Very Bad Men (43 page)

He watched Kenneally's straight brows knit together.

“The missing reporter? Why would her body be in my freezer?”

“I was there that night,” Lark said. “I saw. She got taken by someone in a blue minivan. Just like yours.”

Kenneally leaned forward. “We can go out there right now, Anthony. I'll show you. There's no body in the freezer. If I show you, will you admit that you're not thinking clearly and you need help?”

His voice fell until it was just loud enough to span the distance between them. He sounded sincere. Lark almost believed him.

Almost. “You might have buried the body.”

“You just said it's in the freezer. Which is it?”

“I said I wanted to see. You're twisting what I said.”

In the same quiet voice Kenneally asked, “What if we went out into the garage and I showed you that my minivan isn't blue at all? It's gray.”

Lark felt a moment of doubt, but he shrugged it away. “You could have had it repainted.”

“I'm not going to play this game, Anthony,” the doctor said, rising slowly to his feet. “I can't help you if you won't listen to reason.”

Across the room, the ruined white door opened on a gust of wind.

Lark stood up and drew the gun from under his jacket. “I don't want your help.”

He snatched his notebook from Kenneally and returned it to his pocket.

Kenneally spread his arms. “You're going to kill me? How many people have you killed, Anthony? What good has it done you?”

The gun felt heavy. “You wanted them dead.”

“Do you hear what you're saying? You can't escape responsibility. You need to own your actions.”

Lark took a step back and raised the gun between them. “I'm tired of listening to you.”

He tugged at the trigger, but it felt solid and leaden, as if the metal had fused together.

Somewhere off in the depths of the house, a bell rang.

Kenneally turned his palms out. “See? You don't really want to kill me.”

“Yes, I do,” Lark said, releasing the safety with his thumb.

 

 

ELIZABETH REMEMBERED IT this way. The sun warm on the back of her neck. Shan beside her with his badge out. He reaches to ring the bell a second time, but the door swings inward before he touches the button.

The smell of cooking. Burgers sizzling in a pan. A woman with wavy brown hair wiping her hands on a paper towel. Shan making introductions, asking if Matthew Kenneally lives here.

“Matt's with a patient,” the woman says.

Then the shot. You could almost believe it's the sound of grease snapping in the pan. The woman looks back over her shoulder, confused. Then she's running and Elizabeth calls for her to wait. She doesn't stop. Elizabeth draws her nine-millimeter. Shan already has his drawn; he's close on the woman's heels.

Cartoon penguins on TV. A young girl rising from the sofa. Elizabeth tells her to get down, down on the floor. The woman with the wavy hair dashes along a hallway, throws her shoulder against a closed door. Shan follows her through. Her scream is like another gunshot.

Elizabeth pauses in the doorway, takes in the scene. Two chairs in the middle of the room and a man sitting in one of them. Blood soaking his shirt. Eyeglasses askew on his face.

Shan on one side of him. The woman with the wavy hair on the other. She reaches for his right hand; the index finger is bent at an impossible angle. Shan tears open the man's shirt. Pale chest, pale stomach. No wound.

“He tried to shoot me,” Kenneally says in a dazed voice.

Crossing the room, Elizabeth spots the gun on the floor. She sees the white door half-open. A smear of blood on the knob.

“I shot him,” Kenneally says.

 

 

You're leaving a trail,
Lark thought.

He rounded the hull of his father's boat at a run, throwing out a hand to steady himself. A bloody handprint hung there amid the shadow-leaves on the white fiberglass.

Drops of blood on the sidewalk too. He didn't stop to look at them, but he knew they would be there—tiny circles on the ground.

Strange how alive he felt, the air filling his lungs, his heart racing. The sidewalk pounded beneath him. He didn't feel any pain, not in any part of him.

Kenneally had surprised him, grabbing for the gun—the most decisive thing he had ever seen the doctor do.
You don't really want to kill me.
Lark wondered, as they struggled, whether it might be true.

