Nelson DeMille - Spencerville

He kept looking at her photograph and recalled last evening. She'd gotten home after him, and he'd waited for her in the kitchen. They hadn't said much to each other, and she went right to bed, saying she had a headache. He'd gone out to her car and tried the mobile phone. She hadn't answered any of his calls, but the phone worked fine. Still, you never knew with these car phones. On the other hand, she'd seemed weird last night, and he would have pushed her a little, but he had some checking to do first, and he knew not to ask questions until he already had answers.

Somewhere in the back of Cliff Baxter's mind was the important fact that his wife was smarter than he was. But smart people, he'd discovered, sometimes were too smart, too cocky, too sure of themselves, and they thought their bullshit didn't stink. He nodded to himself and said, "Aunt Louise. I ain't seen Aunt Louise in a while."

Cliff Baxter glanced at his watch and saw it was seven A.M. He picked up the phone and dialed.

Tim Hodge, the postmaster of Spencerville, answered in a sleepy voice, "Hello..."

"Hey, Tim, I wake you?"

"Yeah... who's this?"

"Let go of your cock and grab your socks, the mail must go through."

"Oh... hey, Chief, how you doing?"

"You tell me."

"Oh..." Tim Hodge cleared his throat. "Well... yeah, I went out to St. James last night..."

"You better have. What happened?"

"Well... let's see... they... uh... they had a crowd..."

"I know that. My name come up?"

"Yeah... yeah, it did. Matter of fact, it came up a bunch of times."

Baxter nodded. "Come on, Tim, I'm a busy man. Give me the who, what, where, when, and how."

"Yeah, okay. Well, the city council lady, Gail Porter, kind of led the meeting. Her husband was there, too, and they had... like a lot of witnesses."

"Witnesses? Was this a fucking meeting or a trial?"

Tim Hodge didn't reply immediately, then said, "Well... they had some people there who had a few... kind of complaints against you."

"Like who?"

"Like Bob Aries's wife, Mary, and some woman named Sherry... some weird last name."

"Kolarik?"

"Yeah."

Shit. "What did she say?"

"Which one?"

"Both of them. What did those lyin' bitches say?"

"Well... Mary went on about you taking things from the store, you know, and signing off on more gas than was pumped..."

"Fuck her. What did the other bitch say?"

"Well... something about... she sort of said that you... like you and her... like you had something going."

Jesus Christ. "You mean this bitch got up there in front of all those people in church... and lied about... what'd she say?"

"She says you fucked her. Been fucking her for some time. That you paid her parking fines or something, and that, to pay you back, she had to fuck for you." Hodge added, "She got real detailed."

"Lying bitch."

"Yeah."

"People believin' that?"

"Well... I don't."

"Hey, why don't you stop by this afternoon for some coffee and tell me what you seen and heard last night. About three. Meantime, don't spread no gossip yourself, and keep your ears open."

"Right, Chief."

Baxter hung up and stared out the window onto Main Street. "Goddamnit!" He slammed his fist on the desk. "Goddamned bitches, can't trust any of them to keep their damned mouths shut."

He thought about how this development was going to affect him and decided he could keep it under control. Sherry Kolarik was a whore, the worst kind of witness. Mary Aries was another problem, but he'd get her husband to put a zipper on her big mouth real quick. Baxter wondered what else had come up at that meeting. He pulled a piece of paper toward him and began a list, writing the name Keith Landry, followed by Sherry Kolarik, then Mary Aries, then Gail Porter, then the other Porter whose first name he didn't remember, then hesitantly, he wrote "Pastor Wilkes," then thought a moment and added Bob Aries's name for good measure. He'd have written Annie's name, too, except that she always had the honorary first position on his weekly list of people who pissed him off.

He poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos jug and sipped on it. Things were definitely getting out of control. This wasn't just a bad week, it was the start of a bad life unless he started to kick some ass.

He stood and went out into the office where Ward was entering the list of license plate numbers into the motor vehicle computer and getting names and addresses printed out. Baxter said, "Turn that fucking thing off."

Ward exited the file, and Baxter asked him, "You got a report on Landry's movements last night?"

"Sure do." Ward handed Baxter a typed sheet of paper, and Baxter glanced at it.

Baxter said, "Krug saw him leave his house at seven-thirty P.M., then you and Krug and the other guys saw him in the parking lot at St. James at eight thirty-five."

"Right. The meeting was still going on, but I guess he left early."

"Then what?"

"Well, then Landry went into the parsonage with Pastor Wilkes. I drove out to Landry's place and waited on 28 a couple hundred yards from his driveway, but I never saw anybody pull in. But then I noticed lights on upstairs, and I called him on the mobile phone, and he answered. Don't know how he got there unless he came in from the south, using the tractor roads. He must've been scared, you know, figuring we were laying for him." Ward added, "It's all there in the report."

Baxter glanced at the paper again and said, "You called him at ten thirty-eight and he answered?"

"Yup."

"He could have been home about an hour already."

"Could have. Depends on how long he stayed with Wilkes, and where he went after that. Like I said, I think he took the long way home. He was scared."

"Yeah. You really scared him. You see any other car goin' in or comin' out of his farm?"

"Nope."

"You stick around after you called him?"

"No, because it looked like he was in for the night. But about an hour later, I drove by again, and his light was still on upstairs. What are you thinking, Chief?"

"Nothin'. I'll be at the Park 'n' Eat for breakfast."

"Okay."

Cliff Baxter left police headquarters and walked the half mile down Main Street to the east end of town and entered the Park 'n' Eat at seven-thirty A.M.

He took his customary table, and an older waitress named Lanie came over and said, "How're you this morning, Chief?"

"Just fine."

"Coffee?"

"Sure thing."

She poured him a cup of coffee from a carafe and asked him, "Need to look at the menu?"

"Nope. Ham, two eggs over easy, home fries, biscuits, no toast, and no juice."

"You got it." She started to walk away, but Baxter said, "Hey, where's Sherry this morning?"

Lanie replied, "Called in sick."

"Yeah? Friend of mine saw her last night."

Lanie smiled. "Maybe too much partying."

"Nah. This guy saw her at church. St. James, out by Overton." Baxter studied the waitress's face, but clearly she didn't know anything.

"I'll get those eggs going for you."

"Yeah. Hey, if she comes in or calls, tell her I'm lookin' for her. We got to talk about some parking fines."

Lanie's smile dropped, and she nodded and moved off.

Breakfast came, and Cliff ate. Nearly everyone who came in greeted him, and he tried to guess who knew what at this early hour.

One of the city councilmen, Chet Coleman, who was also a pharmacist, came in and saw him. Coleman sat down opposite Baxter and, without any preliminaries, said, "Hey, Chief, you know about that meeting at St. James?"

"Heard about it."

"Yeah, while we were having our council meeting, those folks were bad-mouthing us."

"No shit?"

"I didn't like what I heard."

"How'd you hear?"

"Well... had a friend there."