“What do you suppose Vicky was doing in Middleburg?” Horse asked.
Elvira shrugged. “Who knows? She’d take off for days at a time and end up anywhere. Couple of times I had to drive clear across the state to get her.”
“Do you have any relatives around here?” Horse asked. “Or perhaps Vicky’s father could make the identification?”
A laugh. “I got some cousins over in Phillips, but they pretend they don’t know me. The kid’s father? I haven’t seen him since before she was born. Listen, guys, I can’t take time off from work. I get paid hourly, you know, and I need the money.”
“There are arrangements to be made,” Lark said.
“I don’t want to think about it. Maybe tomorrow or the next day.”
“It has to be today, Mrs. Stanton.” Lark did not raise his voice, but the finality of his tone was obvious.
“Get off my back!”
“Officer Najankian will drive you.”
Horse stood. “You car’s still running. I’ll shut it off and wait for you in my car.” With a nod toward Lark, he left the small house.
“That’s it, huh?” she said.
“Yes. He will drive you and help you in any way he can.”
“That’s something, I guess. I’ll get my bag.” She left the room and returned a moment later with a worn leather shoulder bag draped over her arm. “All right, let’s go. Let’s get it over with.”
They walked to the front door, where she turned to look up at Lark. “It didn’t hurt her, did it?”
“No,” Lark lied. “Death was instantaneous.”
8
Warren had only one Sunoco station and Lark pulled the pickup into the full-service lane and waited for the attendant. To the side, in an otherwise empty service bay, a Kawasaki motorcycle sat in the center of the concrete floor. A chamois cloth was neatly folded on its seat.
The young man in oily jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt shambled from the small office and looked annoyed. “Yeah?”
“Fill her up and check under the hood,” Lark said. He pulled the hood release.
The attendant set the pump nozzle in the gas tank and slouched over to the front of the truck and raised the hood. “Down a quart,” he said.
“Put in the cheapest,” Lark said. “Do you know a girl named Vicky Stanton?”
“I sell oil and gasoline, mister, nothing else.” He inverted an oilcan over the engine block.
Lark left the truck to get a better view of the attendant. His face was pockmarked from old acne scars. He was of medium build with coal-black hair and dark, emotionless eyes. “Vicky Stanton?” Lark repeated.
The attendant slammed the hood and flipped the oilcan into a waste receptacle. “Cash or credit card?”
Lark handed him a twenty-dollar bill and went into the service bay. The attendant returned to the small office, made change, and went into the bay to give Lark the money.
“You didn’t answer me,” Lark said. “This your bike?”
“Yeah.”
“You should be more careful with it,” Lark said as his foot lashed out and knocked the motorcycle off its stand and crashed it down into the concrete.
“What’s the matter with you?” the attendant screamed. “You crazy or something?” He rushed to lift the cycle and prop it erect.
“You didn’t answer me,” Lark said quietly as he kicked the motorcycle over for the second time.
“Hey!” The attendant looked at his fallen machine in horror. “You faggot bastard!” He picked up a tire iron from the floor. “I’m going to break your head.”
Lark took two steps across the bay’s apron as the attendant stepped forward with the tire iron raised over his head. The iron swung forward toward Lark’s head. Lark stepped into the blow and parried it with an openhanded chop just above the elbow. The tire iron clattered to the floor. Lark continued his forward momentum and used his other hand in another chopping motion to the larynx.
The attendant grasped his neck with both hands as he fell to the floor making heaving, gasping sounds. Lark looked down at him dispassionately and noticed that he wore a male version of the L.L. Bean boots.
“Where’d you get the shoes?” he asked.
The attendant’s breathing began to return to normal, but he remained on the floor, as if afraid that if he stood Lark would knock him down again. “From a mail-order house in Maine. You ask crazy questions. What do you want? The money’s in the till. I won’t give you no trouble.”
“I’m ‘the man’ to you, kid. I’m not here to take the money.” He flipped his badge open. “On your feet.”
The attendant scrambled up and stood with his back pressed against the wall. “I got rights, you know.”
“I’ll bet you have. What’s your name and show me some ID.”
“Lawton. Mike Lawton.” His fingers scratched at his jean’s pocket for a wallet and driver’s license. “I don’t know you. You aren’t from Warren.”
Lark flicked his finger toward the small office, and Mike Lawton stumbled into the small, square room and sat down in a worn captain’s chair in front of an ancient desk covered with greasy receipts and charge slips.
Lark sat on the edge of the desk. “Vicky Stanton?”
“What about her?”
“My, we have a poor attitude, don’t we?”
“What do you want from me, mister? I know her. We went out a couple of times. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know everything, but let’s start with those shoes you’re wearing; they’re like a pair she had on.”
“I got them for her, that’s what she wanted. She came by the station one day with this mail-order form and said I was to get her a money order at the supermarket.”
A car beeped on the apron outside. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“Saturday. I was working here and she came by to borrow a ten.”
Lark calculated that would have been the day before she died. “What time of day did she come by?”
“I don’t know, sometime in the morning, maybe ten or so.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
The impatient customer outside began to honk repeatedly. Mike Lawton squirmed nervously at the desk. “I got to take care of that car.”
