The Fugitives (38 page)

“Let’s call the cops,” he said.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “It’s my fault.”

“Your fault?” He followed her out onto the porch. “You didn’t do anything. It’s not—”

She attacked him, hitting him as hard as she could, clawing and kicking, calling him names.

“You’re right, I didn’t—you did! You told him! You told him and he found them!”

She hit him again and then it was over and she was on the other side of the porch, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

“Salteau?” asked Mulligan. “You think Salteau did this?”

Kat ignored him and went back inside the house, leaving the front door open. She returned with the pack of cigarettes that had been on Becky Chasse’s breakfast bar and closed the door behind her.

“Let’s call the cops,” Mulligan suggested again.

“Call the police,” she said. “How fun. We can watch them screw it up.” She drew a cigarette out of the pack and lit it. She dragged on it and then suddenly ripped it out of her mouth and threw it as hard as she could onto the ground. She caught him staring at her.

“I don’t smoke,” she said.

Mulligan turned away and looked around at the lighted houses on their small lots. “Someone must have heard something, seen something,” he said.

“Don’t bet on it,” said Kat.

Mulligan came down off the porch and went around the house to have a look at the back. The driveway led to a detached garage with an old-fashioned up-and-over door that was two-thirds of the way down. Light came from inside. When he was halfway down the driveway a floodlight mounted on the side of the house snapped on and he jumped. He continued slowly, breathing hard. He crouched to look into the garage and was surprised to see a Mercedes sedan. He stood upright to call to Kat just as the garage door swung open the rest of the way and out strode a trim middle-aged man in his shirtsleeves, carrying a full garbage bag, looking like any householder strolling nonchalantly down the driveway to toss his trash. He appeared surprised to see Mulligan. He dropped the bag, which landed with a sodden thump, and pulled a gun out of his pocket.

“Jesus,” he said. “I knew I heard someone.” He peered past him. “Are you alone?”

“No,” Mulligan said, his eyes on the gun. The man was holding it at his side, almost casually, as if he just happened to have it.

“How many of you are there?”

“Just two of us.”

“Where?”

“On the porch.”

“Did you go inside?” Now he raised the gun and aimed it at Mulligan. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Of course you did. Now why’d you have to go and do that?” The man threw up his hands as if in disbelief. “Terrific,” he said. “More thinking for me to do. Just what I needed.” He gestured with the gun for Mulligan to turn around. They walked down the driveway, the man grumbling behind him. Before they rounded the front of the house, Kat appeared. She stopped dead and stared past Mulligan’s shoulder.

“You.”

“Well, well. The crusading scribe. And Jimmy Olsen,” said Argenziano.

Mulligan started to turn his head to look back at Argenziano, but received a shove.

“You’re working with him?” asked Kat.

“Who? Who am I working with?”

“Saltino.”

“Enough already with Jackie Saltino. Keep going,” Argenziano said. “Stand together against the side of the house. Both of you. I have to think for a minute.”

“You fucking bastard.”

“Language, Kat. I haven’t heard you talk like that. It doesn’t suit you. Now, who’s this?” Argenziano looked at Mulligan. “I’m asking you, pussyface.”

“Sandy.”

“And you and Kat came out here for what, Sandy?”

“To look at Becky. I mean, to see Becky.”

“Same difference, right? You stumbled upon the scene of the crime. Just like the proverbial jogger. ‘The badly decomposed body was discovered by an early-morning jogger utilizing the park’s secluded paths.’ Not bad, huh, Kat? Think I missed my calling?” He laughed. “You a colleague, Sandy? Kat con you into sticking your nose in all this?”

“He writes books,” said Kat. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Oh, sure he does. Maybe he didn’t, but he does now. What are you going to do, unsee it? Come on.” He turned to Mulligan. His voice was cheery: “So you’re an
author,
huh? Impressive. I could write a very interesting book myself if there weren’t so many other things I needed to do. You must have a lot of free time on your hands.”

Even under these circumstances Mulligan was almost amused to find himself the recipient of the usual backhanded compliment. It emboldened him to ignore the gun for a moment and ask, “Who is this guy?”

