On the last few bites, Jac’s cell-phone rang. Bob Stratton with news on the Pontiac registration.
‘Traces back to a holding company of no other than Adelay Roche himself. And the guy driving is one Nelson Timothy Malley, forty-six years of age, down as Head of Security at Roche’s Houma refinery. I’ll get the photos messengered over to you this afternoon.’
A chill ran through Jac with the information. ‘Answers not only who’s been following me, but who apart from Larry Durrant might have killed Jessica Roche.’ Jac swilled back a residue of chewed rye with a gulp of orange juice, but suddenly found it harder swallowing. ‘Looks like the police should have kept doing what they normally do: looking closer to home.’
‘That’s one interpretation, Jac. But don’t get too carried away. The other is that Roche simply wants to know your every move: is convinced that Durrant killed his wife and wants to ensure you don’t get him freed at the last moment on some technicality or rabbit out the hat. Guys as powerful as Roche, seen many a time where they wouldn’t even leave it just to the police, would take justice into their own hands.’
‘So steam-rollering over yours truly in the middle wouldn’t present much of a problem?’
‘True.’ Stratton chuckled lightly. ‘Though there’s another interpretation there, too: we can’t say for sure that they tried to kill you; all we do know is that they’ve been nosin’ and had your phone bugged. The police might have been right on that score: maybe it was just an accident.’
Now it was Jac’s turn to say ‘True,’ but with no laugh attached. He could still feel the cold darkness of the lake shiver through him. Attaching blame, giving it a home, maybe he’d be able to rid himself of it. Or perhaps it meant that he’d keep shivering, because they were still hanging over him like a shadow, listening in on his phone, silently watching, waiting for the next time to try and kill him.
That shiver ran deeper still when, three hours later, the envelope arrived at Jac’s office and he looked at the photos inside. Another for the gallery of Jessica Roche’s possible murderers: Larry Durrant, the mystery e-mailer, now Roche’s henchman: Nelson Malley.
At least it was one bit of positive news after the two rapid name-strikes of earlier, one more shade filled in. Know thy enemy.
Though as quickly countered, the pendulum again swinging the other way, when Ted Levereaux phoned early evening, not long after he returned from work, and told him, sorry, in the end he couldn’t remember anything either. ‘Racked my brain every which way… but nothin’. Nothin’’
Another strike against.
Jac felt weary, tired, his nerves shot from the rollercoaster ride of the past days.
His hand shook as he crossed out Levereaux’ name and looked at the two names remaining: Lenny Rillet and Lorraine Gilliam, the waitress that worked the other shift to Rillet.
Rillet said that he’d phone if he managed to find his old diaries. He’d told Jac and Mack Elliot in parting to say a prayer in thanks to Larry, because that was the only reason he was letting them go. ‘Always felt a sorta kinship with Larry, even more so when he wen’ inside. So I’m curious to see how this one plays out… if you’re gonna be able to save his ass or not?’ But Jac doubted that Rillet would phone. What, you want to not get shot and get a phone call? Lorraine Gilliam’s phone simply didn’t answer, and Mack Elliott wasn’t hopeful that she’d remember anything: ‘Dizzy blonde, if yo’ know what I mean — ‘xcept she was a red-head. Had trouble even recallin’ half the drinks orders in the distance just from the tables to the bar.’
Jac felt lonely, cold and deflated that night. Lonely and cold because Alaysha wasn’t there, had taken Molly to her mom’s for dinner and to stay the night while she worked: her regular four-night-a-week ritual. And deflated from the day’s let-downs and the scant remaining options.
He could have done with sharing his woes with Alaysha, felt her hugging and reassuring him; and, in turn, he’d have reassured her about Gerry, told her that the restraining order arriving in the asshole’s lap the next day would surely stop him in his tracks. Hopefully soothe the lines on her brow and the quiver he’d seen on her lips when he’d come back from Rillet’s and she’d told him about Gerry’s second visit.
Jac reached for the brandy bottle to warm himself and lift his spirits, but stopped short after two heavy measures, tucking the bottle back in the cabinet. He knew that if he kept it close, he’d probably half finish it.
But it was enough, with the hectic, wearying day, to slide him into a doze not long after dinner; and so when his cell-phone rang at some stage later — Jac didn’t know how long, he’d lost track of time — it took him a moment to orientate himself.
Lenny Rillet’s voice, coarse and throaty, as if he’d just woken from the dark tomb that was his crack house.
‘That be the same Jac McElroy pinchin’ his ass that he still alive?’ Sharp, rattling chuckle from Rillet. ‘ ‘Cause I thought you’d like t’be the first to know — I foun’ those diaries.’
Leonard Truelle was only twenty yards into the dusk light of the side-street, heading towards his car, when the blow came to his lower back, feeling like someone had hit him with a sledgehammer, his legs buckling as the pain shot up his spine and lanced like an ice-pick through his skull.
Then another blow quickly after, sending his pain sensors into overload as the breath left his body in a strangled groan and he fell to his knees. Something was slipped over his head then, some sort of fabric, the smell of cotton pleasant, welcoming; but the darkness he was plunged into, suddenly not being able to see anything, was decidedly unwelcome, frightening.
Aware now of sound and movement for the first time, rustling, shuffling — they seemed to have come out of nowhere behind him and he hadn’t heard any approach — one person, no, two, he realized, as he felt himself being lifted and carried. But still no voices, nothing said between themselves or to him, which somehow made it all the more terrifying.
No more than eight or ten paces before a car door was opened and he was thrown brusquely into the back — Truelle trying to recall which cars he’d seen close by as it started up and pulled out. He could feel mucus on his chin, or maybe he’d vomited without realizing it, and the pain in his back had now spread like burning oil to his stomach, razor shards shooting up his spine as his body lurched with two sharp turns, one after the other. A long flat stretch for a while, a half mile or more, and a voice finally came from the front.
‘You know, you should never have had those phone bugs cleared, otherwise we wouldn’t have to do this now.’
Nel M. As much as Nel-M’s voice made Truelle’s skin crawl each time, he felt an odd sense of relief hearing it now: a face at least put to one of his abductors. Two faceless abductors would have been more ominous, worrying. Better the devil you know.
‘We’ve become concerned about what you might have been saying. Because we simply don’t know any more. And that makes us worry perhaps more than we should.’ Nel-M had got part of the idea when he’d looked in his car mirror the other night and seen the hood being taken off McElroy. The other part had been from an interview with Truelle in a psychiatric journal that Roche had got hold of, in which Truelle had talked about drawing out patient’s fears and phobias, with a brief aside about his own fear of heights. ‘Do you like dancing, Leonard?’
‘What? What the hell are yoouuu — ’ A cough rose from the back of Truelle’s throat and became a brief coughing fit that he thought for a second would lapse into retching.