Joey Warnecki - Eight Days Read online

Chapter 8

  "Son of a bitch," Knowles said. "Cruised right by the bastard not half an hour ago and he's calling me again." It was two-thirty in the morning. Knowles thought his eyes were going to bug out from the strain of watching the road and of checking street signs to be sure of where he was. He pulled to the curb and put on his emergency flashers to rub at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Pissant," he said. He answered the call and spoke his location, asking Brulick's in return. Victory Road, must be at Trott's place, Knowles thought. He stuck his head through the open window to listen for traffic before pulling back onto the road and caught the bill of his cap on the door post, knocking it off onto the wet road surface. He started to open his door to retrieve it and closed it just in time to avoid being clipped by a passing car, traveling too fast for the driving conditions. With the car past and his door open, the interior light showed him that his cap had been run over and crushed. "Son of a bitch," he said, and leaned out to pick it up. He spun it to the floor on the passenger side and took off after the offending vehicle.

  It was a futile chase. His strobing light bar only made driving more difficult, reflecting off the fog back into his eyes and he gave it up. Since he was heading in the general direction of Trott's apartment anyway, he decided to pay Brulick a visit and find out why the schmuck kept calling him. He had an idea, but wanted to confirm it, see how much Brulick would squirm when he asked him.

  Twenty minutes later, to the minute, Brulick called again. He was sitting in his idling car directly across the road from Trott's. Knowles didn't respond right away and he repeated his query: ". . . What's your twenty . . .", and was interrupted by a loud voice next to his ear.

  "I'm right here, asshole," growled Knowles. "Why the hell are you checking up on me?" Brulick started in his seat, dropping the handset to the radio and letting out a yelp. He started to reach for his sidearm and Knowles put a restraining hand on his shoulder. "Easy now, buckaroo," he said, "Don't be forcing me to shoot you in self-defense."

  Brulick froze. "Get your hand off me," he said. His eyes were wide and his teeth clenched, one hand still on the snap of his holster.

  Knowles put his forearms on the window sill and leaned into Brulick's face, an inch from the nose of the wide-eyed officer. "So tell me, why would Sloan be interested to know where I am, each and every minute of the night, hmm?" Knowles voice was sinisterly cordial and he smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

  Brulick strained away from the leering visage and blurted the first thing that came to his mind. "We're wise to you, Knowles," he said, "you and your doper friends."

  Knowles eyebrows went up and his smile eased into a half-grin. "I think we need to chat," he observed. "Push over." He opened the door and squeezed his meaty bulk onto the seat, forcing Brulick to the center of the bench seat. "Cozy?" Knowles asked. Brulick's feet were caught on the driver's side of the transmission hump and he disentangled himself, moving close to the opposite door, one hand on the handle, ready to flee.

  Since Knowles had not responded on the air to Brulick's inquiry, the dispatcher at the department repeated the call, checking to see if Knowles was in trouble. Knowles answered with his location and turned to face Brulick, his knee up on the seat and his arm stretched along the backrest, almost reaching Brulick's ear. "Jimmy," he said, "why might the chief think I'm a druggie, anyway?"

  Not answering, Brulick stared through the windshield into the dark blankness outside. He felt like he was floating in the water with a shark slowly circling him. No lighted windows showed in the near buildings that may as well have been moored ships, for all that could be seen of them. The closest, just thirty feet from them, was only a paler shadow in the gloom that surrounded them. It made Knowles' mock-sociability seem all the more threatening. Knowles decided to take another tack. "I may be a lot of things, Jimmy, but a druggie I'm not, and you know it." Brulick turned his head to look at him, but remained silent. The dashboard lights cast enough greenish glow to discern facial features in the car. "You notice a different feeling in the department lately? Talk to anyone besides Sloan? Have you got a clue, Jimmy? Wouldn't want to end up on the wrong side of this, would you?" Knowles paused a full beat between questions. "Might be hazardous to your career, such as it is."

  Brulick felt his lifeline slipping in his grasp. "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "I mean, Jimmy, that your boat is sinking. You just might be able to pull yourself out of the water, if you get your mind right in time. I want you to think about a few things." Knowles lowered the tone and volume of his voice, until he seemed to be talking from outside the car. Brulick had to strain to hear. "Did Sloan ever go into the bedroom at Warnecki's house? Alone?" Knowles gave him a moment to think about it. "Did Sloan ever have any private conversations with Elwood Trott that you know about? Maybe when Trott dumped his bike down in the flats a while back?"

  Brulick's breathing was becoming shallow. Knowles questions floated around his head like debris on the water from the impending shipwreck of his career. He knew the answers to Knowles questions, had thought about them on his own. Sloan might be going down and he didn't want to be sucked down with him, but he couldn't abandon ship prematurely. He intended to say: "I don't know what you're talking about," but what came out was, "What do you want from me?"

  Knowles nodded to himself. "I'm going to give you a day to think it over. Before your shift tomorrow, you go have a talk with the lieutenant. If you decide to go the other way, well, you're going down with Sloan." Brulick was lost in thought, staring through the windshield again. The slamming of the car door when Knowles got out brought him back to the present with a jerk. Knowles spoke his final words through the window from a few feet away. "If you mention our little talk to Sloan, you won't have to worry about just losing your job. And don't call me any more tonight."

  .

  At three a.m., Louis was jarred awake by the ringing of the phone on the bedside table next to him. He'd been dreaming that he was aboard ship again, opening giant cans of green beans, and the ringing of the phone mutated into a shipboard klaxon sounding general quarters. The phone rang four times before he was sufficiently aware of who and where he was to answer it. "Yessir," he said.

  "Hell, Armstrong, you drunk or something? Get up, there's someone out front."

  "Out front where? Who is this?" Louis sat up and swung his legs from under the blankets to put his feet on the floor. His skivvies bunched up into his crotch and the cool air of his bedroom prickled the hairs on his legs. The darkness in the room was almost complete, the lighter gray of the light from the window was definitely not from a porthole and he was not on board a ship. "Soucup?" he said.

  "Of course, you fool. Now get up. I just saw someone sneaking around Joey's front door, doing something. Get up, get up, get up!" Joe hung up with a bang and Louis stumbled from his bedroom to look out the front room window on the side facing Joey's. He could see part of the steps to Joey's porch, but no one who might be standing on the landing. Just as he turned away to go to the kitchen phone, he heard the crash of breaking glass and the whump of something heavy falling, followed by a great brightening of orange light from the front of the house. He turned back to see flames in the area of Joey's front door. He moved quickly to the phone, punching the lighted buttons in the darkness of his home, while firelight flickered in his peripheral vision.

  Joey's only phone was in the kitchen. He got up from bed without really wakening, faintly puzzled but not alarmed by the odd, unsteady light that showed around the edges of the drawn shades in the front room. Joey slept in sweat pants and a voluminous, red and black-plaid cotton shirt that was missing several buttons. He idly wondered about the strange light while picking up the phone. Louis' excited voice woke him all the way to a confused awareness. "Get out of the house, Joey!" the voice yelled. "Your house is on fire! Run over here, I'll call the fire department!" Louis hung up and Joey panicked.

  Louis punched in nine-one-one, looking through his kitchen window as Joey's back porch light came on.
What he saw made him drop the phone and dive for the cabinet door under the sink: a hooded man, dressed in dark clothes, stood twenty feet from Joey's back door in the middle of the yard. His outstretched arms held a gun in both hands and he was in a half-squatting position, ready to fire. Louis came up with the old Colt just as Joey burst through the back door and froze at the sight of the gunman. Joey's arms went up and out to the sides in the effort to halt his forward momentum, the big sleeves of his shirt hanging down, looking like a giant cormorant drying its wings. The muzzle of the dark man's gun blossomed with fire as Louis smashed the window over the sink and pointed his gun at the figure. Joey felt something pluck at the sleeve below his arm and he dropped to the ground, trying to crawl back into his house.

  Louis found that he couldn't fire directly at the man, even after the man fired a second shot through Joey's open doorway. His hands shook and he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. He raised the gun to point over the man's head and squeezed the trigger. The sound of the pistol discharging inside his kitchen deafened him, but he kept his eyes open and saw the man flinch and look his way. Louis fired again and the man fled to the back of the yard, climbing over the fence onto the park property. Louis was sufficiently emboldened by his success in scaring away the intruder that he was ready to give chase, but the ringing in his ears had receded enough for him to hear the tinny voice sounding from the dropped phone receiver and he remembered that Joey's house was on fire and Joey had gone back inside. Louis grabbed at the receiver, almost pulling the trigger again on the gun held tightly in his other hand. "Fire!" he shouted, "Gunfire! Two-twentyfour Fourth Street!" The calmly insistent voice on the other end of the line asked if anyone was injured, but Louis didn't have time to answer. He rushed out through his back door and across to Joey's, almost tripping over his body where it lay in the hallway. "Oh my god!" he exclaimed. "Joey, are you hurt? Are you shot? Answer me, boy!" Joey lay prone, hands clasped over his head, shaking. Louis stooped to his knees, looking for blood on the floor, then turned Joey by a rigid shoulder to look beneath him. No blood. Joey, whose eyes had been squeezed shut since he'd clambered into the hallway, opened them to see Louis holding a large gun that was pointing at his face. His eyes opened wider. Louis saw the cause of Joey's alarm and pointed the pistol in another direction. "Sorry," he said. "Are you hurt?" Joey shook his head. Louis grabbed the loose cloth of the front of Joey's shirt and hauled him to his feet, then snapped the light switch off with his gun hand. "Let's go, boy," he ordered, crouching and leading his neighbor by the shirt he still held bunched in his fist.

  In the middle of the driveway, half-way to Louis' door, Joey balked. "Hey," he said, "my house is on fire."

  "No shit," was Louis' reply, not releasing his grip and peering into the foggy night for armed intruders. The air temperature was only a few degrees above freezing, but Louis didn't seem to notice. His breath steamed from his nostrils in twin plumes.

  "Let me go. I got a extinguisher in the garage." Joey dug in his heels and forced Louis to stop.

  Louis was on a tear. He jerked Joey forward again and propelled him in the direction of his back door. "Git in the house, boy, 'fore I whup your ass." With the fierce look on his face and his bared teeth, Louis could have been Lon Chaney as the wolfman, and Joey backed off, retreating to the safety of Louis' open door. The first fire truck arrived two minutes later, and a police car one minute after it.

  .

  Knowles had been driving in the direction of Warnecki's house, feeling somewhat satisfied by his confrontation with Brulick, and a bit worried that he was in the wrong place and that Sloan knew it. When the address of the fire came over the radio, he pounded the steering wheel in frustration and drove faster, too fast to be safe on the road. By the time he got to the scene, the fire was almost out. Spotlights from the fire truck played on a scorched area that covered the lower half of the house in a semi-circle centered on the front landing, and three firemen were wielding chemical extinguishers to quench the last of the flames. Exiting his car, the smell of charred wood reached his nose, overlaid with the distinct odor of gasoline. Neighbors stood on their porches and peered through front windows — all except for Armstrong's house, which was completely without lights. Knowles could see a face that looked like Warnecki's, holding back a curtain to look out. The dispatcher had reported shots fired. Knowles needed to check that out first.

  Joey opened the door half-way before he could knock, peering around Knowles with frightened eyes, like someone who had recently been shot at. "First thing," Knowles said, "anybody hurt?" Joey shook his head. "Okay, tell me what happened, short and quick."

  Joey forced his attention to Knowles. "Louis called and told me my house was on fire and to get out of there. I ran out the back door and there was a man in my yard with a gun. He shot at me and I crawled back inside. He shot again and the next thing I knew, Louis was dragging me over to his house." Joey sighed loudly, getting ready to elaborate.

  Knowles held out a hand to stop him from continuing. "Did you see the guy's face, recognize him in any way?"

  Joey wet his lips. "He had on a hooded sweatshirt, pulled tight to his face, and all I saw was the gun, anyway. He was short, though." He shook his head. "But that could have been because he was crouched down, sort of. But he wasn't a big man, anyway."

  "Okay," Knowles said. "Stay inside, I'll be back in a minute." Knowles waited until the door was closed and then trotted back to his car. He radioed the dispatcher, requesting all available units to assist (there were two other police cars on the shift, besides his and Brulick's), one to the scene and two to the state park. "Advise caution," he said, "suspect is armed. Call Clarkson, Sims, and Waters, too. Tell 'em what's going on." He would have added that no ambulance was needed, but it had just arrived. The dispatcher asked if he should inform the chief. "Don't bother," he said. "I think he's already up."

