by Lee Goodman
“I know, I know,” I say, “my movies are boring. I’ll let you pick the flick.”
“Serious?”
“Sure,” I say. I hope he’ll come. I feel a wave of love for Kenny, my occasional foster son, as this idea of sitting home with him, downing a few cold ones, and watching a stupid movie momentarily calms my anxiety over this business of being suspected in Scud’s murder.
“ ’Cept I can’t,” he says. “Me and Amber’s having dinner at her mom’s.”
“Amber, the one from the pet store? Serious stuff, meeting the parents.”
“Just her mom.”
“Well, some night we’ll chill with a movie. Your pick.”
“How’s Lizzy?”
“Good.”
“Haven’t seen her since, like, two weeks. How’s Flo? I’m still waiting for my friend with the backhoe to move them rocks.”
“Rocks?”
“The patio. Remember?”
“Oh, sure. Listen, I need you to do this. I got a list of pills. Prescriptions. Go get the PDR and look up each one. Write it all down. Ignore the technical stuff. Just what it treats.”
“Is next week okay?”
“Today, Kenny.”
“I don’t know, I got all this work from civil, and—”
“Kenny, you’re reshelving books, for cripe’s sake. Get Penny to help if you need it. Do it now.”
“Do it now,” he says in falsetto. I take a fake swing at him, he takes a fake swing at me. I have the urge to lock him in a bear hug, this surrogate son, so committed to his life of underachievement.
• • •
Back in my office. I sit and rearrange things on the desk. I try the pencil holder on the left side instead of the right. It’s a clumpy, ugly ceramic mug Lizzy made in second grade. I LOV YOU DADDY is etched into the bottom.
I file some stray papers. I sip cold coffee. The inventory is in the middle of my desk, and though I’m interested only in the meds, I scan the rest of it. What strikes me is how spare a legacy it is for a man of almost forty. I flip through to see if he owned books. He did: “Twelve books of various subject matter,” the list says, no more.
The only thing I know about Seth Coen that makes him interesting is the wild game and fish packed along with his body parts in the freezer. I look at the inventory with this in mind, and I start seeing evidence of his outdoors interest. There is miscellaneous outdoor clothing, a sleeping bag, a camp stove, fishing poles and lures, a tent. He comes a bit more into focus. He was a city rat with country-boy longings. Noticeably absent from the inventory are guns of any kind. How do you hunt deer without a rifle? But since he was a convicted felon, it would be illegal for him to possess a firearm, so was he playing by the rules, or did he keep his guns someplace else?
I wonder if, while he was in prison, the idea of the great outdoors was a comfort or a torment to him. I take a blank file folder and label it COEN, SETH: INVENTORY. I put the inventory inside, but I see something just as I close it. First page, halfway down, it says: “Keys found in apartment, application unknown.” On the list of half a dozen keys of unknown usage, this: “Yamaha.” Whoever typed the inventory appropriately capitalized the proper noun, which is why I noticed it. Yamaha. But there is no other mention of anything having to do with a motorcycle. I flip to the list of miscellaneous documents, looking for an owner’s manual or registration. Nothing. I go to the clothing heading, looking for a helmet or leathers. Nothing. He might have gotten rid of the bike long ago and never thrown out the extra key, but my interest is piqued, so I call Dorsey and leave a message asking if the troopers are aware of Seth Coen having had a motorcycle. Then I file the Coen inventory in the box of miscellaneous documents and try to think of something else to keep my mind off the problem of being a murder suspect.
Janice buzzes. “Nick, you have a call. Lizzy’s guidance counselor.”
I take the call.
“Mr. Davis,” she says, “Lizzy tells me you’re picking her up after school today. We were wondering if you could come in to talk for a few minutes?”
“About what?”
“Something Lizzy has on her mind. She’ll tell you.”
“Is Lizzy okay?”
“Of course. She just—”
“Has she done something?”
“Nothing like that, she just—”
“Is her mother coming, too?”
“Lizzy prefers to speak just with you.”
