Suspects (5 page)

The addendum was needless. Your partner was closer than your brother—closer certainly than Moody's, with whom he had fought bitterly when they were boys, and whom he simply did not see now adays—and was not likely to misinterpret anything you said.

LeBeau returned the address book to the plastic bag in which it had been delivered. “Do we talk to the plumber again?”

“I don't know,” said Moody. “But he bothers me a little. He claims he never noticed what Donna looked like, though he was there more than once. He put in the fixtures in the lavatory.”

“Well…”

“She was beautiful,” Moody said. “What man wouldn't even notice that? I know,
you
wouldn't admit it, but I also know you're normal. He claims to be, with a wife and kids. Does that mean anything?”

“I don't know,” LeBeau answered. “Maybe. That's pretty iffy, unless there's something more. We can remember him if Howland turns up clean.”

From the parking area behind the building, a siren started up, but diminished quickly as the car from which it came sped away. The precinct downstairs had gotten an emergency call.

Moody, now with A through L, decided to start from the back, mainly because the entry for “Lloyd” was accompanied by more phone numbers than any other in the whole book. There were also three different addresses, all of them crossed out with pencil strokes so light that no information was obscured. This was true as well of all the numbers. He dialed the last, which began with a downstate area code.

“Don't know nobody of that name,” said a fatherly voice when asked to identify a “Lloyd.” “But I'm only the night watchman. I guess you should call daytimes.”

“Just what sort of business we talking about?”

“Lumberyard, see.”

“What community?”

“This here is Little Falls, though it's the Rosedale postal district.” “I'll try tomorrow,” Moody told him. “Thank you kindly.” Hanging up, he asked LeBeau, who had himself just completed a call, “Can you gimme that state map of yours? Ever hear of Little Falls or Rosedale?”

His partner rooted through a desk drawer while saving, “I got a waiter in some restaurant over in Oakwood. Says he thinks he remembers a guy named Lloyd worked there last year, mopping floors, cleaning grease traps, and all. Thinks he just stopped showing up. Says he'll have the manager call tomorrow: guy's out with the flu at the moment.” He found the tightly folded map and tossed it across to Moody.

Little Falls was too small to be listed in the index of towns on the reverse, but Rosedale was there. Moody pinched his fingers and made a rough estimate, based on the printed scale, of the miles from here to there. “I make it two, maybe slightly more.”

“You're talking hundreds.”

“Yeah. Like west-southwest. Looks like a mostly rural area except for Rosedale. What's that? Apples, cabbages, tin cans? What do they make or raise out there?” Moody smirked and shrugged.

LeBeau's phone rang. “Yeah, I'll accept.… Go ahead.… Uh-huh, uh-huh… Yeah.… Look, sir, next time it'd be best if you waited till you were pretty certain. We're on a limited budget over here, and I don't know how many collect calls we can pay for, unless they really deliver something we can use. Know what I mean? Thanks. You take care.” He replaced the handpiece and sighed at Moody. “One of
those
guys.”

“There'll be more.”

“He's the waiter I talked to earlier. Been calling up fellow workers, but every one of them had a different theory. Lloyd's a last name, one said. Another claimed the name was not Lloyd but Roy. Meanwhile the manager still has the same flu he had half an hour ago.”

Then Moody's phone rang.

“Officer,” said a voice that sounded out of breath, “I happened to put on the news just now, and that murder or rather those murders were on it, and I noticed the name. So I called that special number they gave, and told the officer who answered there what I had to say, and when I was done he gave me your number.”

Nobody had bothered to coordinate this procedure with Moody. The number given on TV in such cases was monitored by one person, sometimes even a civilian employee of the department. Always there were people who complained they tried all night to get through but finally gave up after hours of the busy signal. Meanwhile those passed along by the call screener would tie up Moody's line with mostly useless information.

“Yes, sir, and just what is your name, sir?”

The voice became petulant. “My name doesn't matter. I'm talking about the
victim's
name: Howland, am I right?”

“I have to take your name, sir.”

“You most definitely do not,” cried the voice. “Just let me say what I'm going to, will you? This name Howland, if I've got it right, well, I discharged an employee today of that same name, and he became violent, threatened me with a box-cutting knife.”

It was standard to try to force an informant out of anonymity, for disembodied statements were often without merit. But not always. People sometimes really had good reasons for hiding their identities while telling the truth, but finding the perpetrator and assembling the evidence that would convict him was what the taxpayers had hired Moody to do, and this effort could be hindered by not knowing whom you were dealing with. However, you had to be careful not to drive away what might be the unique source of information that would break the case.

“Yes, sir, and what kind of work do you do?”

“Produce manager in a supermarket. It belongs to a well-known chain.”

“You can't tell me where?”

“In town,” said the man. “I don't want to lose my job. I know it's not the store's fault if this person is a criminal, but it sure won't please the front office to get this kind of publicity.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Moody said. “Business picked up after that holdup last year at the big Greenleaf over on Three-oh-one. You remember, I'm sure, being in the same trade. Guy came in with an Uzi?”

“I didn't realize that.”

“Tell me more about
your
Howland,” Moody asked. “Like his first name and where he lives, if you got that at hand.”

“After the knife attack, I took the trouble to go upstairs to Personnel and take a look at his records. I was seriously considering preferring charges. I committed his address to memory. I didn't have to write it down. Would you believe he didn't have a phone of his own? Since our regulations insist on it, he gave one where a message could be left for him.”

“Okay, give it to me.”

“Got your pen or pencil?” the produce manager asked pedantically. He gave the street address. “Now,
that
I'm sure of. I'll give you what I
think
is the phone for messages. I could be off on one of the digits, but the address is absolutely correct. I've got pretty nearly a photographic memory unless something distracts me, and that—”

“Got a first name for him?” Moody demanded.

