Brass in Pocket (12 page)

“I get it, Mr. Kracsinski. Thanks again.”

Benny touched his forehead in a casual salute, then hobbled off into the dark, his cane tapping the ground every few paces.

Greg waited until he was gone, then crossed the hangar and shut the door. He turned back toward the plane, thought better of it, and locked the door.

Now
, he thought,
maybe I can get some work done
.

T
HE INTERVIEW ROOM WAS
nobody's idea of a pleasant place to while away the hours. The walls and floor were all shades of gray and black; the table and chairs were gray. Nick supposed there were names for all the different shades—charcoal, slate, things like that—but at a certain point, gray was just gray, period. Everybody who walked in knew the big mirror on one wall was really a window, and anybody might be watching, unseen, from the other side. It was, to put it mildly, one of the most institutional-looking rooms Nick had ever spent time in. Even the designers of mental hospitals tried harder to lighten the mood.

Which was precisely the point. The room was meant to make suspects uncomfortable, to keep them unsettled. Like right now. Nick sat across from Will Penfold, who fidgeted and squirmed as if his chair had been set on fire. Penfold had deeply tanned skin, his left arm a veritable skin cancer petri
dish, thanks to what appeared to be a lifelong habit of hanging it out the window as he drove his beer truck. His hair was cropped short and tattoos spilled from his neck and across his shoulders. He scratched at his goatee from time to time, as if insects had settled there. He hadn't been charged with anything, and he hadn't called, or asked for, an attorney. Nick was happy to leave it that way, for now.

“I understand you hired Deke Freeson to do some investigative work,” Nick began.

“That's right. Biggest waste of money in my life.” He chuckled dryly. “And believe me, I've got a lot of competition for that. I tried to stop payment on my retainer check, but he'd already cashed it.”

“I hear you,” Nick said. “What was your problem with him? If you don't mind me asking.” It couldn't hurt to act like Penfold's friend, to try to work gently through his natural defenses.

Penfold put his hands flat on the smooth tabletop and pressed, as if trying to push the table legs through the floor. “Unless I missed something, when you hire a private detective, that guy is supposed to work
for
you, right?”

“That's generally the case,” Nick said. “Is that not what happened?”

“No-oo,” Penfold said. He was clearly still angry about his experience with Freeson. “That is not what happened,” he said, imitating Nick.
Maybe he's lucky Freeson didn't shoot him, if this is his usual way of relating to other people. Then again, maybe he's just a better shot than Freeson
.

“Tell me about it, then.”

“Okay, whatever. I had this brilliant idea. Once in a lifetime brilliant, you feel me?”

Nick managed to hide his laugh with a forced cough. “This is the beer underpants idea?”

“Beer-flavored underwear,” Penfold corrected. “For men or women, and not just underpants. Thongs, bras, boxers, briefs, everything.”

“I… I guess I'm missing something. Why?”

“Who doesn't love beer, dawg? Right? And face facts—you know how much women love it when a guy rips their pants off with his teeth?”

Penfold paused. He really did expect an answer.

“I guess maybe I've heard that.”

“Trust me, man. They do. Start ‘em off like that and you really get 'em revved up.”

“Okay.”

“And plus while you're at it, maybe you'll give them some attention, right? They like that, too. And if everything tastes like beer, what dude's not gonna dive right in? It works the other way, too, because chicks like beer as much as some dudes do.”

“And you know this because of your professional experience in the malt beverage industry.”

“Because I drive a beer truck, yeah. You wouldn't believe how many chicks honk and wave. Some of ‘em even flash me on the highway. They love the suds, bro.”

“Okay, so you had this idea.” Nick still didn't think much of the idea, even after the impassioned description of it. “Then what happened?”

“I drive a beer truck, dude. I don't know jack about product development and marketing and
all that crap. But I know this guy, Abner Klein.”

“And Abner knows about those things?”