“This sounds serious. Give me something to go on.”
“No, no. Not serious. Not that kind of serious. Will you just come in?”
She’s pregnant. What else could it be? I never saw any interest in boys. I’m amazed. I put the phone on speaker so I can start stuffing papers into my briefcase. If I leave immediately, I can get to Lizzy’s middle school about lunchtime and . . .
. . . and what? Pull her out of class, out of the lunch hall? She’d never speak to me again. But I want to be with her. It’s okay, I’ll say, we’ll figure it out together, babe, you’re not alone.
“So shall we see you at about three?” the guidance counselor says.
“I could come now,” I offer miserably, knowing she’s going to say no and I’ll just have to wait the four hours till school is out.
“No, no, Mr. Davis, it’s no emergency. Just something Lizzy needs to talk about. Three o’clock, then?”
We hang up. I stare at the phone. So now I’m not only a murder suspect, but something terrible is going on with Lizzy.
Dorsey calls. He tells me they have no information about a motorcycle. DMV records show nothing. The puzzle of the Yamaha key feels urgent. I need to unravel these murders, not just because I felt a connection to Cassandra and to Zander and because I’m an assistant U.S. attorney but because Kendall has me convinced that I’ve been caught in the crosshairs of the investigation. My mission is self-preservation.
I hang up with Dorsey, find a Yamaha dealer in the Yellow Pages, and reach a guy in the service department who says if I bring the key in, they may be able to work backward to get the key-cutting code, and then there might be a record of the model and registered purchaser for that bike.
“Sounds good,” I tell him. “I’ll do that.”
“What’s it look like?” he says.
“The key?”
“Yeah, the key, what’s it look like?”
“Don’t know; I don’t actually have it.”
“You’re sure it’s a bike?”
“What else would it be?”
“Four-wheeler,” he says.
“Four-wheeler?”
“Yeah. Or a snowmobile, or an outboard, or I don’t know, they make lots of stuff.”
“Can you tell by the key?”
“Dunno.”
“I’ll get the key and come over there,” I tell him, and we hang up.
The problem is that I don’t have the key, and I might not be able to get it. What happens to all a guy’s stuff when he ends up in his own freezer? For all I know, it went to his sister, who has already hauled it to the landfill. If the key does exist, Dorsey might be able to get it for me, but I’d need a good reason, and I don’t have one.
I scan the inventory again. I remember Seth’s freezer—its nonhuman contents: the butcher-paper packages labeled in green marker. Some were venison (perhaps the very deer poached that night at the reservoir), but there were also packages of lake trout, steelhead, rainbow, and maybe others, all the products of Seth’s fishing hobby—Seth the outdoorsman . . .
. . . outdoorsman, Yamaha key, fishing . . .
I take out a map of the state and unfold it across my desk. The reservoir area is narrow, stretching roughly north to south. About half a mile west of the reservoir, the map shows the red line of Route 7, and though they’re not shown on this map, I know there are lots of spurs from that road to picnic spots by the water. I approximate the location of the one where Seth and Scud poached the deer, and I pencil an X on the map.
The east side is harder. Sev
eral miles of wildlife preserve lie against the eastern shore, with only a couple of black threads indicating access roads. With a better map, I could locate the spot more precisely, but for now I triangulate my way to a rough estimate of where Cassandra Randall found Zander Phippin’s grave. I draw another X. On this map, where the blue serpentine reservoir extends nearly seventy miles, top to bottom, the two X’s lie directly across from each other, separated by under a half mile of water.
Lickety-split, I’m in my Volvo and navigating winding streets to the lowbrow neighborhood that was home to the departed Scud Illman. Scud’s yard is tidy, and the flower beds are weeded, though only a few late-blooming mums remain. It is as I remember: an undistinguished, well-kept home in a low-priced neighborhood. The front curtains are open, but nothing of interest is visible. From the road, at least, the master’s demise has left the place unchanged.