“Lloyd. Lloyd Howland.”

“Look, sir. If it turns out something comes of your information both you and your store's name are sure to be known—and you won't regret it, neither you nor the store, because you'll get a lot of credit for your help—so why not give your name to me right now.”

“I've reconsidered,” said the produce manager. “I'm Jack Duncan, and my store's the Valmarket on Seventeen East.”

Moody got Duncan's private and store numbers, asked him some questions about Lloyd Howland, thanked him, and hung up.

LeBeau was back on his own telephone, but had finished when Moody returned from the water cooler. “No return call from Howland as yet,” Dennis said.

“We got something maybe better. This Lloyd: his last name's Howland, and he's in his early twenties.” Moody told his partner the rest of what he had learned from Duncan. “What's he to Lawrence? Brother? Cousin? He's too old to be a son. He's got a permanent attitude, according to his boss. But he was extra mad today about the firing, and he drew a knife on the man.” He paused to elevate his right shoulder in a personal gesture of triumph. “Here's the big one: the phone he gave the store as his was Donna's: three-oh-three eight-seven-six-eight. Said he didn't have his own but messages could be left for him there.”

Lloyd had not gone to his brother's house since the argument with Donna (if it could be called that) in February. He could not face her again until he had made something of himself or at least held the same job for a whole season and bought a usable car or rented a respectable apartment—anything, really, that he could show as an accomplishment. Yet here he was, three months later, in the familiar situation, or probably worse, if he was now considering stealing some woman's purse from a shopping cart. He had never before fallen that low.

All he wanted now was a drink to blunt the edge of a bad day. It wasn't much to ask, yet he could not afford it. He kept telling himself that, so as by means of inflated indignation to acquire the nerve, or the lack of shame, to enter the big PriceRite and do the deed. The most available victim would be the young mother with a toddler in tow and thus too distracted to watch her purse, someone very like Donna.

Next door to the supermarket was an overstocked liquor store, in which, as could be seen through the big front windows, several artificial aisles, made up of stacked cardboard cases of bottles, narrowed or even obstructed those between the permanent racks of horizontally displayed wines. He looked for and identified the big mirrors mounted just below the ceiling at various points around the room and angled so that they could be monitored from the checkout counter. Whether there might still be a blind spot or two that eluded their ken could not be determined without going in, and if he once crossed the threshold he would perforce be treated as a suspicious character until he made a cash purchase: he was young, unshaven, and he had a naturally sullen expression unless he faked a smile. He maintained no illusions about his appearance. So why did he not do something about it, as Donna might ask? Well, he had tried to shave on getting up that morning, and look what happened. He had ruined his razor, which led to losing his job, which led to his needing a drink, which led him here, about to commit his first serious crime. Everything was linked in an unbroken progress he was powerless to alter.

… But he had not yet fallen so far he would steal from a woman. He would take his chances on the liquor store, where, since he had been watching, no one had appeared behind the cash register or in fact anywhere else, and the entire place was visible through the floor-to-ceiling panes of plate glass that made up the front wall. It was possible that all who worked there were temporarily in the rear storage area, directing or helping with an ongoing delivery from a truck at the back door, the kind of job he had done at the Valmarket. If so, he might have time to step inside, seize the nearest bottle, and get out with nobody the wiser, unless of course there was a chime or buzzer that automatically announced the opening of the door. Even so, many clerks were lackadaisical in their response to such a signal. Some would only poke out or lift a head, then return to a preoccupation; some did less than that. In any case, he was very fast on his feet.

Thus far it was all projection. He would reserve the right to make a decision on the moment.

He pushed the glass door open and stepped quickly inside, listening for the alarm, hearing none. But there were those that signaled silently, with a storeroom light, for example. Big green jugs of weak table wine were nearest the door. He must go beyond the checkout, against the left wall, to reach the hard stuff.

He seized the first half-gallon container he could reach—amber-colored whiskey of some brand—and in the next second was passing the unattended cash register on his way out. It was at his mercy. But had he become sufficiently criminal for
that?

The question was made meaningless by what he saw when he looked at the till. Its drawer was extended. Pausing for an instant at the counter, he saw that as much of the compartmented drawer as was visible at his angle appeared empty of money. He leaned farther across the cool smooth off-white Masonite counter—and saw a quarter of blood-streaked bald head and one shoulder tip of blue broadcloth.

The store had been robbed and the only evident employee badly wounded or worse. Lloyd's first impulse was to leave as quickly as he could. It was purely by chance that he had happened upon the scene. The laws of fate, which he respected, would not be defied by his fleeing the premises. He had not so much as seen any part of the crime as it was taking place, had not even noticed another person near enough to have been the perpetrator. Yet the robbery had occurred not long before: the pool of blood around the victim's head was obviously fresh.

There was nothing Lloyd could do for the man on the floor. He had a memory of CPR from school demonstrations, and also of that maneuver you apply to someone choking on a mouthful of food, but neither was appropriate to a head wound. If the clerk was not already dead, he was well on his way, and if Lloyd stayed much longer, a customer would come in and assume he had done it. You could count on that, and though there was no evidence against him—what had he done with the money?—he would be arrested, tried, and convicted just because he was who he was, the guy people hated on sight. He just wished he could explain that to Donna.

He left the store, remembering to walk steadily, purposefully, head lowered as if in thought. What he forgot, until he had gone thirty feet into the parking area, was that he continued to carry the half-gallon of whiskey, unwrapped. It was an advertisement of shoplifting. He should have taken a brown bag from the stack within reach on the counter. He scanned the nearby blacktop for discarded paper products. They blew all over the vast parking lot in front of the Valmarket from which he had just been fired, but either this strip mall employed better cleanup workers or it was another example of bad chance: at the moment he could not see a fragment.