight, I returned to the security office, anxious to see if the cameras had captured any images that could identify Mike’s assailant.
“Yo,” Edgar greeted me. Raised brows corrugated his forehead clear up to where his hairline would’ve been if he’d had one.
I explained why I’d come back, and he helped me skim the camera data, looking for anyone entering the garage around or shortly after nine o’clock when Mike Wachtel would’ve been headed for his car. At eight fifty-three a van exited the garage, and at eight fifty-nine two burly figures, caps pulled low over their foreheads, bodies obscured by bulky coats, and scarves muffling their lower faces, entered the way I had, walking up the ramp into the garage. Once inside the garage, they disappeared, apparently having the savvy to stay out of the cameras’ line of sight.
Edgar cocked an expressive brow at me and I nodded.
Another camera caught Mike Wachtel as he entered the garage from the mall at four minutes passed nine. We lost sight of him as he transited an area that lay between two cameras’ fields of vision and caught a glimpse of him near the concrete support Glenda Wachtel had sideswiped. He made it to his car, took off his jacket, and tossed it on the passenger seat. Before he could get in, an arm came briefly into the frame and Mike staggered, then disappeared from view.
“That didn’t look like a mugging to me,” I said, standing with my hands on my hips.
“Uh-uh,” Edgar agreed. “Enforcers.”
I looked a question at him.
“Thugs. Rent-a-beating. Paid to deliver a message.” He jabbed his meaty fists in a quick one-two punch.
“How do you know that?” I asked, eyeing him curiously.
“EJ.” The way he said my name implied it was obvious to anyone with an IQ over twelve.
“Okay, assuming you’re right, who would hire them?”
“Spouse.”
I shook my head. “No way. She didn’t know.”
“Girlfriend’s hubby or father. Pissed-off customer.”
“He sells stuffed animals!”
Edgar’s shrug implied that didn’t mean squat. “Bookie. Loan shark. Angry business partner.”
I tapped a fingernail on my tooth and wondered if there was some connection between the assault on Mike Wachtel and the deaths of Celio Arriaga and Captain Woskowicz. I didn’t immediately see one, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Asking Edgar to download the pertinent camera data to a DVD, I told him I’d drop it at the police station on my way home.
Twenty-two
After not enough sleep, I was back at Fernglen by seven o’clock, hoping to catch Curtis Quigley and tell him about the garage incident before he heard it from another source. Since I was headed to Allied Forge Metals with Grandpa, I didn’t plan to stay long, but I thought it was important to tell him about it in person. A quick scan of the newspaper on my doorstep told me the local reporters hadn’t thought it worth mentioning, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Pooja wasn’t at her desk yet when I arrived, so I tapped on Mr. Quigley’s door and walked in when he called, “Enter.”
He sat behind his desk, sandy hair slicked straight back from his forehead, gel-set furrows etched in by the comb. A pale blue bow tie matched the blue topaz and silver cuff links and the thin stripe in his otherwise white shirt. He was reading a thick packet, and he glanced up under his brows. His head jerked fully up when he recognized me. “Oh no.”
Was that any way to greet his acting director of security? “Good morning, Mr. Quigley.”
“Tell me it’s not another body.”
“It’s not another body.”
His thin chest caved in as he let out his breath. “Well, thank goodness for that! I hope—”
“Mike Wachtel, the Make-a-Manatee store owner, was… mugged in the garage last evening.”
“You said it wasn’t another body!” He half rose to his feet in alarm and indignation.
“He’s not dead.”
Quigley subsided into his chair, lips pursed with displeasure. “Small comfort.”
I suspected it was rather a large comfort to the Wachtels, but I didn’t say so. “He’s going to be fine.” I summarized the evening’s activities for him, finishing with, “And I’ve given our camera data to the police.”
“Fine, fine,” Quigley said. “Well, if that’s all—”
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about upgrading the cameras, or at least making all of the existing cameras operational. If we—”
“Now, EJ,” he said testily, “you know our operating budget won’t stretch that far. Captain Woskowicz and I agreed that the camera coverage we have is sufficient.” He waved me away. “Maybe we can discuss it in October when I present next year’s budget to the FBI board. I’ll see you at your interview tomorrow.”
Faced with a clear dismissal, I hesitated only a moment before leaving his office. I’d be in a stronger position to argue for the cameras if I were made director of security, I told myself, returning to the security office to make sure everything was running smoothly before leaving to meet Grandpa.
Since Grandpa drove like a frustrated Formula One driver when he wasn’t tailing someone, I drove to Philadelphia. Hitting the road felt great, and my shoulders and spine loosened as we sped along the interstate. It had been far too long, I realized, since I went on a road trip. Maybe I’d take a couple of days off
in April and just go. No route, no plan, no reservations. My spirits lifted at the thought. The trees along the interstate were budding out, the sky was bluer than blue, and I was tempted to just keep on driving until we hit Canada. Leaving as late as we did, we had little problem with traffic and crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge into Philly a bit over two hours after we started.
“Where to from here?” I asked Grandpa, who had located Allied Forge Metals, set up an appointment, and gotten directions. He was dressed today in his version of southern gentleman couture, sort of a Colonel Sanders meets Rhett Butler ensemble, complete with straw hat, cane, and fake white mustache waxed to curvy points.
He directed me south, to a light industrial area not far from the airport, from which I could smell, if not see, the Delaware River. Half a mile of low, featureless concrete buildings stretched before us when we turned into the business park, and we had to loop around several times before spotting the number we wanted, with a small sign announcing “Allied Forge Metals” bolted over the door.
“Show time,” Grandpa said, adopting a southern drawl as thick as syrup-soaked grits. “Now, remember, Emma-Joy, you’re just my driver because my gout is acting up, so concentrate on looking pretty and not saying anything. You ought to be able to handle the first part, at least.”
“Ha-ha,” I said drily, offering him my arm so he could pretend to limp into the building.
The interior was as bland as the exterior, with indoor-outdoor carpet that probably came from a remnant sale, two upholstered chairs with cushions that looked stiffer than a Brit’s upper lip, and a laminate reception desk staffed by a woman in her thirties who looked up when we entered. “Help you?” She spoke with a harsh, nasal accent but had a pleasant smile.
“I’m Colonel Barclay Dickinson, United States Army, retired,” Grandpa Atherton said, removing his hat and presenting his card with a flourish. “I’ve got an appointment with your William Silver. And what is your name, lovely lady?”
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