The car I’ve come to see, a brown Sentra, is in the driveway—lucky break. With a bit more luck, it would be fronted in instead of backed. I get out and start toward the door of the house to ask permission, but since this isn’t an official investigation, screw the niceties of warrants and permission to search. I veer off the path and walk to the rear of the car to find out what I want to know.
And there it is, as expected: a tow ball for a boat trailer. I’ve got a pretty good idea where to find the trailer. I turn and head back to my Volvo, but before I can get away, Scud’s wife comes to the front door. “You want something?” she yells.
“Hello, Mrs. Illman. So sorry about your husband.”
She waits.
“We met before. The day your house got searched. I was here.”
She waits.
“And so sorry to intrude. I just needed a look at his car.”
“Reason being?”
“Just a look. All done. Did you know Seth Coen?”
She blinks at me and doesn’t answer. Last time I saw her, she trembled with barely controlled rage. This time she’s different—not friendly, just blank.
“Anyhow,” I say, “hope you don’t mind.”
Her son comes to the door to see what’s going on. Colin, the kid with the lip scar and the two-tone eye. I’m tempted to greet him by name, but if these people remember me at all, it’s not as a friend. I just thank her again and walk toward my Volvo.
“So you ain’t going to tell me about the car?”
“Well. No. Not yet. It’s okay, though. Nothing to worry about.”
“I didn’t do nothing.”
“Of course. Nobody’s implying.”
“Son of a bitch,” she mutters, meaning Scud, not me. Her face changes. She draws a deep, soulful sigh, probably as close to a sob as this woman gets. “I didn’t do nothing.”
“Look,” I say, “this thing with the car, it’s not about you. None of this is about you, okay? I’m just tying up loose ends.”
“Mom?” Colin says.
“Inside,” she orders. He disappears.
“No school?” I ask, making my voice breezy so she won’t feel challenged. Colin was home on the day of the search, too, and the day Scud was arrested.
“He ain’t feeling well.”
“Kids . . .”
“Yeah.”
I can’t get a fix on this woman. Is she intelligent or not, maternal or not? I can’t even say whether she’s attractive or not. Her skin is tanned, and she’s without makeup of any kind, and her hair, aside from the bangs, is straight and pulled back so tight that her eyebrows are midforehead. But for all her plainness, she has a Sissy Spacek kind of innocence. She has on tight jeans, a loose sweater, deck shoes without socks. “Could I use your bathroom?” I ask on impulse. I need to purge the coffee, but also I want a reason to stay for a minute, poke around, get a sense.
Without answering, she holds open the door and steps aside. “Scram,” she says into the house, where, presumably, Colin is hanging around to listen. When I walk inside, he’s gone. The house is immaculate, the way it was the day of the search. Everything is nice, though nothing is high-quality. On the wall above the couch is the same triptych by the local artist, Serena, that Tina has in her office. Coffee table has teak legs with a glass top, walls are white, kitchen has mass-manufactured cabinets that give a passable imitation of custom. But the only thing giving any kind of impression, the only statement on the character of the owner, is the absence of character.
It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure this out: the extreme unpredictability of life with Scud apparently resulted in hysterical orderliness imposed on the only thing she could control—her home. Even her son, I’m betting, was wrested from her maternal authority by Scud the manipulator. She very well could have killed Scud. Not that she did kill him—I’m not letting Upton off the hook that easily—but she might have killed him. She might have been suffering from such hopelessness . . . She might have found herself trapped in the surreal thicket of his psychosis . . . She might have feared for her own life . . . She might have known that if she tried leaving him, he’d come after her and Colin . . . She might have decided there was nothing to lose.
Unfortunately for her, all of those might-haves don’t add up to a defense. It’s not self-defense, and it’s not insanity. It’s criminal, and when I’m back at the office, I’ll tell Dorsey my suspicion and he’ll put his investigators on it, and if they turn up anything, she’ll be tried, and if she is tried, she’ll be convicted. If she’s lucky, there’ll be leniency in the sentencing, though to judge from this woman’s life, luck seems to have kept its distance.