“His name’s Robert Argenziano. He runs the casino at Manitou Sands.”

“I’m a consultant, actually.”

“Jackie Saltino worked for him.”

“Again with Saltino? Come on, Kat. Take the facts and apply them to the reality all around you.”

“The reality?”

“I’m getting tired of this game, Kat. We’ve been playing it since the first time you walked into my place. Aren’t you tired of it yet?”

“Why did you kill them?”

“Kill who, Kat?”

“Did you know about the whole thing from the beginning? Were you part of it?”

“What whole thing, Kat? Part of what?”

“Asshole!”

“For Christ’s sake. Do you really have to resort to name-calling?” He raised the gun. “Don’t make me lose my temper. All I need are these fucking drunk Indians around here to start swarming out of these shacks.”

“How did you even find her? Did Saltino help you? Is he here?”

“Jesus,” said Argenziano. “I said
enough
already with that. It was a good bluff, but you couldn’t have picked a wronger person to try it on.”

“Well, where is he?” Kat said.

Everyone was quiet for a long moment.

“He’s been buried in a hole behind the nuthouse in Cherry City since last Spring,” Argenziano said finally. “Jackie’s dead.”

EARLIER TODAY

Jeramy steered the truck to the side of the road and turned off the lights.

“The ignition,” said Hanshaw.

“It be cold, yo.”

“So? Stick your hands in your armpits.”

The boy didn’t say anything but shifted heavily, causing the truck to bounce on its busted struts, and Hanshaw sighed. He didn’t want the kid to go into a funk.

“Oh, go ahead and leave it on.” He eased open the passenger door.

“Where you going?”

“Where do you think?” Hanshaw shut the door softly and leaned against it to latch it. The cold of the metal was harsh on his palms, and he reached into the pocket of his field jacket for his gloves. He began trudging toward the house, moving to the middle of the road because his footsteps through the frozen unshoveled snow on the roadside crunched loud in the stillness. The house was the only one without the shifting light of the TV showing through its windows; without any light at all, in fact. But there was a big F-150 parked in the driveway. No sign of Argenziano’s Mercedes, though.

He heard a rustling to one side and turned to encounter a crow, standing on a fencepost. He and the animal regarded each other.

“Hello, Crow,” said Hanshaw. “Owl’s going to get you. Get back to your roost.”

The crow leaned forward, huffed its feathers, and cawed at him. It took off and flew into the darkness.

Hanshaw came up the driveway alongside the house. At its end was a detached garage, the door closed. That was where the Mercedes had to be. He felt the hairs on his body stand on end, rising in a wave, like when the barber ran clippers over the back of his neck. He had an uneasy feeling. Crows were messengers from the other world. He stopped short of the garage and listened intently, pressed close against the house. He could sense occupancy inside, but there was something wrong. He took two steps forward, bringing the backyard into view, and tripped a motion sensor light attached to the side of the house. Something thudded on the other side of the wall to his right and the structure shuddered slightly. He double-timed it heavily toward the backyard, coming around the rear of the house, where more light trickled thinly onto the ground to illuminate a rectangular pad of concrete containing two plastic chairs and a plastic table, all heaped with old snow. The light came from the other side of the sliding glass door that opened onto the patio. The view into the room inside was hidden behind the pale blue curtain pulled across the length of the glass, but Hanshaw could see the blood splattered across the fabric, soaking through it. A shadow entered the lit space inside; Hanshaw’s hairs rose again, and he held his breath. The shadow moved first to his left, and then to his right. It paused and Hanshaw could feel it, on the other side of the glass. He stared at it, and it seemed as if it stared back. He knew it was only Bobby Argenziano in there, standing over and maybe even admiring his handiwork. But he also could feel that the shadow existed quite apart from Bobby; that the shadow had passed into, inhabited, Bobby as he did whatever had painted the curtain with those kinetic splashes, and now the shadow was taking his, Hanshaw’s, measure.

“Go away,” he whispered. “Get the fuck away from me.”