  Brulick pulled up behind the ambulance. Knowles told the ambulance driver that he wasn't needed and then walked up to Brulick, who was standing in front of Warnecki's house in the flash and strobe of the various red, white and blue lights of the assembled vehicles. "Secure the scene," Knowles ordered. "I want tape around the perimeter of these three properties," indicating Joey's and the two neighbors' homes. "Then stay in the back. You might see a friend of yours there." Without waiting for any acknowledgement, Knowles returned to talk to Joey and Louis.

  Louis' adrenaline high had faded, leaving him feeling and looking as old as he was. Joey looked merely worn out, and maybe a little anxious. Knowles was surprised. After the fear had diminished, he would have expected to see anger, outrage, righteous indignation at least. Something is lacking in this boy's emotional arsenal, he thought. Thirty-some-odd year-old boy. They were all three seated at the table in the kitchen to recollect and write down the events of the past hour, while it was fresh to their memories. Knowles had detected the tell-tale odor of cordite in the house, but Louis had only offered the explanation that it had possibly drifted in through the broken window from the outside air. Knowles didn't press the issue, figuring that it was probably better that a weapon, even an unregistered weapon, had been available in this particular circumstance. Knowles had pressed for either of them to identify the shooter, but it was clear that one would not be forthcoming. "What about the old bastard on the other side?" Knowles asked. The tone of his question brought a faint smile to Joey's mouth, and a scowl from Louis.

  "You gonna try to talk to Joe again?" Joey asked, trying to hide his amusement behind his hand.

  Knowles glared back at him. He thought it was an odd time to find amusement in the old man's orneriness. "Have to," he said regretfully.

  "If I could suggest something, you might get Officer Hartz to talk to him. He's mostly mean with men. Women throw him off his stride, he doesn't know how to act with them."

  "Yeah, maybe." Knowles didn't like the thought that a woman might get from the old man what he couldn't. Also, he was curious as to how Joey could go from fear to co
mplacent acceptance of his recent trauma so quickly. He dismissed the thought; he was no shrink. He looked at his notepad. He had what he needed for the moment. He wanted to look at the site of the fire before it was trampled into nothing. "Listen," he said, rising. "You probably won't see any more trouble tonight. Too many people around. But stay inside, keep the shades drawn. In the morning there'll be more questioning. Oh, and let the place air out, stinks like gun-smoke in here."

  He needn't have worried about the firemen, they had recognized the fire as an arson as soon as they had arrived. The worst they had done was to cover the blackened area with a light dust of dry chemical suppressant. Two of them were checking for burning embers left on the charred wall, two were crouching on the lowest of the two concrete steps that ascended to the landing. All were in full turnout gear, excepting air tanks and masks. One, wearing an old-style leather fire-helmet, was holding a long flashlight and pointing out something to his partner. Knowles approached behind them. "Whaduya got?" he asked.

  Leather helmet turned briefly. "Knowles," he acknowledged. He pointed to several large shards of smoke-blackened glass. "This was a half-gallon juice jug." He moved his finger to point to a small, squarish, flat shape. "This is what's left of a book of paper matches. Next to it is a burnt cigarette filter." Now he directed Knowles to look above. "Up there, stuck into the top of the door frame is a big fishhook with a piece of partly melted, nylon squid line knotted to it." He stood up on the step and turned to look down at Knowles. "Way I see it," he said, "guy hung a jug of gasoline by the line, tucked a lit cigarette inside a book of matches closed around the line. Cigarette burned down, flared the matches, burnt the line off and dropped the jug to smash and ignite from the flare. Low-tech arson. Now look at this." He turned and directed the flash to a pair of charred nubs protruding from where the door closed against its stop, near to the door knob. "See those?" Knowles grunted. "Know what they are?" He turned again for Knowles' answer.

  "Quit showing off, Eshner. You'll make me think you started it yourself just to show me how smart you are. Just tell me what they are."

  The big fireman grinned down at him. "They're old-fashioned claw pegs, banged in to force the latch-bolt against the strike, so the door couldn't open from the inside."

  Knowles looked puzzled. "Claw pegs?"

  Eshner's grin widened. "Yeah, claw pegs. You know, what they used on lobsters before everyone started using rubber bands." He made to pinch Knowles cheek, lobster fashion, but Knowles backed out of reach. Eshner laughed. "Look for an old, cigarette-smoking, juice-drinking lobsterman, and you'll have your man." All four firemen laughed.

  Knowles turned away, shaking his head. Firehouse humor. "Preserve the evidence," he growled. He went to his car to get his flashlight. He wanted to look around back before calling Clarkson, who would most likely be at the department within the hour. It was four-thirty in the morning.

  .

  Mary got to the scene at six, arriving simultaneously with the television news van, driven by Tina Bronki. Mary had been awake for exactly twenty minutes, having gotten a call from Clarkson, taking the time to brush her teeth and splash water on her face, and pulling her uniform on over her pajamas. It was ten minutes from her house to Joey's. Tina, as usual, looked ready to dine at the White House. She could drive and apply her make-up at the same time, although Jim Fleck might fear for his life in the process. Tina and Mary opened their doors at the same time, intersecting on the sidewalk in front of Joey's house. "Mary, whoa," Tina said, grabbing at Mary's jacket sleeve. "Tell me what happened."

  "Have to catch you later, Tina," Mary said, trying to pull away. Tina held on, now looking at Mary's neck in an odd way. Mary stopped pulling. "What?" she asked.

  "What are you wearing under your shirt?" Tina asked. Her fingers went to Mary's collar and plucked at a bit of lace that was sticking out. She guffawed, her other hand going to cover her mouth. "Hell of an undershirt, Mary. That part of the uniform these days?"

  The predawn light was sufficient to show that Mary blushed. Both hands went to her neck to fold the offending material out of sight below her neck. She fastened the top button of her shirt and tried to smooth the bunchiness out of the material where her pajama top folded in ridges beneath and then zipped her jacket. She looked down to see if her pajama bottoms showed beyond the cuffs of her trousers. They didn't. Mary looked at Tina. "Fix your lipstick," she said, breaking away to join Knowles beyond the police line of tape.

  Alarmed, Tina ran back to the van to check her appearance in the side-view mirror. Mary lied. Her lipstick was perfect. "Shit," she said. Her cameraman was bumbling around inside the van, getting his gear organized and humming a tuneless melody. "Damn it, Fleck, stop that noise and get your shit together. I ain't gonna wait all day for you."

  Fleck turned and stuck his head through the open side door. "You," he said, "you can cool it. I'm humming because I'm glad to be alive, considering the way you drive. Find me something to shoot and I'll be there, don't you worry your pretty little head."

  Mary paused in front of the blackened front of the house for a moment. The scene belonged to the fire marshal, who was charged with the determination of the cause of the fire. She'd get to see the evidence later. She walked down the driveway between the two houses to where Knowles was searching the backyard. He'd done it once by flashlight and was going over the ground for a second time, now that the day was lightening. The sky had cleared in the last few hours, taking the fog and mist out to sea. The wet grass held footprints. Those not made by Knowles or Brulick were marked with flags, pieces of stiff wire topped by a small orange plastic pennant. Mary stayed on the hard ground of the driveway. "Tell me about it," she said without preamble.

  Knowles walked to where she stood and gave her the gist of it, including his encounter with Brulick. He pointed out where the shooter had stood and then she followed his pointing arm to the yet open doorway into Joey's house. "I screwed up, though," he sighed.

  "What do you mean?" she asked. Knowles looked both tired and frustrated.

  "I had a chance when this thing went down to put Sloan somewhere other than at his house, but I was pissed off and I blew it." He shook his head. "I shoulda had dispatch call his house. Dammit."

  Mary leaned back on the door of the pickup, crossed her arms and looked at the ground between them. "Could have been Adams," she offered.

  "Naw. Armstrong said the guy was short. Adams is over six feet, maybe six-two. I make it for Sloan."

  "Still," Mary said. "Ought to have a guy out to Adam's house, talk to him. Sims has been wanting to button-hole him anyway. Want to give him a call, offer him the job?"

  "I'll run it by Clarkson." He kicked at a stone on the driveway, rolling it under the truck. "You got your kit?"

  Mary shook her head. "I ran out here without stopping at the station. I'll have to go back and get it." She fingered her collar, making sure nothing was showing of her pajama top. She'd stop at her house and re-dressed before going to the department. "Okay," she said, straightening. "If you don't need me for the canvas, I'll just check in for a minute with Warnecki and then go back for my gear."

  "We're all set here. I got two guys going house to house, Beshloss and Peterson. They already did the park. Nothing there, but they'll go back again when it's full daylight." He hesitated. "Maybe you could take a shot at the old prick next door. See if he'll talk to you. Can't do any worse than me or Sims."

  "Art or Don try?"

  He nodded. "Couldn't get in the door, either of them."

  Louis answered the door for her. He and Joey had been in the t.v. room, watching the live feed from Joey's front walk. She followed Louis, leaving her shoes by the door at his suggestion. Joey gave her a brief smile and a wave, returning his attention to the television. Tina was attempting to interview a fireman — Dave Eshner, now without his coat, but still wearing his leather fire hat and his boots. He was smiling, being pleasant to the pushy reporter, but refusing to comment on the fire other than to adm
it that arson was suspected. Tina gave an encapsulated version of Joey's troubles over the past week and signed off, ending with: ". . . One wonders if this is the last of Mr. Warnecki's string of misfortune, or if there is more to come. Tina Bronki, Channel Twenty-Six News, at the scene."

  "Yes, one wonders, doesn't one?" Joey said lightly. He was in the fully-extended recliner farthest from the doorway, hands behind his head, flexing his toes, grinning at the two standing inside the doorway.

  Mary had the incongruous thought that he had the longest toes she had ever seen and then Louis spoke: "Don't seem so very damn funny to me, boy."

  Joey's grin eased by half and Mary noticed that his humor did not reach his eyes. "No, I suppose not," he admitted. "And I suppose I'll feel different about it myself, in a hour or two. But right now, I'm happy to be alive, so bear with me." He pulled the lever on the chair's side and it popped upright with a clunk. He stood and extended his right arm. "Look at this," he said to Mary. She came closer to him and he plucked at the hanging fabric with his other hand to show where the sleeve had been shredded by the bullet's passage.

  She leaned and peered, fingering the rent cloth. "I'm going to need the shirt," she said. She straightened. "He set the fire to get you to run out where he could shoot you. Not that that isn't obvious, but my point is that you've got to act with consideration. Don't act impulsively." Her second thought was that this was a stupid thing to say. Who would stay in a burning house? But she did want him to behave in a more circumspect manner, and not just react to events automatically. He responded by grimacing and scratching at the stitches on his scalp. She noticed that they were healing nicely. The redness was gone and bristly hair was growing in around them.

  Joey spun and plopped down in the leather chair with a whoosh. "Are you going to pick this guy up?" he asked, looking straight at her.

  Mary looked down at her shoes, hooking her thumbs into her utility belt. An inch of white lace and a bit of pink flannel draped over the top of her shoe. How professional, she thought. Oh, the hell with it. Time to be professional and honest, both. She looked him in the eye. "If it were anyone but the chief of police, he'd be locked up right now. But the fact of the matter is, we need a lot more. Like a smoking gun in his hand and two eye-witnesses."

  "So you need the boy dead on the ground before you're gonna do anything," Louis interrupted, pissed. "Shit, you might as well shoot him now and get it done with." Louis was standing too close to her, his hands on his hips, leaning into her face.

  She refused to back away, holding his eyes from inches away until he looked away, and then she faced Joey again, determination and resolve incarnate. "I promise you," she said. "If you can manage to stay alive for another day, we'll get that asshole behind bars." It may have been a rash promise, but at the moment, anyway, she believed it to the bottom of her soul. "I'll see you later," she ended, and spun on her heel and left the house.

  Louis and Joey were both stunned by the vehemence of Mary's parting promise and Louis took the other chair, sinking into its enfolding arms with a sigh. "Shit, Joey," he said.

  "Exactly right," was the reply. "How about a beer, Lou? It's been a long night."

