“As I told you, everyone’s nervous since Tebbins got shot.”
“As well as before,” I said. “They’re thinking those stains on the steps relate to Tebbins?”
“I don’t know what they’re thinking.”
“One thing after another seems to shut down that construction.”
“Unexplained blood is good reason to shut everything down. Where was Leo?”
“Ill.”
“Want to know what I learned about Edwin G. Evans, of Center Bridge, Illinois?”
“Sure.”
“Where was Leo?”
“Just ill. What did you learn about Snark Evans?”
“Not a thing,” she said. “Now tell me about Leo. Head trauma?”
“What?” I said it too sharply; she’d hit too close to home.
She turned to look at the cops guarding the bloodstained steps, a small smile on her face. She’d sensed the beginnings of victory.
“How ill?” she asked, after a minute.
“They’re at a relative’s.”
“That’s why his mother is gone, too?”
“He’s her life’s work.”
She sighed. “I’m going to check out those steps.”
She walked toward the house, and I followed her, hanging back. Suddenly I was desperate for a glance into the hole next door, to be sure there was no trace of the dead man’s belly poking out of the gravel.
However smooth the snow had been last night, whatever the drag marks and blood smears I’d left, all of it was now obliterated. The bungalow’s front yard had been stomped over by dozens of babushkas. For the first time in my years in Rivertown, I was grateful for the incompetence of its police.
I shot a quick look into the excavation. Nobody’s belly showed through the gravel between the foundation forms. In fact, the stones reflected no disturbance at all, almost as though they’d been freshly raked that morning. I’d gotten lucky. Everything was ready to pour the walls and, after that, the top of the dead man’s grave.
A crime scene technician came out of the bungalow holding two clear plastic bags. Inside one was a gun. Inside the other were small chunks of plaster, stained bloodred.
“Where was the gun?” Jenny shouted out.
The crime scene technician didn’t even glance at her as he came down the stairs.
She nudged closer to one of the Rivertown lieutenants. He smiled. Most people did when they recognized Jennifer Gale. Males smiled the most widely.
She began questioning him. He nodded, still smiling. She pointed up the stairs. He shook his head. She touched his sleeve. He smiled more broadly.
Smoke came then, thick, black, and noxious, accompanied by the loud clatter of pistons slapping too loosely at cylinder walls. Like everyone else, I turned at the racket, but I’d already recognized the sound of Benny Fittle’s ancient orange Ford Maverick. He was making his morning rounds, looking to meet his ticket quota, and had gotten blocked by the people standing in the street. Never one to be constrained by social grace, he’d begun revving his engine to frighten the people away. It worked. People hurried to the curb, convinced they were fleeing an impending hailstorm of ball bearings. Benny grinned, displaying a mouth chock full of Boston crème, and began to drive on.
He stopped suddenly, this time of his own accord. Leaving his engine running, he got out with his pad of tickets and walked up to the crime scene technician, who was closing his trunk lid on the evidence he’d collected. Benny assumed his official stand-up writing position, squinting at the crime scene technician’s rear license plate. A conversation between them began, or rather half of one did. The technician was doing all the talking. Benny simply shook his head, kept chewing, and kept writing. The technician got angrier. He pointed to the county sheriff’s seal on the door of his car.
Benny was well known for maintaining his focus. He kept shaking his head, chewing, and writing.
One of the Rivertown lieutenants guarding the police tape had noticed and came over to put his arm on Benny’s shoulder. Benny shook his head and wrote on.
The lieutenant smiled at the furious crime scene technician. No matter, he seemed to be signaling.
Benny left the lieutenant and went to place the ticket under the windshield wiper of the county car. The crime scene tech’s fists were clenched, but his feet were not. He started toward Benny. The lieutenant stepped in front to block him until Benny had gotten back in his Maverick, sent up a loud cloud, and driven away. The lieutenant took the ticket from the windshield, put it in his pocket, and walked the evidence technician back to the vacant bungalow. Once again, things would be fixed in Rivertown.
Fear began prickling along my scalp. I hadn’t considered that Benny would be writing tickets on the side streets.
Jenny came back. “Those two evidence bags? Nine-millimeter automatic. Serial numbers ground off. And three bullets, with blood spatter, embedded in plaster.”
The slugs would be found to match Leo’s gun, if I didn’t get rid of it. Certainly they’d be tied to the dead man’s blood DNA, if it were on file.
Benny turned at the corner past Leo’s house. “And no corpse,” I said.
“Why would you say that?”
I’d said it because I’d been stupid, talking to myself out loud. My mind was elsewhere, riding in a smoking orange Maverick.
“I just assumed the blood on the stairs means the wounded man left the house,” I said.
She laughed. “I suppose that’s a fine assumption, but I do believe there’s something else on your mind. Want to know what else is on mine?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s suppose someone was driving down the street, a good three hours before the man from the house across the street came out to go to work. Let’s also suppose that the person driving down the street was a reporter, someone who prided herself on having an acute sense of observation.”
I turned to watch the lieutenants guarding the front steps, because it seemed the safest place to park my eyes.
“Let’s also suppose that this reporter saw someone on the sidewalk suddenly bend down to tie his shoe,” she went on.
“Sounds newsworthy, someone tightening loose laces.”
“Ultimately, I’ll find out, you know.”
I told her I had to get back to the turret. She said that was fine.
As I walked down the block to the Jeep, trying to not break into a run, I was sure she was reading my mind through the back of my head.
Twenty-four
Benny was sure to ticket the dead man’s car.
Rivertown had funny parking restrictions. There was no side-street parking, anywhere, between the hours of 9:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M., unless exempted by a special residents-only, hundred-dollar parking permit. The lizards passed off the fee grab by saying it would prevent nonlocal commuters from leaving their cars on the side streets, in order to dodge the exorbitant parking-lot fee at the train station. Residents knew better. It was a way of sucking more money into city hall. Still, so it went. Every year, residents had to shell out a hundred dollars just to leave their cars parked in front of their houses during the day.
It was bare windshields Benny Fittle was looking to ticket that morning, cars that displayed no street parking permits. That would include the dead man’s automobile, since he must have parked nearby. Which was a problem, because later, maybe not for a day or two or even a week, someone from the sheriff’s department would think to instruct the Rivertown coppers to keep their eyes open for an abandoned vehicle, especially if the blood DNA they’d recovered from the bungalow hadn’t turned up the dead man’s identity. The Rivertown cops would search through their unpaid parking tickets for any car sitting abandoned on a local street, and from that trace the name of its owner, who would be found to have disappeared. Alarms would go off.
I had to find the car and make it disappear, but I couldn’t risk anything in broad daylight. Benny Fittle was loose on the streets. He knew me, and he’d remember me lurking around a car he didn’t recognize.