Maybe it was. There had been a moment, after the gunshot, when Lark needed to make a choice. Kenneally dropped the gun and stared at his bent finger—it had been caught somehow in the trigger guard and broken. He fell back into the chair. Lark was still standing; he might have reclaimed the gun. He chose to run instead. Maybe he wanted to live more than he wanted to kill Matthew Kenneally.

At the corner Lark stumbled a little on the turn. He saw the Chevy parked in the shade on the opposite side of the street. Twenty yards away. He could run twenty yards.

He tripped down from the curb and into the street, scrambled to get up again. The beat of footsteps sounded behind him. Fifteen yards now. Up ahead, a girl with a collie on a leash crossed into the street. Ten yards. Lark had his keys in his hand. Five yards. The girl spotted him and reined in the collie. Behind him, a clear voice called out his name. Told him to stop.

The push of a button and the Chevy's door is unlocked. The twist of a key and the engine surges to life. The collie barks in answer. Lark punches the Chevy out into the street. In his rearview mirror he sees the lady cop standing with her gun raised. The gun dips a little, a mark of hesitation. She doesn't want to risk hitting the girl, or the driver of the coupe gliding north in the opposite lane. Lark sees her growing smaller in the mirror, sees the gun coming up again, steady, before finally dropping down to her side.

I
parked in the horseshoe drive of the Spencer house and Ruth Spencer met me at the door. I had called ahead and her husband had agreed to meet with me. She led me through the house to the backyard and we walked along the flagstone path to the gazebo.

Harlan Spencer waited there in an open-collared shirt and linen trousers. His motorized chair faced southeast, so he could look across his lawn at the guest cottage and Bedford Road.

Ruth Spencer left us there alone. A patio chair had been drawn up into the gazebo for me, and a tray with a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses occupied a small table between us.

Harlan Spencer gestured toward it. “I told Ruth you weren't coming to drink tea, but she wouldn't dream of having a guest and not offering him something. Help yourself if you like.” His voice was deep and courteous.

“Not just now,” I said. I was about to ask if I could pour him some, but he saw the question in my eyes and answered it with a shake of his head.

“You're here about Lucy Navarro,” he said. “I've already talked to the police about her. A detective named Wintergreen came and asked me if I'd seen her this past week, parked down the street in her yellow Beetle.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him it's my legs that don't work. My eyes are fine. Of course I saw her.”

A breeze came up and Spencer put his head back to feel it on his shaved scalp.

I said, “Did he ask if you could shed any light on what happened to Lucy Wednesday night?”

“He didn't want to. He thought the question was rude. But he asked. I told him I couldn't help him.”

“I'm hoping you can help me.”

“I thought as much,” Spencer said. “What have you got to bludgeon me with?”

One corner of his mouth turned up, but his eyes watched me intently. “You must have something,” he said. “I understand you threatened Alan Beckett with violence, if he didn't return the girl unharmed.”

“I'm not going to threaten you,” I said.

“Not with violence. But you have something. What is it?”

“I talked to Sutton Bell today.”

“Did you now?”

“About the Great Lakes robbery.”

His nod was slow and thoughtful. “He knows a thing or two about that.”

“He told me his big secret,” I said. “The one that got him a deal. Only two and a half years in prison.”

“What did you think of it—his secret?”

“At first I thought it was a disappointment.”

“Most secrets are.”

“He told me he saw you in a diner with Floyd Lambeau two days before the robbery.”

Spencer gazed off across the lawn. “So he did.”

“The sheriff and the bank robber having coffee together,” I said. “Bell knew it was scandalous. He wasn't sure exactly how. He thought maybe you were in on the robbery. That you had agreed to look the other way.”

“That's not a very credible theory,” Spencer said, “given the way things turned out.”

“No. I think I can do better. I know things Bell doesn't know. For instance, Floyd Lambeau claimed to be Callie's real father. That's what he told Terry Dawtrey.”

