“I hope this is bright enough for you, Mr. Becker. I can turn on another light if you want, but I keep it this way for myself. Too much hurts my eyes. Photo-phobic. Most people find it restful once they get used to it, but just say the word.”
“It’s fine, Mr. Scott.”
“Call me Doug,” said the salesman. “Everyone does.”
The man held Becker’s gaze, grinning slightly, forthright, foursquare, bored already with the sound of his own voice but also eager to make the sale.
“Tell me, Mr. Becker, what can I do you for?”
I’ve made a mistake, thought Becker. This is not my man.
“Do you sell for just one company, or what?”
“Let me tell you how that works,” said Scott. “I can sell you anything. You tell me what you need, we can find the company that suits you best, and I can sell you that policy… but I have found that for a combination of price and service, generally the best around is Connecticut Surety and Life. Most people don’t consider service when buying insurance, but, Mr. Becker, let me tell you, this is a service industry.”
Becker leaned back against the leather upholstery and heard the slow hiss of air escaping his weight. He felt the tension ebb from his body and his mind, but whether the sensation was one of relief or disappointment, he could not say.
Tee was in a jovial mood. He patted the passenger seat before Becker got in. “So.” Grinning widely.
“You look like you just ate something you shouldn’t,” said Becker. “And it agreed with you.”
“Me? You’re the one’s been dining out, as I hear it.”
Tee pulled away from the curb in the police cruiser and swung around the circular drive that terminated Becker’s dead-end road.
“Janie tells me she served you and Cindi breakfast the other day,” said Tee.
“Janie speaks to you now?”
“She’s thawing out. I got her on my back burner.”
“A little crowded there, isn’t it?”
“Changing the subject? Tell me about it.”
“Cindi had eggs, I had a bagel, as I recall it. It was a grand breakfast. Janie was a charming hostess.”
“I hate gentlemen,” said Tee. “Fortunately, I don’t meet that many. Did she mention me at all?”
“Couldn’t get her to shut up about you. It seems she has a thing for married cops.”
“Chief cop.”
“Even better. She’s contemplating a life of crime just to keep you calling on her.”
“Well, if I have to, I have to. I’m a martyr to the cause.”
“Ever take the wife dancing anymore, Tee?”
“I tried to call you last night. You weren’t home. You weren’t with Cindi, either. Unless she lied to me.”
“She didn’t lie to you; she doesn’t respect you enough. I was buying insurance.”
“Always a good investment. And?”
“We all make mistakes.”
“And then sometimes we get lucky,” said Tee.
He pulled onto 1-86, lights flashing to clear a space for himself.
“She called me last night, but you weren’t around,” he continued. “Maybe just as well because we got more information since then.”
“Who called, just so we each have the same conversation.”
“Woman named Helen Brasque, a checkout girl at the Grand Union on Ridge Road. Seems her boyfriend is missing. Hello, says I, that has a familiar ring, tell me about it. The guy’s named Roger Dyce. He lives in Clamden, over in the old military dependent area.”
“Where’s that?”
“Over by the Sherman access road; we just passed it. You don’t know about that neighborhood? I forgot you’ve been away twenty years. We used to have a missile here. Did you know that? I want to say Minuteman, but that’s not it. Anyway, they had a missile stored in a silo just off the electric company’s area. Less than half a mile from the high school, if you can believe it. You never been past there? The chain-link fence is still up; that’s about all that’s left. The things went out of style or something. I’m not sure what it is; they took it away at least fifteen years ago. Anyway, the point is, the military built some housing to put up the troops who operated it, serviced it, polished it, whatever you do with a missile. About twenty houses, all told, quick-fix jobs, built them on slabs, no cellars, a regular little neighborhood tucked away there pretty much by itself. Not bad houses, actually, a family neighborhood, lots of kids-what the hell am I talking about?”
“I’ve been trying to figure it out.”
“Oh, this guy, Dyce, who was reported missing by his girlfriend. Or she says she’s his girlfriend, but I’m not too sure of that. She doesn’t seem to know much about him except where he lives. Their relationship is fairly recent and-uh-more physical than cerebral, well, you would know about that, wouldn’t you.”
“Christ.”
“A man your age. A pretty young thing like Cindi. And I’m younger than you are. Where’s the justice?”
“They say if you tie a string real tight around your dick, after three days it will just fall off. Your problems would be over.”
“That’s horseshit, John. I’ve got a string around my dick all the time, just to remind me to use it.”
Tee turned off on the third exit and turned onto the Post Road, following the signs to the hospital.
“This Helen was frantic-she’s the frantic type to begin with. Seems her boyfriend has been missing for four days. With a girl like her, I would figure he’s just not answering his phone-except for what’s going on around here. So I did the usual checking around and I found him. In the hospital here in Essex.”
“So he’s not missing.”
“No, but here’s the thing. I think maybe he nearly was. The EMS people found him at the train station in Guileford. He’d been mugged. Well, a good deal worse, really. Someone really did a number on his head, slammed the door on his arm, I mean kicked the shit out of him before they took his money. That’s rare enough around here. This isn’t the city, after all, although, by the train station, maybe some of the boys from Hartford are looking for new territory, but I don’t think so. The thing is, we found a syringe on the ground next to the car. On the passenger side.”
“A drug buy that went wrong.”
“I thought that, but we checked the substance in the syringe and it wasn’t drugs. I mean recreational drugs. It was something called PMBL, a barbiturate, kind of out of fashion according to the drug people. You heard of it?”
“No, but that’s not my line. What does it do?”
“It’s an anesthetic. Actually a combination hypnotic and anesthetic, what they told me. It puts you out and keeps you out.”
“You have a theory?”
“What kind of chief would I be without a theory?”
“A Clamden chief. Turn at the light for the hospital.”
“I know where to tum. What if this guy Dyce went to the ATM at the station and our snatcher is waiting there. The snatcher follows Dyce to his car, tries to stick him with the needle and drag him off, but Dyce resists, fights. The snatcher loses his cool, beats the shit out of Dyce, and drops his anesthetic in the struggle so he can’t cope with Dyce anyway.”
“Why the ATM? Why not getting off the train?”
“The tuning’s bad; too many witnesses if a train just came in. Besides, we think the snatcher was hanging around the money machine. Somebody pissed all over it.”
Becker laughed.
“It’s not funny, John. You forget, this isn’t the city. Commuters use the train here, not derelicts, not kids. People don’t just drop by to take a quick pee at the train station. It’s the kind of thing anybody who’s weird enough to snatch people would do.”
“Or any boy under the age of eighteen, or any half-drunk adult male, or any dog, for Christ’s sake.”
“If this was a dog, you’d better call Ripley’s. The guy hit the computer keys.”
“We’re not looking for a public pisser. Tee. More likely he pees sitting down and wipes his dick afterwards.”
“How do you figure?”
“This is not a man who calls attention to himself. If he did, he wouldn’t have lasted this long.”