  Louis regarded his friend. Joey looked wistful. Louis shrugged. "Sure. It's seven o'clock in the morning, but we been up all night. A beer might be just the thing, make us relax, maybe fall asleep for a while." He leaned over the arm of his chair and removed two bottles from the diminutive refrigerator between them. They weren't screw-offs, but Louis pried the caps with fingernails like rhinoceros horn.

  They sipped in silence, staring at but not watching or hearing the television program, which was an informercial on how to suck the air out of your clothing in special plastic bags so that your closets wouldn't be too stuffed to add more clothing. Six dead soldiers stood in a row across the top of the fridge by the time the television was in the middle of its next offering: a soap opera that Louis was prone to watch, but wasn't able to follow at the moment. Joey's eyes were beginning to close, exhaustion and beer finally overcoming anxious concerns for self-preservation.

  "I could use a cigarette," observed Louis.

  Joey came into the present. "You don't smoke," he said. "Do you?"

  "Not for thirty-five years, but you know, it's one of those things that comes back every so often, times of stress." He paused. "Kat made me quit."

  Joey's memories of Katherine were of a stout, handsome woman who baked cookies for him and told him stories of her youth in rural Georgia, daughter of a share-cropper and his wife who had seven children besides her. "You miss her," Joey said, a statement and not a question.

  Louis sighed. "Oh, yes I do. She was a fine, fine woman." He lost himself in thinking about her for a moment and then pulled himself out of it. "You been missing out on some good things, Joey, never getting married." Joey shrugged and looked down at his hands. This was a subject that came up in conversation every once in a great while, and Joey avoided it when he could. Louis recognized the signs, but wasn't ready to let the subject go. He pulled himself up straight in his chair. "When's the last time you had sex with a woman, anyway?" he asked.

  Joey raised an eyebrow. It wasn't like Louis to be so direct about personal matters. He thought about it, and wondered if his encounter with a dixie cup in the week past would count. No, he guessed not. "It's been a while, I'd have to say," he admitted.

  Louis snorted. "I'd guess it's been more than a while, from what I can tell."

  Joey frowned at him. "I wouldn't want to tell you that it's none of your business, but it's none of your business." He was offended.

  "Now don't be getting all defensive with me. I consider myself a friend of yours and I think I can say what's on my mind, as a friend."

  "Alright. You've said it, now let's let it go." Joey directed his intent gaze to the soap opera, where a couple who had been reviling each other the moment before were now passionately kissing and declaring their eternal love. That kind of flip-flop in attitude baffled him. He couldn't relate to it and didn't believe it. "How can you stand to watch this crap?" he said.

  Louis wasn't ready to let it go. "How about that lady cop?" he asked. "I think she might be sweet on you."

  Joey looked to see if he was smiling. He wasn't. Joey pursed his lips and blew a raspberry in dismissal. "No way, Louis. She's a nice person who just happens to be a cop. Now keep quiet for a while and let me grab a few z's." He laid his head back and closed his eyes.

  Louis had to have the last word. "Maybe so, maybe so. But, one does wonder, doesn't one?" Joey opened one eye to look at his neighbor. Louis' eyes were closed but he wore a half-smile on his lips.

  .

  Charles Adams awoke in his chair at ten o'clock in the morning, though 'awoke' may be too strong a word to use in this context. His was more of a shambling rise to bleary-eyed consciousness when his fingers let go their grasp on the pistol in his hand and it slid to the floor with a thunk. He came to full wakefulness during the five-minute news-brief that preceded the Homemaker's Movie on the television that had remained on all night. The vivacious Tina Bronki was having another go at the events of the previous night, recapping what was the only newsworthy incident to occur during that news cycle. Her demeanor was appropriately serious and she seemed to be talking directly to the attentive Charles Adams as he squirmed to relieve the pain in his lower back from improper sleeping accommodations. He squirmed in his thoughts, also, as he considered Sloan's recurring failure to solve their problems. "Son of a bitch," he said. "Guy shouldn't be allowed to carry a gun. What next?"

  What next was the ringing of the doorbell, reaching his ears from the front door, twenty feet from where he sat. "Oh, damn," he said, looking down at his wrinkled clothes. He'd let the doorbell ring. Let it ring until whoever it was got bored and went away. But they didn't go away, and when ringing failed to provide the requisite reaction, they knocked. Loudly and repeatedly. Charles finally got angry and rose to give a piece of his mind, what was left of it, to the insufferable
knocker-man. He couldn't straighten completely, so the man who finally made it to open his door gave the appearance of having aged twenty years in less than so many days.

  John Sims was so shocked at the representation of a train wreck casualty that appeared before him that he stepped back a pace from the doorway. Was this the dashing and debonair Charles Adams, or a dissolute and dying elder brother? "Good Lord," he said, before he could think. "What happened to you?" He half-thought that Charles might have been the victim of another crime.

  Charles' anger turned instantly to acute embarrassment. His vanity had always been in his appearance and in his perceived position as a member of the distinguished elite of the community. For a lowly, uniformed cop to express such astonishment at his downfall was almost more than he could bear. He tried to gather himself together into some semblance of his former self. Clearing his throat to speak brought up a gob of phlegm that he had to again swallow. "Excuse me," he said. "What can I do for you? I'm rather busy at the moment, so I hope you'll be brief."

  Adam's fatuous response brought Sims away from his astonishment and back to his purpose. "I'm Officer Sims, and I need a few minutes of your time, ask you a few questions." He stepped forward to his previous position at the door.

  Charles filled the doorway, making no move to invite Sims into his house. "Questions about what?" he asked, reverting to his imperious manner.

  "Do you mind if I come in for a minute?" Sims asked, edging forward. "Shouldn't take long." Adams backed away from him, allowing Sims room to pass by him into the hall. The spacious hall was elegant, with elaborate painted moldings and a mahogany staircase leading to the upper floor. The open doorway to the left led into a formal dining room with seating for twelve around a dark walnut, Queen Anne table. To his right, beside an antique tall-case clock, the doorway led into Charles' study where the television could be heard playing a singing duet from some forgotten musical comedy. Everything in Sims' sight whispered money and taste, from the oriental rugs and runners to the well-polished, antique items of early-American furniture and handsome landscapes and portraits that adorned the painted walls. All except for the man who leaned against the wall beside him. Charles was a mess, entirely out of place here in these opulent and well-maintained surroundings.

  Sims wanted a reaction to gauge the man's complicity in Sloan's activities, so his first question was a fastball. "Do you know Elwood Trott?" he asked, watching Adams' face closely.

  His pitch streaked by; the batter almost ducked. Charles recovered quickly and resumed his stance. He rubbed at his unshaven jaw. "I may have heard the name. Why do you ask?" Charles was still residually drunk, and he spoke with the elaborate care that the self-conscious drunk employs to preserve his self esteem.

  "Were you at home all during this past night?"

  That one was easy — a slow ball. "Yes. And I would like to know why you're intruding on my privacy with these very odd questions."

  "Can anyone substantiate your presence here, last night?"

  That one was harder, but still manageable. "As a matter of fact, no. But then I see no reason why I should have to account for my whereabouts, anyway." Charles put his jaw forward.

  Sims gave him that one, tilted his head and nodded. "Perhaps not, right now," he said. "Can you account for the source of the substantial amount deposited to your business account at the bank?"

  That one almost knocked Charles down. He gasped audibly. How could this item of privacy be known to the police? "That's my personal business," he stammered, "and none of yours. I'll have to ask you to leave now, unless you have a warrant or some such."

  Sims smiled. Charles in his cups sounded much like his older sister. "Not at present. But thank you for your cooperation. I'll be back." He left without a goodbye, closing the door behind himself without a backward look. He knew Charles was standing inside, sweating.

  Two strikes aren't usually enough to call a batter out, but in this case Sims had gotten what he wanted — gut confirmation of Adams' involvement. And maybe he'd given the man enough of a push for him to do something stupid. He'd keep on Adams' ass like white on rice until something broke. By tomorrow morning, Clarkson and Waters would broaden the original group to include two other officers, Beshloss and Peterson. More would be included before the end of that day. They would have enough officers to keep close tabs on Sloan and Adams. And Waters was seeing Henry Daniels this afternoon to see if they had enough to go before a grand jury. For better or for worse, they were married to this thing now and it was only a matter of time. Either the bad guys would go down or the whole thing would explode in their faces, and the department would go down in flames.

  .

  Charles was indeed sweating. He could smell the sour odor that rose from his body. He smelled like spilled scotch and stale popcorn, with a hint of bad onion. He felt like shit and was ready to trade his body and soul in on a younger model. Fat chance. But he could change his location. He could get the cash to take himself far from his problems, maybe to some tropical isle where the dollar was king and an older gentleman might be able to lose himself in the throng. Not that he was old. Hell, he was only sixty-one, not too old to start over, or at least to enjoy another decade or two of comfort. With the cash he could get, more than comfort, luxury even. Leaning against the doorjamb to the dining room, he watched the steady swinging of the pendulum of the tall-case clock opposite him. The ticking of seconds passing could be heard beneath the sound of the television. Damn. Do it. Do it before it's too late.

  He watched each step as he climbed the staircase, thinking of what he must do, leaning heavily on the bannister. In his bedroom he stripped, leaving his slept-in garments where they fell. He never raised his head to look about him and showered on automatic pilot, scarcely aware of his movements, ritual taking the place of conscious action. He was casting about in his mind: Where to go? South America? The Caribbean? He had no idea of how to avoid any potential extradition processes or how to move his money so that no one could trace it, but his first stop would have to be the Cayman Island bank where he already had an account. From there? Play it by ear.

  It was a different Charles Adams that emerged from his house an hour later. Clean shaven and dressed for business in a conservative, gray wool suit and black oxfords. His agenda was simple: go to the bank and arrange the wire transfer; return home for just long enough to find his passport and pack a small suitcase; drive to the airport and travel south to the money, using his credit cards for the last time. After that? Buy a new identity and move on. He felt sure that his money could facilitate the process, somehow. And he resolved not to have a single drink until he was on the plane, or at least in the airport lounge with his ticket in hand.

  .

  Jimmy Brulick went directly home after his shift, not stopping to ask if his presence was still required at the scene. He had a lot to think about. Of all the questions in his mind, the only certainty was that his situation was about to change, and not for the better. He felt that his anchor, in the person of Chief Sloan, was dragging, and the lee shore was beckoning him onto the rocks.

  Jimmy didn't drink, couldn't, in fact. His few early experiments with alcohol had tended to expose even more of the nature that caused other people to steer away from him. Behind his veneer of sobriety lay a world of craven venality that was only exacerbated by alcohol. On the few occasions he'd been in public, drunk, people tended to react to him in one of two ways, depending on their personalities: avoid him like a plague, or beat him up. So, Brulick had learned to stick with soft beverages.

  He held a can of lukewarm cola, a store brand, as he sat in his easy chair, losing himself in the picture on the wall opposite him. Sometimes the woman was his mother, protecting him from the world behind the green trees and flowing river. His own mother had been distant, distracted by the concerns of her own life and a husband who had been absent most of the time selling on the road. Sometimes the woman was the wife he'd never had, waiting with their child for him to come home t
o her. Whichever role she was playing for him at the time, she always had the answers for him — the answers that would make him feel loved and admired. Her answers worked in his fantasy world, but right now she had nothing to say to him that could relate to his real-life problems.

  His phone rang several times through the course of the morning and afternoon, but he wouldn't respond to it. The voice that came through his answering machine was usually Sloan's, and twice it was that of Clarkson. He stayed where he was. Let them think he was not at home. In a few hours he had to make decisions, but for now he would stay by the river.

  .

  In the early hours of the morning, Sloan had arrived home where his wife was sleeping. She was taking a medication that caused her to sleep heavily all night long, and that left her somewhat unfocused during the day. She had suffered from a chronic nervous anxiety and insomnia all through her life and the last few years had seen her less and less willing to leave the house — to the point where she found herself sometimes unable even to get behind the wheel of a car, let alone drive it anywhere.

