A String of Beads

by Thomas Perry

  “That’s probably wise,” Jane said. “And I take it you’re getting along with everybody there.”

  “Mattie’s been great. And the town is pretty, and relaxed, and nice.”

  “And Jimmy?”

  “Uh-huh. Same.”

  “He’s still right there listening?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay. I’ll talk to you about him another time. I changed phones again. After we hang up, check the memory on that phone and get my new number.”

  “Okay.” She paused. “And Jane?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you so much for saving my life.”

  “Right. Got to go.” She thought about what she had just learned. Chelsea and Jimmy were, at the very least, flirting. People were a strange species. They could be drugged, battered, starved, everything but murdered, but something inside them was always striving to live, to struggle out of darkness toward light. They were utterly incorrigible.

  THE POLICE TEAM HAD MOVED the motor home in Slawicky’s yard back twenty-five feet to uncover the bare patch that Ike Lloyd had seen the night he’d been shot. Two Caledonia police officers were doing the digging, while Technical Sergeant Arthur Reid of the New York State police stood by. He made sure to stand straight, and didn’t sit down or betray a lack of attention to the work so they wouldn’t think he was lounging around while they labored.

  What he was really thinking was that he fervently hoped Ike Lloyd hadn’t taken a bullet for nothing. Ike had been a close friend of Reid’s for about fifteen of his seventeen years with the state police. Ike was going to have a split decision on this case at best. He had gotten shot because once again he had a theory that he’d gone out to test alone without following the proper procedures. But he had been shot in the line of duty, so he would get another public citation for bravery, and another private reprimand for the screw-up. If the search team found something here, then maybe this wouldn’t be his final reprimand.

  Reid was determined to do his best to make Ike’s work count. Reid was supposed to be taking over an investigation that Ike had stalled, but what he was really doing was letting his friend direct the investigation from his bed.

  Reid’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he answered. “Reid.”

  “It’s me,” said Ike.

  “What’s up? Did the night nurse show up again?”

  “This morning. She also just sent us a whole bunch of photographs with dates and times and places. I’m going to forward them to you in a minute.”

  “Anything we can use?”

  “I’m not going to wait to study them before I e-mail them to you, but I think there’s a lot.”

  “I’ll let you know what I can make of them after I—” He stopped in midsentence, and took a breath.

  “What?”

  “I think they found something. Let me call you back in a minute.” Reid ended the call and stepped closer to the spot where the two Caledonia cops had stopped digging. They were kneeling in the hole now, only about two feet down. His heart began to beat faster. After questioning Walter Slawicky, Reid had known that if Slawicky had buried anything, he would not have dug very deep. He just wasn’t the kind of man who would spend several hours sweating to move five or six feet of earth out of a hole and then back in again.

  The two cops lifted and pulled up a black polyvinyl chloride pipe about nine inches in diameter and four feet long. He was aware that some of the other cops were shaking their heads in frustration, thinking that the two diggers had just broken the house’s sewer line, but not the two diggers.

  As they lifted the pipe higher he could see it was capped at both ends. They set it beside the hole and climbed out onto the grass. The lead police detective stepped up and took charge, while Reid stayed back a few feet. “Okay, great work, you guys,” the detective said. “It’s capped at both ends, so what we want to do next is take one cap off. Jerry, can you do that for us? Then take a flashlight and look inside. Don’t take anything out or touch anything inside, but I want a preview of what it is.”

  A technician, presumably Jerry, stepped up putting on latex gloves, then spread a tarp beside the pipe and used a tool that looked like a carpet knife to slice away the plumber’s tape that had been used to seal the cap. He then unscrewed the cap. He bent forward on the tarp, pressed his forehead to it, and aimed a small flashlight into the pipe.

  He sat up again and looked at the detective. “It’s a rifle,” he said. He leaned forward again. “And I can see a twenty-round box of ammo. Thirty-aught-six Federal Power-Shok, one eighty grain.”

  “Could this be the rifle?”

  “We’ll have to do the test and compare the ballistics. But it’s hard to think of why he’d bury it if it wasn’t that rifle.”

  “Okay, Jerry. Cap it again and take it to your lab. Prints, DNA, anything and everything, okay?” The detective turned away while the technician obeyed. He looked past the two diggers and spotted three other cops who had been standing around.

  “Bill, Hank. Go to the station and read Mr. Slawicky his rights.” Slawicky had been in the act of loading suitcases into his new Porsche the night after Ike Lloyd’s shooting had taken place in his yard, and he had been held for questioning.

  The detective saw two technicians folding the tarp and carrying the tube to their truck. He called out, “Pictures, guys. Lots of pictures.”

  Art Reid stepped away from the scene and took out his cell phone. He saw that he’d received an e-mail, but he knew what it was, so he didn’t stop to look. He called Lloyd’s number, and let it keep ringing until Lloyd’s voice came on.

  “Lloyd.”

  “Hi, Ike. They found the rifle. It was right where you thought it would be.”