“I thought he did. He's this screen printer, right, does apparel for some of the big casinos and other clients. I mean big national clients. You see a T-shirt or hoodie with the Lucky Dragon or the Romanov logo on it, Abner made that. So I figure, dude knows the apparel business. He'll know who to pitch the beer underwear idea to and how to go about it. Someone will buy it and then we'll both be set for life. Sweet, huh?”

“Sweet,” Nick agreed. “So what happened?”

“What happened was that Abner screwed me.”

“Screwed you how? Hey, you want a soda or something?”

“You got a brew?”

“I'll get you a soda. Hang tight.” Nick let himself out of the interview room and went to fetch a bottled soda and a straw. Most people didn't use a straw for a bottle or a can, and as a beer connoisseur, he doubted that Penfold would. But he might be more likely to use one with a bottle than a can. If he did use the straw, he would leave DNA on it, which maybe could be matched to DNA found in the motel room. Even if he didn't, he might leave some on the bottle, and he would definitely leave fingerprints all over both the bottle and the table. Since Nick was trying to get his cooperation, acquiring prints and DNA surreptitiously might help advance his cause more than asking for them outright.

Returning to the gray-on-gray room, Nick set the bottle down on the table, just far enough away that Penfold had to rise up out of his seat and reach for
it. Just to make him a little more off balance. He had been the guy's pal and all he got was an extended riff about beer underwear. Time to turn things up a notch. He had also carried in a field kit, which he put on the floor beside his own chair, where Penfold couldn't get a good look at it. “Let's get real here, Penfold,” he said. “You went to this guy Abner because you didn't know squat about how to develop your idea. And Abner cheated you, right?”

“I thought he was cheating me, man.” Penfold sat back down, took a sip through the straw, then left the bottle on the table and placed his hands in his lap. His whole demeanor was different now, his shoulders slumped, his gaze downcast. He moved his eyes to look up at Nick, but not his head. “I thought he was going to partner with me, but instead I heard back from a couple of buddies that he was taking the idea to apparel manufacturers and claiming it as his own. I had put up half the dough to get some prototypes made, and if he was ripping me off, I had to know.”

“So you hired Freeson.”

“That's right. He was supposed to find out if Abner was straight up or not.”

“And then?”

“Then I heard from these same buddies that Freeson had probably gone into business with Abner. He kept not being able to find anything out, he said. He talked to some of the people Abner did, but he claimed Abner was making people sign those, whatever, nondisclosive agreements before he would tell them the idea, so without a court order they wouldn't talk to him. Seemed suspicious as hell to me.”

“Nondisclosure,” Nick said.

“What?”

“It's called a nondisclosure agreement, not nondisclosive. And it's a standard business practice.”

“It is?”

“Absolutely. Freeson was telling you the truth.”

“He was?”

“Sounds like it to me. The conversations Abner was having were legally proprietary. If people had described their conversations with Abner to Freeson, they would have been breaking binding legal contracts.”

“No way.”

“That's right. Did you ever just ask Abner?”

“My buddies told me he would just lie to me if he was really pulling something.”

“Sounds like your buddies are idiots.”

“Some of 'em, yeah.”

“But you listened to them.”

“Dawg, that's what bros are for. To have each other's backs.”

“Right. Did these bros have any way of knowing that what they were claiming was true?”

“Just… you know, they're dudes who have been around. Maybe they were just telling me what they
thought
Abner was up to. But they said it like they knew.”

“Right,” Nick said again. “So they were guessing, and you believed them.”

Penfold looked like someone had killed his dog. “You think Abner was on the up-and-up?”

“I don't see any reason not to.”

“Even though he never brought in an offer?”

“I'd be more surprised to hear that he did get an offer.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That's harsh, dawg.”

“Just being honest with you, Will.” Nick opened his field kit, took out a color glossy, and dropped it on the table. Freeson could be recognized in the photo in spite of the hole in his face, but Nick was pretty sure the hole would make the biggest impression. He dropped it faceup on the table in front of Penfold. “You killed Deke Freeson for no reason.”