  Edith Sloan, nee Bracken, was the daughter of a moderately successful Boston merchant. Her father had owned two retail clothing stores, and she and her brother Edward had grown up in fairly comfortable surroundings, despite the fact that their mother had died early on in the children's lives. Where Edward had been loud and boisterous, rebelling against authority just short of the extant that would have precluded his subsequent career with a law enforcement agency, Edith had been timid and unsure of herself. She did what she was told to do, happy not to make any strong decisions on her own. When Harry Sloan came along, offering her the same deal (though not in so many words), she accepted and became his wife. Husband and brother got along just fine, being if not exactly birds of a feather, then at least animals of similar species.

  Edward had a secret vice, namely an addiction to gambling, that had led to his involvement in certain crimes that were facilitated by his position in the Drug Enforcement Administration. Harry Sloan's addiction was to power and he used his position similarly. Most of their dealings over the years had been small in scope, easily hidden from watchdog authorities and family members. Their present enterprise had been occasioned by both opportunity and need: Edward's need to pay off a large gambling debt and Harry's opportunity to invest surreptitiously in Charles Adam's waterfront condo project. The plan had been to get the project started, sell several units before completion, and then sell off to other investors who would be attracted by longer-term profits and delayed capital gains. Enough cash had been returned to Edward's creditors to persuade them to accept a deferred payment plan, one that was expected to be paid in full in less than a year. Edward had demanded an early partial payment because the initial risk was largely his. Adams and Sloan had both their shares totally invested in the project.

  Harry was considering the stability of Adams and the reliability of his pension plan supplement as he went about the business of hiding or destroying every trace of his late-night activities. There wasn't that much to do: the gun was hidden, body and clothing cleansed of any gunpowder residue. His sleeping wife was more of an alibi than he had any right to expect. He himself had increased her medication of the evening before to ensure that she wouldn't awaken during the night and find him missing. But Adam's behavior of the last several days was on his mind as he prepared a breakfast and carried it up the stairs to wake his wife. Adams was a weak link and Sloan had little confidence in his ability to tough it through to the end. Adams' increased drinking made Harry think that he would have to keep a closer rein on him. Sloan decided to spend the morning in the office and then check up on Charles.

  Upstairs, Sloan had trouble rousing Edith. She was slow to wake and slow to recognize him. She didn't have complete control over her jaw muscles, chewing her toast slowly and dribbling some of her coffee onto the breast of her nightgown, sitting up in bed. He thought that he had perhaps dosed her a little too strongly. He made a mental note to adjust it a bit downwards, next time. She thanked him for his touching concern in serving her breakfast in bed. Buttered toast and coffee.

  At the office later that morning, Harry was feeling a slow burn. He'd come in a few minutes early to catch Brulick for a talk and had found his own unmarked car in the lot, keys on his desk. No sign of Brulick, who had apparently slipped in and out without a word to anyone. He needed Brulick to keep him clued in on what was going on and who was where, and he couldn't get ahold of him. Brulick could tell him things he couldn't get on his own, like what rumors were spreading in the department. Jimmy had a knack for overhearing conversations that would cease the moment the chief entered a room. Sloan wanted his spy on the scene, but what good is a spy if you can't talk to him? Son of a bitch, thought Sloan as he replaced the receiver after his third try to reach him.

  Sloan sat in his office, listening to the silence. Usually, the noise of the department reached right through his closed door: heavy feet pounding down the adjacent stairwell, laughter and shouts from the locker room during a shift change, Clarkson's voice booming over all other sounds as he dressed down some officer over sloppy gear or a lame written report. Today, the place made about as much commotion as the front office in a funeral parlor. Phones rang and were answered quietly. The shift change had come and gone without so much as a slammed locker. And Clarkson hadn't even briefed him on the shooting and fire.

  One time, when Sloan had been a young man drawing a living from the sea, he'd been pulling his traps on a beautiful August morning, a morning when the sea was as dead and smooth as a sheet of green glass. He was working a line of pots that were strung along the small islands that stood out from the flats just a half mile from his home. The lay of the sea bed, invisible under the surface of the water, was as known to him as the lumps in his own mattress, beneath the blankets. He spent about the same amount of time on each, every day. The fact that the usual raucous crowd of seagulls weren't wheeling above his boat's wake gave him pause, and he idled the boat's engine to almost nothing and looked around him. He watched as a black front of clouds rode up and over him from the south, blotting out the sun and unloading a torrential downpour that brought the sea to a spasmodic boil of wind and wave in a matter of minutes. It wasn't the usual summer storm that came on a hot afternoon with towering, anvil-shaped thunderclouds. This particular storm flew in like a giant black crow whose wings spanned the sky, and swooped down to rake his unsuspecting head with claws of hail. He managed to ride out that storm in the lee of an island, using his internal guidance system to keep him from the rocks that the storm was blinding him to, and an almost instinctual knowledge of how to guide his small boat among the unpredictable waves. Two boats and one life were lost in that freak storm and the old-timers still spoke of it in tones usually used to describe an encounter with the supernatural.

  The feeling, the perception of impending doom that came over him when that line of black was nearing overhead, was the same as that which he was sensing right now in his office. He'd ride it out, if a storm came, just as he had back then. And if any small boats were to go down, his wouldn't be one of them.

  .

  At a quarter to twelve, Letty Adams was clearing her desk. It had been a quiet morning. No phone calls, no visitors, just the mailman dropping off a stack of bills and junk mail. The business books were all up to date and she wanted to go out for lunch and then to take the rest of the day for herself, going to the farm and taking her horse for a long afternoon ride. She was about to reach for her coat when the door opened and a young-looking man entered. He might have been twenty-five or -six years old.

  "I was just going to close up for lunch," she said. "Is there something I can help you with that won't take very much time?" She smiled pleasantly, but it was a somewhat impatient smile. Working in the office these last days depressed her and she was anxious to close the door behind her.

  Her visitor was dressed in a low-powered business style — except for his shoes, which were heavy-soled walking
shoes, polished but scarred with wear. A long, blue London Fog-style raincoat was buttoned almost to the top, revealing only that he wore a white shirt and tightly-knotted tie. His pants draped a little too long, as though he wanted to cover as much of his footwear as possible. Letty thought that the ploy only served to draw more attention to them. He was blond and round-faced, overweight by twenty pounds or so. His expression was earnest but pleasant, displaying an uncertain smile, as if unsure of his reception today.

  "Ah, actually," he began, searching the wall behind her to find the right words. "This is an informal call. I'm with the State Department of Environmental Protection and would appreciate just a few minutes today to inquire about something that recently came to our attention." He had barely enough authority to come here today on his own volition and didn't want to mention the source of his information, namely Daniel Drew. The other part of his prompting came from the unexpected story on the television news that had appeared to steal a move on his office. Today he was playing catch-up with the media and doing a favor for an old friend.

  "And your name is . . ." Letty pulled the ends of her unbuttoned cardigan sweater to wrap it more tightly around her. In her low-heeled shoes she stood eye to eye with him.

  "I'm sorry," he said, "Bert Hines, with remediation and waste management." He took one step toward her and bent at the waist to reach out to shake her hand. A lock of his fair hair fell over one eye.

  Letty hesitated offering her hand for just long enough for his gesture to start to seem awkward, and then relented. "Letitia Adams," she said, shaking his hand briefly. She felt unwilling to involve herself in any more of the company's business, new or old, and although she knew the reason for his visit, he would have to bring everything out on his own with no assistance from her. She moved behind her desk and smoothed her skirt under her as she sat, not offering him a seat.

  Hines stood in the center of the room, playing out his line, hoping for cooperation in a matter for which he had at present no legal basis to pursue. He wasn't even sure what form that cooperation might take. All he knew was that some bad compounds had found their way to the site of the old cannery, and he'd like to know where they had gone from there. Letty sat like she could have been carved from marble. Bert Hines was beginning to feel stupid. He should return to the office and work through channels, setting in motion the legal machinery that would formally require answers to specific questions. A lawyerly mano y mano that could string out the process for as many years as had passed since the original occurrences.

  While she was sitting and half-listening, Letty was thinking: the dates on the papers she had seen coincided with about the time that Stan Warnecki had died in the accident, which occurred around the time the new floor had been poured. A floor, she had thought at the time, which had been a complete waste of money. She had an irreverent thought, probably resulting from all the stress she had been under lately. It brought a slight smile to her face. "Well," she said, "why don't you just bang a hole in the floor and see if the stuff is under there?"

  Hines' look of astonishment made her smile grow. "Seriously?" he asked. "I mean, it seems a rash idea, especially since we haven't had an opportunity to speak to Mr. Adams. After all, it's his signature on most of the receipts, and he would be the most likely person to know the wheres and whys of it all."

  "Mr. Hines," Letty said. "If you can find Charles and he's willing to answer your questions to your satisfaction, go for it." Letty was finding a way to separate herself emotionally from the business. Maybe she wouldn't ever return to the office again. Forget coming in to finish out the week. "I'll tell you what," she said, leaning forward over her desk, clasping her hands before her. "If you have a problem with Charles, or finding Charles, or whatever, as a corporate officer, I'll give you permission to knock a hole in the floor or in the walls or in the roof. Whatever you please. How's that?"

  He looked doubtful. Was she rattling his chain, or what? She didn't seem like the type to be other than sincere, but who knows? He wouldn't take her words at face value, but at least he had a reference point to work from. He'd just have to see where it took him. "Well, thank you for your cooperation," he said. "I guess my next step is to meet with Mr. Adams."

  Letty stood and pulled her coat from where it stood next to the door. "Good luck," she said, opening the door for him to precede her into the open air. On the stone landing, she took a deep breath. It tasted of freedom, cool and fresh. The sky was in transition. In the narrow lane between the rows of brick buildings, she could see wisps of ragged clouds hurrying toward the southeast, shuttering and then releasing the light of the sun. She took it as a metaphor for her present circumstance. Would the sky clear entirely, or would more clouds blow in to shadow her future?

  Tina Bronki was making the rounds. She'd been twice to the scene of the fire and shooting, twice to the police station, and once to Adams' home to see if she could get a comment on the record from Charles about the toxic chemicals. Along the way there had been a stop at the television station, but no time for a break. Jim Fleck was feeling pangs of hunger and being constantly rebuffed by Tina. "One more stop," she said, aggravated by his nagging. "Then you can put on your feed bag."

  Driving down Wharf Street to make another try for Adams, Tina saw the green sedan with government plates and the DEP logo on the door. Letitia Adams and a blond-haired man were stepping onto the sidewalk from the entrance of the Adams Realty and Development office. Perseverance pays off again, she thought. She stopped in the middle of the street and hustled to catch the pair on the sidewalk. A car following the van stopped abruptly and beeped its horn. Flack had one foot on the street and Tina yelled for him to park it out of the way. He muttered a complaint to himself and pulled the van into an empty space twenty feet ahead.

  As Tina intercepted the pair, Letty deftly introduced her to Hines and made an escape before Fleck could get set up to get her on tape. Bert Hines made his television debut alone, smiling nervously and trying to say nothing that would come back to haunt him. He failed, by slipping in Letty's off-hand comment about knocking a hole in the floor of the cannery. It takes practice to speak and say nothing, and Hines was a rookie at the game.

  .

  Louis snored when he slept on his back. Generally, it was a rhythmic sound, not unlike a sawyer's steady cadence. The saw hit a nail. Saw-teeth screeched and snapped off; the saw jumped the cut; the sawyer cursed. Joey woke, startled and wide-eyed, and looked at Louis. Louis gasped and chewed, and settled back to his work. Joey got up.

  Outside, the air was chill and Joey's bare feet lost their heat quickly to the gravel on his driveway. A police car blocked the entrance to his driveway, but he saw no official presence around him and felt uncomfortably exposed. He walked gingerly to his back door, looking around him for hidden gunmen as he stepped. Entering his house, he was relieved to see Mary Hartz and then alarmed at what she was preparing to do. She held a reciprocating saw, plugged in and ready to go, apparently about to cut a chunk out of the doorjamb that opened into his kitchen. "Whoa," he said. Mary turned to him with a questioning look, holding the power tool across her chest like a sentry on guard. Joey held up a hand and approached to inspect the doorway. A hole had been punched through the varnished door casing, about chest high. He drew the pencil from behind Mary's ear and probed the hole. The bullet had lodged in the studs behind the casing. "How about if I pry off the trim and then you can cut out what you need. That way I'll only have to fix a small hole, instead of the whole thing." He looked hopefully at her.

