Dying Embers (7 page)

I left her note on the door. If I took it down, it was going to be hard to deny that I'd seen it. I flopped into the chair at my desk and dialed up Wendy on the telephone.

“Silk City Surveys,” she said. She sounded chipper, but then, she didn't know it was me yet.

“Hi, Sweets,” I said, “this is your one and only.” I rocked the chair back and stacked my heels on the corner of the desktop.

“If you're not in jail, how come you're not home?”

“How do you know I'm not in jail?”

“You didn't call collect,” she said.

“I'm at the office. I found your client's old flame.”

“Really. What do you think?”

“I think he's not her type but she's not married and—after today— maybe not attached. I gave her his number.”

“So you're on your way home? Bring milk and bread.”

“I need a ride.”

Less than commiserate, she said, “Now what?”

“Fan club disabled my car again.”

“I'm watching something.”

“Enjoy. I gotta call the police and write the report on Scotty's gal pal.”

“He doesn't like ‘Scotty,' and I'm watching the last part of a miniseries that's on until eleven.”

“Give it an hour and send one of the boys. Scott gave me a message for you. He says that your operative in Wisconsin hasn't been to work in a week.”

“Must be why I haven't had any daily reports. I e-mailed the Dixon Agency this morning but so far, no answer. Don't forget the milk and bread,” she said, and hung up.

I put my feet back on the floor and dialed up the Kentwood Police administrative number. Due to the lateness of the hour I got Kent County Dispatch.

The dispatcher said her name was Deputy Paxton—a voice like honeyed almond. I complained about my windshield while I wondered if she looked as sultry as she sounded. She said that if the damage was less than a hundred dollars I'd have to come in to make the report. I told her the car was “deadlined.” She said they'd take a report as soon as someone was available.

I put the phone back in the cradle and stirred the clutter on the top of my desk until a yellow pad surfaced. I scrawled “New file series—new client, Light and Energy Applications.”

By the time I'd scratched out the details of the Lambert/Jones file, I heard the front door open. I looked up at the video monitor that hung from the ceiling diagonally across from my desk and watched Gerald Van Huis, the Chief of Detectives from Kentwood, scan the office like Bo-Peep looking for her sheep.

“Back here, Jerry,” I called out, clipping a memo on the front of my report to cover Lorna's time.

Detective Van Huis, six feet and some change and well over two hundred pounds, had a fair complexion and a full shock of sandy hair despite his five-plus decades.

“What are you, psychic now?” he said. He strolled into my office with his hands in the pants pockets of a black suit. He wore a white shirt with the collar unbuttoned, and his tie loose.

I pointed at the monitor. “Chip-cam in the smoke detector on the back wall of the front office.”

His face bloomed into a toothy smile. “Hey, Tex, what happened to your hoss?”

“Somebody fed it a cement hay bale,” I said, “but I sure am flattered by this kind of attention.”

“We have a jackknifed semi up on Broadmoor, and the patrol sergeant is taking a dump. I was on my way home, so I told them I'd take the call to spare everybody your usual bullshit.”

The left side of my credenza is a small refrigerator. I opened the door. “I got cola and orange. Sorry, no sarsaparilla in here, Kemo Sabe.”

“Orange. You doing a cowboy divorce case or did you take up community theater?”

“I have a Jewish Korean tailor,” I said, casually, as if that explained everything, and handed him the soda. I took out a cola for myself.

Van Huis tapped the top of the can twice and sat in the wing-back chair across from my desk. “And?”

“You had to be there.”

“I don't want to hear it. If you shook this up I'm going to go put that cement block in your back seat.” He flinched as he opened the can and said, “So who'd you piss off today?”

I popped open my can. “I'd have to work up a list,” I said. “It's been a long day.”

“So how are you going to get home?”

“I called my wife. She's sending one of the boys.”

He reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and dropped a pad of white raffle tickets on my desk. “My church is having a raffle. You live on the lake. We're giving away a bass boat, and the dealer will make you a good deal on the trailer.”

