“I should’ve known right off,” he went on miserably. “Would’ve if I paid attention, because there were signs. You used to adore me’n Mike, used to be all over me when I came in the door at night, used to follow Mikey around like a Chow dog with one master. That stopped and I should’a wondered why. Should’a wondered why she gave you your own room after a while instead of just taking it for granted it was so Mike could have his space, because he was a teenager by then. Now I know it was so Mike wouldn’t see what she done to you, because he would’a stopped her. He’d never let anyone hurt you.” He looked at Eve. “Heredity’s funny, girl. That unwholesome bitch gave birth to the sweetest boy, who grew into the sweetest man you ever want to meet. Go figure, like Ben Levy at the dry cleaners says. Go figure.”
“And my mother?”
“What about her?”
“Her name, Pop,” Adam asked almost gently.
“Edna, like she said. How did she know—”
“Her whole name.”
“Edna Janecki. Her pa died when she was little, her ma a few years before she met me. She had a brother, but I never met him. Don’t know to this day if he knows his sister’s dead. He never cared enough to come asking.”
“Where is she?”
“Dead, boy,” the old man snapped. “What’ve we been pissin’ and moanin’ about the last half hour—your mother’s dead.”
“Dead where?”
“Oh, I get you. Pine Ridge. Just up the hill from your—from Barbara.”
13
“Welcome to Sawyerville, gentlemen,” Captain Burt Soames yelled over the rotors. They shut down, and the men introduced themselves and shook hands.
“Nice rig,” Soames said, looking hungrily at the chopper.
“Lem called...” Latovsky said.
“Oh, yes. Said to give you a car and anything else you need and I’m ready to do just that.”
Two cars were pulled up on the field, a spanking new Olds Eighty-eight and a Caprice with dented fenders.
“We’re in kind of a hurry,” Latovsky said, edging toward the cars. Soames didn’t move.
“Was wondering what all this was about,” he said. “Wondering if maybe it had something to do with the Wolfman.”
The Wolfman. If Riley’s moniker had made it to Sawyerville, it must be on wires all over the country by now. Riley’d’ve liked that, Latovsky thought.
“Wish it did,” he said easily. “Fact is, it’s kind of a shit case. Rich woman supposed to be kidnapped, but we don’t think so. Seems she had a boyfriend from around here.”
“Runaway heiress.” Soames sounded disappointed.
“So it seems. We take the Caprice?”
“What do you think?” Soames sounded a little nasty.
“Keys in it?”
“Look, I have to know where you’re going, Lieutenant, this is my jurisdiction.” Soames’s chin jutted.
Latovsky smiled and pretended to misunderstand. “No sweat, Cap’n, we know the way. But thanks anyway, thanks a million.”
He wheeled around and headed for the Caprice with his jacket flapping in the wind blowing across the field.
Soames started after him but Lucci grabbed his arm. “I wouldn’t, Captain. He’s had a lousy day, and I honest to God wouldn’t.” Soames wrenched his arm away from Lucci, but he looked at Latovsky’s enormous back rushing to the car and didn’t pursue him.
“Thanks again,” Lucci said. “We’ll make a full report... if there’s anything to report.”
“You better.”
Lucci went after Latovsky and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Bet he follows,” Latovsky said.
“Bet he doesn’t, since I obliquely called attention to your size and disposition.”
Sure enough, the Eighty-eight stayed put, with Burt Soames standing next to it and his minion silhouetted in the driver’s seat as the Caprice pulled away.
The car was clean inside, with a cardboard pine-tree air freshener hanging from the mirror, and it started smoothly with the deep even rumble of an engine fed super gas. This was some lower-echelon detective’s baby in spite of the dented fenders, and Lucci hoped they didn’t wreck it for him.
They got to the end of the cyclone fencing where the road into town started and Latovsky said, “Fuller’s car’s a ninety-three light blue LTD, New York tag H278MD. There’s no garage or driveway so it’ll be parked on the street.”
No light blue LTD, new or otherwise, was parked on Barracks Lane or the surrounding streets. The Fuller house porch light was on, but the front windows were dark.
“Now what?” Lucci asked.
“I don’t know.” Latovsky’s face looked ghastly in the street light coming through the windshield, and the muscles of his jaw kept bunching and unbunching. He climbed out, and Lucci saw him unsnap the holster strap over his gun. Lucci did the same, and they went up the steps with their hands on the gun butts under their jackets. “Badges?” Lucci whispered.
“Uh-huh.”
Latovsky rang the bell, nothing happened, he rang again, and a voice behind them called, “Lieutenant?”
In the fading light, Lucci saw an old lady with hair like a rag mop and eyes the color of iridescent moth wings.
“Yes, ma’am,” Latovsky whispered. “It’s me.”
“You still lookin’ for Don?” she whispered back, coming up the steps.
“Yes, ma’am, seems like I missed him again.”
“Nope, he’s in there. Saw him go in, didn’t see him come out. Bet he’s in the kitchen, passed out on the table. C’mon, I’ll take you ’round back.” She turned and Latovsky took her arm. “Ma’am...”
“Mrs. Van Damm,” she said. “You kin call me Ida.”
“Ida, did you see his son?”
“Now how’d you know that? It’s not his week, but he was here okay—and don’t grab me like that, Mister, my bones’re brittle as cooked chicken’s.”
He let her go. “You saw him?”
“Sure did. Saw him come, saw him go. Had a woman with him.” Latovsky took in a harsh gasp of air and closed his eyes. He cares too much, Lucci thought, cares in a way that wouldn’t do him or Lucci—or the woman—any good.
“She was okay?” Latovsky asked hoarsely.
“I don’t know about okay. She was walking on her own two legs.”
“Mrs. Van Damm... Ida... ma’am,” Latovsky pleaded. “You got any idea where they went?”
“Nope, ’cept back toward town, not out to the highway. Thought she might be a girlfriend finally and he was taking her out, maybe to the Elms. His sister-in-law works there.”
Latovsky gave a strangled laugh and said, “I don’t think so.”
“Then to a bar or somep’n. All the churches are closed at this hour,” she said drily. “Movie theater shut up five years ago. Don’t know where else they’d be goin’.”
“Maybe Mr. Fuller’ll know,” Latovsky said.
“Then let’s ask him,” she said excitedly.
“Mrs. Van Damm...”
“Don’t be telling me I can’t come along.”
“You can’t.”
She glared at him with those incredible eyes and said, “Don’t be an asshole, Lieutenant.” She pronounced it ace-hole. “Somep’n’s up for you to come sneaking around here late on a Sunday whispering on Don’s porch, half breaking my poor arm when I tell you Adam’s been here. Somep’n’s up and it’s lousy and ol’ Don ain’t gonna tell you what time it is, much less where his boy’s gone. But he might tell me.” Lucci looked from one to the other, then Latovsky nodded and the old woman said, “Okay, follow me.”