  Mary grinned at him and toggled the switch of the power tool. It gnarled a threat and the eight inch-blade cycled in and out. "C'mon," she said. "I've never used this thing, it's brand new. I want to try it out."

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Joey said, and grinned back at her. "My house has enough damage. Let me get a flat bar and pry off the casing. You can core it and snap out a plug like you did in the other room. Okay?"

  She pouted, looking at her new toy and toggling the sw
itch again. "Oh, alright," she said, laying the tool down on the floor. "Ruin my fun. But if you're worried about damage, don't look in the dining room. Or at the front of your house."

  "What's in the dining room?" Joey asked. Early in the morning, he'd taken a quick look at the scorched front of his home and didn't want to think about it at the moment.

  Mary straightened. "The other shot went through the kitchen wall and broke the mirror on the other side." She looked down at his bare feet. "Don't walk in there. There's glass all over the floor."

  "Damn," Joey said.

  Joey removed the one piece of trim. Mary exchanged power tools and used a core drill to cut around to bullet. One good crank against the side of the hole with a large screwdriver popped the core loose and she fished it out of the hole. Joey nailed the trim back into its original position, thinking all the while that he was losing another day of work. Mary had found the other bullet on the floor of the dining room, its energy spent by passing through two layers of drywall and a heavy wall mirror. Mirror clips held two pieces of the frameless mirror against the wall, the rest lay in shards and chips on the carpet before it.

  "Sorry about your house, Joey — all the damage." Mary knelt on the kitchen floor to pack up her kit. She would put everything in the trunk of the patrol car and then visit Joe Soucup to see if he would talk to her.

  Joey stood in the doorway between kitchen and dining room, leaning against the jamb. From that position, he could see the broken glass in one room and Mary in the other. Joey sighed. "Hope you guys can stop him before he does any more damage. There aren't any more mirrors to break, anyway." He crossed his arms. "You going to try to talk to Joe?"

  Mary snapped the last case shut and stood. "Yeah. Got any hints as to how I should approach him?"

  Joey though about it. "Not really. Just don't try to push him, or he'll get his back up. Right from the start, though, you've got a better shot at it than anyone else. Joe likes women, especially attractive ones, but never really gets a chance to talk to any." He smiled. "They seem to avoid him for some reason. I'm betting he'll talk to you just to keep you in sight."

  Mary, who had been watching him as he spoke, tilted her head forward to look at him from under her lowered brow. He had just said that she was an attractive woman in a very matter-of-fact way, without seeming in any way to appear to be coming on to her. As the only female officer in the department, she was constantly on her guard to avoid any impropriety, or appearance of impropriety, in her speech, manner, or dress. Implicitly when possible, explicitly when necessary, she made it clear to all that liberties were not to be taken with her. She wore no make-up on duty and did not fraternize with the male officers unless it was an occasion where their wives were present. Since police officers tended to hang out with other police officers, it limited her social life considerably. Still, it was nice to know that one was considered to be attractive, so she felt comfortable in accepting this off-hand remark as a kind of compliment. But she'd be damned if she would use her femininity to seduce Old Joe into talking to her.

  Joey didn't seem to notice her slight reaction to his comment, preoccupied as he was with his own problems. He left his torn shirt for her to take away as evidence and went to shower and dress before attempting to restore what he could of his house. Mary stowed her gear away and went to knock at Joe's door.

  Old Joe let her knock for a while before answering his door. When he opened it, he was wearing a relatively stain-free knit shirt, and baggy trousers that showed signs of having been lying folded in a drawer for a long time. He was also wearing socks and shoes. When he opened the door, he looked at her without saying anything.

  "Mr. Soucup," Mary said, "do you mind talking with me for a minute or two?" Not 'would you answer some questions'?

  Joe looked her up and down in an appraising way and then looked over his shoulder into his dark living room. He shrugged and allowed her in, closing the door behind her and watching her until she came to a stop in the center of the front room and turned to face him. His face wore an expression that was a strange mixture of wariness and hunger.

  Mary's mind flew back to stories from her childhood of being trapped in an ogre's lair. She kept her features neutral, not wanting to show her distaste for his person or living quarters. She took her eyes from his face and looked about her. She hoped he wouldn't offer her a seat. She could imagine standing again with a pound of cat hair and greasy dirt stuck to her uniform.

  "So?" he said, remaining where he was in the short hallway by the door.

  Mary managed a slight smile. "Mr. Soucup. It's my understanding that you saw a man in front of Mr. Warnecki's home and phoned Mr. Armstrong. Is that correct?"

  Joe tilted his head to the side. Both earpieces were screwed in. "Maybe," he answered.

  Her situation suddenly seemed ridiculous to her and and a chuckle escaped her. She tried to erase the smile that followed, but failed, and she shook her head. "Please, Mr. Soucup. Either you did or you didn't, right?"

  Her smile may have been non-threatening to him, or he took it as a challenge, or he just enjoyed seeing it, but he allowed himself a slight, wry grin. "Okay, yeah, I did."

  Mary nodded and lost her smile. She took one step towards him. "And then what did you see?" she asked.

  Joe didn't move except to put his hands in his pockets. It was a half-minute before he answered her. "I saw the little weasel run to the back, between my house and Joey's," he spat out. "I went into the back room and watched him. He stood there with a gun, and when Joey ran out the back he shot, twice. Goddam asshole bastard." Joe shook a little with his last expletive and actually spat, to Mary's amazement, towards a coffee can that stood on the floor against the wall to his right. His aim was fair, but not perfect, evidenced by the brown staining of the wall and floor in the proximity of the can.

  Mary retreated a step, not that she was within range, but as a general caution and natural reaction. She was not too taken aback to lose the thread of her inquiry, however. "Did you recognize the man? Could you recognize him if you saw him again?" she pressed.

  Here, Joe's attitude was hard to figure. He was angry, no doubt. Whether he was refusing to being made to feel cowardly in the presence of a woman, or put off from the typically belligerent stance he took before a male, or just fed up with the whole deal, he let it go. Whatever the reason, he put his jaw forward, craning his chicken neck as far as it would extend and nodded. "I know who it was," he said, spitting out the words. "It was the same rat bastard Nazi that came creeping around the last time, shooting at Joey. Asshole jerkface dickwad . . ." Joe was lost in a profane trance, shaking his head,cursing, and moving his feet in small steps that went nowhere. He kept on cursing in an almost mystical way, like some crooked gnome casting an malign spell.

  "Mr. Soucup," Mary said, cutting his tirade off in mid curse. Besides the fact that his performance was disturbing, she needed to pull him back to her reality. "You said you know who it was. Do you know his name?" She spoke too loudly, a little concerned that he might go on ranting like Rumplestiltskin until he stamped a hole through the floor and disappeared into the earth, leaving a only a wisp of sulfurous smoke to show where he had disappeared.

  Joe returned his focus to her, but retained the strange light of dementia in his eyes. "His name is Sloan and he's your boss, the police chief. I seen his face enough on t.v. to know who he is, and I seen him around here three times, creeping around. I know who he is all right." Joe's gnarled hands were clenched into knobby fists and he stared fiercely at her, daring her to dispute his veracity.

  Mary felt a thrill of triumph. She had an eyewitness. Almost immediately, doubt came into her mind. When it came to court, what kind of witness would Joe make? He was ancient. He was mostly deaf. And if he wasn't actually crazy, he surely would give that impression to a jury. Nevertheless, this was what she had, and this is what they would have to use. "Thank you, Mr. Soucup. What you've told me is extremely important. It's something we can use."

 
"Just keep the bastard from finishing the job," Joe said, then added, "Though he's such a piss-poor shot, he'd probably need a dozen more chances to do it right."

  Mary didn't want to give him any more chances. She would bring the evidence she had collected back to the department, meet with Clarkson and perhaps the lieutenant, and then return to baby-sit Joey until the end of her shift. She hoped they could provide continuous coverage on him until warrants could be issued and Sloan and Adams taken into custody. One more day, she thought, maybe two. With Joe Soucup's evidence, they should surely be able to justify those actions. She excused herself and left Old Joe's presence.

  She hadn't been really aware that she had been breathing so shallowly while she had been inside, but when the door closed behind her, she drew several large breaths, purging her lungs of the miasmic atmosphere of the house. The air outside was clear and cool and the sun shone brightly, stark contrast to the gloom and fetor of Joe's cave-like home. As she walked to her car, she unzipped her jacket and flapped it like a bellows to dispel any malodorous residue from her clothing. She shook her head to shake the feeling of spiders crawling around in her brain. What a kook, she thought. Then she smiled to herself, anticipating Knowles' reaction to her success in getting Old Joe to talk.

  .

  Joey showered and shaved and dressed in work clothes. His work clothes were distinguishable from others in his wardrobe only by the fact that they had become faded or stained to a degree that he determined made them suitable for work. From that point, they disintegrated rapidly until they were usable only for rags. Joey was rough on clothing, never hesitating to get down into the nitty-gritty of a job. Dirt, sawdust, pine pitch and plaster seemed attracted to his person like a magnet and his long-jointed body wore out his clothing at the elbows and knees first. Nothing he wore would ever end up in a Salvation Army bin. He'd never owned a proper suit or even a sport coat. Grade school had been the last time he had possessed a pair of shoes other than sneaks or leather work-boots. In the cold months, he wore flannel shirts and jeans. The summer found him in tee-shirts and jeans. What did he have to dress for, other than work or his very casual and limited social life? He'd never had to attend a funeral, had never dressed up and gone to a wedding or a high school prom. Joey had one face, one character, one role to play. He was a one-note man.

  His vicarious life was to be found in his reading, in the paperback novels that filled the shelves in the room at the rear of his home. In those books he took on the characters and guises of international spies and wealthy socialites, private detectives and murderous but nattily-dressed drug lords. These transformations were for the entertainment and diversion of his mind. They were not intended to pertain at all to his quotidian existence. So what was happening to him, here and now?

  He was picking up the larger pieces of mirror shards from his dining room rug and dropping them into a brown cardboard box. They reflected pieces of himself — a shoulder clad in green- and blue-checked plaid, a belt buckle that had once been plated with shiny brass but now was worn to the grayish sheen of the steel beneath, and an eye that revealed a look of troubled uncertainty. The eye held him because he found little recognition in it.

  His may have until this point been the unexamined life, but he had never questioned whether it had been worth living or not. He had just lived it, accepting whatever came his way and rejecting whatever seemed to be the most uncomfortable. Doors had opened, doors had closed. Choices had been few and easy, seeming to push him toward a preordained path. Now he was caught up in something beyond his ability to chose, a wild river-ride of uncontrollable circumstance. Did he have anything like a paddle, or was he merely a passenger?

  He sighed and turned the reflection away, dropping the piece into the bag to clink and shatter further. He couldn't strategize, turn and examine the possibilities piece by piece until he came up with any plan. He would just put his head down and deal with each event as it unfolded. He wasn't built to do it any other way.

  He vacuumed the rug as well as he was able, being careful not to push any pieces down into the pile where they might hide and later emerge to lodge in an unprotected toe. He bent low to catch any glint of reflected light that indicated a missed sliver of glass, plucking with tweezers those few that clung too tenaciously to the fabric. Wood slivers were an everyday fact of life for a carpenter. Ofttimes he would spend an hour in the evening working with needle or tweezers to remove them from his hands before they could fester and make working with his hands painful. But glass splinters were particularly onerous, being essentially invisible to the eye and found only by feel — the clicking resistance of glass against the needle and the sharp twinge of pain at the locus of the lodgment. The blood that might stain a wood sliver into visibility only further obscured a transparent fragment of glass. The thought that his current problems were more akin to breaking glass than any other kind of demolition made him work longer than was perhaps necessary to groom the rug. When he was done, he had twenty pounds of glass in a box and a wall that showed a bullet hole nearly centered in an un-sunfaded rectangle of pastel green.

  .

  When Mary Hartz returned, a few hours later, Joey had cut away portions of the fire-damaged yews that flanked his front steps. What had once been a pair of neatly trimmed, green cupcakes were now low crowns of brown sticks. He was scrubbing the blackened concrete of the steps and landing when she parked on the street in front of his house. Gray suds oozed from under a stiff brush and down the steps to soak into the earth around the denuded plants. The door and surrounding shingles showed long, running streaks from their first scrubbing. The paint had alligatored and every once-crisp edge was charred and rounded. Joey looked over his shoulder at the sound of her car door closing, stopped working, and stood.

