Time Release

by Martin J. Smith

  He looked around the room, feeling invaded and vulnerable. Annie stirred, then burrowed deeper beneath the comforter. His sandwich lay on the floor between the couch and the coffee table in mayo-smeared piles of bread and roast chicken. He didn’t even realize he’d dropped it.

  The videotape continued, crushing his illusions of secu­rity with each innocuous scene. Another yard, this one unfamiliar. Daylight. Snow. The camera panned a row of houses stretching side by side into the distance. He didn’t recognize the scene; it could have been any one of a number of city neighborhoods. In the foreground, a chain-link fence backed up to an alley. The camera returned slowly until it was pointed almost straight down.

  A dog, a sloe-eyed basset, stared up into the lens, tail wagging, snuffling. Slobber streamed from his lower jaw, barely visible against the snow. The camera wavered, then something fell into the frame. Something silver, or red, landed near the dog and disappeared beneath the snow, and the dog set right to the search with his short front paws.

  Christensen was numb. He didn’t know the relevance of the scene, but he knew something was wrong. Something was about to happen. He knew it as surely as the time he’d watched two speeding cars collide at the base of Negley Hill. Nothing he or anyone else could do until the sickening hulks of twisted metal spun to a stop. And even then, nothing could be done.

  The dog delicately pulled the foil from the snow by an unfolded corner. The contents looked like hamburger, and after a cursory sniff, the dog ate it in a series of almost dainty bites. He stood licking the streamers from his chops. Ran his snout over the foil again, then snaked his tongue inside for the remaining morsels. Tail whirling like a propeller. The dog held one corner of the foil down, tore off a piece with his teeth, chewed, and swallowed. It seemed to be reconsidering this when suddenly its legs collapsed.

  Lying belly down in the snow, the dog shuddered. Its neck seemed suddenly weak, like it was trying to lift its head but couldn’t. Its chin was buried, plowing snow as the head moved from side to side. Its rear end rose, then collapsed again. The tail went limp.

  Christensen instinctively looked away, then forced his eyes back to the screen. The dog was up, trying to walk away from the camera, making guttural sounds, almost like a cow, as it moved along the fence. It turned back, lips curled off the teeth in a half-snarl. The eyes were wide, confused, desperate. It gagged and fell again. It struggled to its feet, lurched a few more steps, fell again. This time, it didn’t get up. Its body heaved, the buck and thrash digging a grisly dog-angel in the snow. Then, finally, it was still.

  Black again. Christensen buried his face in hands as cold as ice. The screen was still black when he looked up. Please let it be over, he thought. But he let the videotape roll, ten, twenty, thirty seconds. He was about to shut it off when the screen filled with a still shot of hand-painted numbers on decorative tiles. Tiles Molly bought in a craft store in New Hope three years before she died. Tiles he spent an entire Saturday mounting on the wall beside the front door. Tiles that in sequence read 3545 Bryant—his address.

  Then it was gone, a blip of a scene. Fast forward. Blank. Rewind. He released the button when the final scene flashed past. His address tiles blinked on again, maybe three seconds, then off. Rewind again. No sound. No movement. Just a primal-fear moment chiseled forever into his psyche by someone with a video camera standing on his front porch.

  One more time. This time he noticed the date, stark and white against the dark green trim around his front door. December 19. The day before yesterday.

  Chapter 22

  Downing coughed twice, sounding as pathetic as he could, while the councilman’s niece read off his messages. One was from Christensen, logged an hour earlier. “He wants you to call him right away,” she said. “Sounded pretty upset.”

  It could wait. First things first. He hung up and dialed the phone, and the morgue receptionist put him straight through.

  “Ah, Detective Downing,” Preech said. “I am very, very sorry for the delay. We have been quite busy. The Christmas holidays, you know. But I have been trying most diligently to reach you since this morning.”

  “Had some errands, Preech. What’s up?”

