Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery (21 page)

“Wicked Witch of the North,” he said.

Nina said, “It was the West.”

Maybe she does like movies after all.

“Oh,” Pellam said. “I only like the tornado scene.”

“When I was a little girl, I used to think it was ‘wicker’ witch. We had a wicker patio set. I wouldn’t sit in it. I thought it, I don’t know, was made out of witches.”

Pellam smiled. She took his arm and brushed her cheek against his shoulder.

“I finally outgrew it. I still don’t like wicker, though. You get splinters in your butt.”

He said, “You look good when you smile.”

Which seemed to be just the words to deflate it. But she brought a facsimile back to her mouth and said, “Thank you.”

That was when they found the factory.

Pellam noticed a redbrick building set back a long ways from the road. The grounds were filled with overgrown trees, brush, and rampant kudzu so thick you could only see the top of the tall, square building. It had high, gracefully arched windows decorated with iron grillwork. The setting sun was visible through them and lit the interior with broad shafts of ruddy illumination.

Pellam started up the path. Nina followed.

The Maddox Machinery and Die Company had been abandoned for years. The building had an odd regalness about it, something castlelike, complete with parapets and a dip in the surrounding ground that was probably a collapsed septic system but could pass for a moat. The bottom six or seven feet of the outer walls were marked with halfhearted graffiti, and the metal door was thickly posted with several generations of
No Trespassing
signs. Metal Art Deco designs, in the shape of lilies and vines and the company’s name, were set in concrete around the door.

Nina walked up silently behind him. She looked up at the facade. “What a neat old building.”

Pellam tried the front door. The lock was long broken though the double wooden panels were chained. He pushed inward as far as he could, separating them by two feet, then he worked his way inside underneath the chain.

“Do you think you should?” Nina asked as his boot vanished into the doorway. She timidly followed.

Inside, Pellam paused on the oak floor, worn wavy by years of workers’ boots and hand trucks. To the right were the darkened factory offices. Banisters and windows were done in streamlined aluminum, and in faded murals muscular laborers towered high above them. To the left through an arched doorway was a huge, cavernous space, now lit red by the intense sun glowing on the yellowed, greasy windows. The ceiling was nearly forty feet high.

Nina walked up behind Pellam.

“This is too good to pass up,” he said.

“I thought the field was all you needed.”

“This’d be for another film I’ve got in mind. I’ll get the Polaroid. Be right back.”

AFTER PELLAM DUCKED
out of the chained door Nina walked to the back wall, where she had seen in the shadows what she believed was an antique calendar and some other artifacts that might be worth swiping before the movie crews descended.

It was not a calendar, though, just a poster of the Bee Gees, which would have been dated circa 1975. She guessed some kids had used the building as a clubhouse years ago. She found an old, empty tin of cat food. A dozen beer bottles, burnt matches. Nina walked into a large, windowless office in which rested a piece of sleek green machinery like a huge sewing machine. She squinted into the darkness and poked around in drawers and cabinets for ten minutes. She found a beautiful antique orange crate but it was too big to get through the chained door.

Clouds suddenly obscured the sun, leaving Nina in gray shadow. She felt a chill and, with it, a sense of uneasiness. She started walking quickly back to the front of the factory. She stopped. In the dust on the floor in front of her Nina could see her own footsteps, leading back to the poster and the machine room. And there were Pellam’s sharp-toed boot prints retreating through the arched front doorway.

She saw another set of prints too.

They disappeared into the back of the building, through the offices. They had been made very recently.

Nina gasped in fear and looked at the arched doorway, beyond which was the chained front door. One hundred feet away. And fifty or sixty of those feet led past darkened doorways.

“John?” she called.

There was no answer.

The panic zipped along her spine and seized the back of her neck. Tears popped into her eyes. Step by step, slowly, to keep the fear at bay, she started toward the door. Her jaw began to quiver.

Ten feet, fifteen. Twenty.

She heard a noise, perhaps a footstep.

“John?” The terrified echo of her own voice came back to her from three directions, and it seemed as if there were a trio of ghosts in the room, mocking her. The tears came more quickly. She forced herself with all her will to walk slowly.

