“This is a tough one. I hate to say it, but maybe I’m not being fair to the cops. Maybe they really did look.”
I made work phone calls in his backyard while he continued to search through the wreck for another hour and a half.
Finally, he got up. His work gloves were covered in grease. “Nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing. Now I got to get over to Cheepsters.” That was the record store where he worked.
“A little longer,” I pleaded. “Half an hour.”
“Hand me my cell phone and I’ll see if I can trade off an hour now for an hour of bondage later.”
I helped him pull the front hood open—it was so damaged that the electric engine-cover release wouldn’t have opened it even if he’d applied an external battery to the fuse box. But there seemed to be nothing there either.
“Damn, this is frustrating,” he said. He opened the driver’s side door and wriggled into the collapsed front seat. He sat there for a moment. “Speedometer’s stuck at sixty-five,” he said. “They weren’t speeding.”
He pumped the brakes with his foot. “They work fine.”
He turned the steering wheel. “Oh, baby,” he said.
“What?”
“Turns a little too easy. Are the wheels turning?”
I stepped back and looked. “No.”
“This could be the problem. You’re driving on the turnpike at 65 and the road bends, so you steer, but your wheels keep going straight. You’d crash right into the guardrail.”
“What causes that?”
“Could be a couple of things.” He bent down and messed with the wires under the dashboard. With a long wrench, he removed two airbag screws behind the steering wheel. He took a screwdriver to the back side of the steering wheel and removed the airbag unit from the center of the steering wheel, then the airbag connector.
“Air bags didn’t even deploy,” he said. Now, with a wrench, he removed the steering wheel nut and bolt. He yanked at the steering wheel, but it didn’t move. Then he grabbed a rubber mallet from his toolbox and hammered at the steering wheel from behind a few times, then lifted the wheel straight out.
A minute later, I heard him say, “Oh, now, this is weird.”
“What?”
“Check this out.” He pulled out a thin rod about a foot long that had a U-joint at one end. The other end was jagged.
“What’s that?”
“Steering shaft.”
“Smaller than I thought.”
“That’s because it’s only half the steering shaft. This”—he pulled out a matching piece—“is the other half.”
“Broke?”
“These things are made to withstand a hell of a lot of torque. I’ve never seen anything like it. The steel didn’t snap. It looks like it ripped. Like a piece of licorice or something.”
“You should have been a cop,” I said.
On the drive back to work, I called Kenyon.
“State Police, Trooper Sanchez.” Hispanic accent.
I asked for Kenyon.
“I can give you his voice mail, or I can take a message,” Sanchez said in his heavy Hispanic accent. “Unless there’s something I can help you with.”
I didn’t trust him, only because I didn’t know him, hadn’t met him. Didn’t know who he knew.
I asked for Kenyon’s voice mail, and I asked Kenyon to call “Josh Gibson” back on my cell.
Then I called Kate’s cell from mine. She said they’d just arrived at Susie’s house, and that the trip over had gone well. She was taking it easy now.
“We got a call on the voice mail at home from the doctor’s office,” she said. “The amnio results are in, and everything’s totally fine.”
“Are we having a boy or a girl?”
“We told them not to tell us, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
“What’s going on over there—with Kurt.”
I told her I was going to call her back in a few minutes, from another phone, and I explained why.
The Plasma Lab was empty, I knew. I put my fingerprint against the biometric reader. It beeped and let me in.
Somehow, somewhere, an alarm had probably just gone off, and Kurt knew where I was.
I picked up the phone in the corner office, which used to be Phil Rifkin’s, and called Kate on her cell.
“Hey,” I said. “I didn’t want to call you from my office. I’m not sure it’s safe.”
“How so?”
“Sweetie, just listen. I’ve been thinking a lot. And this business about Kurt—I mean, if he’s doing stuff like tapping my phone, that’s one thing. But this—this thing with Trevor’s car—that he’d never do.”
“You don’t think?” She was an excellent actress, and she was playing her part perfectly.
“I don’t. I really don’t.”
“Why?”
“It’s crazy. It’s conspiracy thinking. The state police have examined the car wreck, and there’s nothing there.”
“I think you owe him an apology. You’ll see him at the softball game tonight, right? You should tell him you’re sorry.”
“Yeah,” I said reluctantly. “I can’t do that, though. I’ll get grief from him forever.”
The apology thing I wasn’t prepared for. I guess she was improvising. Kurt, I figured, would never have believed me if I told him to his face that I’d decided he was innocent. But it would surprise me if Kurt weren’t listening in on this phone call. And he’d only believe I was on the level if he was eavesdropping on me.
Whatever it took.
Sergeant Kenyon had left me a message on my cell. I took the elevator down to the lobby, drove a few blocks, and called him back. This time he answered the phone himself.
“I asked around about LME,” Kenyon said without waiting to ask why I was calling. “You may have something there. Liquid Metal Embrittlement is scary stuff. I don’t know where you’d buy the chemical—a welding supply house, maybe?”
