Archer Mayor - Tucker Peak

I turned to Willy. “You want to look around a little? I’ll talk to Mr. Skottick in the living room.”

Willy nodded and the two of us left him alone. Skottick sat heavily in an old armchair like a bear at the end of a long day, his paws dangling between his knees.

“Tell me about Gagnon,” I told him.

“Not much to tell. I advertised a car in the paper about a month ago. He came by right off, paid me half in cash and promised the rest later. Said he hadn’t gotten his paycheck yet. I trusted him. A couple of weeks later, I called him and he told me he got fired. He didn’t have the money but he’d get it soon. I was angry-threatened to put the cops on him-so he told me he’d take care of me some other way. It would just take a little more time. Finally, he called and said he had better than cash. He’d had a relative die and he’d inherited some stuff and had a watch that was worth a lot more than the balance he owed me. Maybe it was dumb, but I cut him some slack. I was getting sick of it. He came right over, gave me the watch, and that was that.”

“This all happened when?”

“He gave me the watch yesterday.”

“You moved pretty fast to put it on the Net.”

“I sell a lot of things that way. Been doing it for years.”

“You still have that phone number?” I asked.

He shifted his bulk to reach into his back pocket, pulled out a ratty wallet, and removed a small, soiled scrap of paper, which he handed over. “Am I under arrest?”

I looked at the number. It was a Brattleboro exchange. “No. Did he give you an address?”

He shook his head.

“How ’bout a bill of sale or the registration transfer info? That would have it.”

As if snapping out of a dream, he blinked once and dug into the wallet again, producing what I was after. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“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.

“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 several: 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.