Then Nina was almost at the front door arch. Beyond it she could see the glint of the chain on the door. This reassured her and the terror diminished. Pellam would be returning any minute.

She could—

The hand slipped around her mouth and held her firmly. She tasted tobacco and salt. Another arm curled around the chest and yanked her off her feet. The man threw her to the ground, the air knocked from her lungs. She uttered a painful moan. Her breath came in small gasps. Then he was kneeling beside her, his face very close to hers.

SHE LAY ON
the floor, on wood as cold as iron. The narrow door admitted only reflected light from the main room and she was in shadow. She smelled garbage and urine and mold and tasted her own metallic tears.

“Please!” she cried.

The man stood and walked to the outer door. Only a part of her rational mind was working and this portion believed that he’d simply taken her purse and was leaving. She saw his dark silhouette at the front door, the chained door, looking out. Then he slowly turned and walked back to her. He crouched down and a band of pale light fell across his face. He was wearing rose-colored sunglasses. She saw his face clearly beneath his trim hair. He was young, he was handsome, he was white. All of these surprised her and lessened her fear slightly. On his cheek was a large, oval birthmark or discoloration. The light startled him. He had not expected to be seen.

Her fear returned. He was going to kill her because she had seen him. . . . Whatever else he did, he was going to kill her afterwards.

He ran his hand along her pale cheek. “Put your hands under you.”

She did not understand and he repeated the words calmly. When she still did not comprehend this instruction, he illustrated, lifting up her hips and shoving her hands beneath her buttocks. Maybe he wanted her hands pinned so she could not scratch him.

He bent down, kneeling, and put his mouth next to her ear. Nina twisted her head away, wincing and expecting to be kissed. She felt the heat of his breath.

“Please,” she cried, “don’t.”

“I have a message for your friend.”

She did not hear this. “Please.”

“Listen! . . . Are you listening?”

She nodded, crying again.

“Mr. Crimmins knows that your friend saw him in the car that night. You tell him that if he testifies, I’ll come back. You understand what I’m saying?”

“What—?”

“Did you hear me?”

Nina said, “Mr. Crimmins . . .”

“And if I come back—” he touched her cheek again “—you’re not going to like it.”

Nina’s body was racked with sobbing.

He said, “Don’t move for a half hour. Stay right where you are.” He stood up. She heard no footsteps, nor did she hear the rattle of the chain on the front door. Because of this she believed he was still there, watching her, perhaps hidden in the shadows only ten feet away. She stared at the distant square of greasy glass, lit by the sun and the thin auras encircling it, the rings of red light that her tears created.

HE FOUND HER
sitting curled up, outside the factory, staring down at the branch-cracked sidewalk at her feet. “Nina?”

She did not look up. Not for a moment. When she did it was with eyes full of tears. He sensed she had been assembling herself—forcing herself to be placid.

“John . . .” Her voice broke with sobbing. She was shivering.

“What is it?” He crouched next to her.

Her arms hugged him hard and she was shaking hysterically. “There was a man.”

Pellam stiffened. He took her by the shoulders. “What happened?”

Sobbing again. He had to wait. He wanted to shake it out of her, force her to tell him. But he waited.

Nina pulled away and roughly wiped her ear—where the attacker’s mouth had been—as if scraping the skin clean. “He didn’t . . . do anything. He just knocked me down.”

“Let’s call the cops.” Pellam started to stand.

“He said . . . He told me to tell you something.”

“Me?”

“He said he worked for the man you saw, the man in the Lincoln. And if you tell the police he’d come back and . . . Crimmins, he said the name was.”

His hands began to quiver in rage, then his neck. He couldn’t control it. Then his jaw and head, shaking uncontrollably. He blinked. His eyes watered with the fury. His jaw suddenly cramped and he realized his teeth were jammed together.

“John—”

“Let’s call the police.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“What? We have to.”

“No, John. Please. He didn’t hurt me. Not really. But I’m scared of him. He said he’d come back.” She looked at him with frightened, wet, round eyes. “Please. Just take me home.”

