Ice Shear (23 page)

Zeke scoffed. “I'm always a suspect.”

“No,” Dave said. “Really. You loved your boy, and were, as you said, on the other side of the country. Did you ever meet Danielle?”

“In passing.” Zeke watched me as he answered Dave's question, absently fingering the rim of his beer bottle. We all sat there quietly, the lie hanging over the room like the cloud of cigarette smoke.

“Well, there was that one time.” Linda scrunched up her face as if trying to recall something from fifty years ago, when in fact it had been barely five months. “Right before the boys moved east.” She talked to Dave. “She came up, spent the weekend. She and Ray had become like family, and she wanted to say good-bye to him. That's before Ray decided to move.”

Zeke frowned as Linda depicted the weekend, which sounded more like a sorority reunion than time spent with an outlaw motorcycle gang. Linda described giving Danielle a tour of the family home, Danielle gushing over Marty's bedroom as well as the “social club”—a sweet term for the Abominations' den.

“Ray took Dani out for a ride, and she loved it Danielle belonged on the back of a bike,” Linda said. “And when she asked if she could bring Ray with them, keeping Marty's connection with home, how could we say no?”

“Didn't like her, Zeke?” I asked.

“No. I liked her fine.”

I stepped forward, putting myself between Dave and Jelickson. “You and she talked?”

“She was kin. Of course we talked.”

“What did you chat about?”

“Nothing.”

“Family business?” I asked.

“Don't know nothin' 'bout making paper.”

“I mean your family business, Zeke,” I said.

“I don't think I want to answer that question. That ‘family business' crack, I know what you're insinuating. Come tomorrow when you got no one to pin it on, you'll take my words and twist them and find a way to pin it on me.” Zeke's eyes were flat as a dead leaf trapped under the frozen river. “Bitch.”

“Please don't talk to Officer Lyons like that,” Dave said.

“I can talk to that
bitch
any way I want to,” Zeke said. “It's my freedom of speech.”

“He's correct on that.” I smiled at Dave reassuringly. “There's no one better versed on constitutional law than bikers, Dave.”

Zeke took a swig of his beer. “So tell me this, when are you going to get off your lazy asses and release our son's body so we can bury him properly?”

“Zeke only gets a week off for bereavement from the DMV,” Linda added.

Zeke Jelickson, chief enforcer for the Abominations, worked for the DMV? I was stunned.

“I thought you owned a garage,” Dave said.

“I have twenty years' service in the Department of Motor Vehicles. Much like yourselves, I'm a civil servant. The garage is just a hobby I share with some other weekend motorcycle enthusiasts,” an interesting euphemism for the Abominations if I ever heard one. “Like the gentlemen out front. Who are going to make sure that Ray gets sent off in style.”

“Obviously we want to release him,” Dave said. “But until the coroner is done—”

“You can't keep him.” Linda Jelickson stamped out her cigarette, ash from the tray spraying out onto her jeans. “We have rights.”

“I know, ma'am, but we need to complete the autopsy so that we can solve this crime.”

“Like you're going to find his killer,” Zeke Jelickson spat. “I wouldn't trust you to track down a lost dog, but at least you might try
real hard
if Fido belonged to Amanda Brouillette. You have no interest, no interest at all, in finding the killer of my boy. Unless you can pin it on me.”

Zeke Jelickson got up from his seat. He walked slowly, his stance wide in his steel-toed boots.

“Zeke . . .” Linda Jelickson said.

Zeke seemed to be considering his beer bottle carefully. He paused, a foot from Dave. And then he swung.

I dove forward, jamming Jelickson's arm sideways in midswing. The beer from the bottle sprayed wide, hitting Dave, but the bottle missed his face. Using momentum, I pinned Jelickson's arm around his back and held it.

Linda Jelickson leaped out of her seat, sending a tower of CDs crashing down. Dave straddled the coffee table, his foot hitting one of the ashtrays and spilling its contents across the off-white—now off-off-white—carpet, and grabbed her arm.

“This is how you treat a grieving father!” Linda Jelickson yelled, trying to pull out of Dave's grasp. “You people!”

