Very Bad Men (13 page)

“Baseball.”

There's a look you sometimes see in the eyes of intelligent people when you lie to them and they know it's a lie but there are no hard feelings because, in the first place, it's a playful lie and, in the second place, they never expected you to tell them the truth. Just then, Lucy Navarro had that look.

“I don't think you talked about baseball,” she said.

“Isn't that what fifteen-year-old boys talk about?”

“Maybe twenty years ago. Today it would be video games. You didn't ask me what my purpose was.”

“Pardon?”

“I told you this hotel's the only one that suits my purpose. You didn't ask what it was.”

I set the apple down on the table. “What's your purpose, Lucy?”

“I'm trying to cultivate you as a source. How am I doing?”

She bit her lip like an ingénue. Her hair, with its blond highlights, fell carelessly around her face. She looked young. I remembered watching her by the roadside at Nick Dawtrey's house—the way she laughed when the stray dog danced for her. There'd been something appealing about her energy, her delight in that unguarded moment. She had that same energy now, though it was subdued, under control. She had turned serious.

I asked her, “Where are you from—California?”

“L.A.,” she said. “How'd you know?”

“Lucky guess. Your legs are tanned, and you're not afraid to show them off. You project an air of confidence even though you don't really know what you're doing. How long have you been a reporter?”

“Not so long.”

“They didn't train you much.”

She smiled. “Does it show?”

“Usually if you want to cultivate someone as a source, you don't come out and tell him you want to cultivate him as a source. Why did the
Current
send you to Michigan?”

“To cover Callie Spencer.”

“Have they given up on stories about Elvis and space aliens?”

“The
National Current
is a serious newspaper.”

“I like the way you say that with a straight face.”

Her eyes twinkled. “I've practiced.”

“Is the
Current
looking to wreck Callie Spencer's political career?”

Lucy shrugged. “I imagine they wouldn't mind, if it sold papers. But I intend to follow the story, wherever it leads. No more, no less.”

A hint of professional pride had crept into her voice.

“Where do you think it's leading?” I asked her.

“Right now—back to Terry Dawtrey. Did you know his grandmother died a few years ago? Back then, the warden at Kinross Prison wouldn't let him out for the funeral. This time he did.”

“Maybe the warden has mellowed,” I suggested.

“Maybe this time somebody wanted Dawtrey out,” Lucy said. “How much do you know about the Great Lakes Bank robbery?”

“I know the gist.”

She started ticking off bank robbers on her fingers. “The man who planned the thing—Floyd Lambeau—he died. The driver got away. Of the three who were caught, Dawtrey got by far the most prison time. Kormoran served just six years, Bell less than three.”

“That makes sense, doesn't it?” I said. “Dawtrey's the one who shot Harlan Spencer.”

“That's true, but the others got off pretty lightly. Dawtrey spent all that time in prison and then, when he seemed to catch a break—when they let him out for his father's funeral—he wound up dead. It makes me wonder if everything is as it seems. What really happened to Terry Dawtrey? Did someone orchestrate his release? Did someone plan his death? These are questions I'd like to ask Detective Waishkey, if I thought she'd answer them.”

I showed her my empty palms. “I'm not going to answer them either.”

“Come on, Loogan,” she said. “Give me something. What were you doing today on the hill above Whiteleaf Cemetery?”

I listened to the murmur of the television and said nothing.

“What about Sheriff Delacorte?” she asked me. “You and Detective Waishkey met with him this morning. What did he tell you?”

I pressed a thumbnail into the side of my Styrofoam cup.

“Is he happy about Detective Waishkey coming up here, asking questions? Did he try to warn her off the case?”

This was a new idea. It made me frown. “Nobody tried to warn her off the case,” I said.

She tipped her head to the side, curious. “Are you telling me the truth?”

“Why would I lie?”

The sound of the television receded and I watched Lucy Navarro reach into the pocket of her shirt and bring out a folded tissue.