The shadow drew near to the curtain, growing bigger and more diffuse, and then abruptly resolved itself into Bobby’s sharp little silhouette. Then the light disappeared and, letting out his breath, Hanshaw could feel the room empty of life. The curtain hung gray, streaked with its darker gray splashes. He shook his head, disgusted with himself: and now the cops would have his own size fifteens imprinted in the snow to look at.

He heard the door slam at the front of the house, and moved deeper into the shadows to watch Argenziano come up the driveway. He took mincing little steps. When the motion sensor light clicked on he turned and looked sharply at it, as if it were someone who’d spoken out of turn. He carried a stained towel, and his shirt and slacks were splattered with blood. He also carried his shoes, which explained the funny walk. As he reached the garage he stuffed the towel under his arm and reached down to grasp the garage door, lifting it with an audible grunt. The door moved up and back noisily on its tracks. He disappeared inside and lowered the door about halfway. Hanshaw thought about following him inside and shooting him right there, but he knew that would lead to complications. Deviating from the plan always did. He sternly reminded himself that the unfortunate people in that house, whoever they were, had nothing to do with his business. He’d caught a glimpse of a boy’s bicycle inside the garage: still nothing to do with him. And plus there were the size fifteens, plain as day in the snow. He didn’t think there was any purpose in bringing unnecessary trouble down on himself. He would answer the questions he needed to answer when the time came. He edged closer to the garage and got on his hands and knees to look inside. The cold, wet snow instantly soaked through the knees of his jeans. Argenziano stood before the open trunk of the Mercedes in his underwear, stuffing his clothes and the towel into a plastic garbage bag. He was shaking with the cold, and the loose flesh on his torso quivered. He carried his shoes to a utility sink in the rear and rinsed them off. Then he washed his hands. As he watched, Hanshaw was reminded of the meticulous cleansing motions performed by flies.

He got to his feet. His knees were stinging. He looked down at the dark circles of moisture and involuntarily recalled the appearance of the blood-saturated curtain. He moved down the driveway, leaving Bobby to his ritual cleansing. He could wait, and think, in the truck.

TODAY

“I don’t appreciate this,” Argenziano said. He sat in the backseat of the Mercedes beside Kat, his gun hand resting on his knee. “At our age, we really shouldn’t play these sorts of games. If we feel that we’re in possession of information that has a certain value, we present a proposal. Or we hang on to the information, for whatever reason. Discretion, strategy, what have you. We don’t play games. And this is a game for children. An imaginary friend. Come on. That’s the idea you come up with? Which one? Which one of you hatched the brilliant plan to intimidate me with the notion that Jackie Crackers was walking and, more pertinently, talking?” They were entering the outskirts of Cherry City, and Argenziano studied the landscape morosely for a moment. “Was it you? The noted
author
?” He smiled. “I knew an
author
once, a long time ago. He said he wanted to write a book about
people like me
as he put it. He wanted to know things. What he said was he wanted to
learn
things, he knew enough to say that, but what he really wanted was to
know
things. There’s a difference, you know. People
know
all sorts of things but that doesn’t mean that they
learn
. If it did, they wouldn’t write stupid, lying books that embarrass people, that lie about people. Would they?”

He pounded on the back of Mulligan’s seat.

“With
learning
comes understanding, with understanding comes empathy, identification, other highly civilized things. But
knowing things
just makes you want to tell people. That’s what
authors
do. You fucking parasite. Now, me, for example, I learned something from that experience. I learned that you never, ever trust a fucking
author
as far as you can throw him.”

He pounded on the back of Mulligan’s seat.

“Now, you, Kat. Maybe you’re not writing a book, like your friend here, but I know you’re not planning on spending your life at the
Chicago Banana
. We already discussed this. There’s something bigger out there for you. Who knows? Sky’s the limit.” He shook his head. “Turn here,” he told Mulligan. “You know where the old loony bin is? Go through the main entrance when we get to it.”

He went on. “It feels terrible to know you’re just a stepping stone. You try to deal with people fair and square, and what do they do? They try to manipulate you. They tell you fairy tales about imaginary friends. What did you want from me, Kat?” He sounded genuinely anguished. “Had you come to me candidly, honestly, I would have responded in kind. In fact, I did respond to you in that way. As you anticipated. And you took advantage. You and your friend the
author
.”