The Subaru owner did a double take. “This guy? Gavin Webster?”
“Yup. Flat tire, just like you. Small world, huh?”
“I guess.” The driver squatted in front of Rex and gave him a curious look. “Where was this? Where did you see him?”
Rex rocked back and wiped his brow. “Some dirt road near Island Lake. Took me forever to find him, because there’s nothing but trees up there.”
“What was he doing out there?” the man asked.
“Don’t know. He didn’t tell me, I didn’t ask. I mind my own business. But I live in an area like that. Lotta strangers come down our road. Most of the time, it’s because they’re dumping something they don’t want anybody to find.”
15
“Who’s next?” Maggie asked Guppo impatiently.
Max checked the roster of Gavin Webster’s clients he’d downloaded from court records. They’d already made the rounds to a dozen men throughout the afternoon, looking for connections to Broadway and for faces that twitched when they asked about a stolen boat abandoned on the Wisconsin side of the Saint Louis River. So far, they hadn’t found anyone Maggie considered a suspect.
“His name’s Hink Miller,” Guppo said.
“Hink? You mean Hank?”
Guppo shook his head. “Nope. The charges list him as Hink.”
“What kind of a name is Hink?” Maggie asked irritably.
“What kind of a name is Guppo?” Max replied with a chuckle.
“Yeah, all right. What’s the deal on this guy?”
“We arrested him for assault in a downtown parking ramp last year. Some guy backed out of a spot and dinged his old Ford Taurus, and Hink took it badly. Put the guy in the hospital. Gavin was the lawyer, and Hink walked, charges dropped. The victim developed memory problems, and the county attorney didn’t think she could make the case. Thing is, Hink’s employment history includes a lot of work as a bouncer, arena security, tough-guy stuff.”
“Sounds like someone Broadway might have on the payroll,” Maggie said.
“Exactly. The last known address we have is a third-floor apartment on 2nd Street on the hill over the courthouse.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Maggie gunned her Avalanche along Highway 2, heading back to the city. As she drove, a loud crunch of gravel rumbled from under her tires as she veered accidentally onto the highway shoulder. Guppo cleared his throat to alert her, and she steered back into the lane, overcorrecting across the yellow line and prompting a horn blast from an oncoming truck. Maggie didn’t hide the fact that she was a terrible driver. She’d totaled more than one Avalanche already, and her current model looked like she’d been driving in Beirut rather than Duluth. Stride and Serena refused to drive with her, but Guppo never seemed concerned.
“How’s Troy?” he asked her.
Troy Grange was the health-and-safety manager for the Duluth Port and also Maggie’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. The off part was primarily her fault, not his. He’d asked her to marry him two years earlier, and she’d said no. Then she’d had a brief affair with a Florida detective named Cab Bolton, who was as tall and suave as Troy was lumpy and short. That definitely hadn’t helped their relationship. But to his credit, Troy kept coming back into her life, and she was running out of excuses to push him away. She couldn’t say she loved him, but she’d never really loved anyone other than Stride, and that affair had crashed and burned as quickly as they both had known it would.
“Troy’s fine now,” Maggie said.
“Now?”
“Well, he had a little problem last month. I’m not sure he’d like the word to get around.”
“Come on,” Guppo prompted her, obviously smelling dirt.
Maggie glanced away from the road, and Guppo reached over and grabbed the wheel to straighten it as the truck swerved. “You know how they say to contact a doctor if you’re still ready for action after four hours?”
“Uh-oh,” Guppo said.
“Yeah. So he and I had a good morning. A really good morning. Three times worth of good morning, and he was still ready for action. When he hit five hours, we went to the ER. Trust me, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a cute little twentysomething nurse use a big-ass needle to drain the blood out of your boyfriend’s dick. It’s kind of like watching one of those Macy’s parade balloons deflate.”
She pantomimed with her index finger slowly toppling, and Guppo gave a little shiver. “That’s an image I’ll never get out of my mind,” he said.
“You asked.”
“At least it sounds like you guys are still together,” Guppo added.
“Yeah, we’re still together. Despite my best efforts.”
Maggie kept driving. They reached the city a couple of minutes later, and she screeched to a stop at the red light across from Miller Hill Mall, nearly rear-ending a city bus. A uniformed police officer in a squad car pulled up in the lane next to them, glanced over with a grin, and made the sign of the cross at Guppo. Maggie responded by lifting her middle finger.
As they started up again on the green light, Maggie said, “You mind if I ask your advice about something, Max?”
“Go ahead, but isn’t Stride your Ann Landers?”
“Not this time. It’s about Serena.”
Guppo glanced at her with surprise, and words burbled out of his mouth. “She told you about that? Aw, jeez. Look, it was a reflex. The house was dark, and she didn’t realize it was me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Um, what are you talking about?” Guppo asked.
“About her walking off with the damn dog.”
Guppo frowned. “Oh. Yeah. The dog.”
“What am I missing, Max? What did Serena do?”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it. I told her I’d keep it to myself.”
“Max, spill it,” Maggie snapped.
“Okay, okay. Look, it wasn’t a huge deal. She didn’t hear me call out to her when I got to the Webster house. I went upstairs, and she — well, she drew her gun on me.”
Maggie pounded the steering wheel. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
“She wasn’t going to fire,” Guppo insisted. “Come on, we’ve all made worse mistakes at one time or another.”
Maggie bit her lip hard and didn’t say anything more. Sergeant Maggie would have unloaded on Guppo for not telling her, but Lieutenant Maggie tried to keep a stranglehold on her tongue, rather than blame the messenger. Serena was the problem, not Guppo. She also knew Guppo was sweet on Serena and would do just about anything to protect her. But this was a disaster.
She kept a rein on her temper for another ten minutes, until they got to the small apartment building on 2nd Street. With a squeal of her brakes, she bumped over the curb and parked three feet onto the sidewalk. After she jumped down to the street, she slammed the door hard behind her and didn’t wait for Guppo. She went and jabbed her finger repeatedly into the buzzer for the third-floor apartment.
A woman’s whiny voice blared back over the intercom. “Who is it? Lay off the goddamn buzzer, will ya?”
“Police. We’re looking for Hink.”
“Who?”
“hink!” Maggie shouted. “How many Hinks do you know?”
“There’s nobody here with a name like that.”
“His name’s right on the damn label on the damn buzzer,” Maggie insisted. “Hink Miller.”
“Well, he must have had the place before me. I only moved in last month.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Not a clue. Never met him.”
Maggie heaved a sigh. Next to her, Guppo was already running searches to locate a new address for Hink Miller. Before he could find anything, however, a window slid open on one of the first-floor apartments, and a skinny man in a white T-shirt leaned outside. He had a can of Bent Paddle in his hand. His face was freckled, and he had wiry hair the color of sand.