Borderlines (36 page)

There was a slight gap-the door was slightly open.

I reached out and pushed inward. The door swung back without a sound.

“Earle? This is the police. We want to talk to you.” Nothing. We strained to hear anything beyond the occasional groaning of a tree and the isolated scurrying of an invisible woods animal.

Spinney cautiously poked his head around the corner, his features etched in nervous strain. Then, slowly, gaining confidence from what he saw, or didn’t see, he nodded to me and made his move, gliding around the edge of the door and to the left, as I did the same to the right.

We both ended up in a kitchen, crouched against the wall, our guns pointed at an empty room with an open doorway opposite. The place was as cold as the outside. On the floor before us lay a short jumble of climbing rope, an Army-type web belt with various pouches, and an empty scabbard. Next to it was an enormous bowie knife. The knife lay slightly to one side, as if thrown there, its otherwise gleaming blade tarnished with smears of dried blood.

We crossed the kitchen to the other door and looked in. The curtains were drawn across the windows, but enough light filtered through to reveal a small, messy living room with an assortment of cast-off furniture and a short, dark hallway beyond. Now well inside the tiny house, we were cut off from even the rare sounds of the frigid forest.

Spinney and I looked nervously at each other. As before, we split to either side and crossed the room to the cavelike opening of the narrow hall.

Keeping our bodies out of sight, we craned our necks to see what lay ahead. The darkness was virtually total, a corridor leading to an absolute black void.

%232 I shut my eyes briefly and then reopened them. What lay ahead was not entirely blacked out; there was something there. I could sense from Spinney’s sudden stiffening that he’d seen the same thing. In the midst of the gloom, barely visible, there was a single tiny red point of light-the tip of a burning cigarette.

“Earle, this is the police. Come on out with your hands up.” Nothing, not a sound nor a movement.

Spinney began to back toward the front of the building. “This stinks.

I’m calling for backup. I’ll bring back a flashlight, too. Wait here.”

I nodded my approval. Not to have asked for backup earlier had been a judgment call, one on which we’d both agreed. Now, there was no alternative. Christ only knew what Earle had waiting for us in that bedroom.

I stared long and hard at the small point of light. “Come on, Earle, give it up. This is stupid.” Again, no sound and no movement. And no brains, I thought suddenly. I grabbed a pillow off the couch beside me and tossed it like a Frisbee into the bedroom, directly at the cigarette. I missed, but not by much, and still the tiny red glow didn’t move a hair.

“Shit we’ve.been had.” I still didn’t dare enter the bedroom; he might be standing in the corner, waiting for one of us to do just that, but I was also afraid for Spinney. If the cigarette had been a lure, it might have been rigged precisely to split us up.

I ran back to the kitchen and looked out the window toward Spinney’s car. I was just in time to see him being handcuffed to the doorframe by a thinner, dirtier version of the man in Nadine’s photograph. As I watched, the man began returning to the house.

He was about one hundred yards away, a distance he would take cautiously since he didn’t know whether I was still standing by the bedroom door, or waiting to blow him away. I didn’t want to kill him, but I thought about putting him in my sights and telling him to drop the rifle he was carrying. But Spinney was directly in my line of fire. If I had to shoot, my bullet could pass right through Earle and hit Spinney. I retreated toward the bedroom, scooping the rope off the kitchen floor as I went.

I quickly pulled back the blanket Earle had rigged across the open window, flooding the place with light. Taped to the iron bed’s headboard, facing the door, was a barely smoldering cigarette. Without pausing to admire the man’s style, I quickly tied one end of the rope around the leg of a side table and passed the rest of it out the window.

Then, poking my head outside to see if the coast was clear, I sat on the %233 windowsill, swung my legs out silently, and let the curtain drop closed behind me.

Without a sound, my gun in one hand and the end of the rope in the other, I moved along the wall, below the windows, until I was just shy of the front corner of the house. Just a few yards away, around that corner, I heard Earle quietly open the front door. I pulled gently on the rope. Barely audibly, I heard a scraping sound come from the back of the house. I counted to three, and looked quickly around the corner.