“They put us on the same floor,” she said. “I'm in room 305. I have to walk past your room to get to the elevator. Earlier tonight I found something in the hallway outside my door. Do you want to guess what it was?”

I picked up my apple, took a bite. Waited.

“A bullet,” she said. “Nine-millimeter, I think.”

She laid the tissue on the table and unfolded it. There were two bullets inside.

“I found one outside your door too,” she said. “Are you sure no one's trying to warn you off the case?”

T
he magazines in the waiting room had mailing labels on the covers, with the same name on each label: DR. MATTHEW KENNEALLY.

Anthony Lark held a copy of
U.S. News
in his lap. His left hand felt okay as long as he kept it still. If he flexed his fingers, the pain was like a steel wire being drawn through his flesh.

He had a clean bandage on it, white gauze secured with tape. He had showered and shaved and was wearing a fresh blue button-down shirt and slacks.

He glanced at the receptionist, saw her talking on the phone behind the sliding glass panel. He had no appointment, but she had promised she would try to get Dr. Kenneally to see him. She couldn't interrupt the doctor during a session, but his current session would be over in a few minutes.

So Lark waited in the dark-paneled room. Seven chairs—but only one other patient: a mousy woman trying to hide behind a copy of
Entertainment Weekly
.

The air in the room felt thick and warm. Lark thought he had a fever, because of the infection in his hand. He needed antibiotics. Dr. Kenneally could write prescriptions; he had given Lark the pills he used to combat his headaches. The police knew about Lark's hand; his injury had been reported in the news. So he couldn't go to just any doctor. It came down to a matter of trust. So here Lark was, trusting that Dr. Kenneally wouldn't turn him over to the police.

Lark waited. The receptionist was still on the phone. The magazine in his lap concealed his left hand. He looked down at the white label, at the letters of Dr. Kenneally's name. They troubled him.

The letters in “Matthew” were a cool tan like the wood of a healthy tree after you've peeled away the bark, but the letters of “Kenneally” were a dark brown that verged on black. The letters of “Kenneally” divided themselves into tiny dots that skittered over one another like swarming insects. “Kenneally” ended in “ly”; it wasn't an adverb, but it was
like
an adverb. And adverbs made Lark uneasy, because they
swarmed
.

He turned the magazine over to hide the mailing label. What if he had made a mistake? Maybe the receptionist had seen his hand. Or maybe she had noticed him trying to hide it, and that had been enough to arouse her suspicions. Suppose she had already consulted Dr. Kenneally and he had told her to call the police. She had been on the phone a long time. Now, as he watched her, she turned and stared directly back at him.

He bent the magazine around to peek at the mailing label. The letters of “Kenneally” had spread apart into a million tiny fragments, jagged bits of black that leapt and jittered. Lark jumped to his feet and the magazine dropped to the floor. He stepped quickly past the reception window and reached for the knob of the hallway door. Without thinking he turned it with his left hand and the steel wire sliced through him.

He heard the receptionist calling his name, but he didn't look back. He clamped down on the pain in his hand and ran—along the hall, down the stairs. He slowed only when he hit the open air, his breath sawing through his lungs. Beads of sweat poured out of his scalp as he stalked across the parking lot to his Chevy.

 

 

LARK STOPPED FOR GAS at a Marathon station near the north campus of the University of Michigan. He worked the pump with his right hand and kept his left down at his side, the long sleeve of his shirt covering most of the bandage.

He had driven from Dr. Kenneally's office to a shopping center nearby, where he had parked and let the car's air-conditioning cool him. He had closed his eyes to rest for a moment and had opened them to find that nearly two hours had passed.

Now, with his tank full, he drove south to a neighborhood of willows and oaks and green lawns that sloped up to stately white houses. The Spencer house stood taller than the others. The horseshoe driveway was paved with cobblestones and bordered by a low hedge. Lark saw a white van in the driveway. He knew what it meant. The van had a wheelchair lift. Harlan Spencer used it when he traveled, as he often did, appearing with his daughter on the campaign trail.

