The Dead Caller from Chicago (33 page)

He was too slow. My bumper hit his knees, slamming him back against the Prius's open door. He went down like the dry stalks he'd just mowed over. I threw the Jeep into reverse, spinning my wheels backward to see how bad I'd hit him.

He was flat on his back, unmoving in the light of my headlamps. Blood ran from his nostrils, gashes on both arms, and one leg. His gun arm was extended at crazy angles, broken at least twice. His automatic had flown out of his hand and lay on the crumbled asphalt a yard away. He was Mr. Black, the man who'd dropped me with one punch at the health center. I killed my engine, but left my lights on, and got out.

“Jenny!” I yelled into the night.

A twig snapped past the shoulder of the road, and she came up on skittish legs to stand trembling beside me. “Is he … is…?”

I kicked his gun well off the road and knelt to feel his neck. There was a pulse. It was faint. He might live.

He might wake up.

“Let's get to the Jeep,” I said, straightening up.

“I have to find my camera.”

“In a minute.” I grabbed her arm and tugged her to the Jeep.

“The camera's all I have,” she said.

I fished behind the seat for a roll of silver tape, grateful that every financially challenged Jeep owner must carry at least one, for those moments when previously taped tears in the vinyl roof open up to greet the sun. Or more usually, the rain.

“The key's in the ignition,” I said, bringing out the roll. “Take off if he wakes up.”

“I threw it down the bank,” she said, making no move to get behind the wheel.

“So someone would find it, after you were found dead?”

“Brilliant, right?” Her voice was shaky, no matter the cool of her words.

“Let me take care of Mr. Black, then we'll look.”

The Russian still lay motionless, but broken arm or not, I figured him for having more in killer instinct than I had in ingenuity. I worked feverishly, winding tape from his good wrist up to his neck for a once-around, then down to finish it off around his broken arm. One yank with either arm would send him to the moon in pain, if it didn't choke him.

I taped his ankles together, and his knees. I wrapped his eyes and his mouth, reasoning that if he couldn't see and couldn't yell, he wouldn't try to hobble off, and he'd stay put long enough for the sheriff to get there. When I was done, I did it all again, until I'd trussed him into something that looked mummified in shiny silver linen. By then, I'd run out of rational. I walked back to the Jeep only when I ran out of tape.

I took out my cell phone to call the sheriff.

“They'll be here any minute,” she said, heading toward the Prius. “I need a flashlight.”

“Who'll be here?”

“The Rivertown police, of course.” She stopped, noticing the look on my face. “Dek, what's—?”

“I was at the excavation, too, Jenny. I saw, same as you.”

“OK; good,” she said, like it was no problem.

“No, not good. I recognized the bray, Jenny, and I recognized the sister's voice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you called, did you give your name?”

“Some kid answered. His mouth was full. I told him there was a killer bound up at a bridge on a dark road and hung up.”

We'd gotten lucky, at least for a few minutes. Benny Fittle had pulled night duty. He'd have to call somebody. That would take time.

“They can't have witnesses, Jenny. We've got to get out of here.”

She stared at me for a moment, wanting to ask a hundred questions, but then she ran toward the Prius. “Not without the camera,” she yelled.

She grabbed a flashlight from the glove box and disappeared down the embankment.

The road toward town was still black, but they wouldn't come with their lights on.

Please, Benny Fittle: Be confused. Be slow to call.

I ran after her. By now, she was halfway down the embankment, moving her flashlight beam side to side through the weeds.

She stopped. The camera lay on the mud, five feet from the ice at the edge of the river. It was small, almost pocket sized, and I was surprised she'd found it.

The bank of the Willahock was still dotted with slippery splotches of frozen snow, and it took too many minutes to reach the camera. It was light and didn't rattle when I picked it up.

She turned to look up toward the road. “No one's coming.”

“They won't use their headlamps.”

“No witnesses?” she asked, suddenly shivering.

“We've got to get out of here.”

