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CHAPTER 11
Beside his desk, Dean found Jeremy waiting for him. Dean nodded, grabbed his coat off the back of the chair, and pointed to the exit. Halfway toward the door, he patted his coat and realized his flask was still in his desk. He jogged back, slid open the bottom drawer and, with his back turned to the rest of the station, stuffed the half-full flask into his inside coat pocket.
When he turned around, Etheridge was wrapping his coat around the back of his chair, a small styrofoam cup of coffee on the desk. Jeremy was standing beside Laura’s desk. As Dean walked back, Jeremy opened the door and stepped outside.
Once in Dean’s car, Jeremy broke the silence. “So a homicide, eh?”
“Yeah. Here’s the file.” Dean handed it to him. He started the car. “We’re still waiting on the Doc’s report. Should have it today.” A stream of cold air rushed out of the vents. Dean turned down the heater. “It’ll warm up fast.”
Jeremy opened the folder. “Where we going first?”
“Let’s start at McCord’s.”
Dean pulled out of his parking space, crunching over the snow and gravel. He turned onto the square and kept on High Street for four blocks before turning onto Fox Street. Two blocks down, McCord’s Body Shop sat back from the street. A half-dozen cars sat in front of the body shop. The mayor had long tried to adjust the ordinances to prevent the unsightly view, but Charlie McCord found a rare ally in Joe Banks, whose own business was a similar eyesore.
Dean parked the car in the lot. He left it running and looked over at Jeremy. “So you’ll need to look at the photos and evidence we collected at the site. You will probably want to go out there to see it for yourself today or tomorrow.”
“Makes sense. What do we have that you can tell me?”
“Right. Billy Nimitz walked into that clearing. We’re not sure from where. We haven’t found his car yet, and we’re not sure when he got there. Obviously, some time after he was last seen by his friends on the second. Somewhere along the way in the woods, he jacks his knee and ankle. Doc Cotton says there’s no way he was going to run. Painful to walk. So he leans against a tree. His knee’s probably throbbing.
“Someone else comes into the clearing. Sees Billy. Puts a bullet in his head. Probably dropped the gun, but we need to wait on ballistics. Billy has a thirty-eight in his pocket. Was buried deep in it. Both the Doc and I missed it with all the coats and gloves. There’s a copy of The Communist Manifesto in his front coat pocket. When I check Billy’s closet at his parent’s house, I find a crap load of cash and a copy of The Communist Manifesto.”
“He was a pinko?”
“Probably best to leave it as, ‘We found a copy of the book.’”
“How much cash?”
“Nearly twenty thousand.”
“Jesus.” Jeremey rubbed his chin.
“So was he meeting someone out there?”
“Or did he come across someone?” Dean turned off the ignition. “No way of knowing right now. That said, I don’t know why you’d go out there—no trails, nothing—unless you’re meeting someone, right?”
“So he could’ve jacked his knee if he were running away.”
Dean nodded. “Yeah, he could’ve. So let’s go with the probabilities: he was meeting someone. But is that the killer or just the reason he’s out in the woods?”
“Meaning, maybe the killer was not there to kill Billy but whoever he was meeting?”
Dean gave a thumbs up and opened the car door to a rush of cold air.
They got out of the car and walked up to the front of McCord’s. Dean rubbing his gloved hands together while Jeremy stuffed his deep in his coat pockets and brought his shoulders in tight.
The garage doors were closed, but through the grimy windows, Dean could make out two cars and shapes of people. The brick facade had been painted white years ago and not touched since. They walked into the front entrance—the bell hanging on the inside dinging—and the smell of auto grease and oil hit Dean immediately. The concrete floor was covered in a film of black grime accumulated over the years. A small counter with a cash register sat on the right. On the left stood a set of shelves with Pennzoil, Havolene, Castrol, and Marathon oil cans. A door behind the counter led to the garage.
Jeremy pulled his hands out of his pockets and stood beside the counter. Dean stood close to the entrance door.
Charlie McCord—former tight end for the Zion Panthers—ducked as he walked through the door. He wore a gray coverall with the dark blue McCord Body Shop logo embroidered on the left chest. Stray black hairs from his balding head fell down toward the back. Thick sideburns were peppered with more gray than black. He held a thick, short cigar at the side of his mouth, the leaf wet with his chewing on it. “Ah, this ‘bout Billy?” He wiped his hands on a grimy, red rag.