  WALTER SLAWICKY HAD BEEN THROUGH booking and processing. When the detectives came in to talk to him he said he would wait until he had talked to his attorney, so he sat in a holding cell for an interminable period of time, just waiting. They had taken his watch, so he couldn’t even measure the time. Then there was a van that took him and two other men to the county jail. The intake ritual was long and unpleasant, a lot of standing on lines painted on the floor to wait for his forms to be created, for guards to issue him clothes, for a shower, for a cell assignment. Every single thing that got done took fifty times as long as it needed to, and all the time he was watching.

  Jail was a dangerous place. Slawicky had thought about this many times since he went to work for Dan Crane. He had always stayed off Crane’s payroll, doing the break-ins and a few odd jobs. He never liked being an employee, and since he’d fallen off the forklift when he’d run it into the high shelf at the big box store a few years ago, he’d been on full disability. He hadn’t wanted to mess that up.

  He had assumed his cell would be with the two men who had been transported in the van with him. Nobody had been allowed to talk, but he had formed an opinion about them, and he didn’t think they would be a problem. There had been no crazy-eyed stares, no signs of belligerence.

  One of them was a young guy the cops called Oakes who kept watching everybody else for cues, probably because he thought the older guys must have been through this before. The other seemed to Slawicky to actually have been in jail a few times. He was at least fifty and the tattoos on his hands and forearms had not been done by a professional. He was called Gordon, and he had the lean look of a man who had lived a marginal life for a long time. His eyes had squint lines and his teeth and fingers were stained brown from smoking. Slawicky figured that the man’s chain-smoking had probably been a reasonable decision, because he didn’t seem to be likely to live much longer anyway.

  The thing that first struck Slawicky about jail was that it was ugly. There were modules that looked modern, and open bay sections, but those were filled up already—maybe given to favored inmates—so he
was led to a traditional block with cells and iron bars. Maybe if the DA’s office scheduled a trial he would be here long enough to move. For now the guards had Slawicky in a cell alone.

  Everything in the jail was made to be plain, bare, and hard. Just looking told you if you hit anything you’d just break your hand. But he needed less time than he would have expected to get used to things. He didn’t miss soft furniture or any of that stuff. He had never wasted much time thinking about any furniture besides his television set. When he had worked on crews taking furniture out of houses and heard Crane say how much some of it cost, he’d seen it as wasted money.

  It took Slawicky two days to run into the first of the men Dan Crane had hired to get themselves sent to jail and kill the Indian. He was Carl Ralston, the biker. Slawicky was in line waiting his turn at the cafeteria counter when he felt someone standing too close to him. Ralston was big—at least six feet three, with tattoos that showed through his shaved blond hair and on his neck. When Slawicky turned, Ralston’s face was about a foot away and grinning horribly at him. It was hard to keep from flinching, but Slawicky was pretty sure he managed.

  But Ralston laughed, so Slawicky did too. They sidestepped dutifully through the line, received their food, and then Slawicky followed Ralston to a table. They sat, and Ralston said, “There are five of us now.”

  “Us?”

  “You’re in here for the Indian too, right?”

  Slawicky thought faster than he’d thought in years. “It’s not a competition, is it?”

  “No. Whoever gets the first chance at him will do it. We have it worked out that whoever else is nearby will help—block surveillance cameras, distract guards, make noise, whatever.”

  “He’s not here yet, is he?” Slawicky asked.

  “Not yet, but he could be any day.”

  Slawicky nodded as he considered his new situation. Crane had told him that the word had gone to the jail that the killing of Jimmy Sanders was off. Maybe the word hadn’t gotten around to Ralston yet. Slawicky would certainly never have considered trying to kill Sanders, especially to save Crane. But he was a new man in a central jail. Being one of five allies who were prepared to kill somebody was a lot better than being alone in here. If Ralston and the others would help him kill Jimmy Sanders, then they’d also help him in a fight with other inmates. “You can count me in,” Slawicky said. “I used to work with Nick. He didn’t deserve to die.”

  Ralston looked at him with mild contempt. “Never met him. This isn’t about Nick. It’s about money.”

  “Well of course. But I was just saying.”

  Ralston watched him, but said nothing.

  Slawicky said, “How do I know when it’s happening?”

  Ralston shrugged. “Maybe you will, and maybe you’ll just hear about it after. But be ready to lend a hand.”

  Slawicky watched Ralston chewing his food. He wanted to ask him about what Crane had said. The killing was supposed to be off because the Italians didn’t like it. He probed a little. “I heard that the Mafia has guys in here who kind of make the rules. Ever run into that?”

  Ralston nodded. “I’ve heard that, and I’ve seen them around. There are a bunch of them awaiting trial for different things. They mostly hang out by themselves. I stay away from them, and you should too. You really don’t want to get into trouble with those guys.”

  The next night Slawicky slept more soundly on his hard shelf of a bunk. At last he was protected. He was in trouble, but it probably wasn’t fatal trouble. The police had found the rifle he’d buried, even though he’d parked the motor home over it. But they didn’t have enough evidence to convict him of Nick’s murder. There was no way. He would probably be out of here on bail before any of the stupid bastards like Ralston who had gone to jail on purpose. After he was out he would have to stay safely out of sight until the police charged Crane with the murder. But that shouldn’t be hard. Crane had killed Nick, but he wasn’t likely to be able to hunt down Slawicky and kill him too. He wouldn’t have time, and he wasn’t the man for the job.

