by Lee Child
I pushed directly through the copse. Didn’t want to leave footprints on the track. The fat carrier bag made it awkward. It kept snagging in the brush. I came out right by the Buick. Still there. All quiet. I unlocked the driver’s door with the key and got in. Started up and bounced down the track. The rear suspension kept bottoming out on the ruts. I wasn’t too surprised about that. Must have been about five hundred pounds weight in the trunk.
I jounced out onto the road and drove east toward Margrave. But I turned left at the county road and headed north. Cruised the rest of the fourteen miles up to the highway. Passed by the warehouses and joined the stream north to Atlanta. I didn’t drive fast, didn’t drive slow. Didn’t want to get noticed. The plain Buick was very anonymous. Very inconspicuous. That was how I wanted to keep it.
After an hour I followed the airport signs. Found my way around to the long-term parking. Took a ticket at the little automated barrier and nosed in. It was a huge lot. Couldn’t be better. I found a slot near the middle, about a hundred yards from the nearest fence. Wiped off the wheel and the transmission. Got out with the carrier bag. Locked the Buick and walked away.
After a minute, I looked back. Couldn’t pick out the car I’d just dumped. What’s the best place to hide a car? In an airport long-term lot. Like where’s the best place to hide a grain of sand? On the beach. The Buick could sit there for a month. Nobody would think twice.
I walked back toward the entrance barrier. At the first trash can I dumped the carrier bag. At the second I got rid of the parking ticket. At the barrier I caught the little courtesy bus and rode to the departure terminal. Walked in and found a bathroom. Wrapped the Buick keys in a paper towel and dropped them in the garbage. Then I slipped down to the arrivals hall and stepped out into the damp night again. Caught the hotel courtesy bus and rode off to meet Roscoe.
I FOUND HER IN THE NEON GLARE OF A HOTEL LOBBY. I PAID cash for a room. Used a bill I’d taken from the Florida boys. We went up in the elevator. The room was a dingy, dark place. Big enough. Looked out over the airport sprawl. The window had three layers of glass against the jet noise. The place was airless.
“First, we eat,” I said.
“First, we shower,” Roscoe said.
So we showered. Put us in a better frame of mind. We soaped up and started fooling around. Ended up making love in the stall with the water beating down on us. Afterward, I just wanted to curl up in the glow. But we were hungry. And we had things to do. Roscoe put on the clothes she’d brought from her place in the morning. Jeans, shirt, jacket. Looked wonderful. Very feminine, but very tough. She had a lot of spirit.
We rode up to a restaurant on the top floor. It was OK. A big panoramic view of the airport district. We sat in candlelight by a window. A cheerful foreign guy brought us food. I crammed it all down. I was starving. I had a beer and a pint of coffee. Started to feel halfway human again. Paid for the meal with more of the dead guys’ money. Then we rode down to the lobby and picked up an Atlanta street map at the desk. Walked out to Roscoe’s car.
The night air was cold and damp and stank of kerosene. Airport smell. We got in the Chevy and pored over the street map. Headed out northwest. Roscoe drove and I tried to direct her. We battled traffic and ended up roughly in the right place. It was a sprawl of low-rise housing. The sort of place you see from planes coming in to land. Small houses on small lots, hurricane fencing, aboveground pools. Some nice yards, some dumps. Old cars up on blocks. Everything bathed in yellow sodium glare.
We found the right street. Found the right house. Decent place. Well looked after. Neat and clean. A tiny one-story. Small yard, small single-car garage. Narrow gate in the wire fence. We went through. Rang the bell. An old woman cracked the door against the chain.
“Good evening,” Roscoe said. “We’re looking for Sherman Stoller.”
Roscoe looked at me after she said it. She should have said we were looking for his house. We knew where Sherman Stoller was. Sherman Stoller was in the Yellow Springs morgue, seventy miles away.
“Who are you?” the old woman asked, politely.
“Ma’am, we’re police officers,” Roscoe said. Half true.
The old lady eased the door and took the chain off.
