Harry Dolan (36 page)

“I’ve got mine.” It was in her coat pocket. As her fingers closed around it, it began to ring.

At the same moment, Denham’s hand came out of his jacket, gripping something that was not a cell phone. Elizabeth had time to register colors: yellow and black. She had time to think:
Taser.
Then the current leaped to her body and her phone slipped away from her and a searing pain made her cry out.

 

 

 

Carter Shan jerked awake. He had lingered at City Hall to catch up on paperwork and then had settled in for a nap in the Investigation Division’s break room. Now he bolted up on the cushions of the tattered couch and swung his feet onto the floor.

Alice Marrowicz, who had only touched his shoulder, stumbled backward, startled. She should have turned on the light, she thought. Not the wisest thing, to wake an armed man in the dark. “Sorry,” she said.

She faded back to the wall and flipped the switch. Fluorescents buzzed overhead.

Shan blinked. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Is it one o’clock?”

“What happens at one o’clock?”

“Alice,” he said impatiently, “what can I do for you?”

She turned shy for a moment, searching for the right words. “I tried calling Detective Waishkey. She didn’t answer her cell. And she’s not home—her daughter answered there.”

“What do you need her for?”

“It’s about David Loogan—Darrell Malone.”

Shan became alert then. “I’m listening.”

“On Wednesday,” Alice said, “Detective Waishkey asked me to do some research on Loogan. This was before that New York detective showed up—Roy Denham. We had an address for Loogan in Cleveland, and the name of his landlord there.

“I got through to the landlord Thursday morning and learned that Loogan had moved to Cleveland from Philadelphia. The landlord was able to give me Loogan’s Philadelphia address and the name of the woman he rented from there. So I tried calling her, but I only got her voice mail.”

She was watching Shan’s face, and his impatience seemed to be growing. She hurried on. “Then Denham came in on Thursday afternoon and we knew who Loogan was, and where he was from originally—Nossos, New York. So I never followed up with the woman in Philadelphia. I figured it didn’t matter anymore—”

He interrupted her. “Where’s this going, Alice?”

“She called me today. She’d been on a trip and just got my message. She was intrigued to hear from the police about Loogan. She was hoping for some juicy gossip, I think. Anyway, she told me something odd about him—he changed his name.”

Shan relaxed into the tattered cushions. “Well, we knew that. He was Darrell Malone when he lived in New York, and at some point he started using the name David Loogan.”

“It was while he was renting from her,” Alice said. “He signed his first lease as Darrell Malone. His second, as David Loogan. He changed his name. Legally.”

Shan’s eyes narrowed. “That can’t be right.”

“He gave her proof,” Alice said. “A certified copy of the petition, approved by the court. She’s going to look for it in her files and fax me a copy.”

“Oh, hell.”

“He shouldn’t have been able to do that, should he? If he was really a fugitive?”

 

 

 

The Nossos
Tribune
had a Web site, but no archives online. Carter Shan called the city desk and got a number for the paper’s crime reporter. She had covered the Malone case when she was just starting out, and after some cajoling—he had interrupted her Saturday-night dinner date—she told him what he needed to know about Darrell Malone.

Malone had been indicted nine years earlier in the stabbing death of Jimmy Wade Peltier. That much was true. But he had never fled. He had been put on trial for murder in the second degree, and the jury had been unable to reach a unanimous verdict. The reporter claimed to know that they had been split nine to three in favor of acquittal. The prosecutor had declined to retry the case. Darrell Malone was a free man.

Owen McCaleb received the news stoically. He stood at his office window, looking out into the dark.

“Is there a Detective Roy Denham in the Nossos Police Department?” he asked Shan.

“There was. He died year before last. Stroke.”

“So the Denham we talked to—”

“James Peltier,” Shan said. “Jimmy Wade’s father. The reporter gave me a description. She interviewed him a few times, before and after Malone’s trial. He wasn’t happy with the outcome.”

The weight of the situation descended on McCaleb. It showed in his posture—the energy seemed to drain out of him.

“He showed me an ID card,” McCaleb said faintly.

“According to the reporter, he owned a printing shop for thirty years,” said Shan. “He could manage a fake ID.”