“It’s right in there,” she says, pointing to the bathroom. I go in, piss, have a look around. I had planned to snoop a bit, but now that I have actual suspicion, I decide to play it by the book; I’d hate to have some juicy evidence suppressed on grounds that I came here and searched without a warrant. But since I’ve been invited in, anything in plain sight is fair game. Except nothing is in plain sight; the bathroom is like the rest of the house. Sterile. There are no magazines or newspapers, no toothbrushes on the counter, the towels look untouched, the countertop is bare, the porcelain shines, and the toilet paper is folded into a little point just like at a fancy hotel. I have no doubt that when I leave, she’ll be in here quick as can be, scrubbing, sweeping, refolding.
I finish and flush. I’d linger longer but can’t think of any pretext, so I thank her and quickly walk out toward my Volvo. She calls across the lawn, “What about my other car?”
“I told you, I can’t—”
“Not that one,” she says. “We had two. Where’s the other one?”
“How should I know?”
“He took it that night ’cause we still hadn’t got this one back from the police. Took off in my car, then he ends up dead in the river, and I never seen my car again.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I can make a phone call or two, see what I find out.”
She gives me the information on her missing car, then I zoom away to my next stop.
CHAPTER 40
It’s after lunchtime. From Illman’s place, I beeline through the railroad district, past the auto dealerships and crushing plant, past the strip of titty bars and massage parlors, and I screech up in front of Seymour Apartments. I want to make this as efficient as possible, so I position my Glock in its shiny black holster, where it is seen easily inside my suit jacket, then I walk into the office, where I’m announced by an electronic ding-dong. “One sec,” says someone from the back room, then the weasel-faced Mr. Milan appears.
“Help you?” he says in the two seconds before the details of my presence register in his mind. I’m standing back from the counter, feet apart, badge in hand, doing my best to be the stone-faced agent ready to rain down some major federal shit on this transgressor.
“Mr. Milan, isn’t it?”
He nods.
“Nick Davis, U.S. Attorney’s office. We met the day you discovered Seth Coen’s body.”
“Oh yes,” he says. His ears turn red. One hand comes up to scratch
his neck, and the other waves around looking for something to do.
“Mr. Milan, I’m here to ask you one simple question, but before I do, I’m going to explain a few points of law to you, and if there’s anything you want to tell me before I get to my question, it might work in your advantage if you speak up. You hear what I’m saying? You just offer some information without me having to ask for it. Okay?”
The hand at his neck moves up to wipe sweat from the shiny bald head and to scratch an imaginary itch at the corner of an eye. The other hand tugs at one of the suspenders. The guy is harmless, except that he’s caused untold harm.
“You see, Mr. Milan, what you might not know, and what I’m here to explain to you, is that even if someone is dead, taking his property is still a crime. It can even be a felony, depending on the value of what’s taken. See, but it gets better—that’s just a state crime, but withholding evidence in a federal investigation is a federal crime, which is why I’m here.”
Milan’s hands meet under his chin, and the index fingers reach up and work his lips like a lump of bread dough. I wait a few seconds, but he doesn’t say anything, so I continue: “Now, here’s the kicker, Mr. Milan: If it turns out the misappropriated property—let’s say, hypothetically, a small boat—was used in the commission of a crime—let’s say the murder and disposal of a body out at the reservoir—and if the person who steals the property is aware of the crime, then concealing that evidence makes you an accessory. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Seth Coen owed me rent,” Milan blurts with a sob. “And I don’t know about any other body.”
I wait.
“JesusMaryandJoseph,” he says, making his way to a chair, where he slumps into a heap of misery. I knew he’d be easy. I stand in front of him, loading up my glare with the imposing weight of federal power. Normally, I’d have some compassion, but Milan’s antic deprived us of the break we needed in this case, dragging it out long enough for Scud to end up dead, so now we might never figure out who pulled all the strings. Scud would have talked. He’d have told us who was responsible—who gave the order or paid the contract. But the weaselly, suspender-clad Milan fucked it up.