“Or take it from an army supply depot. I have a question for you. Let’s say I somehow managed to get a piece from Trevor Allard’s car that proved something had been done to it, some kind of sabotage. Would that be evidence you could use in court?”
“The car’s scrapped, I told you that.”
“Let’s just say.”
“What’d you do?”
“I’m asking you if the evidence would be admissible.” I’d watched my share of Law and Order on TV. “You know, chain of custody or whatever it’s called.”
“It’s complicated. I’ll have to get back to you on that. See what the DA’s Office tells me.”
“Soon as you can,” I said.
He called back ten minutes later. “Okay,” Kenyon said. “One of the prosecutors here tells me that, in this state, chain of custody goes to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility.”
“You’re going to have to speak English.”
Kenyon laughed. “And I was hoping you could explain it to me.”
“Sorry.”
“What that means is, it’s not a deal killer. Legally, you don’t have to show every link in the chain. A good defense attorney will put up all sorts of arguments, but a judge has to allow it. So…I’ve answered your question. You answer a couple of mine. Do you have the piece or not?”
“I have it.”
“Okay. And you say it proves sabotage. How do you know that? No offense, but you’re a corporate executive. Not a metallurgist.”
“I can’t tell you for a hundred percent sure that it proves the car was sabotaged. But I can tell you that it looks like a Tootsie Roll that’s been twisted and then torn off. It’s not a normal metal break.”
“What kind of piece is it?”
I hesitated. “The steering shaft.”
“Well, let’s assume for the sake of argument that you’re right. In isolation, all that would tell me is that the car was tampered with. But I’ve still got a problem. A major problem.”
“Which is?”
&
nbsp; “Connecting it to Kurt Semko. So you’ve got to establish that he had the means to do this—this LME. That he has or had access to it.”
“He has the stuff in his apartment,” I said. “I’ve seen it. All you have to do is search his apartment.”
“We come back to this,” Kenyon said. “I told you before, unless you’re willing to be a named informant, we’re not going to have probable cause to search. If only there was some other way. He never gave you a spare key to his apartment or anything?”
“No, of course not.”
“I don’t suppose he’d invite you over.”
“Not in a million years.”
“Then how the hell can you prove he has it?”
“How can I prove it?”
“That may be the only solution. Just as you got the steering shaft on your own.”
“Maybe there’s another way,” I said.
There was, of course. Graham Runkel was working on it.
“Like what?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that,” I said.
57
Kurt greeted me with a wave, from a distance, and a friendly smile. I smiled back, just as friendly, said, “Hey.”
He was on the mound already, warming up. The ballpark lights were on. The opposing team, a motley crew from the Bear Stearns retail group, was already inspecting our bats. The word had gotten around. They obviously didn’t realize that, with the exception of Kurt, the remaining members of the Entronics team weren’t good enough for a doctored bat to make any difference. But they’d soon find out. Festino was consulting with the other guys.
My cell phone rang. I knew who it was, so I walked off a good distance before I answered it, on the third ring.
“I’m in,” Runkel said.
“In the house?”
“You heard me.”
He had broken into Kurt’s rented house in the town of Holliston. I could picture it in my mind, from my one visit—everything about it neat and well tended, very hospital-corners.
“Not a problem?” I asked.
“The doors were double-locked, but the overhead garage door was open. The door to the house from the garage is always the weak link. Easy to pick.”
“No alarm?”
“Rented house like this? I didn’t expect it. But count on there being a good smoke alarm system. Landlord would make sure of it.”
“You know where to look?”
“You told me.” His voice was sort of jiggling as he walked through the house. “The spare bedroom off the family room, right?”
“Right.”
“You care what I use to set off the smoke alarm? Like a doobie?”
Kurt was waving to me again, and so was Festino. “Come on, Tigger,” Festino shouted. “The business day is over. We’re starting.”
I held up an index finger.
Once Graham found Kurt’s cache of stolen weapons and explosives, he was going to open the door to the room where the cache was kept and leave it open.
So that when the fire department came, summoned by the smoke alarm, and broke in, did their usual damage, they’d see the illegal armaments, and they would call in the police. In this age of terrorism, they’d have a crime scene on their hands.
And then we’d have Kurt nailed. No arrest warrant needed, and all perfectly legal.
“Find it?” I said.
“No,” said Runkel.
“What do you mean, no?”
“There’s nothing here.”
“Okay,” I said, “if you’re looking at the fireplace in the family room, it’s the door on your right. This hollow-core door. The only one on that wall.”
“I’m there. I see which door you’re talking about. But there’s no stash here.”
“It’s there,” I said, desperation rising. Kurt was walking toward me. I lowered my voice. “I’ve seen it.”
“I’m in the room,” Runkel said. “There’s a single bed, nothing on it. The room smells a little like gunpowder, maybe. Like there used to be something here. But there’s nothing here.”
“Then he moved it. Look in the basement. Look everywhere else. It has to be there.”
“Let’s go, Jason,” Kurt said, maybe ten feet away. “You’re keeping everyone waiting.”
“Don’t give up,” I said, and hung up.
