Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery (Clare Fergusson and Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries) (13 page)

Since she was wearing an expensive-looking sweater and a diamond the size of a .22 cartridge, Lyle figured she wasn’t here to mop the floors. “Ma’am.” He doffed his lid and gave her his most reassuring smile. “I’m Deputy Chief MacAuley of the MKPD. I just need to speak with the supervisor of your cleaning crew.”

“Oh. Are they—is there some trouble?”

“Just looking for some information, ma’am. May I come in?”

“Oh! Of course.” She stood aside, then closed the door behind him. “I think Bea’s the supervisor. At least, she’s the one I always give instructions to. She’s in the family room right now.” She led Lyle across an acre of wall-to-wall, giving him a chance to appreciate her tight little tush. Probably did Pilates. Something about those exercises always gave women a nice, high—

“Bea!” They stepped down a few steps into the family room. A solidly built woman in jeans and a Maid for You shirt was wiping down an enormous window that showed the promised mountain view. “This officer wants to ask you a few questions. I’m going to give you some privacy. When you’re done, will you meet me in the kitchen, please?”

“Sure will, Mrs. Moore.” The homeowner vanished into what Lyle presumed was the kitchen.

“I’m Deputy Chief MacAuley of the MKPD,” he started.

Bea stuffed her cloth into a many-pocketed bucket and nodded. “Yeah, Jackie called me to let me know a cop would be coming around. You want to see Wendall, right?”

“That’s right. Does he expect me, too?”

“Nah. Everybody on the crew except the supervisor has to keep their cell off. Clients don’t want to pay to see somebody standing around yapping to a boyfriend or bookie. Wendall’s doing the power wash in the master bedroom. Follow me.” They went up a wide, glossy set of stairs, past another woman in a Maid for You shirt polishing the banister. “Please don’t touch anything,” Bea said as they turned on the landing. “Our guarantee is ‘No Fingerprint Left Behind.’”

As they walked along the upstairs hall, Lyle caught a glimpse of another Maid for You employee scrubbing a bathroom and a teenager sitting with a laptop in one of the bedrooms. “Do you usually work while the owners are at home?” he asked.

“Depends. Some clients”—Bea’s exaggerated emphasis on the words let Lyle know what she thought of them—“don’t trust us to be here on our own. We’re fully bonded, but, you know.”

“Ah hah.”

“A couple of the older clients, I swear they just hire us so they got someone to talk to once a week. Follow the crew around while we’re trying to clean. Kinda sweet, but it can drive you batty, you know? Here he is.”

The door at the end of the hall was open, and Lyle could hear a low, deep roar, like a vacuum. Except for the bed and some dressers, the master bedroom looked just like the family room—same giant windows, same acre of carpet, same wide-screen TV. Sullivan was running one of those rug-shampooing machines, wearing noise-canceling headphones. Bea walked over and tapped his shoulder.

Lyle watched as Sullivan caught sight of a police uniform. His eyes went round, and he started blinking fast. He switched off the shampoo machine and removed his headphones.

“Wendall, this officer wants to talk with you. Jackie says go ahead, tell him what he needs to know, you’ll still get your usual break time.” She turned back toward the door. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me. Remember”—she pointed at Lyle—“no fingerprints.”

When they were alone, Lyle smiled. “Hi, Wendall. I’m Lyle MacAuley, deputy chief over at the MKPD. Do you know why I wanted to talk with you?”

Sullivan swallowed. “I haven’t done anything.” He was a medium-sized guy who looked younger than twenty-seven: pink cheeks, smooth skin. Curly hair. He smiled nervously and a dimple popped in his cheek. Kids would trust him.

“Really? That’s not what I hear.”

Sullivan kept the smile pinned in place. Lyle could see the shine of sweat on his upper lip. “Somebody’s been trash-talking me? They’re full of it. I go to work, I pick up a few DVDs at the library, and I go home. I don’t go near no schools, or playgrounds, or nothing like that. I keep my nose clean.”

Lyle tugged on his lower lip. “Now that surprises me. It’s not like that last girl was a one-time deal, was it? You did four years federal time for taking a girl into Massachusetts.”

Sullivan flushed. “That’s my juvie record. That’s supposed to be sealed.”

“Then a year after your release, you reoffended. What was the second one? Seven? Eight?”

“Nobody proved I did anything to that girl. I was in for kidnapping, not for rape.”

