John Connolly - Nocturnes

“I guess he wasn’t shot here.”

“Wouldn’t think so. It’s a long way to transport someone just to shoot them. Our guess is he was killed someplace else, then driven out here and buried in a shallow grave. A dog dug up his hand. It hasn’t rained in a while, but there’s a whole bunch of it due.”

I knew what Jansen was saying. The rain would come and the river would rise, covering the burial site. Then, with winter settling in, it would freeze over until March, maybe even April. By the time the thaws came, there would be no evidence left that the ground had ever been disturbed.

I went back to my car, turned on the radio, and listened to NPR until the M.E. arrived. I watched her descend to the body and then, finally, the corpse was taken from the riverbank in a white bodybag. Jansen came over to speak to me shortly after and told me that the M.E. estimated that Czabo had been in the ground for up to two weeks, then let me go. I called Rachel, told her I’d be a little late, then headed for Orono.

Orono is a college town, housing part of the University of Maine. It has an intimate feel to it, and most people know one another’s names, so the first guy I stopped was able to direct me to Casey Tillman’s garage.

The second thing I noticed once I got there was the Lexus parked outside. The first thing I noticed was the Missing Link, who had to step aside before I could see the Lexus. Link wasn’t much more than six feet tall, but he was probably the same width across. His head looked too small for the rest of his body-in fact, it looked too small, period-but I suspected that he hadn’t been hired for his brain power. He had slightly Asian features, and his dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. He also seemed to have shopped in the same hoods’ store as his boss, except his clothes came from the “big man” section.

“We’re closed,” he said, when I stepped from the Mustang. “Come back later.”

“I’m here to see Casey,” I told him. “You haven’t eaten him, have you?”

Link blinked. I figured him for the kind of guy who heard a joke at midnight, and started laughing at about 8 A.M. I kept walking until I was standing in the garage’s entrance. Link lumbered after me and stopped me from going any farther by the simple measure of standing in front of me and tapping me in the chest with his index finger. It barely involved him stretching a tendon, but it nearly sent me sprawling in the gutter.

“You got a problem with your hearing?” he said.

Inside the garage’s office, I could see Gunnar Tillman talking to his son. His voice was raised and he was doing a lot of finger pointing. Casey looked over his father’s shoulder, saw me, and raised a hand to stop the older man’s diatribe. Gunnar turned around and glared at me. He didn’t look happy, but I didn’t think it was personal. Gunnar Tillman wasn’t someone whose smiling muscles got a lot of exercise.

Casey stepped from behind his desk and walked toward me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Ray Czabo’s dead,” I said.

“I know. Edna called me.”

“And you called your father.”

“I figured he should know.”

Link stood beside us, looking from me to Casey and back again. He reminded me of my dog, but without the capacity to learn. I was about to ask him to give us a little breathing space when the issue became redundant.

Gunnar Tillman pushed his way between Casey and Link. I had five or six inches on him, but it didn’t make me feel any better. Gunnar pretty much sweated bad vibes.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

“It’s okay, Pop, he’s-”

Casey’s intervention was cut short by Gunnar’s left hand, which slapped his son hard on the right cheek. Casey took a step backward. His eyes teared with pain and humiliation.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” said Gunnar. His voice was perfectly even, as though he had not even registered the blow he had delivered to his son.

He turned his attention back to me.

“You see what you made me do,” he said. “He’s my son, and I care about him, but you made me hit him. I don’t even know you, so you better believe that I’ll fuck you up good if you don’t start answering my questions. Now who are you?”

“My name’s Parker. I’m a private investigator.”

“So?”

“Ray Czabo’s dead.”

“And?”

“Your son is seeing Czabo’s wife.”

“You saying he had something to do with this?”

“I don’t know. Did he?”

Gunnar reached behind his back and pulled a gun on me. The muzzle looked very big, and very black.

“You’ve got some fucking mouth,” he said.

Casey tried to calm his father down.

“Jesus, Pop, come on. Don’t do this.”

“You got no right to say things like that, you hear me?” said Gunnar.

His son reached out and patted him on the back, gradually forcing the gun down with his right hand.

“It’s okay,” he said. “He didn’t mean anything by it. Let me talk to him.”

Gunnar was slowly coming off the boil. He let out some deep breaths.

“You watch your mouth,” he told me.

He put the gun back in the waistband of his trousers and walked over to a Dodge with a yawning hood. He slammed the hood down and leaned his hands upon it, his head bowed. His son watched him until he was certain that Gunnar had regained control of his temper, then said in a low voice:

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“Your old man visited Czabo. From what I hear, he threatened him. There were witnesses.”

Casey swallowed and shook his head in frustration.

“I knew Ray was following me around. I saw him take some pictures. I tried to warn him off, but he wouldn’t listen. He said I was coming between him and his wife. My pop found out-”

“Found out, or was told?”

Casey reddened. He was, I realized, an even weaker man than he seemed.

“I thought he could get Billy over there to talk some sense into Ray. You know, I do some things for my pop. I look after cars for him. Some of them, well, they may have ownership issues, you know what I’m saying? Ray needed to be warned off, or else things would get really bad for him.”

“Things did get really bad for him. Someone shot him in the head.”

“My pop didn’t do it.”

“You’re sure?”

Casey’s voice lowered.

“He doesn’t need that kind of heat. He’s getting older now. The stuff they say about him, most of it’s not true anymore. He only has a couple of guys on the payroll, and mostly what they do is drive my old man to lunch. He fences some cars, distributes a little pot for the college kids, but that’s about it. He’s small time now, but if they caught him they’d put him away, and he doesn’t want to die in jail. He didn’t kill Ray Czabo. Neither did I. When the cops come calling, we’ll tell them that.”

I looked over at Gunnar. He was coughing. It was suddenly clear that what I had mistaken for his efforts to control his temper were actually attempts to get his breathing back in order. He sounded sick. Billy was now beside him, holding a cup of water to the old man’s lips.

“He can be a prick but he’s still my father,” said Casey.

His eyes pleaded for understanding.

“And-”

Casey put a hand on my shoulder, as though to guide me away from the garage. I let him do it.

“We lost a guy, Chris Tierney,” he said.

“When?”

“Week or so back. Stabbed in the heart.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar. I recalled a story from the Press Herald about a stabbing in Orono. It hadn’t mentioned Gunnar Tillman.

“The story I read said Tierney was mugged in the parking lot of a bar. His body was hidden under trash bags.”