  “Let me find my notes.” Shuffling papers. “It was quite difficult to find a time to work on your doggie in private. Things are quite hectic here, quite hectic. But it is done, mostly, although we are still awaiting the toxicology results, the blood work and so forth. The physical symptoms most definitely were suggestive of poisoning, quite possibly cyanide. Not a very cheery picture, I’m afraid.”

  “He was bloody when you opened him up?” Downing wasn’t surprised at all, but there was a weakness to his voice he hadn’t anticipated.

  “Doggie’s organs were full of blood. That is how the body reacts to the presence of the toxin, as you know. And a definite odor of bitter almonds. We have seen all this before, have we not?”

  “Thanks, Preech. You’re keeping this between us, right?”

  “As I have promised.”

  An afterthought. “What did you do with him?”

  “An excellent question, Grady Downing, because I will need your help to please remove doggie from the premises. I put him back together, of course, but right now he is in my freezer. That must by necessity be a temporary arrangement.”

  Downing imagined a black plastic garbage bag secured by a twist-tie at one end, a standout among the refrigerated cadavers in the morgue’s icebox. Someone was sure to ask questions. “Can’t you just handle it, Preech? Send him out with the garbage so no one will know. I don’t think we should leave him in your cooler too long, either.”

  “You misunderstand, my friend. I could not risk putting him with the others. Doggie is in my office refrigerator, in the freezer, and for that I had to move my frozen entrees to the refrigerator. I can eat one this evening, but the rest need to go back in.”

  Downing’s stomach lurched. “Beyond the call, Preech. Thanks. I’m headed out. I’ll stop by in a bit, but if anybody asks I’m home sick today, okay?”

  “Please be prompt. My prepared meals are beginning to thaw.”

  Chapter 23

  Downing checked the alley in both directions, then heaved the garbage bag over the side of the Dumpster. DiOrio’s Pizzeria would never know. Even if some greaseball trash diver did open the bag, Rodney’s choke chain and tags were in a white coroner’s office envelope in his car. There’d be no tracing it back to him. He checked the alley again as he limped around to shut the trunk. All clear. So long, old buddy.

  Interstate 79 ran due south from Little Washington to Waynesburg, a relatively straight shot considering the Appalachian foothills that rolled along through coal country. Downing got back on at the same exit he got off, dug his fingernail into the skin of a Texas Ruby Red, and steered the Ford into the fast lane with his knees.

  Traffic was light. Could have followed 79 straight south, to Morgantown, Charleston, Beckley, Bluefield. Then where? Where could he go that he wouldn’t see Ron Corbett’s grizzled face every time he closed his eyes?

  He fanned the stack of phone messages clipped to the dashboard. Should have returned Christensen’s calls before he left. Something could be up with Sonny. But even if it was, it could keep until the end of the day. Too much to do. Between sloppy bites of grapefruit, he worked the radio dial. The scanner was off. So was the two-way. So was his beeper. Those were for official police work. Today, he’d told DeLillo, he was too sick to come in. Nasty flu, he’d said, offering just enough detail to make the bastard believe.

  KDKA had the strongest signal, even if the music sucked. Just find something and drive. He checked his watch. 8:30. He’d be there by 9:15. That gave him a full day. He turned up the volume for the half-hourly news, taking it as a good sign when the lead story was about the JoAnn Cuddy product-tampering case. Family of the dead woman was suing the Ranch Bounty supermar
ket chain, trying to ease their pain with a few million cash in actual and punitive damages “to focus attention on the lack of security.” Bless their grieving little hearts.

  He ordered the day in his head. Ranch Bounty was the first stop. The manager’s asshole was probably pretty puckered because of the lawsuit, so he’d have to convince him he wasn’t the family’s PI. The yogurt shipment had arrived mid-afternoon two days before the woman bought it, so the locals had narrowed the killer’s window of opportunity to the forty-eight hours before she was in the store. They’d already checked the store’s security camera tapes and declared them worthless when no one turned up on tape poking a big fucking hypo through the yogurt lid. Like Corbett would do it right there in the store. He’d wanted to smack Ramsey when he said it, ask him if maybe it was possible the killer injected it somewhere else and brought it back to the shelf, so as not to be too obvious. But he’d held his tongue. Less said, the better.