  On the third night, the man for the job arrived. His name was Angelo Boiardo, and he was in his early twenties. He had been raised in Pittsburgh, but after he’d gotten in trouble there he had been sent to Buffalo to live with an uncle. He had been working for Mr. Malconi for about four years, making himself useful, gaining knowledge and respect. At the moment he was in jail awaiting trial for carrying a concealed firearm.

  His lawyer had come to the jail and told him that Mr. Salamone had personally selected him to perform a service for Mr. Malconi. Boiardo had only a vague idea what Slawicky had done to displease the old man. There was something about endangering a business by lying about throwing a gun in the lake. It didn’t matter to Boiardo. If he had been expected to worry about that, he would have been told all about it.

  What he was told was that at 2:39 am, there would be a short circuit in the electronic locking system affecting his cellblock, Slawicky’s cellblock, and the sliding gate between them.

  Boiardo was sleek as a whippet and very quick. At 2:39 when he heard the electronic lock click and the bars begin to roll out of the way, he was already standing sideways beside the lock ready to slide his body out of his cell. He hurried down the cellblock, reached the gate when the bars had only opened a few inches, and slipped through to Slawicky’s cellblock. When he reached Slawicky’s cell the bars were fully open, but Slawicky was still asleep.

  Boiardo produced a toothbrush handle with three blades from a safety razor embedded in the shaft like a long scalpel.

  He swiftly tugged the wool blanket up over Slawicky’s head with his left hand, slipped his right under the blanket, and brought it across the throat by feel. He released the toothbrush handle and held the blanket in place for a few seconds while Slawicky’s heart’s last beats pumped the blood in spurts from the artery and it soaked into the wool.

  In three more seconds he was out again. He moved down the cellblock like a shadow to his own cellblock. A friend had kept the automatic gate from locking by placing a book between the two sides. The gate bumped the book and retracted, bumped and retracted. As soon as Boiardo passed, the man removed the book and the bars clanged shut. The two men were in their cells long before the guards came to find out why the gate had been registering an unlocked signal.

  The tracing of the short circuit that had opened the locks on one circuit for a few minutes began a few hours later, but it had to be interrupted because that morning there was a general alarm and lockdown, so the electrician couldn’t work. A prisoner had been found dead in his cell.

  25

  As Sally Schnell sat on the couch in the living room of her niece Amy’s house in Aurora, Colorado, she felt unsettled and worried. She was holding little Madison, rocking the pudgy newborn and humming to soothe her, but her mind was on her own child. Maybe she had made a terrible mistake that would make Chelsea furious at her. Maybe she had done exactly the right thing, and saved Chelsea from danger. The uncertainty was terrible.

  The two federal agents had come to her here in Aurora. They had arrived with no warning at all. When they rang the bell at the front door, Amy’s husband, Sam, had been the one to go to the door. He had looked through the peephole first and seen two men in suits. They were both athletic looking, one of them blond and the other darker. As soon as Sam opened the door, the two held up little black wallets with their pictures on cards like licenses on one side, and gold badges on the other. When she had looked at the wallets closely a minute later, she had seen a big spread eagle on the top and DEA in the middle.

  Sally had been across the room from the door and seen them and heard the blond one say, “Sir, I’m Special Agent McNally, and this is Special Agent Herrera, Drug Enforcement Administration. We’re here to speak with Chelsea Schnell. Can you get her for us, please?”

  Sam was s
o shocked that at first he was speechless. Then he had said, “What? Chelsea?”

  “Yes, sir. We need to speak with her.”

  Sam was stunned. He had turned to look at Sally on the couch, opening the door wider so the two men were able to see into the living room. “Chelsea’s mother is here, but Chelsea isn’t.”

  Special Agent McNally said, “May we come in, please?”

  There was that oh-so-careful politeness that police officers had, no matter what they were called, but this one spoke in an especially cold, no-nonsense way. The fact that they were federal instead of local seemed to make them even more cold and steely. Of course Sam let them in. Who knew what would happen if he didn’t?

  The two men stepped into the living room and held up their identification wallets so Sally could see them and repeated their names. Sally had been trembling so hard by then that she was afraid she’d drop the baby. She realized after a few seconds that she had been breathing through her mouth. She held little Madison up so Sam would take her.

  Special Agent McNally said, “Your name, please?”

  “Me?” she said. “Sally Schnell.”

  “And you’re Chelsea Schnell’s mother?”

  “Yes. What’s happening?”

  “We’re looking for Miss Schnell in connection with an investigation,” said Special Agent Herrera. “Is she here?”

  “No,” she said. “She’s not. She had planned to come, and we’d even bought tickets for both of us, but she decided she just couldn’t come right now.”

  “So you can assure us that she’s not in the house right now.”

  “Yes,” said Sally. “She didn’t come to Colorado with me. I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but only a few weeks ago her boyfriend was shot to death in front of her eyes.”

  “We were made aware of that, Mrs. Schnell,” Special Agent McNally said. “We’re very sorry for your daughter’s loss.”