  Mary stood inside the line of shade where the sun had moved beyond the corner of the house. She wanted to see his face to judge the state of his mind, though the area in the shade held a distinct chill. The evening promised to be clear and cold, this day in early December. "What's the damage report?" she asked.

  He turned back to the house. "Mostly superficial. I have to replace a couple dozen shingles, strip and sand the door and trim. I'm gonna wash everything once more and then hose it down." He wore no jacket and his knees and his shirt sleeves to the elbow were soaked and black with greasy soot. A chill breeze blew by and he shivered once, involuntarily.

  "Maybe you should wait until tomorrow, change out of your wet clothes and get warm," Mary suggested.

  Joey shook his head. "Another half an hour and I'll be done for the day. You talk to Joe?"

  Mary grinned. "Yes, I did." She looked to Joe's house and waved to the waxy image standing back from the window. Joe didn't return her wave and faded from view. "Guy is a real piece of work, isn't he?"

  Joey didn't reply to her comment. "So what's going on?" he asked.

  Mary took a second. "Tell you what," she said. "Rather than stand here talking while you freeze, why don't you finish doing what you have to do and then I'll tell you all about it? I'll sit in the car where it's warm until you're done." She turned to go.

  "Wait a minute," he said, dropping the brush from his hand to splash into the bucket of dirty water. "I'm too curious to wait. Come on in and we'll talk."

  Sitting at the kitchen table opposite Joey, Mary removed her cap and set it on the chair beside her. "Don't you want to get cleaned up?" she asked. Joey's hands were black and chafed, wrinkled from their soaking. Dirty water seeped from his lower sleeves where they rested on the table surface.

  He turned his palms up and grinned at her. "I don't mind making a mess, long as I can clean it up afterward. I just want to hear what you have to say."

  She told him of her interview with Joe and her subsequent meeting with Clarkson and Waters. The state fire marshal's office had gotten involved, and their brother agency in the Maine Department of Public Safety, the state police, had expressed an interest in the goings-on in their small town. Three shooting incidents an
d an arson in little more than a week and the increasing media coverage had led them to offer their assistance. In fact, it was more than just an offer. Lieutenant Waters was meeting with them at this moment to see whether or not he could keep them from preempting the entire investigation. Mary suspected that the staties would let the locals retain just enough involvement for them to save face, but once a chief of police was implicated, the bulk of the case would be taken from their hands.

  "What's Chief Sloan doing about all this?" Joey asked.

  Mary shook her head. "No one's seen him since around noontime. The sergeant's been scrambling to locate him, but isn't having any success short of blowing the whole thing wide open. When that happens, and it will, soon, there's going to be a shit storm. Our friend Tina is going to put a spotlight on our quiet little town."

  "How about Adams?" Joey asked. "What's he doing?" He leaned forward on his forearms.

  "He's disappeared, too. Sims has been trying to get a line on him, but he apparently left his house some time ago." She shook her head again. "We need more guys on this. I, for one, am glad the staties are getting into this."

  The two of them sat in stillness for a minute or two. Then Joey spoke: "So how long? When's it going to be over?"

  Mary had been giving a great deal of consideration to this. "My best guess is that by tomorrow morning the big decisions will have been made and warrants will be issued. Or at least subpoenas for several people, including Sloan and Adams, to appear before a grand jury."

  "Me too, I guess," Joey sighed.

  "Yeah. You too. But by that point, I don't think you're going to be in any physical danger."

  "Well, that's something, at least."

  .

  Charles Adams hadn't been able to keep his promise to himself. His intention had been to keep out of sight until shortly before his bank would close, then make a quick stop there to transfer his cash to the offshore account and head for Logan International Airport in Boston where he had a reservation on a plane heading south at nine o'clock in the evening. His passport was in his vest pocket. A small suitcase was packed in the trunk of his car. And his pistol was locked in the glovebox. The problem was, where to spend the intervening hours until he could move? Where else but a dimly lit bar like the Shipwreck?

  It was there, sitting on a barstool, watching television and nursing his second scotch on the rocks, that he heard about his wife's off-hand offer to allow the DES to look for hazardous materials under the concrete deck of his cannery building. That was enough to bring him to finish his drink at a gulp and order a third. He finished two more by the time he had to leave for the bank at a quarter after four. He had exceeded his Zen-drinking discipline by an ounce and a half of scotch, but was still able to drive his Lincoln in a manner that would approach sobriety to any but the most observant of watchers.

  His visit to the bank caused quite a stir among a few of its officers, but he managed the transfer and waited for confirmation in a slightly drunken appearance of composure. Even the tellers were casting glances his way and whispering behind their hands to one another by the time he left the building. His temperate mien, however, was entirely on the outside. Inside he was a bundle of nervous anxiety, ready to bolt at any provocation. Exiting the brick-faced building, feeling wondering eyes at his back, the first bead of visible sweat emerged from his temple to trace a cool track down his flushed cheek. He was making it, he thought. The sky was nearly dark. Close the distance between building and car and he would feel the first stage of relief. An hour of driving should bring a second stage, and so on, until he stood on strange soil with a new identity. One step at a time to a safe anonymity.

  Harry Sloan, dressed in civilian clothing and driving a rented Chevy Cavalier, had spotted Charles' dark blue Lincoln in the bank parking lot and waited at the curb, engine idling, for its owner to emerge from the building. He watched Charles closely, walking to his car; noted his tense posture; recognized his level of intoxication. Altogether a suspicious-looking character. Although he couldn't see Charles' eyes, he could tell that the man was scanning the area for threat by the way his head swiveled in a wide arc. Harry switched the dome light on to catch Adams' attention.

  Charles halted abruptly in recognition of the figure lit in the unfamiliar car. His eyes went to his own car, judging whether to continue on to drive away from this place without acknowledging Sloan's summons. Hope died; he couldn't. Sloan would chase him down before he could reach the outskirts of town and then his game would be known. His only chance was to face Sloan and then somehow slip away before the rumor of his banking business reached his ears. Before he could take a step toward the rented car, Sloan pointed a finger at the Lincoln and then made a beckoning gesture, indicating that Adams should follow him in his car. Adams' shoulders slumped and he turned to obey.

  Sloan led Adams north out of town, away from his wanted direction of travel.

  .

  "The shift change, that's the most dangerous time," Mary said.

  "Like right now, you mean," Sims said. "And who would know that better than Sloan?"

  "So from now on, like when Knowles relieves you, he should relieve you on station, right?" She looked at Clarkson, the third man of their trio, one eyebrow raised to solicit his approval.

  The sergeant nodded. "Right. The returning officer can hand off his car at the end of his shift to another patrol. I'll just need to juggle the unit assignments." They were in Clarkson's office, Sims and Hartz standing, he seated behind the desk. His phone rang and he picked it up. "Your wife," he said and held out the handset to Sims.

  "John," she said, "I just bumped into Jayne at the bank and she told me something you ought to know."

  "Bumped into her?"

  "Well, alright, I managed to be in the parking lot when the bank closed and intercepted her in the lot. Anyway, she told me that Charles Adams came in just before closing, canceled his loan application, and wired his money straight back to the bank it came from. Looks like a radical change in his plans. She said he looked to be three sheets to the wind. Thought you ought to hear right away."

  "Always said you'd make a good cop, June. Thanks for the tip. See you later on." He hung up. Sometimes, when she called him at work and knew others might overhear his end of the conversation, she would try to get him to kiss her over the phone. She enjoyed the embarrassment it caused him. She was all business this time, to his gratitude. He relayed her news to the other two in the room. "Listen," he said, "if Adams is D.U.I., we can pull him in, take the night away from him."

  "Yeah," said Clarkson, "if we can find him on the road." He called the front desk for the other officers due to go out on the road to relay this charge to them in person. He didn't want it to go out over the radio where Sloan might get wind of it. They would be looking for Sloan, too, though they wouldn't know why. Or perhaps they would. The department was awash in rumor and speculation. Bits and pieces were being put together in a semblance of the truth, but no one outside of the core group had the whole story. By morning, surely they would.

  At the beginning of his shift, Sims gave the entire neighborhood a good looking-over before parking in front of Joey's house. Knocking at the back door brought no response, so he checked at Louis' home. Louis and Joey were there, eating supper, and Louis invited him in without asking him to remove his shoes.

  Chili Night had been moved up a day by special request. "Smells spicy in here," Sims said. Louis set a new place at the table without asking if Sims wanted to participate and Sims accepted by sitting down to it. No, he wouldn't care for a beer, but chili and hot cornbread sounded just fine, thank you. His throat began to burn after two spoons-full. "Holy shit," he offered. "This stuff is hot. May I have a glass of water, please?" Louis and Joey both grinned at him and Louis got him a large glassful.

  They ate and talked. Sims managed one small bowlful and Louis two. Joey ate the rest and most of the cornbread. "High octane fuel," he said of the food.

  Sims stopped marveling at his
ability to pack the hot stuff away without apparent ill-effect and turned to Louis. "I understand you have a gun in the house, and fired it out the window."

  Louis looked about him for a disarming reply but couldn't locate one, so he admitted to the action. "I just shot into the air over his head, though," he said. "When I pointed it at him, I couldn't pull the trigger, so I pointed it up and used it to make a loud noise."

  Sims considered his next words. "I'm glad it worked to scare him away. You should understand, though, that even when a gun is possessed legally, it can't be fired out into the neighborhood. These particular circumstances constitute a gray area, but you could still get into trouble with it. It's good that you didn't hit him." He looked at the curtained window over the sink, where several layers of plastic wrap and masking tape showed at the bottom of the sash. "In fairness, I have to tell you that it could bring you some problems, even though you probably did the right thing." If the incident came out, Sims would do what he could to help, but he felt that he had to let Louis know about potential difficulties. To Sims, the Second Amendment was a minefield where private citizens would tread at their peril. In Louis' eyes he saw a resolve to do what needed to be done, regardless of the consequences to his own person. Luckily, he thought he could also discern an intelligent concern for responsibility. He decided to put the matter aside, for now anyway.

  Sims left after letting them know that he would be around until the end of his shift, checking the neighborhood every half-hour and sitting outside in his car for the balance of time until Knowles relieved him. "Make sure you don't shoot me by mistake," he said on his way out the door. Louis nodded at him gravely.

  Joey retired to his own home at nine, trying to get some sleep and waking at every creak of his house and every click of the furnace turning on.

  .

  Sloan had Adams follow him to a dirt road north of town. He stopped at the road's outlet and waved Charles past him, following on foot until the Town Car was out of sight around a bend. The road led to a disused campsite and was only visited by the occasional teenaged couple looking for a discreet place to make out. On a cold weeknight no one would likely go there.

  Adams removed the pistol from his glovebox and tucked it into his waistband before Sloan reached the car. Tree branches reached out to touch the car on both sides and Charles protected his face with his forearm to step out. One small branch flipped into the open doorway and stuck there when Charles closed the door on it. "Shit," he said. "What did you drag me out here for? You got my car all scratched up."

  Sloan was a darker shadow in the night. "We need to talk. Come on," he said and walked back to his car, Adams following with difficulty on the rutted surface that he couldn't see. In the car, they continued northward for several miles, until Sloan apparently changed his mind and headed back to town. Sloan refused to speak, choosing to think in silence and listen to the occasional police calls that came over the portable radio sitting on the dashboard over the steering wheel.

  "Okay, I give up," Adams said. "What's this all about? Where are we going?" Sloan looked at him but didn't answer. They returned to town and Sloan turned down Water Street toward the cannery. He drove through the open and hanging chain-link fence gates onto the weed-grown gravel lot and parked in an open-ended carport attached to the brick side of the building, once used to keep the cannery owner's car out of the hot sun. Sloan opened his door and got out, walking back into the open lot to see if his car was visible in the doorless shed. Satisfied that it was not, at least to a casual eye, he walked back to where Adams was now standing next to the car and together they entered the building through a locked steel door to which Sloan had a key. Five concrete steps led up to a large open space, broken only by square, brick columns that supported the flat roof thirty feet above. Moonlight coming through floor-to-ceiling multi-paned windows cast long shadows behind the pillars. Much of the glass on the public side of the building was shattered. Above this side entrance, a two-room office space sat above the work-floor, quieter workspace for a manager and two clerical workers.

