by John Lutz
“I don’t like it when plans go wrong,” the Skinner said.
Sanderson had stopped walking and stood leaning against a building in a shallow alcove where he had something like privacy. “What are you talking about? Tan—The job got done. It’s all over the news.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“I gave you your ticket stub, like we agreed.”
“That’s not necessarily enough. We also agreed on a patsy. You guaranteed me that Stopp wouldn’t have an alibi, that he’d be by himself home in bed.”
Sanderson was confused. He’d tracked Stopp. Knew his habits and routine. “Wasn’t he?”
“No. I checked. I always check. When the woman we’re talking about was losing her final battle, Stopp was almost losing his. He had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Lots of people that wear white outfits will testify he was nowhere near the apartment when the woman died.”
“Heart attack? You serious?”
“Serious as . . . well, you know.”
Sanderson’s confusion was fast becoming anger. His fear was moderated by the fact that the Skinner was far away, on the other end of a phone connection.
Or is he far away?
Sanderson’s gaze darted this way and that. Unknown Number. Any of the many buildings around him might contain a public phone. And there were cheap, disposable bubble-packed phones that didn’t provide caller ID. “Listen, I couldn’t know about a heart attack. I mean, that was something out of my control.”
The laugh on the other end of the connection chilled Sanderson’s blood. “Everything is out of your control. You’re like the hunter who tracked a tiger to its lair and found out his gun wasn’t loaded.”
“Listen—”
But the Skinner had broken the connection.
Tiger . . . Lair . . .
Sanderson stood with his mind whirling. The hunter analogy had scared the hell out of him. This was terrible. Stopp had been intended as an insurance policy, a patsy held in reserve, a prime suspect with a motive to kill Tanya Moody, and no alibi. Between that and the Skinner’s ball-game ticket stub printed with the time and date of Tanya’s murder, the Skinner would have had a tight alibi. But instead of alibi insurance, what Stopp had provided was a heart attack.
That Sanderson could be blamed for not knowing about it ahead of time was vastly unfair. How could anyone have predicted a coronary event? Or was he supposed to have had a backup plan? Some way to maintain control of the situation?
Well, maybe . . .
Was the Skinner right? Did Sanderson have any control at all?
Of anything?
Sanderson couldn’t stop looking around, searching with worried eyes. It had been a long time since he’d been so unnerved. He almost dropped his cell phone trying to slide it back in his pocket. It took a few minutes before his hands stopped trembling.
The Skinner walked away from the lobby pay phone in the Clarington Hotel. Across the street and down two blocks, he entered another hotel and went to the bar, where he ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks with a splash of water and sat by himself three stools away from two men and a woman. They were watching an old black-and-white Honeymooners rerun on the TV over the bar. Jackie Gleason was bouncing around in his bus driver’s uniform. Art Carney, as Norton the sewer worker, was patiently trying to calm him, but Gleason was fuming and out of control.
The Skinner smiled grimly. Control.
He reviewed in his mind his phone call to Sanderson. Sanderson had been right in that he, Sanderson, couldn’t control something as unpredictable as a heart attack. That was the problem. It wasn’t so much that the Skinner couldn’t trust Sanderson; for now, he could be depended upon. But eventually, if Sanderson lost his fear, he might attempt blackmail even though he, himself, would be an accomplice to murder.
But all that was in a possible future. The problem with Sanderson now was that he’d become a complication as well as a coconspirator. He was something else that could go wrong.
The Skinner needed—no, demanded—perfection in planning and execution. Complete control. Imponderables made him uneasy. Sanderson was a parasite the Skinner hadn’t so much minded, because he was useful. Not as useful as he thought, but useful. But Sanderson, by his own admission, couldn’t control matters. Which meant that the Skinner couldn’t control Sanderson.
