Lie in Wait (18 page)

 

Chapter 39

O
UTSIDE, AN
ICY
wind blew. A woman reporter rushed at him as he came down the station's steps to the sidewalk. He did not know where she'd come from, the bushes perhaps.

“No comment,” Victor said. He quickened his pace.

The reporter quickened her pace.

“Just one question,” she said and thrust a small recorder toward him.

“No comment.”

Victor walked faster.

The reporter stayed with him.

“I'd like to ask just one question. If . . .”

Vic stopped. The reporter bumped into him. Her recorder clattered to the sidewalk. She snatched a pen and pad from her purse without a blink.

“Just one quest—­”

“I'd like to ask you just one question,” Victor said. “What word is it you don't understand in ‘no comment'? Are you a total idiot, or just too callous to give a shit?”

The woman's face reddened. “I'm just trying to do my job.”

“And I'm just trying to live my life. Which do you think I care about more? Your job or my life? Now leave me alone before I shove that pen so far up your ass it comes out that pretty fucking mouth. Do you understand me now?”

He stalked off, blood hot as lit gasoline in his veins.

At the corner, he looked back sharply. The reporter stood there, watching him. What he'd said to her was not how he wished to conduct himself. But he felt better than he had in two days. A man had to speak in earthly terms at times, to stress a point.

He yanked the collar of his denim jacket up tight to his neck. He strode quickly.

The cold settled in on him. It was one of those days when the temperature dropped throughout the afternoon, and as soon as the sun set the air drew close and frigid and you knew autumn was not coming back and winter had you in its cold clutches.

 

Chapter 40

T
EST PARKED HE
R
Peugeot in front of Jed King's house, stepped out and looked around the place. It seemed eerily quiet. From where it hung on the porch, a Don't Tread On Me flag flapped lazily in the wind.

King's truck was nowhere to be seen.

Test stared at the old sugar shack.

She walked up the slate walkway to the porch of the house and knocked. No one came to the door and she heard no sound from within the house.

She shielded her eyes with her hands and peered through the window.

The inside of the place, what she could make out of the living room and kitchen, was immaculate. A stack of magazines sat on a coffee table, each magazine perfectly squared with the others. Three TV remote controls sat aligned beside the magazines. The end tables had not so much as a coaster on them. All four kitchen chairs were tucked up precisely to the kitchen table. Nothing sat on the table. The countertops were bare, except for a toaster. The refrigerator door did not have a single magnet stuck to it. The place was as neat as a drill sergeant's quarters. Though she'd expected the slummy disorder of a two-­time, late-­middle-­aged divorcee, a militant tidiness did not fully surprise her now.

Test stepped off the porch and walked toward the sugar shack.

The door to the shack was ajar. Test knocked, then opened it.

Inside, propped in the corner, were dozens of Take Back Vermont signs.

“Find what yer looking for?”

Test spun at the voice behind her, hand going to the butt of her sidearm.

“Going to draw on me again, are we?” King said, smirking, his eyes gleeful, almost childish, with contempt.

“Push me. Find out,” Test said.

“I'll file a harassment complaint if you don't have a warrant to be on my property, is what I'll do.”

“You'd know about harassment. According to Gregory Sergeant.”

“Go running to the cops, did he.”

For a moment Test thought he was about to confess to poisoning the dog.

“All because I accidentally bumped into him on the street,” King continued. “Figures. Drama queen. Jacked with paranoia and seeing enemies all around.”

“You kill his dog?”

“Now why would I do that?”

“You tell me.”

“I'm not going to do your job for you, Officer.”

Test wondered if he used the word
Officer
as a knowing slight, or didn't appreciate the difference between an officer and a detective.

“Where were you last night?” Test said.

“Right here.”

“Doing?”

“Making more signs. They're in high demand.”

“Making them alone? You have an alibi?”

“Don't need one.”

“But do you have one?”

“I have more than you. You have squat. Just like last time. Just because you don't like that I speak the truth, you hound me without a lick of evidence. If you did have anything on me, we wouldn't be here gabbing about it like silly gossiping school twats, now would we?”