We scrambled up the embankment.

Mr. Black lay immobile. I couldn't tell if he was breathing, decided it didn't much matter.

“Your fingerprints are on the silver tape,” she said, looking at him.

“They might not worry about that,” I said, thinking of the speedy digging job earlier, at the excavation.

I ran to the Prius and tried to pull back the ruined driver's side door. It was bent back flat against the front fender and wouldn't budge.

I slipped behind the wheel. “Follow me.”

She didn't protest. She ran to the Jeep.

We ran without lights, seeing only by the moon. I hugged the right side of the road; odds of a head-on collision between two cars running dark were good, if they didn't find us first by the sound of the Prius's ruined door. It banged against the front fender like a big steel drum at every ripple and heave in the road.

Luck rode with us. We got to the neighborhoods without passing anyone. I stopped so she could pull up alongside.

She reached over to roll down the Jeep's window. “What now?” Her voice was high, but she was in control.

“Is there anything in this car you want to keep?”

Her face froze, and then she understood about the blood that must be smeared all over the front bumper, a concern for any body-and-fender shop. She got out. “My damned camera, Dek. My notebook, and my purse.” She came around to the other side, swept papers from the glove box into her purse, and grabbed her notebook and camera.

She ran back to the Jeep. “Do not pull in behind me,” I called out.

I drove to the health center. This time I stopped right in the middle of the parking lot and got out holding the last of the cash from my wallet. After a moment, two of them sauntered over, zippered in black leather and smelling opportunity like wild things sniffing meat.

I handed them the money. It was a little more than a hundred and fifty dollars. “There will be no report of a theft for a week,” I said.

I walked out to the curb and got in the passenger's side.

She tried for a smile. “My car's been stolen?”

“In a week, no sooner, though I expect it will become parts tonight. Let's get you home.”

For an instant, she stared straight ahead, out the windshield. Then she drove to the turret.

The sensor lamps switched on the moment we stepped inside, lighting the two white plastic chairs, my table saw, and all the fears and promises in the world on her lovely face.

Once before we'd had such a moment, supercharged, as hot as the sun. Though it had been July, it had been cold from fear and horror, just like now. We'd let that moment go; our ghosts were too close.

Now she moved a few miles closer to me and looked up. A fine grin spread wide across her face. “You've got wood?”

I nodded. For sure I had wood.

“Then let's have a great fire,” she said.

 

Fifty-nine

The sun had not yet risen when my cell phone rang from someplace cold, under the bed.

“You've got to get over here,” Leo said, when I fumbled the ringing thing on.

“Why?” I whispered, rolling over. Surely I'd been dreaming.

It had been no dream. Jenny was sitting up in bed, watching me, impervious to the cold on so much of her skin.

I took the phone from my ear, but not her from my eyes. I was not at all impervious to the cold on so much of her skin.

The phone display said it was four thirty. We'd only been asleep for two hours.

“I'm always amazed at what can happen in Rivertown,” Leo said.

“I'm certainly thinking that way, too,” I said, agreeably.

“I was coming home from Endora's,” Leo chattered on, “and, well, jeez, you're not going to believe it. You've got to get over here.”

There were heavy diesel noises in his background. “There's construction at this time of night?”

“A backhoe and a bulldozer, hoeing and dozing like it was the middle of the day.” The diesels had gotten louder; he'd gotten closer to them. He shouted something unintelligible, and then the connection went away. He'd hung up.

I've always trusted Leo's instincts, but there, in my bed, in the middle of the night, embers still smoldering in the fireplace across the room, and so much closer … Jenny and I hadn't so much sought to banish the memory of what had happened at the excavation and the bridge as we'd lunged to claim what we'd let slip away the previous July.

“That was Leo?” Jenny, ever the newswoman, asked. “You've never told me the whole story about Leo.”

“You never told me how tattooed Russians fit on his block,” I countered, warming even more beneath the covers.