“I didn't mean to spill my beer on you, Officer,” Zeke said, but I felt his arm flex, the flaming skull tattoo moving under my hand, and Jelickson's face slid sideways, mashing against an M. C. Escher poster. It tore against his cheek. Being shorter than Zeke had its advantages here. I used my lower angle to pull his arm tighter, but this wouldn't last—the second I let him go he would pound me into the ground.

“Wrong,” I said. The patches on his back were easy to read:
ABOMINATIONS
, 1%, and
COPPERHEAD
, which must be his club name. “You were
trying
to hit him with the bottle.”

“Why, I wasn't trying to hit him with anything.” The saccharine tone of Zeke's jagged voice was more insulting than if he'd told us to fuck off and die. “An accident, I swear, Officer.”

“He's right, Officer Lyons.” Dave spoke only to Linda Jelickson. “Zeke's mind wasn't clear after he heard the news that we might not be able to put together a case because people are withholding evidence.”

Linda Jelickson stopped pushing against Dave, and as she relaxed, I released my hold on Zeke.

Zeke Jelickson shook out his arm. “I don't know who might have been ‘withholding evidence,' but the congresswoman is all twisted up, warped inside with all the power she's got. That woman, and her husband, too, they're users, no doubt about it.”

Linda Jelickson nodded. “I'm a mother, and I can tell. Amanda Brouillette's got no mother's love, and neither does this bitch here. Any idiot could see it.”

“We're done,” Dave said at last. “But consider this, today, a freebie. You are grieving parents, and you aren't,” he emphasized, “suspects. But you take a swing at me or anyone else in this town and you will be locked up. And if you don't keep the boys outside on a leash, you will be locked out. Am I clear?”

Linda Jelickson didn't reply, going to the door and holding it open for us. Jackie's voice could be heard from the porch, trying to talk her way past the gauntlet. The requirements for her entrance were different than those for Dave and me.

“Show us your puppies,” a guy was saying, gesturing for her to lift her shirt.

“Jackie,” I asked, “does your father know you're here?”

Jackie squared her shoulders. “The Jelicksons are expecting me.”

“We are,” and Linda Jelickson opened the door wide, gesturing Jackie in with her cigarette. “Jackie dear, come in, come in.”

Jackie slid past the men, but stepped back when Linda tried to hug her.

“Can you put out the cigarette? It's not, it's not . . . healthy.”

Linda Jelickson flicked the cigarette over the porch railing where it burned out in the snow. “Do you want a soda, Jackie?” She threw her hair over her shoulder. “Of course, it's family only.”

O
W, FUCK.” DAVE GINGERLY
pulled the blue cloth away from his body and winced. “I think my chest hair is freezing to my shirt.”

“Now, now,” I said. “Zeke didn't mean to spill beer on you. I'm sure he's very sorry.”

“Because he wasted beer. He wasn't sorry that the wasted beer ended up on
me
.”

I bumped Dave's shoulder with my own to adjust his course as he ran up the steps of the police station—he was going to run into the frieze next to the entrance rather than through the door itself. The carving depicted Justice, her scales and sword at the ready, with a beaver, the official New York State animal, nestled at her feet. It had probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Please hold,” we heard Lorraine say as we pushed open the door. She raised an eyebrow at Dave. “You know you smell like a bar mat, right? And while that's not a problem most days, today you should get yourself cleaned up. Jerry called, and the chief and him are out of their meeting with the governor. Jerry said, and I quote, ‘The governor handed out so much pain, there's more than enough to go around.' Unquote. Always the big talker, Jerry. They'll be here in fifteen minutes or so. Plus, you got an FBI agent waiting for you in Room Two.”

“Oh, joy,” I said.

Dave grabbed a shirt out of his desk drawer and jogged toward the locker room. “Please let me solve this case before I run out of clean shirts. Hey,” he called over his shoulder, “don't kill the G-man before I get back.”

Hale sat at the far side of the table in Interview Two. Two files and a stack of papers were at his right hand, and a recorder? a camera?—I was no longer up-to-date on the latest surveillance technology—at his left. Behind him was carnage: bloody pictures of Ray and the bloodless pictures of Danielle.