  In its heyday, the cannery employed some fifty-odd people, dispersed among conveyer belts and machinery that reached almost to the ceiling. Trucks would be pulled up to loading docks on the long side of the building and boats would be emptied of their catch from a pier that extended into the harbor from the far end. Voices would have been heard shouting over the din of the machinery in Polish, French, and German and the smell of fish and oil would hang heavy in the air. Rubber-booted feet walked carefully on thick plank floors greasy with fish oil and scales.

  All that was gone now. In its place remained a silent and barren cavern, the machinery sold off to other canneries or as scrap metal, the workers gone, the great doors locked and barred. Broken glass littered the floor from stones thrown through the tall windows by kids making late-night mischief and rowdy drunks leaving Molly's at closing time. There was other litter on the floor, evidence of trespass - beer cans and wine bottles, candle stubs, torn and crumpled pornographic magazines, the detritus of vandals and vagrants.

  Sloan carried a long-handled flashlight, which he shined into the dark corners of the space, looking and listening for signs of human occupation other than their own. "Let's go upstairs," he said, and led Adams to the wooden stairway that led to the offices above their heads. Their footsteps rang hollowly, echoing back to them from the far wall. The door at the top of the stairs was closed, but the padlock and hasp had been torn away some time ago, so entrance to the outer office was unrestricted. Inside, Sloan's light revealed a wooden table and two chairs, shelving on the walls largely devoid of anything but trash, and a stained mattress. Obviously, the space was sometimes habitation for the homeless, but appeared now to be not presently occupied. Still, the chairs were free of dust and much of the litter had been pushed into a corner, so someone had been there fairly recently. An old wind-up alarm clock rested on its face on the table, but it was not ticking. A two-burner Coleman stove occupied a wall shelf with a can of white gas next to it and there were a few unopened cans of beans and beef stew. "You ought to keep this place locked up better," Sloan observed.

  Charles shrugged. "What's the point?" he said.

  Sloan took a seat and waved the flashlight to indicate that Charles should do the same. He did so and Sloan laid the light on the table so that it pointed at Adam's chest, lighting up his face but not blinding him with the direct beam. The air in the room was cold and Adams' breath steamed into the cone of light. "What's going on at the bank?" Sloan asked.

  Charles shrugged again, and it turned into a shiver. He wore no overcoat, not expecting to need one where he had been heading. "Just doing some business," he said. "You going to tell me what we're doing here?"

  Sloan regarded him narrowly. Adams dark suit jacket was flecked with lint and bits of leaf matter. Not like the Adams of old to be out in the world unbrushed. The tie was clean, but the shirt beneath was wrinkled. Either he had put it on un-ironed or he had been sweating. His face, puffy from heavy drinking and troubled sleep, wore a guarded expression which he was taking pains to hide by being overtly casual in his posture.Sloan felt that he was looking at a man who had something to hide from him. Not that he had ever completely trusted Adams, but Sloan knew that Charles had always feared him enough to not step out of line. The fear was still there, but something had been disconnected. He looked like a rabbit ready to bolt if the light were taken from his eyes. Sloan would have to tighten the cords that bound them. "Things are heating up," he said. "We're going to have to take serious steps."

  "We?" Adams asked petulantly. "All the screw-ups have been yours. You've had two chances to take Warnecki out of the picture and blown it both times. You let Trott get away and did the stupid thing with the cocaine. You haven't thought anything through, you've been acting on impulse. If there are problems, they're of your making and you get to work them out." He scraped his chair back to stand. "Take me back to my car. I have things to do and we shouldn't be seen toge
ther."

  Sloan picked up the light and shined it in Adam's face. "Sit down," he ordered. Adams held up a hand to block the beam, but sat down. "We're going to finish it tonight, you and me together," Sloan said.

  Charles pushed his shoulders tightly against the back of the chair. "How? What do you mean?" His schedule had no time for another foolish distraction and his plans didn't include putting himself into further jeopardy.

  Sloan scratched his jaw. "They're trying to cover Warnecki full-time now. We've got to find a distraction for his keepers and get him into the open. I got an idea . . ."

  "You bassards." The slurred words came from behind Sloan. Charles opened his mouth wide and gasped. Sloan looked over his shoulder and saw the raggedy figure of Pardner Jenks, wool cap pulled low over his ears and bulky with several layers of old clothing. Jenks lurched forward from the doorpost and Sloan jumped to his feet, knocking his chair to the ground. The old drunk took one more step and Sloan knocked him into insensibility with the butt of the revolver he had drawn from under his topcoat. Jenks lay crumpled on the floor like a large bundle of rags.

  "Oh my god, is he dead?" Charles whispered. Sloan knelt and put a finger to the pulse in Jenks' neck. He shook his head and took a plastic strap from a coat pocket, a wrist lock that riot police use to bind unruly demonstrators in crowd situations. He pulled Jenks' hands behind him and pulled the cuff tight. Adams licked his lips. "Just what we need — another problem," he said.

  Sloan stood and stared down at the fallen man, thinking. "Actually," he said, "he might be part of the answer." He checked his wrist watch and paced the inner and outer rooms. Adams could hear that his jaw was making small clicking sounds. Sloan paced and stopped, looked about him, paced and stopped again. Ten minutes of stop and go seemed to bring him to a solution to the maze he was following, and he began to gather materials. He wound the alarm clock and listened to it tick. He set the time to that shown on his watch and set it back on the table, checking on it every minute or two to see if it kept time. From the inner office he collected a six-volt battery-operated camp lantern, and an empty half-gallon liquor bottle. He took a lace from Pard's shoe, the old man still unconscious. And he took the can of white gas from the shelf. And with a few small bits of wire from an old phone line, he built an incendiary device.

  They trundled Jenks limp form down the stairs and into the trunk of the car and Sloan went back to collect his flashlight and his parcel. While he was gone, Charles looked to see if the keys were in the ignition, considering briefly if he had a chance to make a break for himself. The key slot was empty and Charles doubted that he would have made a try for it, anyway. Sloan returned with a canvas knapsack. "Amazing what you can do with a little camping gear," he said and chucked deep in his throat. Adams couldn't appreciate his humor.

  .

  Sims got the call at ten-fifty: fire in progress at Thirty-four Main Street, all available units to respond. The dispatcher wasn't making an exception in his case, so he set his light bar and siren going and floored it to the scene.

  Thirty-four Main was a three-story, wood-framed and wood-sided building with a red-brick facade on the street side. The first floor was occupied by a florist's shop and the other two floors housed families in six apartments. When Sims arrived, the rear of the structure, accessed by an alley too narrow for fire apparatus, was engulfed in flame. Men, children, and mothers clutching babies were streaming from the alley-side exit and pouring out onto the street in front. Sims pushed his way through the throng, grabbing a shoeless man dressed in a sleeveless tee-shirt and jeans. "Do you know if anyone is left inside?" he shouted. The panicked man pulled away from his grasp, wide-eyed and shaking his head in bewilderment. Sims ran to the rear of the building. The base of the column of flames was centered around a large, wooden lath trash enclosure. The flames licked the wall to the top of the structure and the trash shed collapsed in a storm of sparks that flew onto Sims' uniform as he held up an arm to protect his face. Sims fled back down the alley to run headlong into the first fireman arriving at the scene. He rebounded from the man and headed for the open door. The fireman pulled him away and pointed to his own smoke mask. "You can't go in there," came the muffled words from behind the mask. "Get the people out of the way and clear the street." Then the fireman and three others dashed inside to check the building for people left behind or overcome by smoke. Sims listened to the men pounding up the stairwell and thought he could feel a breeze sucking past him into the building before turning to his duty out in front.

  .

  Mary Hartz had just fallen asleep, struggling to stay awake and finish the last few pages of her book before dressing for bed and turning in for the night. Her reclining position on the couch, the cat purring on her lap, and the fatigue of her day conspired with the warmth of her apartment to seduce her into slumber and her book fell to the carpet unnoticed. Her feet hung over the cushioned arm of the couch clad in thick socks. She was still dressed in her uniform shirt and trousers, but they were due to be cleaned the next day and had been stripped of badge, name-tag, belt, and all the other uncomfortable apparatus that hung on her all day long. What a relief to shuck all that gear at the end of the day.

  The phone rang and the cat jumped from her lap. Jerked from sleep, she bolted upright, swinging her feet to the floor and remembering where and who she was. The clock on the wall read ten-fiftyfour. Mary caught it in her bedroom on the fourth ring just as the answering machine cut in. "Hello, you have reached ..."

  "Mary? Are you there?" The voice was a shout.

  ". . . please leave a mes- . . ."

  "Yes, who's this, Joey?"

  " . . . the beep, tha- . . ."

  "Yeah, I just got a call from Pard Jenks, he's . . ."

  "Who?"

  "Pard Jenks, the old guy on the road the other day. He's hurt, up on Frenchman's Hill. I gotta go up there . . ."

  "Wait a minute, Joey. Don't, do not go anywhere. I'll . . ."

  "I got to. I'm just telling you . . ."

  "No. Joey, wait. It . . ."

  "Gotta go. Bye." He hung up.

  "Damn!" she shouted and slammed the receiver down. "Idiot!" Her hands went to the sides of her head to keep it from exploding in exasperation. She growled through her teeth. "Stupid son of a bitch." She grabbed her running shoes from a corner. Her socks were too thick, but she pulled the shoes on anyway, tying the laces tightly. A black wool turtle-neck sweater from the back of a chair went over her head. She grabbed her gun from its holster, lying on top of the dresser. Checked the clip and chambered a round, safed it, ran downstairs into the kitchen. Grabbed her keys from the top of the refrigerator and was out the door. Three minutes from call to door.

  Her Honda needed a tune-up. It wouldn't start in the cold on the first try. "Come on!" The second turn of the key did it and she revved the engine and backed squealing into the street. Lights and emergency flashers on. She flew by the police station. Not a cop in sight. "Where are the police when you need them?" she shouted. Twelve minutes to the state park, she did it in eight, blasting her horn and swearing at other drivers in her way, breaking before corners, accelerating out of the curves and on the straightaways.

  She swung into the entrance to the park on two wheels, rocking to a stop just inches short of the heavy chain that hung from pillar to pillar. She got out of the car without bothering to shut it off and left it, lights on and door open. Six minutes to the top of the hill, she vowed, hurdling the chain and hitting the pavement running full out, gun in hand.

  .

  Joey was intercepted by Sloan where a straight run from his house across the ballfields intersected the access road. Sloan stepped from behind a tree and stuck a gun in his face, bringing a winded Joey to an abrupt halt. "Nice of you to be so predictable," Sloan said. "Coming to help out an old friend, were you?"

  The moonlight showed a wicked grin on Sloan's face. Joey was almost too out of breath to speak, but he realized he had acted rashly, again. "Where's Pard?" he gasped out.<
br />
  "I'll take you to him. Move on up the road a bit." Sloan prodded Joey to walk before him to where his car sat around a curve. "Up against the car. Assume the position." Joey had never heard that expression in life, but he'd read enough police procedurals to know what Sloan meant. Sloan didn't read much, but he had gotten it from the movies and used it whenever he had the chance. Joey put his hands on the trunk of the car and Sloan pushed him forward so that Joey's face hit the trunk. Sloan pulled Joey's hands behind him and used a plastic tie to bind his wrists. At one point, he had to put the gun in his pocket and use two hands, but Joey wasn't offering any resistance. Joey hit his head again when Sloan pushed him into the back seat of the rented Chevy, this time on the roof gutter. Joey sprawled on the seat still seeing stars as Sloan drove up the road to its end at Meredith Adams' vacation home. Sloan parked around the side of the house and led a self-reproachful Joey to the front entrance.

  A forlorn Pardner Jenks and a rapidly sobering Charles Adams awaited them on the porch steps of the stately home. There were no lights on in the place, but the front door hung open. "I'm sorry, Joey. They made me call you." Pard was sobering enough to have lost any trace of belligerence in the presence of two men with guns.

  "Shut up," said Sloan. "Let's go inside and set this up." He pushed Joey toward the stairs.

  "Set what up?" asked Charles, knowing but not wanting to know. He longed for escape with body and soul. He longed for a drink, too, but the house was empty of spirits. He held his own pistol uncertainly, as though he would just as soon toss it into the woods.