On the other hand, if the Skinner eliminated Sanderson, it would open an entire new avenue of investigation, create a new vulnerability. And for now, Sanderson and his ticket stubs were useful. And who knew what kind of precautions Sanderson had taken? Were there Pandora’s boxes that would automatically open if he were killed? There might be a sealed, incriminating letter in some lawyer’s files, or video recordings lying in a safety deposit box, that would be examined upon his death.
Alice entered the drab apartment carrying a bag of groceries, and Norton quickly stepped between her and Ralph to protect her. Gleason, as Ralph, balled his right and righteous fist, rolled his eyes, and then sat down at a bare table and buried his head in his arms. He wept in frustration.
The Skinner sipped his scotch.
The people at the bar, watching the TV, laughed at something Norton had said sixty years ago.
The Skinner weighed his options.
75
Hogart, the present
“You want me to drive over there?” Westerley asked, after Beth had described Roy Brannigan’s unexpected visit.
“No,” Beth said on the phone. “He didn’t actually threaten me, and he must have had to keep moving to stay on his route.”
“If the whole thing wasn’t a load of bullshit,” Westerley said.
“I believed him about the driving job. I saw the actual truck. One of those big diesel things the drivers leave running even when they go in someplace for lunch.”
“When’s Link due home?”
“Not for two more days.”
“I don’t like it, you alone in that house, especially tonight when we know Roy’s in the area. I could talk to the state patrol. Maybe they’d send a car around.”
“They’d tell you there wasn’t enough reason. Even I know they don’t have enough people to protect every woman who suspects she might be in danger.”
“True enough,” Westerley said. “How’d Roy seem to you after all these years?” He was trying to get a feel for just how real a threat Roy Brannigan might pose. After all, the business about the rape and trial was a long time ago. If time didn’t heal completely, it did tend to cool passions.
“Physically he looked about the same,” Beth said, “only bigger and stronger than I remembered. And he seemed to be calmed down some when it came to his religious beliefs.”
“Did his apology seem sincere?”
Beth hesitated. “I can’t say, Wayne.”
Westerley thought about it. “I could have Billy Noth drive out to your place and keep an eye on things till morning.”
“Your deputy’d just love to spend the night sitting in a parked car,” Beth said. “Or hiding in the woods.”
“He could sack out on the couch, Beth. Billy’s a light sleeper.”
Beth didn’t say anything for a long time.
“Wayne?”
“Yeah?”
“How ’bout you, after all? I’d like you to come over.”
“Sleep on the couch?” Westerley asked.
“Don’t try to be funny, Wayne.”
Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to happen at Beth’s that night. And Westerley didn’t sleep on the couch.
When they got up the next morning, he took Beth to the Bob Evans near the Interstate cloverleaf and they had breakfast. Westerley had eggs and biscuits, Beth a waffle and sausages.
“I appreciate you coming here,” Beth said, over their second cups of coffee.
“It’s not like I got nothing in return,” Westerley said with a smile.
There was a rumble outside the window by their booth, and they looked out to see a bi
g eighteen-wheeler with a dusty black cab roll in. It parked some distance from the building with a hiss of air brakes. They stared and saw a short blond man climb down from the cab, stretch, and swagger toward the restaurant. He looked nothing like Roy Brannigan.
“I’m still jumpy,” Beth said.
“I should come back tonight.” Westerley said.
Beth smiled at him and stroked his bare forearm. It made the hairs on his arm rise up. “You’d do this all over again?”
He nodded. “I like the biscuits.”
“I don’t think I need anyone tonight,” Beth said. “Roy’s probably two states away by now. Besides, Wayne, you’ve got a job to look after.”
“The Hogart Bank hasn’t been robbed in forty years.”
“Overdue, I’d say.”
“Has Link got a gun?”
“His twelve-gauge shotgun’s locked up out in the garage.”
“I mean a handgun.”
“Yeah. In the closet. An old Colt semiautomatic. I know how to use it.”
“Keep it by the bed tonight.”
“I’ll do that. I promise.”