“Yeah? Did they put you in general, then?” The general population of a prison—garden-variety dealers and thieves and killers—would tear apart child molesters. Special population offered safety, but also mind-numbing segregation and a complete lack of freedom. A prison within a prison. “The way I see it, you been out more’n a year now. You gotta see them everywhere, even if you are staying away from schools. Girls in the supermarket with their moms, riding their bikes, checking out books in the library. Must get pretty lonely after a while. Hard to resist.”

Sullivan wrapped his hands around the handle of the shampooing machine. His knuckles were white. “I don’t do that no more. I did a nickel in Fishkill, stuck in Special the whole time. I’m not going back there. I don’t care if I have to whack off for the rest of my life. I’m not going back.”

“Mikayla Johnson,” Lyle said.

Sullivan blinked rapidly. “Who?”

“Cute little girl. Eight. Used to live with her mother, Annie Johnson, until about six months ago. Since then she’s been in foster care with Ted and Helen MacAllen.”

Sullivan looked at the carpet. “Don’t know her.”

“Sorry?”

Sullivan raised his head. His mouth was flat and hard. “I don’t know her. I didn’t have nothing to do with her. I didn’t have nothing to do with nobody. If you think you got something, go ahead and take me in. Otherwise, I gotta get back to work.” He jammed the earphones on and started up the rug shampooer. This close, the machine sounded like a jet engine running up on a tarmac.

Lyle retreated. He didn’t have anything yet, but there was something there; sweating, twitching, then shutting down cold. Lyle clattered down the stairs, not touching anything as instructed, and found Bea dusting a shelf of golf trophies in what looked like a home office. “Everything okay?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “One question. Have you ever cleaned for a couple named Ted and Helen MacAllen? Big old house out on Crandell Hill Road in Millers Kill?”

She frowned. “Nope. Not that I can recall. But different people switch around on different teams. It depends on the days available and how many hours you want to work. You should check with Jackie. She could tell you if we take care of them.”

After two tries and getting nothing but a busy signal, Lyle decided it would be quicker to run back to Maid for You and talk to Jackie in person. On the way to Fort Henry, Lyle radioed the station and asked Noble Entwhistle to get started on the paperwork for a warrant to search Sullivan’s apartment. If he turned up something, he wanted to move fast. Sullivan had looked dead serious when he said he wasn’t going back to prison. If he had Mikayla Johnson, Lyle didn’t want to give the scumbag a chance to crawl back to whatever hidey-hole he was using and make sure the girl could never testify against him.

The owner of Maid for You was still holding a smoldering cigarette, still on the phone trying to sell someone on cleanliness being next to godliness. This time, Lyle leaned over her desk and said, “I need to speak with you right now.”

Her face pruned up. “Can I put you on hold for just a sec?” she said into the phone. “I have another client on the other line. Thanks.” She jabbed a button. “What?”

“Have you ever cleaned for Ted and Helen MacAllen? At 52 Crandell Hill Road?”

“Yeah. They’re once-monthly clients. Why?”

“Has Wendall Sullivan ever been on the team assigned to their house?”

“He is in trouble, isn’t he? Crap.” She turned to her computer screen. She clicked, scrolled, clicked again. “Yeah. Yeah, he was on D team the last three times they were there. Goddammit. Did he steal something? Because we’re fully—”

Lyle was out the door and in his unit before she could finish. He raised Harlene this time. “Sullivan cleaned house for the MacAllens.” He flipped on his red lights. “I’m going to bring him in. He might spill if we lean on him, but I wouldn’t count on it. Tell Noble I want that warrant request ready to take to Judge Ryswick when I get there.”

He drove a bit above the speed limit, without sirens. It had just started snowing—not heavy, but enough to make the road slick. He was thinking about the search, and where Sullivan might have stashed the kid, and realizing they just might be able to wrap the whole thing up without having to drag Russ away from his honeymoon. Back at Mountain View, he swung in behind the van and its line of cars.

“You again.” The lady of the house didn’t look very happy to see him.

“Yes, ma’am. May I…?” He strode past her, through the football-field living room.

“I have to say this is disrupting our Saturday routine!” She trotted after him.

“Bea?” he called. The supervisor popped out of the kitchen.

“And it’s making me have second thoughts about the reliability of your cleaning service!”

Bea gave him a look that said
See what I have to put up with?

“Where’s Sullivan?”