Jeremy looked at Dean and when he realized Dean was not going to say anything said, “It is Charlie. Did you hear?”
“I heard he was found out at the Pratt farm. That’s it. Sad to hear. What happened?” He set the cigar on the edge of the counter.
“He was killed,” said Dean.
Charlie’s eyebrows lifted and he took in a short breath. “God, that’s awful.” He pulled a stool, silver with a red vinyl seat, over and plopped heavily onto it.
“It is. It is. And we’re doing some follow up now that we know it’s not a missing person’s case.”
“Sure. Sure. How can I help?”
“Tell me about Billy.”
“Of course. Anything I can do. Billy was a good kid. He started working for me, um, let’s see, it’s probably been five years. Didn’t know a thing when he started. But we were training him. Getting him up to speed. He started as a helper, basically. Cleaning up. Grabbing parts and tools. Checking people in and out. Calling them. That kind of stuff. Over time, we got him changing oil, which we do for a few of the ladies in town, you know. He started to learn how to fix dents and rust. He painted his first car not too long before.” Charlie hung his head and shook it. “Damn. I liked that boy.” He looked back up at Dean, still shaking his head.
Dean said, “How was he? I mean what was he like?”
“Nice. Nice kid. If I had a daughter, I’d let her date him.”
“Anything odd the day he disappeared? Or the weeks prior.”
Charlie looked down at the counter, frowned, and shook his head. “No. Everything seemed normal. I didn’t talk to him much beyond work, mind you.”
Dean grimaced and cocked his head to the side. “So when I talked to William’s parents last night, they said he’d never shown up to work.” He noticed the quick and focused glances between him and Guthrie.
Charlie picked up the cigar. “I think they, um, well, have it wrong. He did show up. Late. But he showed. He showed.” He rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Yeah, I mean he was late.”
“Okay. What time did he show up?”
“Hold on.” Charlie held up a finger, stood up, and walked to the door that led to the garage. He opened it, leaned out and reached for something, his head and arm disappearing behind the wall.
Dean raised his hand casually into his coat pocket, hand on his pistol, unsnapping the button strap in a singular, practiced motion.
Charlie leaned back in, looking at a timecard in his hand. Dean dropped his hand.
The former football player looked over the card, tapped it with his middle finger. “He came in around nine. Clocked out at five-thirty.”
“Why was he late?”
“I don’t know. I’m flexible, you see. My boys put in their hours, they get the work done.” He looked up. “I’m sorry if his folks got the wrong impression about him not being here. They were pretty upset though.”
“Sure. I think they were.”
Jeremy, who had been taking notes, asked, “What about his friends? You know them?”
“Nah. I didn’t.”
“Billy had a girlfriend, right?”
“Yeah, he talked about her. I can’t remember her name. Susan. Sarah. Something like that.”
“Sarah Esposito?”
Charlie snapped his fingers and pointed at Jeremy. “That’s it.”
“You know her?” asked Dean.
“Nah. I seen her around town I guess. But I didn’t know her.”
“Tell me about the day he went missing.”
“Just a normal day. Except for that, of course. I got to the shop my normal time.”
“Which is?”
“Six. Always been an early riser.”
“Sure.”
“So I get here and start to open up shop. The guys start coming in normal time. Eight. I want them here at eight. Well, Billy’s as prompt as the rest of them, so when eight-thirty rolls around, I’m thinking he must be sick or something. So I called his home. He lived with his parents, you know?”
Dean and Jeremy nodded.
“Anyways, they tell me they hadn’t seen him since the day before.” Charlie stuffed the rag into his back pocket. “That’s the last I know. Well, like I said, he did show up. Left on time. That’s it. Then Jeremy here shows up with his questions.”
“Were you guys working on anything before the holiday?” asked Dean. “Or did anything odd happen over the past few weeks?”
“Nothing odd. No. Not that—no. Hold on.” Charlie reached down behind the counter and pulled out a battered metal box. He lifted the latch and started thumbing through a list of index cards. “I keep everything sorted here. Insurance, you know?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Charlie kept flipping. “Ah, here.” He pulled out an index card and gave it to Jeremy. “So this would have been that Friday before the weekend. The twenty-ninth. And the second, when we all got back. Mrs. Hendrickson’s car.” He reached over and tapped her name on the card Jeremy was holding. “She’d slid into a tree. Real light. She wasn’t going fast or anything. But she banged up her passenger door. We were fixing that.” He kept flipping. “And Mr. Davis. Chris. Yeah, he wanted to repaint his Corvette.”
