I nodded.
“I thought, fuck, what if this is our best chance to find your brother? So I bolt into the blizzard, slipping and sliding, ’cause the snow’s really coming down, and the tiny lot is up that hill. I’m barely able to catch up with him. I get in his car, this piece of shit from, like, 1984. Greasy, balled-up McDonald’s bags, vending machine wrappers, scraps of scorched tinfoil on the floor, half of it eaten away by rust. I mean it, Jay. You could totally see the ground.
“Kid tears up the Turnpike. He’s constantly checking his rearview, side view-like he’s expecting someone to be behind us. He starts ranting about the DEA and other covert government organizations, how they’re tailing him, tapping the phone lines, trying to scare him.”
“Sounds like my brother.”
“I know, right? But he’s getting really worked up about it, all the time speeding faster and faster, and it’s icy as hell out there. This kid is coming unhinged and we’re about three seconds from careening off the Turnpike and joining that crane in Duncan Pond. I’m doing my best to calm him down. No use. He’s talking about how the government’s been sending agents to the motor lodge, roughing up everyone, slapping them around. I know he’s high. I tell him it’s all in his head, and that’s when he reaches over and pulls up his sleeve. Welts and bruises, wrist to biceps. Like a goddamn eggplant, Jay.”
I thought about that junkie girl telling me how thugs had been coming around lately, intimidating the riffraff to clear out the motor inn. These tenants didn’t sign leases; you could kick them out with little due process. Then again, why bother? You could do whatever you wanted to these people. It’s not like they were going to file a complaint with the police.
“We’re tooling down the Turnpike,” Charlie continued, “and he’s pointing at everything-telephone poles, fire hydrants, goddamn icicles-and it’s all some form of undercover surveillance. I went to call you and that’s when I realized I’d lost my phone. Must’ve fallen out of my jacket when I ran to the car.
“We’re driving through Ashton, and then we’re out in the sticks, getting farther and farther from the center of town. I ask where we’re going. He starts in about his wife he’s gotta find, how she’s the only one who’s ever loved him and how he knows he fucked up, but he’s gonna win her back and get it right this time, and it’ll be like before, she’ll see. I ask, ‘What about Chris?’ Kid stares over like he’s seeing me for the first time. He doesn’t even know what planet he’s on, Jay, irises the size of nickels, and he’s all, ‘Who’s Chris?’”
“Jesus, Charlie, what are you doing getting in a car with someone like that?”
“He swore he knew your brother.”
With the heat blasted, Charlie had started to melt. I grabbed a towel from the bathroom shelf and tossed it to him to dry off.
“We ended up way out by that cemetery on 23,” Charlie said. “You know, over by Eagle Ridge, before the 23 turns into the 12 on the way to Middlebury? The really old one with those crypts from the Civil War. He parks at the gate and kills the engine. I’m trying to talk sense into him, but really I’m thinking of ways I can wrestle away those keys. That’s when he reached under his seat.” Charlie panned over. “He had a gun, Jay. Put it right on his fucking lap.”
“Jesus.”
“Finger on the trigger, hand twitchy, he busts out sobbing-chest-heaving, snot-bubbling, like a little kid who can’t catch his breath. Full-on waterworks.”
“What’d you do?”
“What do you think I did? I got the fuck out of there.”
“You walked all the way here from the 23?”
“Ran is more like it. Your place is before the Dubliner and a helluva lot closer than my house. I nearly froze to death.”
“Had me worried sick, Charlie.
“Sorry, man. I knew you’d be worrying.” Charlie kneaded the back of his neck, clearly frazzled over his midnight adventure. “I never knew this town was so fucked up. There’s this whole world I didn’t know about. That I don’t want to know about.”
I phoned Ashton PD and let them know Charlie was all right. I also mentioned the kid with the gun by the cemetery, not that I expected he’d still be there.
“You want me to give you a lift to your truck?”
“Mind if I crash on your couch and we grab it tomorrow?”
“Don’t you have to be to work at like seven?”
“After tonight, I think I deserve a sick day, don’t you?”
I pulled a pillow and blanket from the closet.
“Almost forgot,” he said, peeling wet layers of clothing and setting them on the radiator to dry. “Got a call from Fisher before I lost my phone. Remember that whiny guy who called you wanting his computer back? The restricted number? Fisher did some digging. Goddamn pay phone on Archer and Black Spring.”
I dropped the linens on the table. “Archer and Black Spring? By the old Armory?”
“Think so. Why? Mean anything?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Who even uses pay phones anymore?”
I didn’t say anything. But I knew the answer.
People who don’t want to be identified.
I heard Charlie kicking around the kitchen in the morning and shouted where he could find that coffee I figured he’d be wanting by now. I rolled over and checked my cell. A little after eight. It was strange having so much time off work, waking up without an alarm, though I was hardly getting a vacation from all this.
We made a pit stop at Miller’s for coffee and smokes. The storm had cleared and trucks were back out on the road. I filled Charlie in on my portion of last night. The junkie girl. The new condos and ski resort. The Commanderoes. Although in the gray light of a new day, I couldn’t say the picture was any clearer.
The plan was to get some breakfast at the Olympic, where we could fuel up on coffee and pancakes, clear our minds, and try to brainstorm what the hell this new influx of information meant in the grand scheme of everything. That is, if it meant anything at all.
We were driving over to the Dubliner so he could pick up his truck, and had just pulled in the lot-dank fog descending the mountaintop like an inappropriate fairy tale-when we heard the sirens, and I saw the flashing lights in the rearview mirror. A squad car hopped the curb, screeching to a halt behind us.
Pat Sumner stepped out of his cruiser, donning his fancy, wide-peaked sheriff’s hat, touching the brim like a cowboy on his way to church.
I unrolled my window and leaned out. Charlie, who had started toward his truck, stopped and turned around.
“Thought that was you, Jay,” said Pat, cheerfully. “Good timing. Hi’ya, Charlie.”
“How you doing, Pat?”
“You know what they say about complaining. Eighty percent of the people don’t care, and the other twenty are glad it’s happening to you and not them.” Pat chuckled before shifting his gaze back to me. “Say, Jay, I need you to follow me.”
“Where to?”
“Got a call this morning from Adam Lombardi. Seems someone hopped a fence and broke into his construction site last night.” Pat let go a deep sigh. “Any guess who?”
“They sure it was Chris?” I asked.
“Video surveillance,” said Pat. “Apparently, Lombardi’s security has your brother climbing the wall like Spider-Man and mugging for the camera.”
The relief I felt that Chris wasn’t dead was instantly replaced by agitation. Mugging for security cameras? Here I was, freaking out and running ragged, and he was treating this goose chase he had me on like a joke.