Bea pointed toward the door. The line of beater cars, he realized. One of them was—“He told me he was too shaken up to work,” the supervisor said. “He’s gone.”

6.

Hector DeJean hadn’t been home that morning. Hadley and Flynn had found his address easily enough, a double-wide on a country road in Cossayuharie. What would have been the attached garage had been converted into a business, with two cars parked out front and enough room for at least three more. The sign overhead read
DEDE’S DO AND DYE
. Next to the beauty shop, a good-sized cruiser was cradled in a boat trailer, its lines obscured by winter shrink-wrap. “Huh,” Flynn said. “He’s gone from a junkie to a successful businesswoman. Maybe he has reformed.”

“Men don’t reform.” Hadley was in no mood to give any guy the benefit of the doubt after last night’s disaster. “They just get better at covering their tracks.”

Flynn gave her a look but didn’t respond. When they entered the shop, the bell tinkled. It looked a lot like the salon Hadley went to—shampoo sink, three chairs, posters of edgy hairstyles that no one in Millers Kill would ever wear.

“Be right with you!” A slim woman with fire-engine red hair was bent over an old lady, winding perm rods into her silver hair. She gave a last squirt and twist, stripped off her gloves, and turned around. She frowned when she saw them. She patted her customer on the shoulder. “I’m setting the timer, Mrs. Bain,” she yelled. “You just sit here and relax.” She handed the woman a magazine and walked over to Flynn and Hadley. “Deaf as a post,” she said in a normal tone of voice. “Nice lady, though. Good tipper.”

“We’re looking for Hector DeJean,” Flynn said.

“Of course you are. Who’s complaining this time? His meth-head ex? Her parents?”

“Is he here?” Flynn said.

“No, he’s not here. He’s at work. He’s a driver for DHS Deliveries. He leaves before dawn every morning and works hard all day making a better life for us.” She braced her fists against her hips. “He’ll be home by four. You can come back and talk with him then, but whatever they told you, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

Hadley was about to ask about Mikayla, but Flynn cut her off. “Thanks very much, Ms.…”

“It’s Mrs. Mrs. DeJean.” The redhead held up her left hand to display a gold band. “This is a God-fearing Christian home. We’re not living together like animals, thank you very much.”

“Okay. Mrs. DeJean. We’ll be back at four.”

“That was not what I expected,” Hadley said as they walked back to the squad car.

“I guess he found Jesus as well as anger management in the pen.” Flynn sounded bemused. “Let’s track down some less God-fearing associates of Johnson and see what we can shake loose.”

They didn’t shake loose much. They found a small-scale dealer who lived on Depot Street who said Annie Johnson used to come around once in a while, but he hadn’t seen her in months. They canvassed her apartment house, got a few names or descriptions of people who had been seen with her, and followed up on as many of them as they could find. One skinny, hollow-eyed girl told them Annie had stopped hanging out and had gotten serious about finding money in the past year. They found one guy with a prison-gym body working behind the counter at Stewart’s who had heard she’d gotten in with a pretty heavy crowd.

“What’s your impression?” Flynn asked. They had picked up a couple of coffees while they were at the Stewart’s, and they were parked in a turnout on the Cossayuharie Road.

“Why are you asking me? You’re the one with the drug squad experience.” Flynn had been the MKPD officer detailed to the Capital Area Drug Enforcement Agency.

He blew on his coffee. “I want to know what you think.”

“Ugh. You sound like the chief.”

He grinned.

“Okay. Most junkies or meth heads, from what I understand, are just small-time dealers if they’re also using. Eventually, they give up on the dealing altogether, because they use their own stuff faster than they can sell it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Annie Johnson seems to have gone in a different direction. From what her folks said, she’s been using for years. But she’s not hanging around with the small fry. It doesn’t look like she’s turning tricks or stealing to pay for her next hit.”

“Right. Instead, she’s smurfing in a big way.”

“It’s got to take a lot of money up front to buy that much pseudoephedrine. I mean, have you priced that stuff lately? I had to get some generic kid’s decongestant for Genny last month and it cost me like nine bucks.”

“We don’t know if it’s all been paid for. When the state lab finishes running down the bar codes, they’ll be able to tell us.”

“Yeah, but even so.” She took a drink of her coffee. The first snowflakes of the predicted dump were starting to fall. “I think she’s hooked up with a much bigger fish. Somebody who’s running a commercial lab, not home brew. He supplies her with the money and just enough product to keep her hanging around.”