“I'll find something,” Test said.

“You know where I am.”

In her Peugeot, Test slammed her palm on the steering wheel. The fucker. He'd killed both dogs and was going to get away with it unless she found physical evidence. All she had was her gut, and King's smug response. A man who would do that. It shifted her idea about Brad. King had no alibi for the night Jessica was killed. He'd been on his own, distributing signs. And he had no alibi for last night. Whereas Brad Jenkins had the ultimate alibi for last night.

Test needed to bring North up to speed on the dogs; it might alter his theory on Brad as it had started to alter her own.

King had some balls, too, knocking Sergeant just about on his ass in broad daylight. Threatening him. Then the dogs. Her dog. Charlie. It had to be him. It had to be. He'd killed the dogs and Jessica. She hated the man, she realized. Truly hated him.

She wondered if she was letting her personal emotions cloud her objectivity.

No, part of her hatred of King came knowing what he was capable of doing.

But being capable of something and doing it are not the same
, she thought.

“Shut up, shut up,” she said and pulled her car onto the road, its bad exhaust backfiring like a rifle shot.

 

Chapter 41

V
ICTOR ENTER
ED THE
Beehive Diner.

The usual suspects sat at the counter and in their booths. When they caught his eye, they looked away.
God forgive their turning their backs on me
, he thought as he sat as his stool beside Larry Branch and ordered a late breakfast. Larry nodded but said nothing. The place grew tense as conversations lulled.

When his breakfast came, Victor mashed his fried eggs and hash together but did not eat it. He sipped his black coffee. He needed to get his energy up to speak with the lawyer. That's what he needed. That's what he told himself. With a full stomach, he'd be able to concentrate. He took a bite of his eggs and hash, not tasting it. With no appetite, he dug in to the breakfast to get it over and done.

As he swiped up the last of the hash with a wedge of toast, Gwynne refilled his coffee. “There's been a mix-­up, I'm sure,” she said. But her voice a whisper, so others would not hear.

“Yes,” Victor said. “Boy'd have to lose his mind to throw away the future he's got lined up.” There he went, unable to check his pride, even if it came with its price.

The bell above the door jangled.

Victor glanced in the mirror behind the counter to see the reflection of a black raincoat.

Jon Merryfield took the stool on the other side of Victor.

Gwynne swooped in, coffeepot in hand. “You're a sight. Been a dog's age.”

“I've been trying to eat well,” Jon said.

“Tsk. What can I get you?”

Jon eyed Victor's plate. “Whatever he had. Looks like he licked it clean.”

Gwynne glanced at Victor, then whispered to Jon, “I'm awful sorry for what happened in your home.”

Jon glanced at Victor. “Coach. How are you?”

Victor stopped drinking his coffee. “How's that?” he said, not meeting Jon's eyes, which felt as though they were boring into him.

“I said, ‘How are you, Coach?' ”

“How do you think?”

“I suppose as good as ever by the looks of that cleaned plate. Though you do look a bit green about the gills.”

“You read the paper?” Larry Branch said to Merryfield.

“Haven't had a second,” Merryfield said. “Pretty occupied with my own case.”

“His boy's been taken in for questioning for what happened at your place,” Branch said.

Jon stared at Victor. “Is that right?”

“You know it's right,” Victor said. He wanted to leave, this moment. He felt too hot. The air in the place seemed to shimmer.

“Guess I might have heard something,” Jon said.

“You know damn well,” Victor said.

“Do I?”

Gwynne stared at the two men, confused, the coffeepot suspended in midair from her hand.

Victor brought his eyes up to glare at Jon. “My boy never did nothing wrong.”

“Then I guess he's got nothing to worry about,” Jon said. “Yet there he sits. Even with you praying for him nonstop.”

Victor stood abruptly, knocking over his coffee mug and spilling coffee on the counter. Gwynne broke from her trance and wiped up the mess as Victor tossed down his money and huffed out of the diner.

Jon watched him go.