“You better come in,” she said. “He’s in the kitchen. Eating, I’m afraid.”
“Who is?” said Roscoe.
The old lady stopped and looked at her. Puzzled.
“Sherman,” she said. “That’s who you want, isn’t it?”
We followed her into the kitchen. There was an old guy eating supper at the table. When he saw us, he stopped and dabbed at his lips with a napkin.
“Police officers, Sherman,” the old lady said.
The old guy looked up at us blankly.
“Is there another Sherman Stoller?” I asked him.
The old guy nodded. Looked worried.
“Our son,” he said.
“About thirty?” I asked him. “Thirty-five?”
The old guy nodded again. The old lady moved behind him and put her hand on his arm. Parents.
“He don’t live here,” the old man said.
“Is he in trouble?” the old lady asked.
“Could you give us his address?” Roscoe said.
They fussed around like old people do. Very deferential to authority. Very respectful. Wanted to ask us a lot of questions, but just gave us the address.
“He hasn’t lived here for two years,” the old man said.
He was afraid. He was trying to distance himself from the trouble his son was in. We nodded to them and backed out. As we were shutting their front door, the old man called out after us.
“He moved out there two years ago,” he said.
We trooped out through the gate and got back in the car. Looked on the street map again. The new address wasn’t on it.
“What did you make of those two?” Roscoe asked me.
“The parents?” I said. “They know their boy was up to no good. They know he was doing something bad. Probably don’t know exactly what it was.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Let’s go find this new place.”
We drove off. Roscoe got gas and directions at the first place we saw.
“About five miles the other way,” she said. Pulled the car around and headed away from the city. “New condominiums on a golf course.”
She was peering into the gloom, looking for the landmarks the gas station attendant had given her. After five miles she swung off the main drag. Nosed along a new road and pulled up by a developer’s sign. It advertised condominiums, top quality, built right on the fairway. It boasted that only a few remained unsold. Beyond the billboard were rows of new buildings. Very pleasant, not huge, but nicely done. Balconies, garages, good details. Ambitious landscaping loomed up in the dark. Lighted pathways led over to a health club. On the other side was nothing. Must have been the golf course.
Roscoe killed the motor. We sat in the car. I stretched my arm along the back of her seat. Cupped her shoulder. I was tired. I’d been busy all day. I wanted to sit like this for a while. It was a quiet, dull night. Warm in the car. I wanted music. Something with an ache to it. But we had things to do. We had to find Judy. The woman who had bought Sherman Stoller’s watch and had it engraved. To Sherman, love Judy. We had to find Judy and tell her the man she’d loved had bled to death under a highway.
“What do you make of this?” Roscoe said. She was bright and awake.
“Don’t know,” I said. “They’re for sale, not rental. They look expensive. Could a truck driver afford this?”
“Doubt it,” she said. “These probably cost as much as my place, and I couldn’t make my payments without the subsidy I get. And I make more than any truck driver, that’s for sure.”
“OK,” I said. “So our guess is old Sherman was getting some kind of a subsidy, too, right? Otherwise he couldn’t afford to live here.”
“Sure,” she said. “But what kind of a subsidy?”
“The kind that gets people killed,” I said.
STOLLER’S BUILDING WAS WAY IN BACK. PROBABLY THE first phase to have been built. The old man in the poor part of town had said his son had moved out two years ago. That could be about right. This first block could be about two years old. We threaded through walkways and around raised-up flower beds. Walked up a path to Sherman Stoller’s door. The path was stepping stones set in the wiry lawn. Forced an unnatural gait on you. I had to step short. Roscoe had to stretch her stride from one flagstone to the next. We reached the door. It was blue. No shine on it. Old-fashioned paint.
“Are we going to tell her?” I said.
“We can’t not tell her, can we?” Roscoe said. “She’s got to know.”
I knocked on the door. Waited. Knocked again. I heard the floor creaking inside. Someone was coming. The door opened. A woman stood there. Maybe thirty, but she looked older. Short, nervous, tired. Blond from a bottle. She looked out at us.