Pellam looked around the field and brush surrounding the factory. He thought back to the dark car that had cruised past while they were on the street. All his enemies in this town were faceless. Where were they? Pellam thought momentarily of his distant ancestor Wild Bill, who fought it out with gunfighters face-to-face and no more than a dozen feet apart (except, of course, for the last one, the one who shot him in the back).

“This guy, what did he look like?” Pellam asked.

She described him as best she could, the hair, the youthfulness, the pink glasses. She thought for a moment and described his pants and jacket. She could not remember his shoes or shirt.

“There’s something else about him . . .”

“What?” Pellam helped her to her feet.

“He had a red mark on his cheek. Like a big birthmark. It looked like that red spot on Jupiter.” She touched her own cheek.

“Jupiter.”

“The planet,” Nina said. “Will you please take me home now?”

“I DON’T NEED
a goddamn appointment.”

Pellam shoved the door open. It swung into a bookshelf. A precariously balanced volume tumbled to the bare floor with the sound of a gunshot.

He stopped. Four people gazed at him. Three were astonished. U.S. Attorney Ronald Peterson looked calmly at Pellam as he walked farther into the room. The others, two men and a woman, were young. Their eyes danced between the intruder and Peterson. Pellam ignored them and said, “I want to talk to you. Now.”

“Ten minutes. You mind?” Peterson asked his coterie.

Even if they had, he was obviously their boss, and the only debate they were presented was whether it was better protocol to take their files or leave them. The papers remained where they were and the youngsters walked silently out of the room.

Pellam put his hands on the cluttered desk, knocking aside a windup set of dentures. He leaned forward. “I want protection for myself, my friends, and for everybody with the film company. A friend of mine was just attacked. I want an agent at her apartment
now!
She lives in Cranston, on—”

“Have a seat, Mr. Pellam.”

Pellam remained standing, glancing from the windup toy collection into the man’s serene olive pits of eyes. The U.S. Attorney motioned to a chair. “Please.”

Pellam sat down.

“You say she was attacked, this friend of yours?”

Pellam told him about the factory and the man with the birthmark.

“Crimmins.” Peterson’s troubled eyes scanned the colorful foliage outside his window. He spat out, “That son of a bitch.”

“Your agents told me he’d hired some hit man in Chicago or Detroit or something. This’s him. This is the guy. I want protection.”

“Protection?”

“Agents,” Pellam exploded. “You know, bodyguards.”

“U.S. Marshals? That’s a lot of taxpayers’ money to devote to protecting someone.”

“You’ve got this witness protection . . .”

“Ah, the key word.
Witness
.”

Pellam said, “Look, you’re playing a game. You know his name. Crimmins. Go arrest him.”

Peterson said, “I’m confused. If you didn’t see him, why would he threaten you?”

“Well,
he
doesn’t know I didn’t see anything. Why are you hesitating? You want Crimmins. He’s just threatened me and assaulted my friend. Go arrest him.”

“The attack that you say—”

Pellam was on his feet. “I
say?
 . . . My friend—”

Peterson held up a hand. “Excuse me. My mistake. I apologize. Please—have a seat.”

Pellam sat down.

The U.S. Attorney said, “What exactly do you want?”

“I want protection. I keep saying that.”

“I suppose we could put one man on it for a while. But what happened to your friend isn’t a federal crime. It’s an assault. There’s no federal jurisdiction—”

“You mean it’s not a crime to threaten a federal witness?” His voice faded in reverse proportion to Peterson’s smile.

“We come back to that again. See what I’m saying?
You’re
not
a witness. No jurisdiction. There’s nothing we can do.”

Pellam’s voice was soft. “That’s the kind of technicality you people like to use.”

Peterson paused a moment, maybe wondering which category the
you people
described. “The point is, even if we got a conviction for this attack, the best we could do is put him away for a year, tops. He’d be out and after you again twice as mad. Or after your friend.”

“Bullshit.”

Peterson pressed an intercom button. A middle-aged woman in a white blouse and tan skirt appeared in the doorway. “Yessir?”