“I imagine he has a wife. A tough old broad. Does a good impersonation of a chief of police.”

“They planned this well. She calls to let you know he’s coming. He appears right on cue. The faxed case file seals it. What is there to doubt? The file was probably more or less authentic. The reporter told me the real Denham befriended James Peltier. It wouldn’t be the first time a detective felt sorry for a grieving father. Peltier could have asked for a copy of the file and held on to it. It would only require a few alterations, to make it look like Malone had skipped out before his trial. Probably the wife handled that, after Peltier told her what he needed.”

“What led them to Loogan in the first place?” asked McCaleb. “How did they know he was here?”

“I haven’t checked on that yet, but it probably happened just about the way Denham—Peltier—described. Loogan goes shopping for a shovel. The cashier recognizes him, because she went to school with him. She mentions him to her sister—who, instead of passing it along to the police, passes it along to the Peltiers.”

McCaleb gathered himself and turned away from the window. “All right,” he said. “I’ll send a patrol car around to James Peltier’s hotel. See if we can pick him up. You should call Elizabeth in. She’ll want to hear about this.”

Shan took out his cell phone and dialed Elizabeth’s number. His call cycled through to her voice mail, and he began to feel uneasy as he remembered that Alice too had tried to reach her earlier and had gotten no answer. He left a message and then tried Elizabeth’s home number. His conversation with Sarah did nothing to reassure him.

He turned to McCaleb. “Lizzie’s not answering her phone. She called her daughter around seven-fifteen, said she had errands to run. No word from her since.”

McCaleb frowned. They both knew that Elizabeth kept her phone close. It wasn’t like her to be out of touch.

“Maybe nothing’s wrong,” McCaleb said, “but I’m not willing to make that assumption. Not tonight. We need to find her. I want you to work with Harvey Mitchum on that. I’ll call him and tell him to pull everyone off the
Gray Streets
stakeout.”

“Right.”

McCaleb sank into the chair behind his desk. “Maybe her phone isn’t working,” he said wistfully. “Maybe she really is running errands. Do you think she’s running errands?”

Shan was already on his way out. Without breaking stride he said, “No.”

“Neither do I.”

Chapter 37

ELIZABETH WAISHKEY FELT TREMORS PASS THROUGH HER. THE MUSCLES of her back twitched as she leaned against the wall of Sean Wrentmore’s living room. Her wrists tingled within the circles of handcuffs. Her legs, extended straight along the carpeted floor and bound at the ankles with electrical tape, jerked and trembled with minor aftershocks.

A single lamp lit the room, a table lamp with a shade like parchment. It gave off a golden light and the light seemed to flicker, but after a time Elizabeth realized it was steady. The flickering was in her mind.

There were things she remembered. A glimpse of black and yellow in Roy Denham’s hand. The cry that escaped her when she felt the current. Her fists clenching uselessly and Denham tugging her pistol from her holster.

Denham’s voice. “My dear lady, forgive me.”

Then her feet on the ground. Knees wobbly. Tightness in her arms. The cuffs were on by then. Her own cuffs, from the leather case at her belt. A drunken march across the parking lot with Denham at her back, his fingers like talons in the flesh of her arm.

The porch light shining suddenly over the door of Wrentmore’s condo. David Loogan in the doorway, a shotgun leveled, wavering.

Denham holding the muzzle of her pistol to her temple. Cool steel. Loogan bending slowly to lay the shotgun on the step, retreating into the house with his palms open, fingers spread wide.

“Take it easy, Mr. Peltier,” he said.

She would have slapped her forehead then, if her mind had been less addled, if her hands had been free. Instead, the realization sank in slowly, as Peltier’s fingers dug into her biceps. As he guided her up the steps.

You’re awfully hard on yourself,
she remembered him saying.
You can’t think of everything.

Passing through the doorway, she heard his voice again, a whisper at her ear: “Keep quiet and do what I say. You’re going to survive this.”

Now, in the flickering golden light, she saw David Loogan in the center of the room, in a straight-back chair from Wrentmore’s kitchen. He had shaved his head. She hadn’t noticed it before.