  He’d go over the tape himself if he could, then start nosing around. See if any of the checkers or stock boys recognized Corbett’s picture. Do the same at the two licensed cyanide distributors in the area, see if anybody knew the face or wanted to share purchase records. He wanted to be in Outcrop once the sun went down to check out the view again from behind Corbett’s house, look for a faster way out of that strip-mine hollow just in case he ever needed it.

  And he’d been thinking he might. All options were still open, even the extralegal one. He’d be retired in a couple months. He’d have the rest of his life to sort out the morality questions. There’d be a lot, but he could live with them. Lot of other people might live, too.

  The manager fancied himself quite the stud. Late twenties. Knowing smile. TV anchorman hair. A John Davidson look-alike in a red Ranch Bounty blazer, eyes locked onto the baby blues of an idle checker with a seventeen-year-old’s ass. Downing guessed the manager’s career would peak right here, in this godforsaken chain supermarket in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, the future filled with aisle cleanups and a succession of fresh-meat hires and lonely housewives seduced by a man in uniform.

  “You the store manager?” Downing interrupted.

  John Davidson turned, annoyed as hell. Name tag said Richard. He forced a smile as the girl walked back to her checkout register and flipped the “Closed” sign to “Open.” A customer immediately raced from another line, unloaded half a dozen items onto the conveyor, and swiped what looked like a credit card through a magnetic reader.

  “What can I do for you?” the manager said.

  Downing fished his badge from inside his coat. “Grady Downing, Pittsburgh Police Department. Got a minute to talk, Dick?”

  The manager led him to a sweltering office at the rear of the store, behind the refrigerated dairy case that blew hot air into the back rooms. He closed the door behind them and sat down.

  “You’re a little late,” he said, propping his feet on the grim metal desk. “Cops and TV people stopped coming around weeks ago.”

  Downing faked astonishment. Guys like Dick could turn ten seconds on the local news into a lifetime of pickup lines in a town like this. “TV people? You were on the TV?”

  “Channels 2, 4, and 11. Radio, too. That was right after. But now you have to go through corporate.”

  Patient smile. “And I’d do just that if I was a reporter. But I’m not. Besides, corporate wasn’t here that day. I’m guessing you were, along with some of your employees. No big deal, Dick. I just want to talk. No pressure.”

  “It’s Richard.”

  “Richard, then.”

  “They see me on TV again I’ll get fired. Especially with the lawsuit.”

  Downing gestured grandly around the office. “See, no camera crew. No microphones. Just curious little old me.”

  The manager produced a piece of paper on Ranch Bounty letterhead. “They gave me this statement to read,” he said. “Basically says we’re sure the tampering took place some­where else since nothing turned up on the security camera tapes. Cops already went through all that.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “You’d have to talk to them. They wouldn’t let me in. But they spent, like, nineteen hours going through tapes of the two days before Mrs. Cuddy bought the yogurt. All I know is they said they weren’t any help.”

  Downing leaned against the door. “Still got the tapes?”

  “Cops took ’em.”

  Shit. He could have bullied them out of Dick here, but trying to get them from the locals would raise a lot of questions. Like what the hell was he doing? Like why was he second-guessing their investigation?

  “I’ll talk to them about it, then. Detective Ramsey’s an old friend.”

  “He’s my cousin.”

  “No kidding!” Downing said, thinking, Fuck. He should have known better in a place as inbred as Greene County.

  “Where’d you say you were from?”

  “Pittsburgh. Say, is it me, or have supermarkets changed a lot? My wife does all our shopping, I have to confess, but I didn’t even know you could pay for groceries with credit cards nowadays.”

  “Pittsburgh? Down here?”

  “Noticed it when I came in,” Downing said, forcing the conversation in a different direction. “Your checkout stands have those electronic credit-card reader things. Must make it easier for you guys, not handling all that cash.”

  “That’s for Bounty Club cards. We do take the majors, though. And ATM cards.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Bounty Club? What’s that?”

  “Discounts,” Dick said. “What planet did you say you were from?”