Westerley did drive back to Hogart after breakfast, but not before making sure Beth was safely installed at home.
The first thing Westerley did when he got into town was to call his deputy, Billy Noth, into the office and give him the rest of the day off. Then he told Billy the situation with Beth and instructed him to drive to her place this evening and spend the night keeping an eye on the house without telling her.
“I can hardly recall what Roy Brannigan looks like,” Billy said.
“Let’s hope you aren’t reminded tonight. By the way, Billy, Beth’s got a handgun she keeps by the bed.”
“Great,” Billy said. Then he laughed. “You warning me away, Sheriff?”
“Get out of here, Billy,” Westerley said.
When Billy was gone, Westerley called his contact at the state lab and asked if there was any progress on the DNA samples he’d sent in. There’d been a family killing in St. Louis that was put on top priority, he was told. It might be several days before he heard about his samples.
Westerley’s next phone call was to his part-time clerk and dispatcher Bobi Gregory. He asked her to handle the phone and to call him if anything important came up. He wouldn’t be far away, over in Jefferson City, where the Vincent Salas trial had been held.
Something about the time of the rape, and the Salas trial, was nibbling at the edges of Westerley’s memory, but he couldn’t identify it.
He spent most of the morning in the City Hall records room, reading the trial transcript. Salas seemed guilty again.
Only he wasn’t. Not according to DNA.
Westerley went to another department and gained access to the section where evidence was stored from trials dating back years. He easily found the box containing the Salas trial evidence.
It angered him when he touched Beth’s torn panties, the three empty Wild Colt beer cans. Salas had never reclaimed the contents of his pockets, which were in a separate brown envelope. When he examined the envelope’s contents, Westerley understood why. The envelope contained a pocket comb, a cheap penknife, and sixty-two cents in loose change. A worn leather wallet held two one-dollar bills, a punch card that would earn free coffee at a restaurant in Flagstaff, Arizona, and an expired Missouri driver’s license. One of the loose nickels attracted Westerley’s attention. It was dated 1919, or maybe 1918. It was hard to tell, as worn as the nickel was. Westerley fingered the coin for a while, then dropped it back in the envelope with the rest of the contents, put the envelope back in the evidence box, and returned everything to its dusty space in the rows of metal shelves.
When he left it struck him as always how so much chaos and violence could be reduced to items in neat rows of boxes, and ignored to be rendered harmless by time.
76
When Westerley got back to Hogart and entered his office, Bobi Gregory was seated at the desk by the window. Across from her, Mathew Wellman was sitting in one of the padded black vinyl chairs with wooden arms. Mathew was pretending to read a supermarket tabloid. It featured the President of the United States smiling and waving as he boarded a flying saucer.
“My Aunt Edna sent me,” Mathew said.
Westerley was thrown for a moment. Then he remembered Mathew’s surreptitious viewing of pornography on the computer. He motioned with his head for Mathew to follow him into his office.
After settling in behind his desk, Westerley told Mathew to have a seat in a nearby chair that was exactly like the one he’d been seated in out in the anteroom.
Mathew looked down at the floor. “All I can say is I’m sorry about what happened, sir. I never meant for Aunt Edna to see that stuff.”
“I bet you didn’t,” Westerley said. “Some of those women looked seriously underaged.”
“Aw, they can make them look like that. You probably mean the one with the—”
“The sites are against the law,” Westerley said, but he supposed they’d have to be looked at one by one to really determine that.
“Actually, they’re—”
“I’ll talk to your Aunt Edna and make sure she knows you were just satisfying your curiosity, and you’re not a sex maniac.”
Mathew seemed surprised by this sudden apparent termination of what he’d assumed would be a major and historic ass-chewing from an expert. He wasn’t sure quite how to react. “I know pornography can become an addiction, sir.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Westerley said, noticing that Mathew was regarding him with a new attentiveness.
Mathew said nothing, sensing when to hold his cards close.