Earle was gone and Spinney was still at the car, his eyes fixed on me.

With the rope still in hand, I scurried to the door and very carefully looked in. Earle was in the kitchen, crouching by the living room entrance. Again, I pulled on the rope. He tensed and levelled the rifle toward the rear of the building, turning his back to me completely.

Using the doorframe as cover, I pointed my gun at him and spoke softly.

“Don’t move, Earle-not a muscle.” There was that inevitable slow count of three, that endless moment in which fateful decisions are made between life and death. I wasn’t sure of Earle. I didn’t even know the man. He’d had a hard life, had his brains twisted around by the very person who should have lent him guidance, and he’d finally given in to the ultimate act of violence. I was fully expecting him to turn that rifle on me to put his misery forever behind him.

But he didn’t. He laid it on the ground beside him and placed his hands on top of his head. He was smiling when he turned around. “How the hell… ?” I showed him the rope and pulled it. The table moved a bit in the dark beyond him. “Lie down on the floor-hands behind your neck and ankles crossed.” He did as he was told and I put my handcuffs on him. “I didn’t expect your buddy to come out so fast. I was going to nail both of you inside.” His voice was utterly calm, as if he were sorting out the details of some minor housekeeping mishap. I decided to take advantage of what might be just a temporary state of mind.

“Why’d you kill Rennie?” He snorted. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know that.” “Why now?” “Dumb luck. I saw him pull into Lemon Road when I was coming down Radar. I was feeling bad, thought a drive might clear my head. It sure did. I saw him, followed him, watched him rig a meeting with those fruitcake bastards, waited ‘til they left, and then I cut him open.

%234 I’ve wanted to do that for more years than I can remember. It felt great. You should have seen him go.” I watched him lying on his stomach, his cheek pressed against the cold wood floor, a smile on his face. Now I knew why he hadn’t challenged me-the life had already gone out of him. He didn’t give a damn anymore.

“The fruitcake bastards was one of them Edward Sarris?” He cocked an eye at me, surprised. “Him and some girl. You got all the answers, don’t you?” Didn’t I wish. “I’m getting there.” Hamilton stopped the car halfway up the hill and watched Sarris’s building. Most of it was dark, with only the windows to the far left brightly lit.

“Looks like somebody’s still at home,” Spinney murmured. “Son of a bitch never leaves the place,” Smith said. I looked at Smith out of the corner of my eye. For the first time, I sensed a small bounce to his voice. And earlier, while Spinney and I were being debriefed on the Earle Renaud bust, I’d felt somehow that the rigidity with which he’d addressed me from the start had melted a couple of degrees. It was nothing measurable, but it was more than my wishful thinking. For some reason, I’d finally been elevated from being a mere 5A investigator and a thorn in Smith’s side. It shouldn’t have mattered to me one way or the other, but I was pleased nevertheless. It justified the number of times I’d resisted simply writing the man off, as I always sensed Spinney had, perhaps to his own loss. We continued up the hill, drove around the edge of the building, and parked next to the Cherokee with the “ORDER” license plate. It was only six at night, but already pitch-dark. Sarris answered our knock with a flashlight in his hand. He led us without uttering a word through the gigantic gloominess of the meeting room to his private inner sanctuary. Hamilton and Smith had never been in that part of the building before, and were obviously surprised by its Greenwich, Connecticut gloss.

Sarris seemed totally distracted, which made me wonder what might have happened during the few hours since Spinney and I had last %235 sat in this room. It might have been that Sarris had had time to mull over Spinney’s dire prediction of his fate and that of his organization, but I sensed there was something more, something tangible that had made him realize just how thin the ice was beneath him.

After we were all seated, he fixed me with his large, dark eyes. At some early point in this case, he had focused on me, first as his primary antagonist, and now I thought, almost as a personal nemesis.

“What do you want?” I looked at the others. Hamilton gave me a slight nod to go ahead.

“We arrested a man named Earle Renaud a few hours ago, for the murder of Rennie Wilson.” “Good for you. Of what interest is that to me?” Sarris crossed his legs nonchalantly, but I felt the gesture belied a subtle tension in his features.