Shit.
“You’re a busy guy,” Kurt said. “Who was that?”
“It’s a contract,” I said. “Guy misplaced it.”
“That’s annoying. So you’re playing first base. Can you handle that?”
“Sure,” I said. “Kurt. About all that—all that stuff I threw at you. About the car and everything.”
He shook his head. “Not now.”
“No, I just want to apologize. I was out of line.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “That’s the past. Come on, let’s get to the field.”
He put his arm around me, like a fellow soldier, the way he used to.
But I could tell there was something about him that had changed. He was hard and unyielding and distant.
He didn’t believe me.
Kurt had moved his cache of stolen Special Forces armaments and war trophies.
That made sense. The heat was on, and he didn’t want to risk a search.
So where had he moved it?
The answer came to me while I stood at first base, and it was so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. Willkie Auto Body. The shop owned by Kurt’s friend and SF buddy, Jeremiah Willkie, where Kurt had taken my car the night I met him. Where he stored all his tools and stuff in the warehouse out back.
That’s where I had to go.
I tried to focus on the game. The Bear Stearns retail brokers weren’t very good. Without Kurt, neither were we, of course. Kurt struck the first two guys out, and then their third man up, who had been studying Kurt’s pitches, managed to hit a grounder to the right side of the infield. Letasky tried for it, but it glanced off his glove. Kurt ran off the mound and retrieved it, then threw it to me.
I caught it, but it slipped out of my glove, and the runner made it to first.
“Come on, man,” Kurt shouted, annoyed. Before he returned to the mound, I trotted over to him, pantomimed an apology, and pretended to hand him the ball. He glanced at me strangely, but walked slowly toward the mound, taking his time.
I returned to first base, the ball hidden in my glove. The runner, a pudgy, bespectacled kid, beamed me a smug smile. He saw that Kurt wasn’t looking, wasn’t even back on the rubber yet. Saw his opportunity to steal second, greedy man that he was.
And as soon as he moved off the bag, I tagged him.
He was out.
“Hey!” their coach shouted, running out into the field. “That’s a balk!”
Festino and Letasky and the others were watching with amazement. Festino burst out in raucous laughter, shouted, “Tigger!”
The umpire waddled onto the field. “He’s out. The old hidden-ball trick.”
“That’s a balk!” the Bear Stearns coach said.
“Nothing to do with a balk,” the umpire said. “You don’t even know what a balk is.”
“No one knows what a balk is,” Festino said.
“That’s the hidden-ball trick,” the umpire declared, “and it’s perfectly legal. Pitcher was not on the mound. Now, play ball.”
“This is sandlot stuff!” protested the Bear Stearns pitcher. Like this was some professional ball club.
Letasky laughed, said, “Steadman, where’d you get that?”
“I saw some guy from the Marlins do it against the Expos a couple of years ago,” I said.
As we left the field, Kurt came up to me. “Classic deception,” he said. “Never thought you had it in you.”
But I just nodded, shrugged modestly.
Go ahead, I thought. Underestimate me.
I excused myself, took out my cell, walked a distance away, and called Graham. The phone rang and rang, six times,
then went to his voice mail.
Strange, I thought. The cell phone reception in and around Kurt’s house was perfectly good.
So why wasn’t Graham answering the phone? I had to know if he’d located the cache of weapons.
I hit redial. It rang six times again before going to his voice mail.
Where was he?
Kurt came up to me. “Come on, Grasshopper. We’re up.”
“One second,” I said. I hit redial again.
No answer.
Where the hell was Runkel?
“Jason,” Kurt said. “Come on. Time to play. Let’s show them what you’re made of.”
58
The minute the game was over—we managed to eke out a victory—I took Festino aside and asked him to invite Kurt out for drinks with the rest of the Band of Brothers. Make sure of it, I said. I didn’t give him an explanation, and he didn’t demand one.
Then, in the car on the way to Cambridge, I tried Runkel’s cell, then his home number. Still no answer, which freaked me out a little. It wasn’t like him to just fall out of contact. He was a hard-core stoner, but he was basically responsible, and he’d been pretty methodical about breaking into Kurt’s house.
So why wasn’t he answering the phone? I didn’t want to let myself think the worst—that something had happened to him. Besides, I knew Kurt couldn’t have done anything to him, since I’d been with Kurt the whole time.
He was fine. He had to be.
I’d been to Willkie Auto Body twice—once the night I met Kurt, and then again to pick up my car—so I vaguely remembered the directions. But I had no idea what I was going to do once I got there. I was pretty sure Kurt’s storage locker was in the back building, which was a ware-house for auto parts and paint and whatever else they needed. The front building, which looked like an old gas station that had been retrofitted, was where the customer waiting area was, and the small office, and the work bays, where they did the frame straightening and spray painting and all that.
Willkie’s Auto Body was a desolate, marginal-looking place. It was surrounded by a tall chain-link fence, but its front gate was open. I knew the place was open late, but I didn’t know if that meant that there was someone there twenty-four hours, or just until midnight, or what.
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