“You believe that stuff?” Westerley asked.
“About the addiction?”
“No. About the president and that flying saucer.”
No fool, Mathew, knew that wasn’t really the question. He said, “I don’t dismiss it out of hand.”
“You notice that computer on the table out in the other room?” Westerley asked.
“Sure, I did. Nice setup with plenty of power and storage. It’s got that new chip that makes it unbelievably fast. If you wanted to play games—”
“I do,” Westerley said.
Mathew grinned. “What kind of games?”
“Depends on what you and that computer can do. The state just bought it and I’m still lost on it. Probably always will be, to some extent. It’s a generational thing. Seems that the younger people are, assuming they been weaned, the better they are with all this tech stuff.”
“Weaned?”
“It’s an old expression. Like carbon copy.”
“You’re funning me,” Mathew said.
“Not really. People over a certain age have a difficult time getting the hang of computers. Bobi, out there, she mostly downloads recipes and sends e-mail and photographs, so she’s not much help so far. Billy Noth might as well be flying the starship Enterprise for the first time. What I want calls for somebody who can make the most use of that expensive advanced technology. Really make it hum.”
“That would be me,” Mathew said.
“I’d find somebody younger if I could,” Westerley said, wondering where the sir went.
“I’m in the right spot at the right time.”
“That you are, Mathew. On the spot, you might say.”
“I want to do something,” Mathew said, “to repay you for keeping me out of trouble with Aunt Edna, and with the law. And for saving me a lot of embarrassment.”
So young to be playing the game, Westerley thought. “I haven’t done anything yet,” he said.
Mathew nodded but said nothing. His bland, reassuring face was unreadable. The lad would go far.
“What’s the expression used when you go where you aren’t supposed to be on the Internet?” Westerley asked. “I mean, other than if you’re looking at porn sites.”
“Hacking,” Mathew said.
“Do you possess that skill, Mathew?”
“I
t’s more an art than a skill.”
“So are you an artist?”
Mathew smiled. “Think Picasso.”
Westerley stood up and came around from behind his desk. “Come with me to the other room and familiarize yourself with that computer,” he said. “I’ll send Bobi home to make a pie, and then go see your Aunt Edna. When I get back, I’ll tell you what I need.”
Mathew stood up, grinning. “I wonder what Aunt Edna would think if she knew we were partners in crime.”
Westerley didn’t smile. “You’re going to have to learn, Mathew, not to pull my chain.”
But Westerley knew Mathew wasn’t exactly joking. He recognized the expression in the young nerd’s face, the ironically dumb staring look in his eyes. Hero worship. Maybe it was the way the porno thing was handled. Maybe the uniform. Maybe the gun.
Westerley shook his head. Terrific. I’m the idol of a kid smarter than I am.
Link kissed Beth on the cheek when he came home. She tried not to react too obviously, but she wondered if he’d noticed her resistance, the slight drawing away and stiffening of her body.
If he did, he gave no indication. He sighed contentedly, like a man glad to be home, and carried his blue nylon suitcase into the bedroom. It was a roomy piece of luggage, a suit carrier that had lots of zippered pockets. It could be folded twice, and somehow managed to qualify as a carry-on and fit in an overhead compartment.
Beth followed him into the bedroom and watched him unpack.
“Add to your collection?” she asked.
He smiled as he tossed a pair of socks onto the laundry pile. “Not my personal one, no. But I picked up some valuable antebellum coins for the company.” She noticed, not for the first time in the past few years, that Link had even begun to talk in a slightly different way, as if he were more educated. Not so much like the uncomplicated country guy she’d met years ago in a roadhouse with a parking lot full of pickup trucks.
Of course, he might simply have cleaned up his English to go with his suit-and-tie job.
“They should be pleased.”
“They usually are, Beth. That’s why they keep me busy traveling. It looks like I’ll have to be gone next weekend, too. Big numismatic convention in Denver.”