“It turns out Earle had been watching Rennie for quite some time before he stuck him with a knife, long enough to see him meet with you and Julie Wingate.” Sarris remained silent.

“Do you admit to meeting Rennie the day he died?” “You’re the one with the witness, Lieutenant.” “What did you three talk about?” Sarris propped his elbows on the arms of his chair and made a steeple of his fingers in front of his mouth. I recalled his earlier comment that he’d had a lot of practice appearing in court. He had to walk a fine line with us-to appear accommodating and yet stay clear of self-incrimination. But I sensed from his curtness he was also running on limited reserves, and that the game of cat and mouse was becoming increasingly less rewarding. It was a weakness I hoped to work on.

He finally cleared his throat, opting for a half-truth. “Our meeting was clandestine, not illegal. Mr. Wilson invited us there.” “Why?”

“Oh, he was concerned that Julie Wingate was somehow involved in implicating him in her father’s death.” “By planting his lighter under Wingate’s body.” Sarris hesitated. “He did mention a lighter.” “Why did you agree to meet with Rennie at all? You were under no obligation to him, were you?” “Of course not, but Julie was quite upset over her father’s death. I thought this meeting might be of some help to her, maybe shed some light on why Bruce Wingate was killed.” “Weren’t you a little nervous about being alone in the woods with a suspected murderer?” “I had no quarrel with Wilson.” %236 “You had no quarrel with a man who’d been blackmailing you for months?” Sarris sat absolutely still.

“A man to whom you’d been supplying women, including Julie Wingate, because he had information that would shut the Order down overnight?

Seems to me that might constitute grounds for a quarrel, even a rather violent one.” “You said yourself you’d captured Wilson’s murderer.” “But Rennie Wilson had been framed by the man who killed Bruce Wingate.

Wilson wasn’t supposed to die; he was supposed to take the fall for the death of a man that had caused you grievous harm. In fact, Bruce Wingate was a challenge to your credibility within the Order.” I paused here for a theatrical mix of fact and bluff. “He had killed five of your followers, burned one of your houses to the ground, and was intending on kidnapping his own daughter from under your protection.

With Wingate’s death and Rennie taking the blame, you took care of two major problems with one fell swoop. Very efficient.” Sarris’s eyebrows shot up, in what I was afraid was genuine surprise. “You’re saying I killed Wingate?” “It fits. We have a witness to his murder, and another who will testify that Rennie Wilson was blackmailing you.” Sarris was now visibly perturbed. “You have a witness who says I killed Bruce Wingate?” “Paul Gorman was also at the bottom of that ravine. Wingate had asked him to come along for backup. He saw the whole thing.” “Well, he didn’t see me. I was nowhere near that ravine. Do you think I’d be stupid enough to jeopardize all I’ve built to kill Bruce Wingate?

He wasn’t undermining my credibility. The idea’s absurd.” “I hardly thought you’d like it. A jury probably will, though, especially when they hear how far you went to keep Rennie quiet, first by paying him off in sexual favors, and then by framing him for murder.’z My mind was whirling by now, flipping though the facts we’d built up over the past several days, looking for the connections that would widen the cracks in Sarris’s composure. Rennie had begun blackmailing Sarris six months ago, more or less. He’d also lost his lighter to Julie Wingate at that time, and she’d been the first woman Sarris had supplied. What had happened six months ago that gave Rennie the ammunition he needed to put the squeeze on Sarris?

And then it came to me, like a bolt from the blue. It fit perfectly, gave a logic to it all. But it needed to be confirmed. Only Sarris could do that, and only if he believed I was already sure of my facts.

I sat back in my chair and smiled at him, trying to hide my nervousness.

%237 “That must have seemed like a nice piece of irony-framing Rennie for murder-since that’s exactly what he was holding over you.” The room was absolutely still. I could hear my own heartbeat thumping away behind my temples, its rapid rate belying my outward calm.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sarris said in a flat voice, devoid of conviction.