Finding the van here meant that Spencer was home. Callie Spencer might be here too. There was a guesthouse in back of the main one, where she often stayed—Lark had read about it in a magazine.

He circled the block and when he came around again he saw a car parked behind the van in the driveway. A woman stood by the driver's door. Her hair shone silky black in the sun, and for a second he thought it was Callie Spencer. But Callie had short hair; it scarcely reached the base of her neck. This woman had pinned up her hair so that it only seemed short. She was taller, her skin not as tanned.

He slowed the car. He recognized her. She walked toward the front door of the house, and he remembered when he had seen her: the night he went after Sutton Bell. She was one of the cops from the hospital.

T
he door opened to Elizabeth's knock. The woman who opened it had white hair and a lined, handsome face. She introduced herself as Ruth Spencer, wife of Harlan, mother of Callie, and led Elizabeth upstairs to her husband's studio.

The air in the house felt cool, though the temperature outside stood in the nineties. Elizabeth already missed the milder weather of Sault Sainte Marie. A sprinkling of rain had fallen that morning as she and David began the drive south. With a stop for lunch they made it in seven hours, the temperature rising as they drove.

The trip north had raised more questions than it answered, and Owen McCaleb had made it plain that she was needed here. “We can't worry about the Dawtreys,” he'd told her. “We need to focus on Kormoran and Bell.”

As a first step, she had called Harlan Spencer, who had agreed to meet with her. She had dropped David at home, staying long enough for a shower and a change of clothes. Now she followed Ruth Spencer up to a large room with tall windows facing west.

A row of canvases lined the eastern side of the studio, each one propped against the wall. There were landscapes and still-life paintings of flowers. Some realistic, almost photographic; others so rough that they bordered on abstract. An orange sunset in a deep blue sky. The vivid yellow petals of a daffodil.

A table occupied the center of the room, cluttered with brushes and tubes of oil paint. An easel stood next to it, holding an unfinished canvas. Harlan Spencer dropped his brush into a porcelain cup, wiped his hand on an apron that lay in his lap, and motored his wheelchair across the room to greet Elizabeth.

“You'll forgive me,” he said. “I've been traveling for a week. I miss the paint when I go for more than a few days without it. Would you rather talk downstairs, or out in the garden?”

“Not at all,” Elizabeth said. “Right here will be fine.”

Ruth Spencer brought a straight-back chair in from another room and then went out again. Harlan Spencer rolled his wheelchair to the table, where a tray of iced tea sat amid the paint tubes and brushes. As he poured two glasses, Elizabeth saw a canvas she hadn't noticed before. While the others rested on the floor, this one hung in a wooden frame on the northern wall. The image was familiar: a portrait of Callie Spencer in her twenties.

“That's one of my early works,” Harlan Spencer said.

Elizabeth sat and accepted the glass he offered her. “You started painting after—” She left the thought unfinished.

“Yes,” he said. “After. I never had any interest in art as a young man, and if anyone had told me I should be a painter I would have laughed. But a bullet in the spine makes you reconsider things.”

He had a deep, resonant voice, the voice of the sheriff he had been, not the artist he had become. He sat straight in the chair, his broad shoulders held stiff. His open collar revealed a sinewy neck, and the muscles of his right arm were prominently defined. His other arm rested on the arm of the chair, supported by a brace so that his fingers could work the chair's controls. His legs, beneath the fabric of his pants, were long and wasted thin. His brow was deeply lined and his fringe of gray hair had been shaved close to his scalp.

“It became clear early on that my legs were never going to carry me again,” he told Elizabeth. “My right arm and hand were weak, but the physical therapists had high hopes for them, and they thought I might regain some function in my left hand too. My wife sat by my bed and made a list of occupations for a one-armed man. Not a long list. But ‘painter' was on it.”