Spencer turned his head toward me sharply. “That's nonsense.”

“I know,” I said. “Callie explained why it's impossible—the business about the blood types. But Lambeau made the claim. Maybe it was an empty boast. Or maybe he believed it was true, or could have been true. Do you have a gun?”

The sudden transition made him laugh. A deep laugh, like his voice. “Why do you ask?”

I shrugged. “The other day the senator told me you always keep one handy. If you've got a gun, I should be careful about suggesting your wife might have had an affair with Floyd Lambeau.”

His right hand rubbed his chin. “You should be. But let's suppose the suggestion doesn't shock me.”

“If they had an affair, that could explain some things,” I said. “Lambeau might have seen you as a rival. So when he decided to rob a bank, he picked one in Sault Sainte Marie. Right in your backyard. It was a demonstration of his contempt for you. And if you found out he was in town—if you ran into him in a diner, for instance—I think you'd want to have a talk with him.”

Something flashed in Spencer's eyes. “You'd be right about that.”

“So that explains what Bell saw,” I said. “It explains another thing too. I've read about the Great Lakes robbery, and I never bought the idea that you just happened to turn up at the bank that day. The story was, you went there to open an account.”

“You think that's too much of a coincidence, Mr. Loogan?”

“I think you were watching Lambeau's hotel that morning. Once you knew he was in town, you would want to keep an eye on him. I think you saw him get into the black SUV—him and the other four. I think you followed them to the Great Lakes Bank.”

Spencer nodded. “That's a plausible story.”

“I could embroider it a little, if I were cynical,” I said. “Suppose you knew in advance what they had planned—”

“How would I know that?”

“The Great Lakes robbers were all amateurs. Maybe one of them talked to somebody, maybe somebody passed the word along to you—”

“And if I knew about the robbery in advance, why wouldn't I have stopped it sooner? Why wait till they were inside the bank?”

I raised an eyebrow. “It would be awfully tempting, wouldn't it? Floyd Lambeau slept with your wife. If you just let the robbery happen, you could shoot him. And get away with it.”

Spencer laughed again, deep like before. “Alan Beckett told me you had a wild imagination.” He gave me a candid look. “I admit it would have been tempting. But that's not the way it happened.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “It doesn't really matter. Bell saw you with Lambeau. That's embarrassing enough on its own. If it came to light, you would need to explain how you knew him, what you talked about that day in the diner. Maybe you could come up with a convincing lie—or maybe people would find out that the man who slept with your wife also planned a bank robbery right under your nose.”

The wind stirred the vines around the pillars of the gazebo. “So you would want to make a deal with Bell, to keep him quiet,” I continued. “But only the prosecutor could make a deal. You would need to influence him—or someone would. Someone with the power to influence a prosecutor. Like Senator Casterbridge. And I think the senator had a good reason to do you a favor.”

“You're letting your imagination get away from you again,” Spencer said. “Callie told me about your theory: that Jay was the fifth robber, and I kept quiet about it because the senator asked me to.”

I leaned forward in my chair. “When I talked to Callie, she said you would never take part in a cover-up. You had too much integrity. But she didn't know about Sutton Bell. She didn't know you had a reason to make a deal. You'd forget you saw Jay at the Great Lakes Bank, and the senator would make sure Bell forgot he saw you and Lambeau together.”

“You tell a good story, Mr. Loogan. But it's only a story. Jay Casterbridge wasn't the fifth robber.”

I shrugged and sat back again in the chair. “I'll tell you what I told Alan Beckett: I don't care who robbed a bank seventeen years ago. I care about what happened to Lucy Navarro. I haven't been able to find out. Maybe you can.”

Spencer showed me the palm of his right hand. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Ask around,” I said. “I figure whoever took her was someone you know. Maybe Beckett. Do you think he's capable of it?”

He mulled the question over. “I think he might entertain the idea. I don't know if he'd follow through.”