  Downing faked a ridiculously hearty laugh. “Maybe I should get out once in a while, huh? So how’s it work?”

  “You join the club, you get automatic discounts on stuff. Just swipe the card through before you check out, and the register gives you credit for anything that’s discounted on the inventory computer. Customers feel like they get something for nothing, and we get a record of how often people shop, what stores they shop at, what they buy. Then we can send them coupons for the things they buy most. Keeps ’em coming back here, see?”

  “I’ll be damned,” Downing said. “Very smart.”

  The manager puffed up. “I’m the pilot store in Greene County. Only one. You probably got a lot of stores with it in Pittsburgh. Been around for years, just not here.”

  “And it keeps a record of everybody that buys something?”

  “As long as they’re in the Bounty Club. Doesn’t cost nothing to sign up.”

  “What’ll they think of next?” Downing said. “I suppose the police went through all that when they were here.”

  “Not really,” the manager said, then stopped. “But you’ll have to go through corporate.”

  “Is the computer in the store here?”

  “Big mainframe up in Little Washington,” he said. “So I couldn’t let you see it even if I wanted, which I don’t.”

  Downing grinned. “You get printed records, though, don’t you? So you’ll know who your customers are. So you’ll know what stuff to put in end displays or at eye level. You probably handle all the direct-mail stuff here, right?”

  “Nope. All that’s done from Little Washington.”

  “You get a list, though, I’ll bet. I’m imagining a big alphabetical list, or maybe one arranged by date. Which is it?”

  “Really can’t say.”

  Downing had come prepared. He reached into his pants pocket, peeled a bill from the outside of his small wad, and laid it on the desk. Dick stared.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  Downing produced another fifty. “Sure you can.”

  “I’ll get in trouble.”

  “Who’ll know?”

  “You can run it either way, by name or by date. If I run it, they’ll know
. Computer keeps a record.”

  Another fifty. “When was the last list run?”

  “Week before last. For the big Christmas mailing. But we keep them for six months.”

  “Alphabetical?”

  The manager nodded. His eyes went back and forth several times between Downing and the money.

  “Perfect. And I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind giving me five minutes alone with that list. That’s all I need.”

  Come on, Dickie. Think of all the rubbers a hundred and fifty bucks would buy. The manager stood up, folded the money into his pants pocket, then stooped down behind the desk. From a bottom drawer, he pulled two inch-thick computer printouts.

  “September and October,” he said. “I’ve got to run up front to check on a produce delivery. Be back in five minutes.”

  Downing moved to the desk chair as soon as the door shut. Maybe Corbett was a regular Ranch Bounty shopper. At the least, he’d have been in the store once or twice in the weeks before making the drop to check the layout and develop a plan. He’d probably have bought something, if only to seem less suspicious. Was he the type to use a Bounty Club card? Probably not, but it was a shot.

  He unfolded the September printout and ran his finger down the list to the names beginning with C. Cakula. Cernan. Ciecelski. Cochran. Connelly. Connor. Corcoran. Corbett, Carla. Corbett, Peter. Corbett, Rose Ann. Corbett, Thomas P. He felt a chill as his finger reached Cuddy, JoAnn. But no Corbett, Ron.

  Shit. He traced one of the listings to the far right edge of the page. Adrian Ciecelski, whoever she was, visited four times in September, showing a fondness for Weight Watch­ers entrees, Vlasic kosher dills, and Coke. Last visit that month was on the 29th. Bounty Club member since the previous April. Downing scanned other “Member since” listings. Most were since April, nearly all issued by this store. April must have been when they started the pilot project. He marveled at the abbreviated paragraphs of purchase records. James and Kim Corcoran cleaned their toilets with Sani-Flush, ate too many salty snacks, and bought Frankenberry cereal. Must have kids. Kim apparently preferred Lightdays sanitary napkins. Rose Ann Corbett and her family ate Great Grains cereal at a two-box-a-week clip, and they liked Bounty-Brand Garden Style Spaghetti Sauce over the name brands. She also used K-Y Jelly.