“Why would Leo call in the middle of the night?” she asked. The cold had finally touched her consciousness. She reached to pull the blanket up.

“Oh, don't,” I said, a man of immediate need.

She grinned and let the blanket drop, knowing the cold would only improve the view. “Tell me why Leo called.”

“Something's going on by the excavation.”

“What?”

“Bulldozing.”

Her face froze, remembering what she recorded. “Oh, no,” she said, scrambling out from beneath the covers.

I remembered Robert Wozanga. I scrambled, too.

“You can't take your camera,” I said needlessly, opening the timbered door. The camera wasn't in her hand anyway. “No one from city hall can ever think you might have been filming at the excavation.”

“Understood,” she said.

We had to park beyond the cross street. Rivertown police cruisers had blocked off both ends of Leo's block. Their lights flashed blue across the furious faces of two hundred people, rousted from their sleep by the noise of the diesels and the glare from the enormous construction lights.

They'd worked fast. The backhoe had already demolished the vacant bungalow and its foundation, dumping the debris into the new hole and on top of the splintered forms that lay ruined in the excavation next door. The bulldozer hovered attentively behind it, pushing in dirt from the mounds piled at the back of the lot.

Dozens of the neighbors shouted from behind the cordon of cops, demanding to know why things had to be smashed in the middle of the night. I doubted the rank-and-file cops had been allowed to know.

The original plan must have been to wait until first light for the demolition and filling. Little scrutiny would be attracted that early, and their first shallow burial would have lasted well until then.

That was before Jenny's anonymous phone call about another man, at the bridge. There wasn't time to scrape more gravel, dig more clay. People would be headed off to work soon.

Worse, no one knew who'd made the call, or what the anonymous woman knew. No one knew if she'd called the sheriff.

Things couldn't wait until dawn now. The plan was moved up.

“Where is city hall?” one of the bravest of the neighbors shouted. Nothing in Rivertown was allowed without the approval of city hall.

Nothing indeed, I thought. It was brazen, quite lizardly. It was perfect.

Jenny moved forward, mercifully without her camera. I stayed at the back of the crowd, resisting the thought that I should break into song and dance. Rest at last, Mr. Wozanga.

Leo found me a moment later. In the bright of the lights from the construction lamps, his hat, traffic jacket, and pants were a blur of muddy greens and oranges, except for the purple pom that now looked black and appropriately funereal on the top of his knitted hat.

“Why are you grinning so broadly?” he asked.

“I'm merely reveling in the spectacle that is Rivertown.”

“You and the press arrived together,” he said, struggling to produce as much of a leer as his clownish outfit would allow.

“The press is everywhere.”

“If it satisfies you, then I find it deserved, and delightful. What's going on here?”

“I told you: I just arrived.”

Four large haulers rumbled up, loaded with extra dirt, and everyone in the street had to back away to let them in.

“Obfuscate if you must,” he shouted above the new engine noises. He pointed to a man stomping through the crowd. “He's the general contractor. He's going crazy.”

I put on one of my dumb faces. I have several. “Trying to find the person in charge here?”

He tilted his pommed head back in mock concentration. “Let's see. Mr. Tebbins, the building inspector, is dead. His boss, Mr. Robinson, is dead. That leaves…”

“Yes? Yes?” I taunted, laughing at his antics, sure, but more in final relief that he was there at all, prancing, clowning, the old Leo, close enough to being as good as new.

“Our newest building and zoning commissioner, soon to be our mayor!” he pronounced, raising his arms like a boxer victorious in the ring. People nearby looked and, despite the chaos, smiled. They loved Leo; they were his neighbors.

“Interestingly, she's not here, enraged at what's obviously a violation of Rivertown working-hour statutes and instructing our inert police force to stop these goings-on.”

“I still don't get it,” he said, suddenly serious. “Why a demolition?”

“This isn't a demolition,” I said. “This is a burial.”

 

Sixty

Jenny was in a dark mood as we drove back to the turret. She didn't speak until I pulled up in front.