She nodded. “Good luck renting that unit.”
“No sign of our William Smith?”
“According to Miller, a white cargo van drove by after midnight, going real slow. The driver must’ve seen the crime tape, because then he hauled ass.”
“Miller didn’t pursue?”
“He said you’d ordered him to surveil the building. His word, ‘surveil.’ ”
“Did you know he’s got a crush on you?” Raymer said, immediately feeling guilty about betraying the dope’s confidence. “He’s working up the courage to ask you out.”
“Miller.” Clearly, she was mortified.
“Go easy on him,” Raymer suggested, though secretly buoyed by her reaction. “Anyway, when they’re sure there’s no snake, you can start letting people back in. Is the mayor in his office?”
“No, at home.”
“Do we have any departmental stationery?”
She looked at him like he was crazy. “Of course.”
“Bring me a sheet. And an envelope,” he called after her when she went to fetch it. She returned with the envelope and two large sheets. She obviously had no idea how short this letter was going to be. “What’s today’s date?” he asked. When she told him, he thanked her and said that would be all for the moment. He printed the date at the top right of the page and started at the left margin with Dear Gus. Which was wrong, of course, so he wadded the page up and trashed it. Once more, Charice had been right. She’d probably considered bringing him three sheets. Again he wrote the date and then a new salutation, Dear Mayor Moynihan. Next, the body: I quit. And finally: Sincerely, Douglas Raymer. He folded the page into thirds, paused, then unfolded it and added Chief of Police after his name, smiling as he did so at the thought of Miss Beryl. He had produced possibly the world’s smallest rhetorical triangle, but it pleased him to note that all three sides were represented: a clear subject, a specific audience, the identity of the speaker established not once but twice. Nothing to do now but deliver it.
When he stood up, though, he saw that Charice hadn’t left the room but had circled around and was reading over his shoulder. Unless he was mistaken, her eyes were tearing up.
—
INSTEAD OF GOING directly to the Moynihans’ house on Upper Main, Raymer took the department SUV and drove on impulse out to the White Horse Tavern. Except for the battered old sedan that belonged to the woman who tended bar and lived in the apartment on the second floor, the lot was empty. He parked next to the reeking Dumpster and walked the perimeter, looking for what, exactly, he couldn’t say. Maybe some indication of an altercation. Spinmatics Joe was a bigot and an idiot and a loudmouth, so it was possible that when leaving the bar he’d insulted someone who’d stomped him unconscious and dragged him into the tall weeds. No sign of that, nor did he seem to be in the Dumpster, though Raymer’s examination there was on the cursory side, his stomach heaving at the stench.
Oh, well, he figured, getting back in the car, it had been a thought. Dougie’s? His own? Hard to say. He just sat there for a minute scratching his palm, which was still itching ferociously. It felt good to scratch the staple, but as soon as he stopped, the itch redoubled. Heading back into town, he hadn’t gone more than a quarter mile before he saw the dark, violent skid marks that ran onto the gravel shoulder. Pulling over, he backtracked along the blacktop until he found a shard of thick, foggy glass on the shoulder that he held up for a better view. From a reflector, was his guess. He used the jagged edge on the staple: ecstasy, followed by even worse itching. In the weeds nearby he found several more shards, one of them crusted with something rust colored. He sniffed it, then returned to the SUV for an evidence bag that he slipped this into. There was a Bic pen on the dash, so he took its top off and used the long, plastic tooth to dig at the staple. From where he stood he could make out what he hadn’t noticed before, the section of tall weeds that had been flattened and a trail leading off into the woods.
He was contemplating all this when a car with a bad muffler pulled up behind his own, then Officer Miller got out. “Chief?” he called, as if Raymer’s identity were in doubt. “What’re you doing?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Heading home. I just finished up my double,” he added, in case his boss meant to question his right to go off duty.
“Feel like a walk in the woods?”
“Uh, Chief?” he said, pointing at Raymer’s hand. “You’re bleeding.”
Well, this much was true, a stigmata blooming where he’d gouged the skin with the cap of that Bic. “Shit,” he said, wiping his palm on his pant leg. Examining the wound more closely, he was surprised by how deep and angry it was, while Miller chuckled nastily.
“What’s so funny?” he snapped, pissed off that it struck the other man as amusing.
“Sorry?” Miller said, and Raymer understood from the startled look on his moronic face that he hadn’t laughed at all. The chuckle had come from somewhere else. No need to wonder where. “You okay, Chief?”
Raymer ignored him. “I think we’re going to need an ambulance,” he said.
“It doesn’t look that bad,” Miller said, still mesmerized by the bloody palm, or perhaps that anybody could unwittingly damage himself so badly.
“Not for this,” Raymer assured him.
Miller looked around curiously. “For what, then?”
“For what we’re going to find in the woods.”
“You’re not making sense, Chief.”
“You see where those weeds are all flat?” Raymer said. “Don’t walk there. In fact, after you radio for the ambulance, just stay on my footsteps.”
He didn’t have to go far. Joe Gaghan lay on a bed of brown pine needles, amazingly still alive, his respiration just strong enough to blow a tiny blood bubble from the nostril that wasn’t completely plugged. Raymer knelt beside him and checked his pulse, which was barely there. A moment later Miller came crashing through the brush.
“Oh my God,” he said, pulling up short. “That’s a body.”
Raymer made a mental note to take Miller with him everywhere. When it came to inspiring confidence in others, he was really without equal. “Did you call the ambulance?”
“On its way,” he said.
In fact he could hear it, far off. “Good,” he said. “Somehow the guy’s still alive.”
Miller took a cautious step closer and took in the sickening, grotesque angle of Gaghan’s left leg, bent so unnaturally at the knee. “I can’t believe he made it so far on that leg,” he said.
“He didn’t,” Raymer confirmed. “He was dragged down here by whoever hit him.”
“You mean—”
“Right. He was left to die here.”
“Who’d do such an awful thing?” Miller said.
Really, Raymer thought, his palm throbbing now, the pain as intense as the itch had been. Take him with you everywhere.
The Tree You Can’t Predict
STAGGERING UP the street like a drunk, his head still ringing from the skillet, Roy wasn’t expecting to catch a break, not with his fucking luck, but he’d gone only a couple blocks when he heard a horn toot — with just one ear still functioning, it sounded far away — and there was fucking Cora behind the wheel of her shit-bucket of a car, waving him over. In another minute or two there’d be cops everywhere, all looking for a skinny, tattooed longhair in a neck brace, a description that would fit Roy and Roy alone.
Cora had inherited this ride — an ancient Ford Pinto — when her grandmother croaked, and this pissed off her mother, who’d been expecting to inherit the worthless piece of shit herself. Yellow on one side, purple on the other, it was impossible to know what was original and what had been cannibalized from even-worse beaters at the junkyard. Wearing her Mets cap as usual, Cora leaned across to unlock the passenger door and called, “Hey there, Roy. You partying already?” Only when he tumbled inside did she get a good look at him, his ear half severed, one whole side of his face red and swollen. “Roy,” she gasped. “You’re hurt!”