Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (25 page)

“Would the setup have worked? Without the video, I mean?”

“For a conviction? Who knows? Doubt it. It sure as hell would've kept you inside these walls awhile, though.”

“Huh.”

“There's more.”

“How much more can there be?”

“I don't know if I'll ever change your mind on your pal Crump,” Lima said—sitting straight, savoring something—“but we found a shotgun in his spare-tire well.”

I sat. I stared at nothing. My ears hummed. I focused on the humming, tried to make it stop.

It didn't.

“Bullshit,” I finally said.

“No bullshit. Wicked little thing, on the short side but not a sawed-off. No branding whatsoever, looks like a full-on custom job. I got three civilian experts trying to figure out who made it. Turns out if you got a checkbook big enough, there're six or eight guys in various parts of the world who'll build a gun exactly to your specs. It's just like getting a hot rod built, or a custom motorcycle.”

“You found
a
shotgun. Is it
the
shotgun?”

Lima shifted in his chair. “Well. Hell, why am I telling you all this? You know, you're sneaky in your own way. Sit there saying nothing, or close to it, but somehow egging me on to share the family secrets. How do you do that?”

I said nothing.

“I deserve that,” he said, half-smiling. “Like I said yesterday, shotgun ballistics are a pain in the ass. The nature of the weapon, you know?”

I put my hands together, made an explosion sound with my lips, let my fingers fly apart.

He nodded. “Right. So here's the way we're looking at it. The gun from Crump's SUV has
not
been ruled out as the murder weapon from both Almost Home and the Biletnikov killing.”

I said nothing.

“That's not lazy, Sax, and it's not a clock puncher's cop-out. That's good police work.”

“Can I go?”

He set elbows on the table, rubbed his eyes with fingertips. “You know,” he said, “the media's turning up the heat on this one. The Almost Home triple homicide was rough enough. Framingham's Framingham, and it
was
in a halfway house. But still.”

Finished rubbing his eyes, then opened them to stare at me. “Then a rich kid got it, in Sherborn no less. And now Crump, in a state park in another nice town. Guess who called our press gal at six this morning?”

I said nothing.

“Only
The New York Times,
that's who. They're going to dump me, Sax.”

“
The New York Times
is going to dump you?”

He shook his head. “The bosses. They love a shiny minority, but only until the shiny minority screws up.”

I felt bad for him.

I said, “Can I go?”

“Talk to me about Charlie Pundo. Talk to me about Fat Teddy.”

“I guess I can go.”

I rose. I walked out. I felt Lima fume behind me.

At the front desk, they handed over my phone, wallet, and keys. And told me to have a nice day.

*   *   *

Lima was right about the Pundos—they'd done a solid job taking out Donald, and if it weren't for a horny thirteen-year-old, I'd be waiting trial right now instead of heading for Sherborn on a sunny spring morning.

It had to be the Pundos who'd done it. Fat Teddy and Boxer, most likely. But maybe Charlie himself had been in on the act, sending a Mob-style message:
You got lucky and didn't burn in my skate park. But I can burn you anytime I want.

There was one question: how'd the Pundos learn about Donald in the first place?

Easy. I could think of a couple possibilities. Donald had partied with Rinn, Gus, and Brad Bloomquist, and Fat Teddy had been their connection. Bingo.

And if that wasn't it … hell, I'd met with Donald in public around the time Teddy and Boxer were tailing me. The Pundos would have cop connections—they could've run his plate and known everything there was to know in ten minutes.

After texting Charlene and Sophie to say I was okay and would explain everything, my gut had told me to round up Randall and make a hard run at Springfield. Bull-rush the Hi Hat, kick the snot out of anybody we found inside, take out Boxer if need be.

I ignored my gut.

I wish I hadn't.

That one time I should've let the red mist, the blind fury, take over. Instead, I played it civilized. Told myself I'd get to the Pundos when I got to them. I figured they had to be holed up and alibied up after what they'd done last night.

I actually congratulated myself on my thinking. It seemed like the smart move. It seemed grown-up.

