“Watching.”
“For?”
“For faces that don’t fit.”
“Sounds like you’re grasping at straws.”
Jesse shook his head. “Never understood that expression.”
“Me, either.”
They both laughed.
“It’s a sad day, though,” Marchand said.
“Did you know the girls?”
“I was older, but I knew who they were. Paradise is a small town, Jesse. It was even smaller back then. As a selectman, I just felt like I had to make an appearance.”
Jesse didn’t say anything, but he was caught off guard by how closely Bill Marchand’s words paralleled what Alexio Dragoa had said on the subject. But he wasn’t exactly shocked. Healy and Stu Cromwell were right. Everyone in Paradise had found a way to distance themselves from the girls’ disappearance and now the discovery that they had been murdered. It felt to Jesse almost as if they had all rehearsed the same answers. Answers that were meant to insulate them from the horror and the guilt. It wasn’t hard to understand. Then he saw a vehicle pull up to the church that got his full attention.
Jesse said, “Isn’t that Alexio’s Dragoa’s pickup?”
Marchand shook his head in disgust. “That’s his rusty POS, all right.”
“Wonder what he’s doing here.”
“Got me.” Marchand patted Jesse’s shoulder. “I better show my face up there now, Jesse. By the way, I ordered those new softball uniforms.”
Jesse nodded, but he was barely conscious of Bill Marchand. All he could think about was Alexio Dragoa and why the fisherman kept turning up in the middle of things.
42
After waiting outside the church for the service to conclude and following the funeral cortege to Saint Paul’s Cemetery on the outskirts of town, Jesse had driven over to Paradise Taxi’s garage. No one was particularly happy to see him again. Unless you called them, cops showing up at your door usually meant one thing: trouble.
“Yeah, Chief, what can I do for you this time?” said the dispatcher, a heavyset, unshaven man who smelled of cigars and spilled coffee.
“Your driver, Wiethop.”
“Jeez, him again? What about him?”
“He have a record?”
The dispatcher made a face and gave a shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know. He never stole from us as far as I can tell. We don’t do background checks. Most of our guys live in town and have been with us for years. Don’t matter anyways, because he ain’t my problem no more.”
“How’s that?”
“He blew off his last few shifts. Didn’t even freakin’ call in last night. Just didn’t show. I called him, but he never answered. When he comes in for his last paycheck, I’m gonna rip it up in front of the bastard. Let him sue me.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
The fat man rubbed his cheeks. “About an hour after you was here the last time. He said he left something in his cab the night before. He went out to the garage and came back in here to say he wasn’t gonna be in that night.”
Jesse asked, “Did he find what he was looking for?”
“Must’ve.”
“Why’s that?”
“He was all happy and smilin’ like he hit the lotto or something.”
“I’m going to be sending some people over to look at his cab.”
The fat man gave Jesse a stained-tooth smile. “Sorry, Chief. That’s going to have to wait. It’s on the road.”
“Get it back in here.”
“But it’s been vacuumed and washed twice since—”
“Get it back here. Pronto!”
Fifteen minutes later, Jesse and Peter Perkins were standing on the landing half a flight of stairs below Rod Wiethop’s apartment. Jesse gave the thumbs-up to Peter. Peter nodded that he was ready. Guns drawn, they took the remaining steps slowly and as quietly as the moaning old stairs allowed. At the threshold, Peter and Jesse stood on opposite sides of the door. Jesse nodded to Peter. Perkins reached over and pounded the door.
“Rod Wiethop,” he said, “this is the Paradise Police Department. Open your door.”
Nothing.
Jesse spun his index finger for Peter to try it again.
Perkins pounded the door, harder this time.
“Rod Wiethop, c’mon. This is the police. Open up.”
This time there was stirring, but not from Wiethop’s apartment. The door to the left side of the staircase opened and a white-haired old Yankee with wire-rimmed glasses, a flannel shirt, and jeans worn shiny at the knees stepped out into the hallway.
“Please get back inside your apartment,” Jesse said.
“Relax there, pups. That Wiethop fella ain’t been in since near around eleven last evenin’.”
Jesse kept his .38 drawn, but turned to the old man.
“How do you know that?”
“I own this buildin’, son. Name’s Borden, Lyle Borden, and I keep a pretty good eye and ear on the goings-on around here. You don’t believe me about Wiethop, I’ll show you.”
He pulled a fistful of keys from his pocket, found one in particular, and took a step toward Wiethop’s door. Jesse blocked his way.
“Peter, try it one more time.”
Same results.
“Okay, Mr. Borden. Open her up.”
When Borden had opened the lock, Jesse stepped in front of him and asked him to stay in the hall.
Wiethop’s apartment was the same charmless place it had been before, and though the cabbie wasn’t in, it still stank of cigarette smoke and vodka sweat.
“I’ll take this room and the bathroom,” Jesse said. “You take the bedroom.”
Jesse found pretty much what he expected to find in the medicine chest. Some amphetamines, a little pot, lots of generic painkillers.
“Jesse, you better get in here.”
When he walked into the bedroom, he found Peter Perkins on his hands and knees, flashlight aimed under the bed. He got down on the floor next to Peter. In the beam of Peter’s flash, Jesse saw Maxie Connolly’s missing bag. And draped over the bag, between the handles, was a pair of black panties that shone in the light.
43
“He left first around nine,” Borden said, pouring Jesse a cup of coffee. “Then, like I told you before, Rod came back around eleven and left again.”
Jesse took a sip.
“Good coffee.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re sure of your times, Lyle?”
“Don’t sleep much since the wife died last year. That old woman used to make me nuts, but since she’s passed...” Lyle Borden shook his head. “Well, anyhoo, I’m sure of my facts, Chief. Old man like me don’t have much to fill out his hours, so he holds on to the little things he has.”
“Can you tell me anything else about last night? Did you see Wiethop come and go?”
Borden sat down across from Jesse and took a swallow of coffee. “No. Only heard him. That third apartment, the one over on the other side of the stairs, is vacant. Has been for going on two years. So after the sandwich shop downstairs closes, it’s just my renter and me moving around up here.”
“How long has Wiethop been—”
“Well, Chief, now wait a second,” Borden said, interrupting Jesse. “Maybe there was one thing.”
“One thing?”
“About last night that I noticed, come to think of it.”
“What’s that?”
“When Rod come back and left that second time—”
“At eleven.”
“That’s right, about eleven. He must have had a load on,” Borden said.
Jesse took another sip of his coffee. “You mean he was drunk?”
“Sure sounded that way to me. Real heavy footsteps on the stairs. Real deliberate. You know how you get when you’ve had too much?”
“Uh-huh.”