“You willing to hear me out?” Hale said, his black suit picking up the faintest layer of dust as he spread his arms wide on the table.

“Dave might. My bullshit detector is still in place.”

“That might change once you hear what I have to say.”

“Doubtful.” I pulled a chair from the corner so we had seats for five.

“I—”

“Let's wait for Dave, shall we?”

We sat in silence. Hale turned sideways, keeping one eye on me while he studied the wall of evidence. I could see him follow the ribbons that led from one photo to the next. He seemed calm, unflappable under my scrutiny until he made eye contact. He then, ever so slightly, blushed.

Behind me the door opened, the chill air hitting my neck. I continued to stare Hale down, trusting Dave at my back.

“Sorry it took me so long,” Dave said finally. “I bathed.”

He collapsed next to me, the steam of the shower still clinging to his clothes, radiating out.

I slanted a glance at him. “Didn't have time to towel off?”

“I'm solving a murder here. At least I'm no longer going to pass out from alcohol fumes.” Dave crossed his arms across his broad chest. “So what's up?”

“Something . . . something big.” Hale gestured at the recording device.

“Something big enough that you waved Craig off the crime scene?”

Hale froze. “Wait. No. You don't believe I'd do that.”

“He
knew
you. He described what you were wearing, your stupid hat.”

“The boy was snow-blind.” Hale leaned forward on the table. “He was mistaken.”

“No one in law enforcement,” I said, “no trooper, no one from the sheriff's department—no one would wave away someone from the crime scene.”

“No one in law enforcement includes me.”

“Really?” I said. Dave shifted, and his leg pressed against mine under the table, whether to give support or calm me down I didn't know. And I didn't care. “You're protecting Craig, who very well might have murdered two people.”

“June, you as much as anyone knows an agent has only two things: his reputation and his confidential informants. Craig wouldn't—”

“Means, motive, opportunity,” I ticked off on my fingers.

“We track him constantly.”

“Constantly. Really? So you knew he was at the scene?”

“Constantly might be too strong a word.”

I had a full head of steam built up. “Well, whether you are lying—”

“I'm not.”

“—or not, which we have no way of proving, why don't you describe this big investigation so (a) I don't haul your CI in and hold him, and (b) you restore some of your beloved reputation. Because right now? You look pretty dirty.”

“No,” Hale said. “Let's settle this, for good. I wouldn't compromise the investigation. Until I know you believe that, we can't move forward.”

“I believe you,” Dave said.

“Really?” Hale said.

“What?” I said.

“I do.” Dave grabbed his neck, an exaggerated version of Hale's tell, and gave me a meaningful look. “I don't believe that he would wave Craig off.”

I stifled a smile.

“I
might
believe that you didn't lie,” I said to Hale, “but to build my trust, why don't you tell us everything that made you compromise two murder investigations.”

Hale didn't say anything, instead pressing the tiny button on the small machine that lay next to him.

“So I'm trying,” Zeke Jelickson's voice roared out, and Hale lowered the volume, “to get a handle on things.”

“Well, sheeyit,” said a man's voice with a southern accent. Texas, I thought. “What're ya doin?”

“Funeral for the girl. And Ray's body—”

“Brother, you have my deepest sympathy. Lost my own boy young.”

“Ray lived a righteous life, and I plan to stick it to the cowards who murdered him, so that his death is paid back. Paid back in full.” Zeke breathed deeply. “In the meantime, we got to take care of business.”

“Your girl took care of the wire transfer. She was just full of surprises—it was those Orientals in Canada tipped us off that she had paid in full. If I didn't know how close you were to your boys, I might have been worried that she was gettin' ready to cut us out of the sugar. Such a shame she passed on. She was a firecracker.” There was a pause. “And they told me you got her pilot lined up. He's solid, right?”

“Hold on a sec.” In the background Linda Jelickson could be heard saying, “Watch out for that cabinet there. It makes me nervous; it could tip over and kill someone. Do you want a soda?” And Jackie answered, “Yes, please.”