For a while.

So instead of running dead west at a hundred and five, I rolled southeast at city pace, easing into Sherborn.

Every few minutes, a flash of Donald busted through. A green cowboy hat. A head that didn't look much like a head anymore. Dead weight that carried me to the parking-lot tarmac.

Interspersed: Gus memories. A black sweatshirt that said
FLATOUT
. A bloody middle in three different shades of gore. That wrist, twisted so delicately, the wrist of a boy.

I fought the memories. I tamped them. I knew from experience they'd fade as time passed.

But they'd never go away altogether. I knew that, too.

It was pushing ten when I knocked on the Biletnikovs' front door.

Nothing.

Gave it five minutes of knocking, ringing, calling out. Then went through the same routine at the guesthouse.

Nothing.

Peered in a garage window. One of the black BMWs was gone.

Well, now.

Looked like this was my chance to search the house, the way I'd wanted to yesterday. But did that still make sense? The idea had been to look around for a shotgun, or anything else that might clear or point a finger at Rinn or Peter. Now Lima had his shotgun. As far as he was concerned, he had his shooter, too: Donald Crump.

Me, I still needed one hell of a lot of convincing on that.

So convince yourself. Or not. Look around. Now.

It was a big risk with low odds on a payout.

But hell, I was going to do it.

I may have smiled when Randall's favorite army saying came to me:
Half a plan and your dick in your hand
.

I'm no cat burglar, and thin tape strips on the house's front windows told me there was some kind of security in place. But people are always the weak link, and in a big joint like this, with a nanny and a kid and cleaners and deliveries all the time, I expected no trouble.

And had none. Two-thirds of the way around the north side of the house, hidden from the road, a small window was open an inch. There was a screen, and because the yard fell away here I was working at shoulder level and above, but those factors didn't slow me much.

I used my multitool to pry out one of the pushers that held the screen in place. Set down the screen, shoved the window higher, untied my boots, put hands on the sill, jumped-pulled-scrabbled until my shoulders were inside.

My face was six inches above a toilet bowl.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY

The toilet smelled like flowers.

Sherborn.

I wriggled until my waist set on the sill, then kicked off my boots. It was worth a few seconds of my time: they kept the house clean as a marine's sock drawer, and there'd be no quicker giveaway than to tramp dirt all over the place.

Then I was all the way in. I stepped from the powder room and got my bearings. I was in the hallway Haley'd disappeared down during my visit. To my left: laundry room, a few other doors. To my right: the bulk of the first floor.

I stood and listened. Even today, with electronics everywhere beeping and buzzing, you can feel when a house is empty. Especially if you've been breaking and entering since you were thirteen years old.

Which is another story.

I felt the B&E tingle, the ugly little thrill you get when you have the run of somebody else's home, for five seconds. Then I reminded myself what I was here for, set the bezel on my ancient Seiko diver's watch, and ran upstairs. It's where you start. That way, you're always flowing back toward your escape point.

That was one thing a certain woman had taught me long ago.

Another: you never want to be inside more than eight minutes. Six is better.

It took me eleven to do the second and first floors. I was out of practice, and it was a big house, with lots of storage in lots of rooms.

I stood by the basement door. Two more minutes for a search down there?

Hesitated, grabbed the knob, bombed down.

It paid off the instant I opened another door, one that looked like it led to the unfinished part of the basement.

I whistled long and slow in the room lit only by a pair of slot windows in the foundation.

Knives. Swords. And tools for working them. A four-foot-by-three-foot butcher-block table, a stool, a pair of magnifying safety glasses. A variety of oils and whetstones like I'd never seen. Most of the stones looked a hundred years old—God knew how many sharpenings had worn in them soft, deep valleys.

On the room's walls, there had to be a hundred knives and swords. Some were three inches long, some were thirty. Three were Confederate swords from the Civil War, and many looked even older.

You've been in the house thirteen minutes. Get the hell out.

Two walls were lined with cabinets. I rifled them
fast
.