Penfold grabbed the edge of the table in both hands, his eyes suddenly the size of small balloons. He turned away from the photograph. “
Killed?
No way, dude. No way.”

“You didn't break into a motel room and shoot him, that what you're telling me?”

“Man… okay, fine. I tried to hit him once, at his office. I landed a punch and just about pissed myself. That girl, Camille, his secretary or whatever, she saw it happen. I thought I would die of shame.”

“She thought you were pretty mad.”

“I was. I was goddamned furious. But I couldn't even get in a decent shot. My fist hit his, I don't know, his shoulder or something. I felt it all the way up my arm. That night I had to drink myself to sleep. No way could I cap a guy.”

“Where were you earlier tonight?”

“Making deliveries. I was in the truck until nine.”

“Plenty of people see you?”

“People at every store I stopped at. Plus it's all in my log, and stored on the GPS in my truck.”

“Okay. You don't mind if I swab your hands?”

“If you what who?”

“Swab your hands.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Not a bit.”

“What does it mean?”

Nick didn't think there was any harm in explaining. Penfold's story sounded pretty convincing. “I'm looking for something called gunshot residue,” he said. “It usually dissipates in a couple of hours, or through hand washing, but sometimes traces of it hang around.”

“How would I get it on me?”

“By shooting a gun.”

Penfold smiled. “Swab away, boss. I haven't shot a gun in fifteen years.”

Nick opened his kit and took out several pieces of filter paper. He brushed one over Penfold's right hand—he had used that one to grip the soda bottle, so Nick knew he was right-handed—then brushed his left hand with another, then swiped his arms and finally his shirt.

“That's it?” Penfold asked.

“Almost,” Nick said. He put a couple of drops of diphenylamine on each piece of paper. They didn't change color.

“What's that mean?”

“Means nothing.”

“What?”

“It means there's no gunshot residue on you. If it had turned blue, then I'd have to run some confirmatory tests to make sure it wasn't reading urine,
tobacco, or certain other substances. But it didn't, so you're clean.”

“I told you.”

“Unless you washed it off and changed clothes.”

“Dude, I told you, I didn't shoot nobody! I was making my rounds. Check my truck!”

“I will.”

“Do I get to go home?”

“Soon,” Nick said. “Just hang for a while. You can go after I've looked over your truck.”

“Dude, my truck is at home! The
cops
drove me here!”

Nick closed his kit up. “Then I guess you'll have to hang for a little while longer.”

A
FTER
B
ENNY
K
RACSINSKI
left the hangar, Greg turned back to his work once again. Too many interruptions. He still had to lift some of the prints he had revealed with the dust, so he took the tape and captured them, pressing the tape down on a white backing card to preserve the impressions intact.

A few minutes later he heard a rapping at the door.
This is getting insane
. Greg suppressed a curse and looked over his shoulder. He couldn't not answer it—what if it was Williams, or Officer Morston with something important? He went to the door and unlocked it. Tonya Gravesend stood there, her hands stuffed into her pockets.

“You can't come in right now,” he said, wondering where Officer Morston had gone for lunch. California, maybe, at this rate.

“Oh, I'm sorry.” She shrugged. “Am I okay here?”

“Where you are is fine,” he said. “Just stay right there.” He really would have preferred her just
about anywhere else—at her own home, or in the airport office, or thirty-five thousand feet in the air behind the controls of a jumbo jet. Or maybe lunching in California with Officer Morston. But Jamal Easton had suggested she be looked at for Dunwood's murder, so he figured it couldn't hurt to give her as much time as the others had taken. Maybe he would learn something helpful. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh… I just… I wanted to thank you for what you're doing here.”

Greg gave a modest shrug. “It's our job.”

“But someone's got to find out what happened to Jesse, and you two seem like the people who can do it.”