Дэвид Балдаччи - Daylight

As they left the school, Pine glanced to her right. “I know him. He was outside the Blakes’ house this morning.”

The person Pine was referring to was sitting on the fence surrounding the new football field.

Pine and Blum walked over to him.

Pine said, “You looked like you knew something but didn’t want to say earlier.”

The young man jumped down and faced them. He was about Pine’s height, lean, and looked as tough as a piece of iron. His face held a jagged scar, and part of one of his fingers was missing.

“Did you know Jerome?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s your name?”

He shrugged.

“You followed us here, didn’t you? So you must have something to tell us.”

He looked over her shoulder.

“We think Jerome met someone yesterday who made him do whatever he did last night. Do you know anything about that?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe you do?” prompted Pine.

“See a man talkin’ to him yesterday.”

“Here at the school?”

He nodded.

“Do you go here?” asked Pine.

He shook his head. “Ain’t go to school.”

“You graduated?” asked Blum.

He shrugged, grinned, and said nothing.

“Did you recognize the man he was talking to?”

“Uh-uh.”

“What time of day was it?”

“’Bout two.” He pointed. “Saw ’em talkin’ over there.”

“What did the man look like?”

“White dude. Tall guy with big shoulders.”

“Age?”

“Forties, maybe. Dark hair.”

“How was he dressed?”

“Pants and a shirt.”

“Tie?”

He shook his head.

“You think he worked here?”

“Don’t know.”

“If we can get some pictures together, do you think you could recognize him again?”

“Maybe.”

“What’s your name?” she asked again.

“Peanut. What they call me on the street.”

“How well did you know Jerome?”

“We real tight till a while back.”

“What happened?”

“I quit going to school and he didn’t.”

Pine said, “How did Jerome seem when he and the man parted company?”

“Jerome, he walked off, looking at his shoes. Seemed jumpy to me. Weird, y’know?”

“Do you think Jerome would have shot anyone?”

He cracked a smile. “Shit, lady, Jerome don’t know how to kill nobody.”

They had gone back into the school and asked Norma Bailey if she could put together a photo book and background information of the school employees. She told them that they had it digitally, but it would take her some time to get the necessary permissions to release that information. She added that she would contact Pine when it was ready.

After that they climbed into their car and drove off.

Three minutes later Pine said quietly, “We picked up a tail. Silver Mercury Marquis. Don’t look, Carol!”

Blum caught herself halfway through turning around. “Sorry, Agent Pine. Can you tell who it might be?”

Pine slowed down a bit to let the car catch up and she eyed it through the rearview mirror. “Okay, now I can make out the plate. It looks like a New Jersey state plate.”

“Can you make out the tag number?”

“Yes. Write it down.”

Pine told her the plate number and Blum inputted it on her phone.

“Just a driver or more?”

“A pair.”

“You’re sure they’re following us?”

“Well, we can find out.”

She hung a sharp left, hit the gas, roared through an intersection, and then hung a right.

She peered into the rearview again. “They got caught at the light, but they were following us all right.”

She hit a speed dial on her phone. Puller didn’t answer.

“Why do you think they were tailing us?” said Blum.

“They want to see what leads we’re following up.”

“Did you notice them while we were at the Blakes’?”

“No, but I wasn’t looking, either.”

“So someone from the state government is interested,” opined Blum.

“That guy who gave Puller the third degree was with the federal government, not the state.”

“But still the ‘government.’ Talk about a dog biting its own tail.”

“There might be more to it than that, Carol.”

“This doesn’t have the feel of the typical government turf fight.”

“It has the feel of criminal collusion .”

Her phone buzzed. It was Puller.

He said, “This case has thrown another curve at us.”

“Why, what happened?”

“Teddy Vincenzo was found dead in his cell this morning.”

“What! How?”

“Prelim is suicide or drug overdose. They found him dead when they were doing a head count.”

“You can’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t believe it. I checked his records and photos of him when he went into prison. Not a needle track anywhere on his person, no tooth, nostril, or gum decay, no indication that he was a user. And when we saw him in person, he had no signs of being a user. Second, and most importantly, the timing is a little suspicious.”

“Don’t they have cameras in the prison?” asked Pine.

“They do. I asked about that. Unfortunately, the camera in question was not in operation. They apparently have a maintenance backlog.”

“That’s highly convenient. And if they were doing their head count, he died presumably early this morning, but you only found out recently.”

Puller said, “I doubt they care about keeping me in the loop. I only found out because I was working another channel to get back in to see him. That’s when I was told it was a no-go because he was dead.”

“Damn, that is definitely a curveball all right.”

“So they took out the father,” said Puller.

“Which means the son now sits squarely in the crosshairs.”

“We need to find Tony Vincenzo fast, before he bites it, too,” he said.

“FYI, we picked up a tail today. Whether it was at the Blakes’ home or at the school where we went to see if anything there might have precipitated what happened, I’m not sure. But it was a silver Mercury Marquis with New Jersey state government plates.”

“You get the tag number?” Puller asked.

Pine read it off to Puller from Blum’s phone screen.

“I’ll check that out.”

Pine said, “The people I spoke to, including Blake’s mother, said the cops think it was some gang thing, maybe an initiation. But these same people were also pretty sure Jerome didn’t even know how to fire a gun, much less make a shot like that last night.”

“It all stinks. The local cops have pretty much closed the case. They’re not looking anywhere else.”

“You know we could have been the targets last night, right?” pointed out Pine.

“The thought had occurred to me, yes.”

“His mother said he was going back to school to work on a robotics project, but that wasn’t true. And he lied about messing up a test to explain away why he was worried when he got home from school. And then an old friend of Jerome’s told us that Jerome had been approached by some guy at school, and it made him upset and nervous. I’m trying to run down a lead on that now.”

“What if someone got to him and made him show up in the alley, gave him a gun, and told him to run after he heard the shots?”

“How could they make him do that?” wondered Pine.

“That’s for us to find out.”

“Have they even confirmed that the gun he had was the murder weapon?”

“Not that anyone’s told me,” said Puller in disgust.

“Wait a minute, who’s doing the post and forensics? Surely CID people.”

“All I can tell you is that the local cops took the gun and Jerome Blake’s body and left us with McElroy’s remains.”