Lamentation (7 page)

“That isn’t how it works. You need parents to foot the bill. Or else be able to shoot a ball through a hoop.”

“How would you know? You never even took the shot.” Charlie wrinkled his nose. “You’re sweating a joker like Brody? There are a million guys like Brody.” Charlie pointed at me. “There’s only one Jay Porter.”

The coffee finished percolating, and Charlie filled two mugs. He set them down with the sugar in front of me, then grabbed a carton of milk from the fridge, sniffed it, decided it didn’t smell too bad, and joined me at the table. He swiped a cigarette from my pack and perched an elbow over the back of the chair, digging around his craw for whatever he had stuck in his molars.

I dumped in some sugar and milk and stirred.

“We both know why you came back,” Charlie said, scratching the thinning curls of his kinky hair. “Why you couldn’t leave. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, so feel free to tell me I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

Charlie grinned. “The sooner you cut bait with your brother, the better your life is gonna get. Don’t get me wrong. I
like
the guy. He’s always been cool with me. He’s just, I’m sorry, man, a lost cause, dead weight.”

“Last night was the first time I’ve seen my brother in almost six months,” I said.

“Ain’t no ‘almost.’ You know exactly when you seen him last.”

It had been five months and thirteen days. But I knew that only because Chris had come by begging for money on his birthday, like junkies are entitled to get high on their birthdays. We’d had this huge fight, which ended with him screaming outside my window, “But it’s my
birthday
!”

“I’d rather talk about Jenny right now,” I said.

Charlie flashed a quizzical look. “I thought we were.”

My cell buzzed on the table. A number I didn’t recognize. Normally,
I wouldn’t take the call. But given recent developments, I held up a finger and answered.

“I need it back.” It was a man’s voice, though not a very assured one. He sounded pretty young, in fact.

“Need what back?” I asked.

“I need it back,” he repeated, a little more desperately this time.

Charlie eyed me from across the table.

“I think you have the wrong—”

“I dropped off a computer the other day. By mistake. But I want—I
need
to get it back.”

“Who is this?”

“Please,” the man begged. “I have money. I’ll pay you.” He sounded as if he was on the verge of tears.

“How’d you get this number?” An incoming call was waiting. “Hold on,” I said, and switched over. “Hello?”

“Jay. It’s me. Turley.”

“Christ, Turley. What do you want now?”

“We have a problem.”

“Wrong,” I said. “
You
have a problem. I told you, I don’t know where this guy Pete is. I’m not doing your job for you.”

“Jay, they found Pete Naginis’ body behind the Travel Center Truck Stop about an hour ago. His neck’s been broken. There’s an APB out for your brother.”

“Hold on, Turley.”

I switched over to the other line. It was dead.

Three squad cars, about half of Ashton’s entire fleet, were parked helters-kelter beside an ambulance with its rear doors flung open at the far end of the Travel Center lot where the semis regularly lined up and rested for the night. Currently, there were half a dozen tractor-trailers stacked up there, nose to bumper, drivers either still asleep in their cabs or else stocking up inside before heading back out on the trail.

The sprawling facility had every accessory and accommodation for a trucker’s needs. Showers, laundry machines. There was a convenience store and a restaurant, the Peachtree, with the Maple Motor Inn a skip away, in case a driver needed more room to stretch out or whatever.

We parked my Chevy in front the Peachtree. We couldn’t get much closer, what with the crime scene tape and gaggle of onlookers that had assembled. Walking toward the scene, Charlie, who’d insisted on coming along, cinched the furred hood of his parka tighter, as I tried to fathom what this would mean for my brother.

The TC was right off the Turnpike, a busy thoroughfare for deliveries from southern New England up to Canada. It actually was a straighter shot than the I-93, and frequently less congested, making it the preferred route for many long-haul drivers. The Turnpike was barely within Ashton’s city limits, just clipping its northeastern tip. Given the TC’s scandalous reputation, there had been periodic squawking about shutting it down. But since so many local factories and mills had gone under in recent years, the Travel Center provided one of the few consistent revenue streams for the town, and so any chatter of closing it eventually died off. Most chose to ignore its existence. Out of sight, out of
mind. The TC was Ashton’s dirty secret, a small town’s red-light district. Which was fine, as long as the riffraff remained out of sight. Who really gave a shit about a trucker getting a blow job from a toothless junkie? Live free or die, man. But a murder, even of a scumbag drug addict, was bound to incite an uproar.

Plowed snow clustered around lampposts, towering twelve, fifteen feet high, like mammoth mounds of mashed potatoes. Earsplitting noise assaulted on all fronts as traffic flew past on the Turnpike, and countless industrial-sized laundry and dishwashing machines whirred and buzzed.

Through the glut of cops, EMTs, reporters, and gawking rubberneckers, I spotted Sheriff Pat Sumner standing in the middle of the crime scene. A little old man, he’d been sheriff up here since before I was born. He tapped Turley, who turned and made his way toward us, pushing through the fracas, gleefully waving a hand over his head.

“Charlie Finn,” Turley called out with a big goofy grin, like a nerd trying to sniff himself into a jock’s good graces. “Been a while. Where you been hiding?”

Charlie thumbed over his shoulder. “I live five miles down the road. Same house I grew up in.”

Turley’s face pinched and he squinched one eye, scratching his furry, Chia Pet head. “How come I never see you?”

“I don’t know, Turley. Have you been looking?”