I picked up the pad. He hadn't sold any yet.

“Hole in the water impossible to fill with money,” I said. “Besides, I hate fish.”

“Tickets are a buck apiece. How many you want?”

“Five,” I said. Van Huis looked happy. I peeled off five tickets and started filling out the stubs. “You still driving that ratty minivan with the fake wood siding?”

“It's got a windshield,” he said and took a slug of soda.

I finished the stubs and handed back the pad. I took a similar pad from my jacket. “My son's football team is having a summer raffle for new equipment. The Chevy dealer donated a Silverado Suburban. It's a couple years old, but the tires come with it.”

He laughed. “Hardin, you're a pain in the ass,” he said. He took the pad, peeled out five tickets, and tore them off.

I asked, “At what point did you delude yourself into thinking that you weren't going to buy the church raffle tickets yourself?”

He set the soda on my desk and leaned forward to fill out the stubs. “Some guys really sell these things.”

“Sure they do,” I said.

“One of the ushers already sold two hundred.”

“Does he fish or has he just got a gambling problem?”

“I think he fishes.”

I watched him fill out the stubs while I finished my soda. I crumpled my can and dropped it in the wastebasket at the end of my desk.

“Hey, there's a deposit,” he said.

“Not on those. I bought 'em down in Indiana when I went to get Wendy's cigarettes.”

“Kay-ryst, Hardin! I come over here and you feed me bootleg soda?”

“You could always run me in.”

He rolled his eyes up to look at me directly. “No,” he said. “I'm waiting for something good.”

“You busted me for murder once.”

“That was a hummer,” he said and flipped the pad back in front of me as he clicked his pen and put it away. “But it had its moments.” He smiled.

Headlights flashed across the short window high on the back wall of my office.

“That's probably my ride,” I said. Van Huis finished his soda and dropped the can into the wastebasket.

I locked up, and we went out to the lot. We found my son Ben leaning against the front of his brother's Camaro with his arms folded and one heel racked on the bumper.

A month short of his seventeenth birthday, Ben stood six feet tall, was lean at the waist and wide at the shoulders. He wore a black denim jacket over white jeans and a black T-shirt. He had my brown eyes and—I told him—his mother's hair. Far too long to suit me. Wendy liked it. When he was out with me he tied it in a ponytail and hid it under a baseball cap.

“I would have donated my left testicle to science to have a car like that when I was a teenager,” said Van Huis.

The Camaro was a black T-top with a four speed, Corvette rims and tires, and a sport suspension. Eye candy. Ben had turned off the ignition and Van Huis could not hear the part that I would have sacrificed significant appendages for—two-and-a-half-inch dual-exhaust pipes relieving a big block V-8 that loped like a three-legged dog until you cranked it on.

“So would I,” I said as I turned to look at Ben and told him, “and your brother would blow a gasket if he saw you sitting on it.”

Ben made an embarrassed smile that included a roll of his eyes. He stood up, hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and walked over to look in my car. He had driven on a dawn-to-dusk “farm license” since he was fourteen. Working for local farmers, he'd piloted everything from harvesters to five-ton straight trucks. He proudly displayed his newly acquired “real driver's license” to anyone who cared to look. But how Ben got out of the driveway in his brother's car was a story I could hardly wait to hear.

“Hey, Pop,” he said, “you're supposed to put that kind of stuff in the trunk.”

“Let me get my flashlight,” said Van Huis. “Maybe they keyed the paint
too.” He reached into the open window of his minivan and extracted a flashlight that was a “two stroker” on the scale of the “twelve cell rule.”

Kent County District Courts guarded the twelve cell rule jealously. Unarmed desperados who resisted arrest could be subdued within the twelve cell rule. The amount of force was calculated as follows: two strokes with a six cell, three strokes with a four cell, et cetera. I expected that Van Huis could probably subdue an ox with his six cell and stay within the budget. He flashed it up and down the side of my car.

“What the hell make is this thing, anyway?” he asked. “There's no emblem.”

