“How ’bout this guy? Ever see him?”
He looked at the photograph closely, even taking it under a small light suspended over the cash register. “He doesn’t look too healthy.”
“He’s not.”
He returned the picture gingerly. “Can’t say I have. I’m not too good with faces anyhow. You guys want anything?”
I didn’t know later if it was inspiration or dumb luck, but I said yes, and ordered a tonic water with a twist. Rawlings merely shook his head and swiveled around to look at the gloomy room.
The bartender returned moments later with my drink and volunteered, “You know. You might try one of the girls. They spend every night staring into guys’ faces, making ’em feel good.”
He indicated a corner table, far from the bar, where three shadows were hunched together over their drinks.
With Rawlings in tow, I walked over to the table, noticing that the closer I got, the more the three women took notice and changed accordingly. Their bodies moved slightly away from the table, the better to be seen, legs were crossed, lips moistened. There was an inaudible comment followed by a shared dirty laugh just before we got within earshot.
My glass still in hand, I smiled down at them. “Hi. Mind if we sit down?”
Two of them were brunettes, the third in blonde disguise. They were all weighted down by an excess of makeup and cheap jewelry, but their enjoyment, perhaps lingering from the joke we hadn’t heard, seemed genuine. The blonde indicated the only empty chair at the table, while one of her friends pulled another one over from the next table. “Please do,” she said.
“You from out of town?” asked the third. “I know we’ve never seen you in here before.”
“I’m from Brattleboro,” I answered and pointed at Rawlings, “but he’s local.” Rawlings smiled tightly and nodded, distinctly uncomfortable, and unsure of my strategy.
“What’re your names?”
“I’m Joe. He’s Sandy and, to be honest with you, we’re both flying under false colors.”
The three women quickly exchanged glances. “What’s that mean?” one of them asked.
“We’re cops. I’m investigating a homicide and Sandy’s helping me out here in Rutland-what they call a liaison.”
“You got badges?” the older of the two brunettes asked.
“Sure.” I whipped my shield out and placed it on the table before them. Rawlings followed suit more slowly. The three of them bent over to read the fine print in the dim light.
“Joe Gunther,” read the blonde, her voice warming back up. “You been in the papers?”
“Sure,” one of her friends answered. “And on TV. You were the one that got knifed last year-the one that got that rapist.”
I signaled to the bartender and ordered another round, “for the ladies.” I could feel Rawlings wilting beside me as I fed their curiosity about the case they’d alluded to.
“So now you’re working on a homicide?” asked the blonde sometime later. She’d introduced herself as Kim, and her friends as Mona and Candy. “That car bombing?”
“It’s connected to it.”
Rawlings let out a small sigh. Rule one in law enforcement-among dozens of others-was not to show your cards unless absolutely necessary, especially to civilians. It was, however, one I broke often to great benefit. Since the public had come to see us as tight-mouthed and generally aloof-answering every question with a question-I’d found the best way to win them over quickly was to be just the opposite.
The proof that it worked, at least occasionally, was evidenced by Kim’s understandable delight. “No kidding? That made the national news.”
I now reached for Chu’s photograph and laid it face up on the table. “Does he look familiar?”
Kim made a face. “Ooh, he looks dead.”
“I know him,” said Candy, who up to now had been the quietest of the trio. “I went out with him maybe a month ago. He was a creep.”
Everyone turned toward her, and she seemed momentarily tongue-tied at her abrupt notoriety.
“Could you tell me about it?” I asked.
“Not that much to tell. A bunch of them came in here one night. Mona and Kim weren’t around, and I was feeling lonely. They were throwing lots of money around, and this guy started buying me drinks. It was fun for a while. They sang at the machine-got me to do it, too…”
“Candy,” Kim burst out, almost in outrage, “you always hated that thing.”
“Well,” she came back defensively, “I was having fun. Anyway, after a while, he said he had a real nice car, and maybe I’d like to drive around a little. I knew what he was after-I mean, I’m not that dumb-but I thought he was pretty cute, and he talked funny, and the car was beautiful. I should’ve known it was going to get weird when his two pals came along…”
“Candy, you jerk,” Kim broke in again.
She didn’t argue the point. “Yeah-a drunk jerk, too. It started out okay, though. We did just drive around at first.” She gestured to the mug shot. “He found some back roads out of town and really opened that car up. It was fun. But they had a bottle with them and they started showing off, and next thing I know there was a gun being passed around…”
“Oh, my God,” Mona murmured. “You never told us any of this.”
Candy looked down at her lap. “I was embarrassed-maybe a little scared. There were three of them, after all. I know I shouldn’t have gone.”
“What happened with the gun?” I asked gently.
“I didn’t show I was getting nervous. I pretended to be impressed. They even let me hold it once. Then this guy here asked me if I’d ever shot one before. I had shot a twenty-two when I was little-my daddy’s gun-so that’s what I told him. He laughed and pulled over and fired the stupid thing right out the window. Scared the crap out of me. He tried to get me to shoot it and I wouldn’t. That’s when things kind of got bad. He put the gun away and made a pass at me, but I wasn’t in the mood anymore, and the other two being there put me off, too. It got a little rough, then. They started pawing me, ripping my clothes, trying to get at me…”
“Oh, my God,” Mona repeated. Kim was rapt, her mouth slightly open.
“I was fighting them off, and doin’ all right, since the car was too small for the guys in the back to do much, but then one of them hit me on the back of the head-maybe with the gun, I don’t know-and that sort of took the fight out of me. I figured, you know, what the hell? Just lie back, let ’em do it, and that’ll be that. What’s the fuss?” She added as a face-saving joke, “It’s not like I haven’t faked it before, right?”
But her eyes were brimming with tears, and Kim wrapped an arm around her.
“It didn’t happen, though,” she continued. “I guess I ruined it for everybody, ’cause they just threw me out of the car and drove off. So, other than a bump on the head and a ruined blouse, I was okay, except it took me over an hour to walk home. My feet ended up hurting worse than my head.”
Mona rubbed her friend’s back, repeating that she couldn’t believe Candy hadn’t shared this with them before.
“Candy,” I said, “are you up to answering a few questions about these guys?”
She nodded. “Sure. It actually feels pretty good getting it out.”
“Okay-easy ones first. What did this man call himself?”
“Bobby.”
I straightened slightly, caught off guard, and repeated inanely, “Bobby?”
“Well,” she amended, “he started out with something I didn’t understand-something Chinese or whatever-and then when I couldn’t get it, he said, ‘Just call me Bobby.’ And he introduced his friends the same way, as Frankie and Tommy, I think. I’m not positive about that.”
“Do you think you could describe either of the other two, including things like scars, tattoos, unusual eye color, anything like that?”
She hesitated and finally shook her head. “I was pretty far gone when I met them, and all four of us left almost right after. Plus they ended up in the back seat.” She grimaced apologetically. “I’m sorry, Joe, all I can say for sure is that they were Oriental and didn’t have any beards or mustaches.”