“If you’re telling the truth, nothing. This says it was an ’88 Subaru. What did it look like?”
“Dark blue where it wasn’t rust. I was asking five hundred for it. I’m really sorry about this. I didn’t mean any harm.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said reassuringly, all but convinced by now that he was telling the truth. “At worst, you’re out a car and some money, and if we get lucky-and you don’t hold your breath-maybe you’ll even get the car back.”
I took a business card from my pocket and gave it to him. “Now that you know what’s up, give it some more thought. Anything comes to mind, even something trivial, call me or leave a message.” I held up my index finger for emphasis. “Remember one thing, though, okay?”
After a pause, he asked, “What’s that?”
“I’ve cut you some serious slack here, taking you at your word. If I find out that was a mistake or that you’ve been spreading the word about our visit today, especially to Marty, I’ll be a lot less pleasant the next time. Understand?”
His eyes widened at the threat. “I won’t say nuthin’. Promise.”
There was a thud from the other room, followed by a curse.
“I’ll get him out of here,” I added.
Chapter 4
“Damn, boss, you could’ve gotten us a heated lookout.”
Lester Spinney rose from the chair by the window and walked around the bare, shadowy room, thrashing his sides with his arms like a penguin doing aerobics.
I kept my eyes on the darkened apartment across the street. “I told you to dress warmly.”
“I am. I did-to cross the street or something, not stand around inside a freezer.”
“Oh-one from oh-two,” Sammie’s voice came over the portable radio.
I picked it up and keyed the mike. “Go ahead.”
“Anything?”
I sympathized with everyone’s boredom. We’d been there for six hours already. I only hoped Willy wouldn’t chime in from his position-I doubted he’d be so gentle. “Nope.”
She didn’t respond. I replaced the radio on the windowsill and resumed watching Marty Gagnon’s windows, curtainless and as blank as they’d been all night.
We were on Main Street, downtown Brattleboro, Spinney and I on the west side, above the pharmacy, Willy bundled up and dressed like a bum at the back of the alley, near the back door of Gagnon’s building, and Sammie, the only warm one among us, holding tight in an apartment directly above the suspect’s. And none of us with anything to look at.
We’d been like this since suppertime, hoping Marty Gagnon would reward us by coming home. Following our visit to Walter Skottick’s, we’d discreetly dropped by Gagnon’s place and found the rusty Subaru in a parking space by the railroad tracks nearby, but no Marty.
The choices after that had been severaclass="underline" a canvass of his neighbors, friends, and family; a sit-tight approach, waiting for a reaction to the bulletins we’d sent around; a combination of both; or-the most expensive alternative-a stakeout.
I’d opted for the last, to universal groans.
My explanation was that, according to Marty Gagnon’s records, we were dealing with a man as prone to flight as a cat in a dog fight. He had a history of running off worse than anyone I’d seen. He’d skipped on court appearances, parole meetings, counseling sessions, and everything else for which he’d ever been held accountable. It had therefore seemed more cost-effective to me to blow a single night’s overtime and nab him fast than to tip him off through routine inquiries and then waste days chasing him down.
What I hadn’t admitted to the others was the additional juvenile appeal of handing this case gift-wrapped back to Snuffy Dawson only forty-eight hours after inheriting it.
Which was just as well, since now it was looking as if I’d blown my budget solely to create three cranky colleagues and a skeptical boss at headquarters.
The cell phone in my breast pocket began vibrating silently against my ribs.
“Gunther.”
“This is Dispatch. We just got a call from a Walter Skottick. He was assaulted at his home by someone looking for Marty Gagnon.”
“He okay?”
“Didn’t sound it. I sent the ambulance to pick him up. They should be at the hospital in about half an hour. He wanted me to tell you specifically that he didn’t talk to anybody. That make sense?”
“Yeah.” I put the cell phone away and keyed the radio again. “It’s a wrap, everybody. I think our target’s already long gone.”
Sammie Martens stood in the ER waiting room, her head tilted back, staring at the television set mounted high on the wall. On screen, a couple was visibly screaming at each other from opposing chairs, an interviewer with a microphone trying to walk a fine line between verbal abuse and furniture tossing-but the sound was off, making the whole drama a pantomime. A caption at the bottom of the screen read, “Men who slept with their sisters.”
“What do you think happened?” Sammie asked the TV.
I understood the oblique reference. “Skottick will have to confirm it, but my bet is whoever beat him up did what we did in reverse, looking for Marty Gagnon, asking a lot of questions, until he finally ended up at Skottick’s place, giving Marty the heads up in the process. That would explain why Marty never came home.”
She didn’t move. “Makes you wonder if this person is looking for him for the same reason we are.”
Walter Skottick seemed in pretty rough shape when he was rolled into the ER on a backboard, his face bandaged, his neck in a brace, and two IVs running into his arms.
Sammie and I waited in the hallway while the nurses and technicians went through their routine and the on-call doc finally arrived to survey what was left.
Luckily, that doc turned out to be James Franklin, the hospital’s best general surgeon and a man I had known for years.
“Jim,” I asked him on one of his trips out of the treatment room. “He going to make it?”
Franklin stopped in his tracks and laughed. “If we don’t kill him. You read that article on how many people die in hospitals every year through negligence? It’s amazing. Hi, Sammie. Walk with me, I gotta get something to help out with his lung. How’ve you guys been? Haven’t seen you since that gunshot wound to the heart. Remember that, Joe? Hell of a deal. At least I didn’t do that guy in. Miracle I saw him at all. Shoulda been DOA. Still, you know, I keep thinking about that case, wondering if there mightn’t have been some way… Remember, Joe? I had my finger right in the hole… ”
He finally paused long enough to notice neither one of us had said a word. This was typical James Franklin.
“Sorry. Right… This guy has a concussion, facial fractures, a few missing teeth, four broken ribs, and a collapsed lung. Basically, beaten to a pulp. But he’ll live. That answer your question?”
“One of them. Will I be able to talk to him?”
Franklin grabbed a sealed package from the shelf of the supply room we’d escorted him to. “Fine with me, but it’s up to him.”
Walter Skottick would have looked like a movie mummy if it hadn’t been for the oxygen tubing up his nose and the tufts of beard poking out from between the bandaging. He was so still I wasn’t sure he was breathing. Sammie and I stood at the foot of his bed for a moment, I toying with the fanciful notion that the hospital staff would soon discover their patient had died unnoticed under all their packaging.
“Mr. Skottick?” I said gently.
The one nonswollen eye opened. The voice barely emanating from the dressings managed to say, “Wha?”
“It’s Joe Gunther, Mr. Skottick. We met earlier-about Marty Gagnon.”
One hand flapped anemically on the bed sheet. “Wha’ the hell you do to me?”
Sammie furrowed her brow, not having been at that first meeting. “What do you mean?”
“Fine till you came,” he answered and then stopped to gasp for breath.