His hands were behind his back—Peltier had produced a second set of cuffs.

Loogan regarded her calmly. She looked at his mouth. She had always thought he had an interesting mouth. His lips were moving. “Elizabeth,” he said.

James Peltier—the man who called himself Roy Denham—extended his arm casually. The Taser, black and yellow, touched Loogan’s chest and made a spark. Loogan grimaced and his body stiffened, but only for a moment.

“Shut up,” Peltier snapped, and returned the Taser to the pocket of his jacket.

He got his cigarettes out and fired one up. Blew smoke at Sean Wrentmore’s ceiling. Another drag and he switched the cigarette to his other hand, reached into a trouser pocket, and came out with Elizabeth’s nine-millimeter.

“Mr. Peltier,” she said, “you don’t want to do this.” Her voice sounded odd, as if it were flickering like the light.

Peltier didn’t look at her. “I asked you to keep quiet.”

“If you really wanted to,” she said, “you would have done it by now. And you would have brought a gun of your own.”

Peltier still didn’t take his eyes off Loogan, but he took the cigarette from his lips and ground it into the carpet with his shoe. He tucked the nine-millimeter into his waistband and rooted in an inside pocket of his jacket. When he drew his hand out he held a metal object six inches long. A snap of his wrist and the thing unfolded as if by magic—a butterfly knife with a polished blade like a mirror.

He held it up for Elizabeth to see, but his eyes remained on Loogan. “He killed my son with a knife like this, and he ought to die the same way. That would be justice. But I guess I don’t have the stomach for it.” He tossed the knife onto the sofa behind him.

“It’ll have to be a gun,” he said.

His hand went to the grip of the nine-millimeter, but he didn’t draw it out. Elizabeth took that as a positive sign. She might be able to talk him down. She had precious few other options. She could yell at the top of her lungs and hope someone heard. But if Peltier panicked, that might get her shot—no matter what assurance he had given her about surviving.

She scanned the room and didn’t see Loogan’s shotgun. Peltier might have left it outside on the steps. Someone might see it and get suspicious and call the police. Or they might not. If the porch light was off—and Elizabeth thought it was—the shotgun might go unnoticed. And the blinds were all closed now. No one would be able to see in.

She would try to reason with him, stall him. It was the best she could do.

“Mr. Peltier.”

He took a step back from Loogan and turned to look at her.

“Think about what you’re doing,” she said.

David Loogan chuckled then. An unexpected sound.

“Oh, he’s thought about it,” Loogan said. “He’s been thinking about it for years. He’s been working up the nerve.”

Peltier stood impassively. The golden light cast half his face into shadow.

“He used to throw rocks through my windows,” Loogan said. “Used to call me in the middle of the night. Always from a public phone, always un-traceable. And he never said a word. The police could do nothing about it. After a while, I moved away. I changed my name. I’m almost grateful to him for that. I never much liked being Darrell Malone.”

Elizabeth studied the easy set of Loogan’s shoulders. He looked relaxed for a man with his hands cuffed behind his back. She allowed herself to hope that he might have a plan. He was a juggler. Dexterous. Perhaps he had other skills. Perhaps, somehow, he was picking the locks of the handcuffs even now.

He was still talking: “Mr. Peltier and I have been out of touch for six years. I thought maybe he had mellowed. He’d come to grips with what happened. But I guess not. Here he is, primed to shoot me. That’s a far cry from prank phone calls. But I think I understand. You got old, Jim. Time’s running out. If you don’t do it now, you might never do it.”

“If I were you, I’d keep still,” Peltier said in his gruff smoker’s voice. “I’d think about the state of my soul. I’d try to get myself right with God.”

“I feel like talking, Jim. When are we going to have a chance to talk again?”

“I’ve heard enough of you talking. I sat through two days of it at the trial.” Peltier drew the gun from his waistband and glanced at Elizabeth. “He testified at his trial. He told them exactly what he did to my son. He didn’t even try to deny it. And they let him go anyway.”

“I’d like to hear about it, Mr. Peltier,” she said calmly. “Why don’t you sit, and we’ll talk about it?”