“I need more on Vicky.”
“Listen, mister, you can beat on me all you want, but I’m the only one at the station until noon. I got to take care of that customer.”
“Okay, go do it.” Lark followed Mike Lawton outside and watched as the surly young man halfheartedly serviced a Corvette. “I’ll be back at noon.”
Lawton mumbled an acknowledgment.
Warren’s town green might have been picturesque if the town’s fathers had kept their wits about them. Instead, they had allowed local business to take the lure of the dollar, and now the remaining nineteenth-century facades were decaying and the area was sprinkled with fast-food outlets that incongruously dotted the square. Parts of old newspapers blew across the green itself, and the grass covering was scuffed to bare earth in many spots.
Lark located the town’s small police station in the rear of the building that housed the library. He parked the pickup in a no-parking zone directly in front of its double glass doors.
He knew that Warren was on the Resident State Trooper Program, and hoped the state cop would be on duty rather than an ill-trained and part-time constable. He knew that the troopers who policed these small towns were well-trained men who received their assignments through competitive examination and considered it good duty.
When Connecticut curtailed most county government functions and severely reduced the police powers of the sheriffs, many small towns and villages were unable to provide adequate, well-trained police services. The Resident Trooper Program filled the void. State cops, with years of experience and advanced training, were assigned to these towns, and in conjunction with the constables, they provided efficient services.
Lark entered the small office and bli
nked as his eyes refocused from the bright exterior light to the dim interior.
A bulky state trooper sergeant looked up at him, pushed his chair back, and walked forward with balled fists. “Lark, you son of a bitch!” His right hand shot forward into Lark’s solar plexus.
Lark’s rigid abdominal muscles deflected the blow and he countered with a left to the trooper’s midsection. The sergeant reeled back with a deep exhale of breath. His hands tenderly felt his aching stomach.
“What in the hell are you doing here, Black Jack?” Lark asked with a smile. “I thought they’d exiled all you black Irishmen.”
“Son of a bitch, you’re still hard,” the trooper said. “I’ve been here nearly a year. It keeps me away from the likes of you, and I got tired of prying teenagers out of wrecked cars.”
“Warren must be desperate.”
“Not as bad off as Middleburg is with you still on the force,” the trooper countered with a grin.
“They’re working on it,” Lark said, knowing how true that was. “I need some help, if you’re not too hung over, you broken-down bastard.”
“If you’re up here, that means I got drug problems.”
“I’m not on the street anymore, Black Jack. One of your kids bought it in Middleburg the other day.”
“Oh, Christ.” The other officer’s grin faded. “The body of the girl you found was from Warren?”
“She’s been identified as Vicky Stanton. The mother’s making the final ID right now.”
Black Jack nodded. “I’m not surprised. She was wild as hell, school dropout, work dropout and roundheels.”
“That’s some character reference.”
“She was a disaster waiting for an accident.”
“I just talked to a kid named Lawton who works at a gas station. He was going around with the Stanton girl.”
“The wipeouts attract each other like flies.”
“What do you have on Lawton?”
“If you’re serious about him, I’ll get you a full written report, but off the top of my head, how about shoplifting, auto theft, breaking the peace, and God only knows how many vehicle charges?”
“Ever done time?”
“So far, the only thing serious we had on him was as a juvenile. The next time he steps out of line he goes adult and does time … maybe.”
“You’ll never get his juvenile record unsealed,” Lark said.
“Hell, Lark, I’m as mean as you are when it comes to my town. I’ll damn well make sure that the sentencing judge hears the right rumors about our little boy blue.”
“Tell me about breaking the peace?”
“Make that plural. The kid’s got a temper. Pump a couple beers into him and he goes after people … usually with a bottle or anything else handy. Luckily for his victims, he’s not too big or well-coordinated.”
“Then he’s capable of murder?”
Black Jack tilted back his chair and considered the question before answering. “Murder? The girl? Maybe in a fit of rage, if he let himself get out of hand.”
“She was tortured first,” Lark said.
“Tortured? Christ! How do you mean?”
Lark recounted certain portions of the tape and described the autopsy.
“Hell, you’re not even sure if it’s the same girl. The tape could be a phony.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences, but I do know that most victims know their killers.”
“God, Lawton is mean, but I’m not sure he’s that mean. I can figure him for snuffing the Stanton girl in a drunken rage or even for the hell of it, but not doing it like you tell it.”
Lark glanced down at his watch. “I’ll have a better idea after I interview him again. He’s got a relief coming to the station at noon and then I’ll get another crack at him.”
“Where are you picking him up?”
“He’s going to wait for me at the station.”
Black Jack’s mouth gaped open. “You’ve got to be kidding? Do you really think that creep’s going to wait for you? How long have you been off the street?”
“A couple of days.”
“Then you’ve gone soft in the head. If you expect him to be there at noon, you’re crazy. He’ll leave at eleven-thirty.”
“Then I’ll find him,” Lark said noncommittally.
“And tear up half my town doing it.” The trooper heaved himself to his feet and snatched his broad-brimmed hat from a nearby coat rack. “Come on. I know where he’ll go.”
