She found Shannon Beckley’s number and called.
“This is Abby Kaplan. I’m the one who—”
“I know who you are; I saw you less than two hours ago. What do you need?”
“Have you heard about Carlos Ramirez?”
“Heard what about Ramirez?”
“That he’s dead. He was murdered.”
Abby didn’t think it was easy to knock Shannon Beckley off her stride, but this seemed to do it. Abby heard her take a sharp breath before she said, “You’re serious.”
“Yes. Shot to death in a stolen car. I wanted to let you know.”
“Why?” Shannon asked, and it was a damn fine question. Abby hadn’t put the answer into words yet, not even in her own mind, but now she had to.
“Whatever Tara saw might be important,” she said.
“Dangerous for her,” Shannon answered. “That’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know. But I won’t rule it out. Listen, I’m not trying to scare you; you’ve got enough to be scared of right now. But Ramirez lied to the police. I’m sure of it. And now he’s been murdered.”
“It was just a car wreck,” Shannon said, but she wasn’t arguing. She said it in the way you did when you wanted to make something big small again.
“Maybe.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Shannon Beckley said, “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to let you know that this had—”
“Bullshit. You’re looking at it differently than everyone else. You didn’t believe him, and now that he’s dead, you think that means something. So let me ask again, please — what are you thinking?”
Her tone was no longer combative or even commanding. It was lonely.
“When she comes out of it,” Abby said, “be careful about the people who are around when she’s asked about the accident. Be careful who asks her about it.”
“When she comes out of it,” Shannon said softly. “I like your confidence.”
“She’s in there,” Abby said. “I’m almost positive.”
“Yeah? The doctors aren’t. So how do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen someone who wasn’t. There’s a difference.”
I’m almost positive, she repeated to herself. But of course she wasn’t. Not now when she said Tara was still in there and not back when she’d said Luke no longer was.
17
It wasn’t yet five o’clock, but Savage Sam Jones figured you didn’t always need to go by the book, certainly not at his age, and so he opened a PBR well before he locked the gates at the salvage yard. It was a quarter past four and he was hungry as well as thirsty and he wanted a slice or two of pizza from the corner store, but right now it would be the old, dried-out shit left over from lunch. For the good pizza, he’d have to wait until five.
Might as well wait there as here, he thought.
He’d closed the door to his office and turned to lock it, and he was standing with his keys in one hand and a beer in the other when he heard the car pull in.
Son of a bitch. There was business after all.
He left the keys in the door, set the beer down on the step, and walked toward the gate as a young guy stepped out of a Jeep and gazed at the place. That wasn’t uncommon; teenagers were always coming around. They were young enough to still have an interest in working on their own cars, and they didn’t have the money for new parts.
“Come on in, but don’t forget it’s gettin’ on toward closing time,” Sam hollered.
“It’s not even four thirty.” The kid said this in an amused voice, not confrontational, but still, it riled Sam. Who gave a damn what a kid thought closing time should be?
“Like I said,” Sam told him drily as he picked up the PBR can. The kid watched him and then smiled, like he’d just learned something that pleased him.
“I don’t want to impose on you, sir. I can tell you’ve got better things to do.” This was smart-ass, but he plowed on past it so fast that Sam didn’t have a chance to retort. “I’m just doing my job, which requires hassling you about a couple of cars that you towed in here from up by Hammel College a few days ago.”
“Shit.” Sam drank more of the beer. He was tired of those cars from the college. They were costing him more in headaches than they were worth in dollars. “They send you to take the pictures?”
The kid cocked his head. “Did who send me?”
“The gal I gave the phones to, she said she was coming back for pictures.”
The kid didn’t move his head, didn’t change expression, didn’t so much as blink, and yet Sam felt a strangeness come off him like an electric pulse.
“Who was this?”
“I don’t remember,” Sam said, and that wasn’t a lie. He was always awful with names and even worse when he wasn’t interested.
“Police?”
“Insurance, I think. She gave me a card.”
Sam drained the beer and shook the empty can with regret, and he was just about to tell the kid that he had an appointment with a slice of pepperoni pizza when the kid said, “You like whiskey?”
Did Savage Sam Jones like whiskey? He almost laughed aloud. It had been a number of years since he’d heard that question. He was about to shout back, Does Hugh Hefner like big tits? but then he recalled his business decorum. That and the fact that Hugh was dead and this kid might not have the faintest idea who the man was or why glossy magazines had ever been needed. The damned internet had spoiled these kids.
“Does the pope shit in a funny hat?” Sam asked instead, figuring even a youngster could follow that old gem, and the kid grinned as he approached. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder and he didn’t look like any trouble. Just lazy, that was all. You could tell that by the way he dressed, way he moved, everything. All these damned kids were lazy now, though. If he was here looking for car parts and asking about whiskey, why, he couldn’t be as bad as most of them.
“I’ve got a bottle I might share with you, then,” he said, and Sam squinted at him. This was more intriguing — and concerning. Was he some sort of street preacher? Was the whiskey a ruse entirely? If the kid got to carrying on about the spirit and the soul, that was not going to go well. It would go even worse if he was trying to sell some homebrew small-batch bullshit.
What he produced, though, was good old-fashioned American Jack Daniel’s. It was hard to argue with that. Granted, it was a higher-dollar version, something called Gentleman Jack, but Sam had seen it at Walmart and so he knew it could be trusted.
“What do you want, son?” he said. He didn’t mind the kid, and he surely wouldn’t mind the whiskey, but he also didn’t drink with strangers who showed up at five — well, close to five, anyhow — on a workday.
“Just a bit of your time. I can pour you a drink if you listen to me for a few minutes.”
Sam looked at him and then at the bottle, and then he pictured the pizza slices spinning their slow dance in the warming oven on the corner store’s counter. It would be twenty minutes at least until there were fresh slices in there.
“Who’d you say you worked for?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” the kid said, and smiled. “But I promise I’ll be less trouble than any of the rest of them.”
“Rest of who?”
“The people who are asking about those cars and the phones.”
“Son, I only towed ’em in here. I didn’t witness the damn wreck, and I don’t have the damn phone.”
“But there was a phone in the car?”