“Good point, Charlie,” Turley said with a laugh. “Good point.”

“What’s up?” I said.

“Not good, Jay.” Turley turned sideways, pointing to a line of skinny, bare birches at the back end of a blue brick building that was tagged with graffiti and cordoned off with yellow police tape. “Waitress went out for a smoke, found the body in the wastewater runoff. Ligature marks—that means he was strangled—face bashed in pretty good. Neck been broke.”

“So, why are you looking for my brother?”

Even Charlie seemed taken aback by my question. I recognized how ridiculous it sounded. Of course they’d be looking for him. But I also knew that Chris couldn’t have done this in a million years.

“Um,” Turley stammered. “Just need to talk to him, is all.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

Eighteen wheels rumbled over the snow-packed asphalt, an endless parade of trucks downshifting, chugging, rumbling bellies of braking semis belching diesel fumes into the lot. Hard gusts raced over the peaks of Lamentation Mountain, swooping down brae to brow. Whipping through tightly crowded, manmade spaces, flecks of snow and tiny ice chips kicked up and stung exposed skin. I blew on my hands, red and raw.

“You need to try to find him,” Turley said. “There’s a lot of pressure coming from on high.”

“On high?” repeated Charlie. “What are you talking about? You got a police force of what, half a dozen?”

“That’s the thing,” Turley said, inching closer, peering back at a man in a suit.

Crisp overcoat, leather gloves, glistening shoes. The man stood talking to Sheriff Sumner and a deputy, Ollie Gibson, scribbling something down. It’s funny, when you spend your whole life in a small town, people who don’t belong stand out like ten-foot aliens belting show tunes.

“Came up from the city,” Turley said. “Detective.”

“Why is a Concord detective up here investigating a dead junkie behind a truck stop?” I asked.

Turley shrugged.

The detective briefly glanced my way. Aromas from the crappy fried food they served in the Peachtree drifted over, mixing with the cigarette smoke and diesel emissions; it smelled nauseous.

I gestured toward the detective, who’d already returned to jotting notes. “Is he going to want to talk to me?”

“Eventually, I guess,” Turley said. He looked me squarely in the eyes. “I’m granting you a courtesy.”

“A courtesy?”

“Yeah,” Turley said, testily. “A courtesy. A favor. Now do
yourself
a favor. Find Chris. Get him to come down on his own so we can straighten this out. I don’t know why they sent a detective all the way from Concord. But you’re right. It’s weird. The drug shit must really be
getting folks riled up. Last thing Michael Lombardi’s campaign needs is a drug-related murder in his hometown.” Anticipating what I was about to say next, Turley quickly added, “No one is saying Chris is guilty of anything. But Naginis
was
killed. And your brother was heard making threats. It’s hardly a leap.” Turley looked me dead on. “I know what you think of me, Jay. I’m not stupid. But I’m doing you a solid here. I hope you see that.” He thumbed back at the scene and the Concord detective. “That guy isn’t messing around. He’s treating this like a big deal investigation. I don’t think you want us finding your brother first.”

“That was fucking weird,” Charlie said as we pulled away from the TC.

I fiddled with the knob, trying to dial in some music, news, sports, car talk—anything to put noise between my racing thoughts and the ramifications. Nothing but static, frequencies jammed, signals lost almost immediately.

“What did he mean by that last part?” Charlie asked. “‘You don’t want us finding him first’—what the hell?”

“Turley’s watched too many cop shows, I think.”

Charlie chuckled, but it wasn’t funny, and neither of us thought Turley had been blowing smoke. I considered Turley a self-aggrandizing jackass when it came to most things law enforcement, but this was for real. As much as I wanted to dismiss his warning as chest puffing, I couldn’t. Chris had really fucked up this time. I knew my brother didn’t kill Pete; he didn’t have that kind of violence in him. But what he
could
do was to seriously make a mess of things. He’d made a career of it. And this was a perfect shit-storm: the wrong thing said at the wrong time, heard by the wrong person, and aided by the worst possible circumstances. My brother had threatened to kill a dead man. I needed to find him before I was powerless to help him.

Ashton may not have been New York City, but the town was hardly a stranger to violence, especially at that truck stop. A couple summers back, a prostitute had been found badly beaten and left in a dumpster. But there’d never been a detective up from Concord to investigate before. This was bigger than some run-of-the-mill lowlife fished out of a river.

I hadn’t mentioned the strange phone call to Turley. Charlie had obviously been listening. We’d talked about it and Chris’ visit on our way to the TC. Last night, I’d believed the computer story was another one of my brother’s myriad delusions—Chris suffered fits of paranoia like some people get heartburn after eating spicy food—but following that bizarre phone call and the discovery of Pete’s body, I knew his conspiracy theories weren’t going to be so easy to write off this time.

If the cops were looking for Chris, that computer shop of his would be the first place they’d check out. But dope fiends and crack-heads aren’t going to be as forthright with the police as they might be with someone else. I offered to drop Charlie home first. He insisted on coming along. Fine by me. I didn’t want to deal with this freak show all on my own.

Turley was right, I knew the spot. Taking the old Pearl Street exit off the Desmond Turnpike, we dipped into a heavily forested gully, and the surrounding scenery began to take on a vaguely familiar appearance, like the edges of a repressed, unpleasant dream. When a dilapidated red shack came into view, I clearly recalled driving by the place on the way to Coal Creek. Never ate the food, though. Even back then, you’d have to have had a death wish to go in there.