“Got it down pat, huh?”
“Hell, it’s my town.”
They took a state police car and drove past the Warren city limits and out Route 79 to where it narrowed to a winding, double-lane country road. The houses were spaced farther and farther apart until few appeared and they were in rural farmland surrounded by second-growth timber. The dark-complexioned trooper swerved the cruiser into a right-angle turn and jounced up a rutted dirt road, making another turn onto an even more rustic road until it came to an abrupt stop at a barnlike building nestled under the shadows of large trees. The Kawasaki motorcycle was parked near one corner of the building.
Black jack stepped from the car and signaled to Lark. As the trooper walked toward a tack-room door, he brushed his hand lightly against his holstered pistol. Lark unzipped his jacket.
“You might call it a clubhouse,” Black Jack said. “They play all kinds of fun and games out here.”
Lark saw that the barn was isolated and the area surrounding it was filled with stands of trees and heavy underbrush. The sound-depressant qualities of the foliage would be excellent. Anything could go on in this remote building without anyone hearing.
They stepped just inside the door and paused a moment to let their eyes adjust to the building’s interior dimness. Incongruously, an Oriental carpet covered a large expanse of the floor while a pool table stood in the exact center of the expensive carpet. A wooden bar with upholstered stools occupied another corner, a rumpled bed another.
“Where in the hell did they get this stuff?” Lark asked.
“You get one guess. Unfortunately, I can’t match the items with any local burglaries. The stuff probably came from jobs they pulled in other towns.” He yelled out, “Lawton! I know you’re here.”
Both officers stood in the center of the barn as a shaft of light from a dirty window on the far wall fell at their feet. “Craziest bike clubhouse I’ve ever seen,” Lark said.
“We grow ’em unique in Warren,” the trooper said. He yelled out again. “Lawton, dammit!”
“I ought to go outside and finish trashing his bike,” Lark said loud enough for anyone on the premises to overhear.
He saw the motion in the shadowy loft from the corner of his eye, but it took a moment for the action to register itself on his conscious mind. He half-turned to see that Jack was walking toward the bar just as the form from above hurtled down in a long sweeping arc.
A scream filled the barn and reverberated from the walls. Jack, startled, hunched down in a shooting crouch. Lark knew it was nearly too late, the state policeman’s body was directly under the swinging man’s trajectory. Lawton screamed again as his raised saber glistened in a shaft of window light.
Lark hurled his body forward and twisted in midflight into a cross-body block that caught Jack in the small of the back and sprawled both of them across the floor into the side of the bar.
“What the fu—”
Lawton, swinging from a thick rope attached to a beam near the roof of the barn, thudded against the far wall and began his return arc. He clutched the rope with one hand while his feet rested in a loop. His other hand waved the sword.
“The bastard’s crazy,” Lark yelled as the biker swept past them with another screech. His saber narrowly missed their heads as he waved it back and forth.
On the next return swing, Lawton’s feet crashed through the window at the far end of the barn. The saber dropped to the floor with a dull thud. His body twisted in the rope as he fought for a handhol
d to control his sway.
Jack pulled himself erect and grasped his service revolver in his right hand as he extended it toward the figure at the far end of the barn.
Lark ran forward, grabbed the twisting feet of their attacker, and swung him forcibly against the side of the barn. Lawton’s body crashed against the wall and Lark swung him forward again and again until the young man’s hold broke and he fell.
Immediately, Lark’s knees pressed against the man’s back as he pulled his arms back and handcuffed the wrists. Lawton writhed on the floor. “I’ll kill you bastards. I’ll cut your fucking heads off.”
“Mike’s been in the angel dust again,” Black Jack said without emotion as he reholstered his weapon. “Makes him crazy as a loon.”
Lawton’s body convulsed as he repeatedly drew his legs to his chest and kicked out. His head rocked back and forth while he spewed out a series of incomprehensible words.
Lark grabbed the prisoner’s chin to hold the lolling head still. “Where’d you kill her, punk? In here? You kept her here and then dumped her in Middleburg, right?”
“Off with their heads,” was the reply.
“You won’t get any sense out of him now,” Jack said. “And besides, you have to read him his rights.”
“This prick’s got no rights.” Lark tightened his grip. “What did you tie her with?”
“Heads will roll,” was the nonsensical reply.
Lark let his hands fall away from the handcuffed man. “We won’t get a thing from him until he’s detoxed.” He walked slowly around the pool table as he examined the building at greater length. Lawton still writhed on the floor, straining against the handcuffs. “How’d he get so bad so fast?”
“I think he double-laces his smokes and does them two at a time. Who knows? Low tolerance probably,” Jack said.
“Can we seal this place up and get the lab people out here? I’d be interested to know if there’s any fibers that match what we got from the body.”
“Vicky Stanton probably got laid out here two dozen times. You’re going to find a ton of matching fibers, but I don’t know what it will prove.”
“How long can you hold Tarzan?” Lark asked.
Black Jack walked over to the convulsing figure and looked down. “Assault, resisting arrest, attempted murder of a police officer … Hell, he’s ours for as long as we want.”
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