“You think he did it, Victor's boy?” Gwynne asked Jon.

“Cops don't arrest someone unless they got them dead to rights. Not for murder,” Branch said. He passed his check across the counter to Gwynne, who rang him up.

“They haven't arrested him,” Gwynne said. “They're holding him for questioning. There's a difference, isn't there, Jon?”

Jon stirred his coffee, watching as Victor strolled past the window, looking inside the diner as he made to cross the street.

“Remember that guy and the Atlanta Olympics bombing? Everybody had him hanged,” Gwynne said.

“I don't doubt for a second the boy did it,” Branch said. “Pampered, entitled jock who thinks he can get away with anything. And his old man excusing any behavior. Hypocrite.”

“I thought you liked Vic,” Gwynne said. “You talk to him every morning.”

“A matter a proximity,” Branch said.

“Why sit next to him at all then?”

“
He
sits next to
me
. I sit right where I've always sat for thirty years. I like my stool.”

“You know what,” Jon said. “I'm good, Gwynne. I lost my appetite.”

He put a twenty-­dollar bill on the counter and walked out, his mind buzzing.

 

Chapter 42

N
ORTH
SAT SLUMPED
at his desk, dozing.

When his phone rang, he fell out of his chair and cracked his elbow on the floor. Coffee spilled from a paper cup all over the front of his shirt. “Son of a bitch,” he shouted. He stood and picked up the phone. “Detective North.”

“It's Test, I have something I need to fill you in on.”

“Shoot.”

“In person.”

“What's it about?”

“Brad. In a way. Maybe.”

“That sounds concrete.” North looked around, bewildered. “What time is it?”

“Ten thirty.”

“Shit. Meet me at the coroner's in ten. We'll talk then.”

“I—­”

“It's there or nothing.” He hung up and strode out of the office.

N
ORTH MARCHED DOWN
Main Street, past the old Palladium Movie House.

Its marquee had gone unlit for fifteen years, though now with a grant and donations it was under renovation to regain its former prominence as the town centerpiece.

North had seen
The Omen
,
Rosemary's Baby
,
Soylent Green
, and every other horror or sci-­fi movie that had passed through town at the Palladium. The old theater was unlike any movie experience in suburbia today, the Cineplexes with their stadium seating and plush chairs and surround sound. The Palladium was grand but intimate, its plaster and tin ceiling ornate, the screen set on a proscenium stage whose smoky velvet curtains lifted at the start of each showing in the tantalizing manner of a burlesque performer slowly hiking up her skirt.

The Palladium boasted a balcony, an adolescent hideout. What better place in the world for a kid to while away a wintry Saturday than in the balcony at a movie house, his girl beside him? The thrill and heartbreak of it: holding hands, that first kiss. Even just being close enough to smell a girl's shampoo, to watch the Junior Mints melt on her fingertips, leaving them stained with chocolate she licked off, utterly oblivious to how her every tiny, casual gesture cleaved a boy's heart in two. North's heart, anyway.

The darkness made a boy brave, too. If you got there early, you got the front row of the balcony. You could prop your feet up on the rail. You could see the screen better than from any other place in the house, and you could see the audience laid out below you. At times, if he'd seen a film more than twice, which he often had, he would spend most of the matinee observing how the audience reacted to certain scenes. Mrs. Marsh, petite and bespectacled, one of the two pharmacists at Whipple Pharmacy, always squished herself up into a tiny ball when a character inflicted a wound on his own self, cut a wrist, or held a hand over a candle. Yet, when mass bloodshed took place, she leaned in closer, plucking Jujubes from her box with the frenzy of a squirrel heisting seeds from a bird feeder. Coach Jenkins—­Victor Jenkins—­North remembered, was unmoved by violence. He sat stone-­faced during the most brutal of acts. He stirred only for sex scenes. He would fidget, unable to get comfortable. He seemed to be a movie buff. But around the time of North's freshman year, Coach had stopped going to the movies. He was rarely seen in public. ­People talked. Then, he'd reappeared. Born again.