“We’re police officers, ma’am,” Roscoe said. “We’re looking for the Sherman Stoller residence.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Well, you found it, I guess,” the woman said.
“May we come in?” Roscoe asked. Gently.
Again there was silence. No movement. Then the blond woman turned and walked back down the hallway. Roscoe and I looked at each other. Roscoe followed the woman. I followed Roscoe. I shut the door behind us.
The woman led us into a living room. A decent-sized space. Expensive furniture and rugs. A big TV. No stereo, no books. It all looked a bit halfhearted. Like somebody had spent twenty minutes with a catalog and ten thousand dollars. One of these, one of those, two of that. All delivered one morning and just kind of dumped in there.
“Are you Mrs. Stoller?” Roscoe asked the woman. Still gentle.
“More or less,” the woman said. “Not exactly Mrs., but as near as makes no difference anyhow.”
“Is your name Judy?” I asked her.
She nodded. Kept on nodding for a while. Thinking.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Judy said.
I didn’t answer. This was the part I wasn’t good at. This was Roscoe’s part. She didn’t say anything, either.
“He’s dead, right?” Judy said again, louder.
“Yes, he is,” Roscoe said. “I’m very sorry.”
Judy nodded to herself and looked around the hideous room. Nobody spoke. We just stood there. Judy sat down. She waved us to sit as well. We sat, in separate chairs. We were all sitting in a neat triangle.
“We need to ask you some questions,” Roscoe said. She was sitting forward, leaning toward the blond woman. “May we do that?”
Judy nodded. Looked pretty blank.
“How long did you know Sherman?” Roscoe asked.
“About four years, I guess,” Judy said. “Met him in Florida, where I lived. Came up here to be with him four years ago. Lived up here ever since.”
“What was Sherman’s job?” Roscoe asked.
Judy shrugged miserably.
“He was a truck driver,” she said. “He got some kind of a big driving contract up here. Supposed to be long-term, you know? So we bought a little place. His folks moved in too. Lived with us for a while. Then we moved out here. Left his folks in the old house. He made good money for three years. Busy all the time. Then it stopped, a year ago. He hardly worked at all since. Just an odd day, now and then.”
“You own both the houses?” Roscoe said.
“I don’t own a damn thing,” Judy said. “Sherman owned the houses. Yes, both of them.”
“So he was doing well for the first three years?” Roscoe asked her.
Judy gave her a look.
“Doing well?” she said. “Grow up, for God’s sake. He was a thief. He was ripping somebody off.”
“You sure?” I said.
Judy swung her gaze my way. Like an artillery piece traversing.
“It don’t need much brains to figure it out,” she said. “In three years he paid cash for two houses, two lots of furniture, cars, God knows what. And this place wasn’t cheap, either. We got lawyers and doctors and all sorts living here. And he had enough saved so he didn’t have to work at all since last September. If he did all that on the level, then I’m the First Lady, right?”
She was giving us a defiant stare. She’d known about it all along. She’d known what would happen when he was found out. She was challenging us to deny her the right to blame him.
“Who was his big contract with?” Roscoe asked her.
“Some outfit called Island Air-conditioning,” she said. “He spent three years hauling air conditioners. Taking them down to Florida. Maybe they went on to the islands, I don’t know. He used to steal them. There’s two old boxes in the garage right now. Want to see?”
She didn’t wait for a reply. Just jumped up and stalked out. We followed. We all went down some back stairs and through a basement door. Into a garage. It was empty except for a couple of old cartons dumped against a wall. Cardboard cartons, could have been a year or two old. Marked with a manufacturer’s logo. Island Air-conditioning, Inc. This End Up. The sealing tape was torn and hanging off. Each box had a long serial number written on by hand. Each box must have held a single unit. The sort you jam in your window frame, makes a hell of a noise. Judy glared at the boxes and glared at us. It was a glare which said: I gave him a gold watch and he gave me a shitload of worry.