I found nothing. They were junk cabinets, had been crammed full long before Peter Biletnikov began using this as his hobby room. Which it had to be.

Yeah, I made the connection: not-quite-a-man Peter liked playing with swords, blades, knives.

Duh.

But that armchair shrink talk always struck me as BS, the kind of palaver stupid people throw around to sound smart. So as I zipped up the stairs, I made a note to wait and see where Peter Biletnikov's hobby led. If anywhere.

Twenty seconds later, when I pushed away from the powder-room windowsill, I had jack shit to show for all those minutes.

Don't get me wrong: in the old days, the Biletnikov place would've counted as a gold mine, maybe my best score ever. I'd found eighteen hundred in cash, a half-dozen men's watches worth more than my truck, a tiny pistol in a tiny velvet-lined box, cameras, laptops, and all sorts of other crap. Had left it all in place, of course.

As for
real
guns, though? Shotguns, handguns, cleaning supplies, trigger-lock keys, any indication this was a weapon-savvy household?

Jack shit.

As I pulled my boots on and replaced the screen, I thought about something else I hadn't seen in the Biletnikovs' master bedroom. The dog that did not bark, as Randall sometimes said.

No woman's stuff. None whatsoever. It was a man's space, flat out.

Rinn Biletnikov's move to the guesthouse was long-standing and permanent.

Huh.

Which means you haven't searched the joint, not
really,
until you've searched the guesthouse.

I looked it over. A white bungalow, trellis covered on the side facing me. There was no second story, and a concrete slab told me there was no basement. It was what, fifteen hundred square feet tops?

You pressed your luck already when you took too long in the main house. Am-scray.

“Hell,” I said out loud. My voice,
any
voice, sounded funny to me—hadn't heard one since leaving Lima.

Half a plan and your dick in your hand.

What swayed me: Donald Crump's tiny boots. Boots only a girl's feet could fit inside, as I'd said myself. Crump's suspicions hadn't convinced me, not really. But didn't I owe him a three-minute search of the guesthouse?

The way his sherbet-green cowboy hat fluttered from his SUV. The way his left eye bulged under the side of his head that'd been blown out.

Yeah, I owed Donald three minutes.

I crossed the yard to the bungalow's door. The key wasn't under the mat. Which meant it was parked atop the casing, I knew.

It was. It always is.

I pushed key into lock, set my watch bezel again, stepped inside.

Bedroom first was the smart way to go. As I crossed the living room, green caught my eye on a big square end table.

Goodnight Moon
. Under a stack of junk mail and women's magazines.

My face reddened as I walked the short hallway to a pair of bedrooms and a bath. I felt like a sap for handing the book over to Rinn Biletnikov.

Each bedroom was twelve by twelve. A glance told me one was for sleeping, the other for dressing and primping—it'd been turned into a giant closet with a makeup table and mirror.

I tossed the true bedroom first. Didn't find a shotgun with
I KILLED GUS
etched on the barrel. Didn't find much of anything.

Checked my watch. Nearly two minutes left.

In the second room: nothing nothing nothing. Clothes, tossed here and there, some still with tags from high-end stores.

Hell. Now what?

I gave each of Rinn's clothing drawers a five-second look-through. And there were a lot of them—she'd brought in a second full-sized dresser. I guess she liked clothes.

Nothing.

Finally, with less than a minute before I ought to get out, I rifled each of the dressing table's smaller drawers.

Looking for the world's smallest shotgun, numbnuts?

But once you start, you've got to finish.

Top to bottom on the left: makeup makeup makeup, blow-dryer, Q-tips and cotton balls.

Nada.

Top to bottom on the right: makeup makeup makeup, a half-dozen varieties of tampon-type stuff, and … my head knew I was a few seconds over my three-minute limit now, whip that drawer open …

“Well,” I said.

A stack of gift boxes. Each one the size of a deck of cards, all identically gift wrapped in primo-looking silver paper. I finger-shuffled. There were a half dozen of them. They gave off a sad vibe, though I wasn't sure why. The topmost one was dusty.