  "Shhh," whispered Sloan. "You hear that?" He cocked an ear toward the road and held up a warning hand. Three of them could hear a faint sound of running feet. Pard's hearing ability was limited. Sloan leveled his pistol in Joey's face. "You call anyone? You know who that is?" Joey swallowed and shook his head, but Sloan read the lie in his eyes. "Adams. Get these two inside and shut them in a closet where they can't make any noise. I'm gonna check it out."

  "Let's get in the car and get out of here," Adams said, almost whining.

  "Do it now," Sloan hissed. "Turn on one small light in the back and leave the door open." He ran with his peculiar short, choppy stride toward the dense growth of woods at the edge of the access road and disappeared into shadow. Adams reluctantly prodded the two captives into the old house.

  .

  Mary was too smart to blunder out into the clearing in front of the house. She slowed her pace to a walk fifty yards before it and moved to the edge of the road, out of the moonlight. Still hidden in the darkest shadows at the edge of the clearing, she stopped and leaned forward, hands on her knees. Her turtleneck was soaked with sweat, but in the cold, night air, she didn't dare remove it Her gun weighed fifty pounds and was hard to hold on to. Though she ran nearly every day, she had never pushed herself as hard as she had tonight, not by a long shot. She struggled to get her breath. Her thighs were burning and her calves were shaking, threatening to cramp up on her. She couldn't walk it off and she was afraid she might collapse. She drew up every ounce of her willpower to lift her head and interpret the scene before her. The front door was wide open and a light was coming from downstairs, somewhere in the rear. The best thing to do would be to keep to the edge of the clearing and edge around to the back of the house, try to see if anything was going on inside. The absolute best thing would have been to take the time to call in and tell the dispatcher where she was going, but that wasn't an option now. She damned herself for being almost as stupid as Warnecki.

  She tried to listen for sounds other than the gasping of her breath and the pounding of blood in her ears. She did hear the click of a hammer being drawn back and she did feel the cold muzzle of the gun that touched the soft spot under her left ear. For a moment she froze entirely: her breathing, her trembling, and her process of thought all came to a stop. She tensed.

  "Don't even think about it," said the voice beside her. "Welcome to the party, Officer Hartz. I do believe you are out of uniform." Keeping the muzzle of his gun where it was, he gently removed the pistol from her fingers.

  .

  Knowles had more than an hour to kill before he was due to relieve Sims. He'd gotten in to the department early, checked out a vehicle, and decided to make a swing by Trott's apartment to see if the biker wannabe had come home. He'd probably relieve Sims early, let him get home and see his wife before she went to sleep. His own wife was incommunicado, preferring to watch the soaps all day and read those stupid gothic novels all night.

  Two issues were burning his ass. The first was his cap. His new one was too tight, sitting on top of his head like a party hat on a cantaloupe. He should have an elastic band on it to go under his chin. And Clarkson had given him a raft of shit about the shield. He'd transferred it from old cap to new, but it had gotten bent and scratched from being run over. Now he'd have to pay for a new one and what was the point of that when he had only a few months to wear it?

  The second issue was that Hartz had gotten the old bastard to talk to her. Sims was amused by that, laughing it off. But Knowles knew that Mary would use it well, rubbing it in in that sly way she had. Not that she wasn't a bad cop. He hadn't worked with one better, preferred her to most. He wasn't looking forward to seeing her, though. He could never get one up on her, and it pissed him off.

  One thing cheered him, almost enough of a lift to reduce his other two issues. Tomorrow, Sloan was expected to feel some serious heat. He had cornered the lieutenant before going on the road and Waters told him that the state was convening a special grand jury in the morning. Subpoenas would be issued to more than a dozen people. Even if he wasn't indicted, Sloan would inevitably be forced to resign. The worthless prick would be out of the department before Knowles retired. Knowles almost chuckled as he pulled to the curb five houses away from Trott's dark apartment.

  He missed the alarm by less than a minute and hadn't taken his portable for fear that it would squawk when he was creeping around the rear of the duplex. By the time he returned to his car, having decided that no one had visited the place since he had last been there, the incident was fully covered. Fire trucks were battling the blaze, traffic was being diverted around Main Street, and rescue workers were taking care of the injured and displaced. Listening to the radio traffic for a few minutes, taking his time moving towards Warnecki's house, he realized that Sims was one of the officers involved and that the Warnecki house was not covered. He sped up. Then he considered that two fires in town in one day were more than coincidental and he sped up some more.

  He almost missed seeing Mary's car at the gate as he sped by, so involved was he in his thinking, but the lights and the open door caught enough of his attention for him to stop and reverse his car to check it out. Stopped in the middle of the road, engine idling, he didn't have to get out of the car to recognize the Honda as hers. But what was she doing here and why would she leave the door open and the engine running? He left his car where it was, got out with his flashlight, and looked at the car and swept the powerful beam of the light over the open grounds of the park inside the fence. Nothing and no one. No sound but the even idling sound of the two car engines.

  .

  "Come out, come out, wherever you are," Sloan sang. He prodded Mary before him into the entry hall of Meredith's home. "Ally, ally in come free." He chuckled. Adams looked cautiously around the corner at the end of the hall. "Charles, bring our other two friends out here. Don't be shy." Sloan was oddly gleeful. Adams opened the door to the closet, stood back from the door and silently waved its two occupants out with the gun in his hand. The sound of wire coat hangers rattling on a closet pole accompanied the emergence of the two men. The poorly lit hallway was too crowded with the five of them standing there. "Let's go outside where we'll have some more room to work," suggested Sloan, flicking on the switch for the porch light. He backed out the door and down the porch steps, leading the others in a silent parade.

  Standing on the front walk, both Joey and Pard looked
sheepish, as though they had been caught doing something foolish in school. Mary was tense and watchful. The three of them stood abreast in a line, not looking at each other. Adams and Sloan stood apart from them, Adams clearly nervous, Sloan calm and smiling. He looked pleased with himself. He cleared his throat. "Okay. You may take two steps forward, Officer Hartz. She did so, after a beat. "You forgot to say 'May I.' Now, Charles. Would you be so kind as to secure Officer Hartz' wrists together behind her back, while I watch?" Without taking his eyes from hers, he fished one of the plastic ties from a pocket and held it out to Adams. "Turn her sideways, Charlie. Stay out of the line of fire. We don't want to take unnecessary chances with this one." The thought that he might himself be shot made Charles even more nervous. His hands shook as he bound her wrists and he pulled too tightly, causing Mary to wince. Immediately, her hands began to throb.

  "You won't get away with it, you know." Her voice was controlled, but her anger came through clearly. Adams stepped away from her and she turned back to face Sloan.

  "Won't get away with what?" Sloan asked, mock puzzlement on his face.

  "Killing the three of us." Deadpan.

  "Hmm. Not that I have any choice, but why not? The way I see it, Jenks and Warnecki and Trott comprised a dope ring in our little community. The two boys were having a meeting up here, Officer Hartz somehow found out about it and rashly came up here to investigate on her own. Unfortunately, though she managed to shoot and kill the two offenders, she herself was killed in the line of duty."

  Mary still kept her cool. "Ligature marks, for one. I can't even feel my hands, the tie is so tight. And the gun. If that gun you're holding is the one I think it is, you had access to it." She wasn't trying to convince Sloan of anything. He was so full of himself it wouldn't matter what she said. He'd been running the department in his own arbitrary way for so long, he probably felt immune to even hard evidence. Adams was the wild card. She looked at him. He was sweating even in the chill air. She herself was freezing in her wet clothing, trying not to shiver and appear as vulnerable as she felt.

  Adams spoke. "Harry, shit. Let's cut our losses and get out of here. Leave them tied up inside, we can get clear before anyone finds them." If he could only get to his car, he still had a slim chance to escape.

  Sloan ignored him. He addressed Mary. "Officer Hartz, it's a shame. You're a fine-looking officer, but we're out of time. Too bad . . ." He looked her up and down lasciviously.

  At his gaze, she sneered. "You're a lizard. Slithy tove."

  He grinned. "Snicker-snack," he replied and raised the gun.

  Mary felt real fear for the first time in her life.

  .

  Knowles stood by the open door of Mary's car, hands on his hips. He looked at the car, looked at the chain gate. Looked along the access road and then back to the car again. Walked in a tight circle and then abruptly plunked his solid frame into the driver's seat. He backed her car onto the side of the street and shut it off, got out. Looked to his car and then to the chain again. Came to a decision.

  Directly across from the park entrance, a driveway led to the parking lot of an ice cream stand, closed now for the season. He backed thirty feet into the driveway, checked for traffic coming from either direction on the road, and unholstered his gun. The Baretta 92 series held fifteen rounds and had been standard in the department for long enough for even an old-timer like Knowles to get to feel comfortable with it. He set it on the passenger seat, cocked and locked. Then he put the car in gear and floored the accelerator, both hands on the wheel, stiff arms pushing his shoulders against the seat back.

  The big eight-cylinder engine may not have pushed the heavy Crown Vic to any great speed in the seventy feet of travel between ice cream stand and chain, but the momentum gained was sufficient to tear the anchor point of the chain free from the stone pillar. His right front headlight caught the chain at the low point of its hanging arc. That headlight went away and the chain bounced up over the hood to smash the windshield, which exploded inward in a hailstorm of glass. The chain rode up over the doorposts at either side of the windshield and tore the light-bar from the top of the vehicle before pulling free of the stone column to rattle in the debris on the ground behind. The airbag went off, breaking his nose and blinding him until it deflated. He never let up on the accelerator, never lost his grip on the wheel, and he regained all of his momentum and then some, roaring up the hill.

  .

  All attention was on Sloan. Eight eyes saw only the gun in his hand. Sloan's finger tightened on the trigger, and then he hesitated. All but Jenks heard the new sound coming from the direction of the access road. In a few seconds, he heard it too and redirected his attention along with the others. With the growing sound, soon a single light could be discerned, stabbing the darkness around the last curve before the top. Sloan turned and exchanged his revolver for the gun in his belt — Mary's automatic. The car was now six hundred feet away, coming straight at them and not slowing at all. At two hundred feet, Sloan began pulling off rounds, both hands on the butt of the gun. One after another at a rate of two per second. As soon as he began firing, Mary swiveled and yelled to Pard and Joey. "Move!" She led and they followed, running with their hands tied behind them toward the side of the house. Adams hesitated for only a half beat before dropping his pistol and running for the opposite side.

  Knowles' single headlight picked out the action in front of him. He saw Mary and the others fleeing, saw Sloan firing directly at him. He took his foot off the accelerator and one hand from the wheel, picked up his gun and begin firing through the glassless windshield opening. He didn't touch the brake until he was forty feet from Sloan, who never even jumped out of the way. He got off only three rounds to Sloan's five, but his last was the one that counted, catching Sloan at center mass. Not that it mattered a great deal. The front end of the car picked Sloan up right out of his shoes and flipped him headfirst into the passenger seat next to Knowles before plowing into the porch stairs. The car bounded up the stairs into the house wall, obliterating the entryway and dislodging several dozen bricks around it. Knowles' seatbelt kept him from leaving the car, but Sloan popped out and landed on the floor in the hallway.

  Mary, watching it all happen from the corner of the house, only ducked back out of the way for the crash. An instant later, she was around the corner and perched on the edge of the porch next to Knowles' window. He was sitting back, eyes open and glazed, blood running from his broken nose. The engine had stalled and the only sound was its ticking as the metal began to cool. "Charlie?" she whispered. He didn't respond. "Knowles?" Louder this time. A final brick fell from over the door and banged loudly on the hood. Since the right front corner of the car was actually inside the house, the brick landed only three feet from Knowles face. Mary jumped and Knowles blinked. "Damn," he said. "I think I'm alive."

  .

  Sloan was dead, of course. Knowles was able to call it in from where he sat in the car. The doors were jammed shut and the steering column pushed up to his chest, but the radio still worked. Imagine that. He was able to get to his pocket knife to free Mary's hands, but a fireman had to come up the hill with the Jaws of Life tool to extricate him from the wreckage. Mary's hands were numb and useless for an hour.

  And Charles Adams was picked up on the road an hour later, trying to hitchhike a ride to his car. He refused to say anything at all without his lawyer present.

  .

  And Tina Bronki got her big story, parceled out over the next days and weeks to come.