I walked over and looked at the cartons. They were empty. I smelled a faint, sour odor in them. Then we went back upstairs. Judy got an album out of a cupboard. Sat and looked at a photograph of Sherman.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
It was a simple question. Deserved a simple answer.
“He was shot in the head,” I lied. “Died instantly.”
Judy nodded. Like she wasn’t surprised.
“When?” she asked.
“On Thursday night,” Roscoe told her. “At midnight. Did he say where he was going on Thursday night?”
Judy shook her head.
“He never told me much,” she said.
“Did he ever mention meeting an investigator?” Roscoe asked.
Judy shook her head again.
“What about Pluribus?” I asked her. “Did he ever use that word?”
She looked blank.
“Is that a disease?” she said. “Lungs or something?”
“What about Sunday?” I said. “This Sunday coming? Did he ever say anything about that?”
“No,” Judy said. “He never said much about anything.”
She sat and stared at the photographs in the album. The room was quiet.
“Did he know any lawyers in Florida?” Roscoe asked her.
“Lawyers?” Judy said. “In Florida? Why should he?”
“He was arrested in Jacksonville,” Roscoe said. “Two years ago. It was a traffic violation in his truck. A lawyer came to help him out.”
Judy shrugged, like two years ago was ancient history to her.
“There are lawyers sniffing everywhere, right?” she said. “No big deal.”
“This guy wasn’t an ambulance-chaser,” Roscoe said. “He was a partner in a big firm down there. Any idea how Sherman could have gotten hold of him?”
Judy shrugged again.
“Maybe his employer did it,” she said. “Island Air-conditioning. They gave us good medical insurance. Sherman let me go to the doctor, any old time I needed to.”
We all went quiet. Nothing more to say. Judy sat and gazed at the photographs in the album.
“Want to see his picture?” she said.
I walked around behind her chair and bent to look at the photograph. It showed a sandy, rat-faced man. Small, slight, with a grin. He was standing in front of a yellow panel van. Grinning and squinting at the camera. The grin gave it poignancy.
“That’s the truck he drove,” Judy said.
But I wasn’t looking at the truck or Sherman
Stoller’s poignant grin. I was looking at a figure in the background of the picture. It was out of focus and turned half away from the camera, but I could make out who it was. It was Paul Hubble.
I waved Roscoe over and she bent beside me and looked at the photograph. I saw a wave of surprise pass over her face as she recognized Hubble. Then she bent closer. Looked harder. I saw a second wave of surprise. She had recognized something else.
“When was this picture taken?” she asked.
Judy shrugged.
“Summer last year, I guess,” she said.
Roscoe touched the blurred image of Hubble with her fingernail.
“Did Sherman say who this guy was?”
“The new boss,” Judy said. “He was there six months, then he fired Sherman’s ass.”
“Island Air-conditioning’s new boss?” Roscoe said. “Was there a reason he laid Sherman off?”
“Sherman said they didn’t need him no more,” Judy said. “He never said much.”
“Is this where Island Air-conditioning is based?” Roscoe asked. “Where this picture was taken?”
Judy shrugged and nodded her head, tentatively.
“I guess so,” she said. “Sherman never told me much about it.”
“We need to keep this photograph,” Roscoe told her. “We’ll let you have it back later.”
Judy fished it out of the plastic. Handed it to her.
“Keep it,” she said. “I don’t want it.”
Roscoe took the picture and put it in her inside jacket pocket. She and I moved back to the middle of the room and stood there.
“Shot in the head,” Judy said. “That’s what happens when you mess around. I told him they’d catch up with him, sooner or later.”
Roscoe nodded sympathetically.
“We’ll keep in touch,” she said to her. “You know, the funeral arrangements, and we might want a statement.”
Judy glared at us again.
“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m not going to his funeral. I wasn’t his wife, so I’m not his widow. I’m going to forget I ever knew him. That man was trouble from beginning to end.”
She stood there glaring at us. We shuffled out, down the hall, out through the door. Across the awkward path. We held hands as we walked back to the car.