“Buick body, Olds engine, Chevy transmission.” I said. “Pick a brand you like and go with that. When they made this one, they all looked alike except for the bumpers and tail lights.”

“Where do you get off ragging on my van and driving a dinosaur like this?”

“It's got five hundred horsepower.”

“It's got bullet holes, for God's sake,” said Van Huis.

“I was a little slow making the jump to light speed.”

“But not in Kentwood?”

“'Course not,” I said.

“I think the windshield job probably totaled it,” said Van Huis. “You still want a report for the insurance company?”

“I want you to catch the perpetrators and bring them to justice.”

Ben laughed.

“Might have been eco-terrorists trying to get this thing off the road,” said Van Huis.

I caught a glint of light off a puddle next to Van Huis's foot. I pointed. “I think you got a clue, right next to you on the ground.”

He searched out the puddle—really just a dribble—with his light. I stooped over, stuck my fingers in the liquid, and stood back up to inspect my fingers in the light of his torch. They shimmered pale green.

“Antifreeze,” he said. “Probably yours.”

I rubbed the liquid between my thumb and fingertips and held it under my nose. “No,” I said. “Hydraulic fluid.”

“Hydraulic fluid is red,” said Van Huis.

“When it's green, what does that mean?”

Van Huis guessed. “Foreign car?”

“In this case a Jag, I think.”

“D
ANNY HAD A DOUBLE DATE
so he took Mom's car,” said Ben. We lined up at the stop sign with Detective Van Huis's fake-woody minivan. He went left and Ben turned right onto Forty-fourth Street.

“It's a school night,” I said.

“Danny would've been in college if he hadn't broke his leg and been in traction for six weeks.”

“Coulda, shoulda, woulda,” I said. “Take the next …”

I flopped down the visor and focused the vanity mirror out the rear window. We had three sets of headlights behind us.

Ben flipped up the turn signal. “It's a school play,” he said. He took his foot off the gas and pushed in the clutch.

“Oh yeah? What are they doing?”

“Oklahoma,”
he said, and eased into the turn—onto a residential street.

“Sorry I missed it.”

“It's on again tomorrow and Friday,” said Ben. “What are we doing? Do we know somebody down here?”

“Nope. Checking for a tail.”

“Cool.”

The car directly behind us passed the intersection, but the second one turned in after us. I watched for it to flash under the street light—a small white car with a dark top.

“Maybe your mother and I will go see it on Friday,” I said. “Take the next right.”

“Friday is sold out. We have somebody?”

“Maybe.”

“Cool.”

“Signal a left turn but turn right.” I watched the car in the mirror. Ben flipped down the turn indicator and got on the clutch and brake for the turn. The car behind us signaled a left turn. We made the right.

At this point the casual observer would think we were nuts, but a pro would know he was toasted or that I was cleaning myself. He'd pass the intersection, scoot up to the next parallel street and make his turn. A cop would come ahead around but would close up fast and touch off his rollers. Only an idiot or a shooter would stay behind us. The car behind us made the turn with his headlights off.

“He's still there,” said Ben. He got his foot into the gas. The torque raised the right front fender.

“Ease off,” I said. “This is a residential area. Just lock the doors and head for the bright lights.” My pistol started to itch, but it's one of those things you just can't scratch in polite company—or in front of your impressionable, almost seventeen-year-old son. “If this guy is dumb enough to think he's still covered, let's let him follow us down to the Kentwood Police Department.”

The driver of the car following us waited until we were on Forty-fourth and he had a cover car before he pulled on his headlights. It had to be embarrassing for him because the oncoming cars kept flashing their lights. The stiff suspension on the Camaro made it hard to ID the make of our trail car in the vanity mirror.

The parking lot of the Kentwood Police Department was an island of bright light in a sea of vacant land. To the west and the north apartment complexes stood silhouetted in the night-time glow of Grand Rapids. To the west and south fallow farm lands and feral orchards waited for the city to consume them. Kentwood dispatches through the county at night, so the doors were locked. I picked up the red telephone by the door.