Everyone knew Chris Davis and his Corvette, a silver 1974 Stingray Coupe. Davis and his brother, Jack, ran the biggest law firm in Zion—anything from wills to injury lawsuits.
“Nothing odd about those, though,” said Charlie. “I know you guys are wanting to find something odd, something that’ll give you an answer or a direction or whatever, but I ain’t got it here. Everything was normal. Absolutely normal.”
“How much overtime did William work?” asked Dean.
Charlie tilted his head and squinted. “None. None at all.”
“None?”
Charlie shook his head.
Jeremy looked at Dean, who nodded toward the door. Jeremy said, “Thanks, Charlie.”
“Sure. Sure thing.”
Just as Jeremy was getting ready to step outside, Dean looked back at Charlie and asked, “Did Billy have any money issues you know of?”
Charlie slid the stool back to its corner. “No, not that I know of.”
“What about his political views? You guys ever discuss that?”
Charlie looked at Dean, one eye squinting in confusion.
“You know. Republican? Democrat?” Dean shrugged. “Socialist?”
“I don’t know. We never talked about it.”
“Thanks.” Dean walked out into the cold air, followed by Guthrie. They got into the car and started it. It was still warm enough to start cranking out warm air.
“So what do you think?” asked Guthrie.
Dean leaned back in the seat, the vinyl creaking. “We’ll see. Seemed pretty straightforward other than that he didn’t show up, he showed up late discrepancy. But I can see upset parents making that mistake.”
His partner, Dean did not know what else to call Guthrie now, shook his head and tapped the pen he still held in his right hand on the dash.
Dean smiled, sat upright, and put the car into gear. “Let’s talk to the Canadians.”
* * *
Dean sat at his desk, and Guthrie sat at his. Both were on there telephone, on the same line. Dean gave Guthrie a thumbs up and called Renard Desplains at the Sûreté du Québec. Renard, a longtime detective, also worked as the U.S.-liaison officer out of Montreal, a couple of hours north of Zion.
“Bonjour ceci est lieutenant Renard Desplains de la Sûreté du Québec,” said the rough voice of the French-Canadian Renard.
“Renard, this is Dean Wallace of Zion. In the States.”
A short pause. “Ah, oui, oui.” Renard and Dean knew each other casually, having participated in several cross-border conferences, meetings, and an investigation since his return to Zion.
“Look, I’m calling about a murder down here in Zion. I have my partner, Jeremy Guthrie on the line as well.”
“A murder?” The distinctive ticking of a lighter.
“Yep. One of Zion’s folks got themselves murdered. Thing is, it was really close to the border. Less than a mile. We think there were footprints leading to the border, but with the snow, wind, and some melting, it was at best a guess.”
“How long ago?”
“The person disappeared the day after New Year’s Day. The second. He was almost certainly killed that night. A William ‘Billy’ Nimitz. Aged twenty-five. I’ll send you a picture. He worked at an auto shop down here in Zion.”
“I see. How can I help?”
“Well, thing is, I found a lot of cash in his home, tucked away in the closet. Way more than what one earns at a body shop working normal hours.”
Renard took in a long drag. “You think drugs?”
“That’s a possibility, yeah.”
“Oui, that would make sense.”
“So I’m calling, to see if you know or can keep an eye out for anything close to the border down here near Zion.”
Renard muttered something quickly in French, covered the mouthpiece, and then came back. “Désolé. I will. I will ask around, but it is a long shot, you know, eh?”
“Yeah, yeah. What about drug trafficking?”
“We have seen the normal. Heroin mostly between here and there.”
“Anybody or groups specifically?”
“The normal. You are aware of these, eh?”
“Yeah, I think we’re on the same page there.”
“Excellent.”
“Hmmm.” Dean put a cigarette in his mouth. “The only thing I can’t figure is the copy of The Communist Manifesto with the cash.”
“Pardon?” Renard covered the mouthpiece but less effectively this time. Someone was wanting to speak to him. “Désolé. What’s this?”
“I found a copy of The Communist Manifesto with all the cash. And a copy of that book in his front coat pocket when we found the body.”
“Oui, oui. Look, I must go. But have you spoken to the FBI? Ciao.”
The line went dead.
The FBI? What was Renard talking about?
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