“He visited the car wash before he came here.”
“There was something wrong about him,” Harold said.
“How so?”
“Just an idea that struck me as soon as he got out of the van,” Harold said. “It was like he hadn’t made up his mind about something. It’s just me and the kid — Andy — working this morning, and he was around back smoking…well, smoking. So it’s just me and this guy and his eyes keep wandering around the yard, like, I don’t know, maybe he wants to make sure it’s just him and me. Then Andy appears, and I see something change behind his eyes. Like he made up his mind right then to sell me the van.”
“Instead of?”
“Who knows?” Harold shrugged, ashamed of himself, Raymer could tell. “I don’t normally have such thoughts. It’s probably the…”
“The what?”
“I’m kind of ashamed to admit it.”
“I’m not here about you, Mr. Proxmire, if that helps.”
“It does, a little. I’ve got this thing growing in my head. A cyst. Fibrous, they say, not cancer. But they can’t operate. Anyway, I get these headaches.”
“And smoking dope helps.”
“It does. A little, anyways. I know the kid shouldn’t be smoking, but I can’t very well tell him he can’t when I do. Without him I wouldn’t even know how to get it.”
“I assume there’s paperwork on this vehicle?”
“There is. I’m on the up-and-up here, mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“Well, this is the car business.”
Harold’s office was the living room of a single-wide mobile home. He handed Raymer the van’s title, which he hadn’t even had time to file yet. Raymer wasn’t sure what a title issued by the state of Georgia was supposed to look like, but something felt off about the weight of the paper this particular document was printed on. The owner was identified as Mark Ringwald.
“How much did you give him?”
“Thirteen hundred. I told him the van was shot, even before this latest accident. Over two hundred thousand miles. I’d basically be using it for parts. I figured he’d want to dicker, but he didn’t. He seemed more interested in me paying in cash. That should’ve made me suspicious right there.”
“You keep that kind of cash around?”
Harold pointed to an ancient safe in the corner. “Have to, in this business.”
“So how’d he leave? In a taxi?”
“Andy gave him a lift in the tow truck.”
“To Bath?”
“Schuyler. The train station. Said he needed to be in Albany by early afternoon.”
“And this was when?”
“Couple hours ago?”
“Is this Andy still here?”
They went outside and Harold hollered for the boy, who appeared from in between rows of junkers. Raymer could smell the marijuana on him from thirty feet away.
“Yo,” he said, eyeing Raymer nervously.
Harold regarded the kid and sighed deeply. “Andy,” he said, “the person you’re addressing here is Mr. Raymer. He’s the chief of police in Bath.”
The boy stood up straighter. “Oh,” he said. “Yo, sir.”
“He wants to ask you about the man who sold us the van.”
Now it was the kid’s turn to sigh. “All I bought was a couple ounces. For my own personal use, I swear.” His eyes flickered over to Harold for just a second, then returned to Raymer.
“Andy?” Raymer said, kind of liking the kid. He might be a stoner, but he’d just had the opportunity to throw his boss under the bus and he hadn’t.
“Yeah?”
“For future reference? It’s better not to answer questions until they’re asked.”
“Yeah, okay,” the boy said. “I can see how that would work.” But then he surprised him by taking a quick step backward and pointing at Raymer’s hand. “Dude,” he said. “Are you, like, a holy man?”
His palm, Raymer realized, was bleeding. Apparently he’d been scratching it again, and the fingernails of his left hand were rust colored. “Far from it,” Raymer assured him. “So, Mr. Proxmire says you took the owner of the van to the train station.”
The kid nodded but kept staring at Raymer’s hand, even when he turned the palm away. “Bill, yeah.”
“He told you his name was Bill?”
“Yeah.”
Raymer put the hand behind his back, which caused the kid to blink and then finally meet his eye. “What’d you talk about?”
“I told him the bus was way cheaper, but he said he had a thing for trains.”
“What else?”
He glanced at Harold again. “He offered me a job if I wanted to come with him.”
“Doing?”
“Steady work, was all he said. But I told him I’m not really, like, allowed to leave the county. And he said, ‘You gonna spend your whole life doing what other people say?’ and I said, ‘No, but like I’m really not allowed to leave the county,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you mentioned that,’ and I said, ‘What’s in the box?’ because he’d set his backpack on the floor, but he was holding this box on his knees like it was real important and he wanted me to ask what it was, so I did, and he said if I came to work for him maybe he’d tell me, but I said, ‘I’m not kidding, if I leave the county I’m in, like, mega-trouble,’ and he said, ‘That’s three times now you’ve told me that,’ and I said, ‘Here we are, this is the train station.’ ”
“He said he was going to Albany?”
“Yeah, and then somewheres else, Chicago or Denver, someplace like that.”
“He volunteered this, or you asked him?”
“He said to come look him up when they let me leave the county, like I could just show up in Chicago or Denver and there he’d be. You gonna arrest me?”
“Not today.”
“Thanks, dude,” Andy said, clearly relieved, but then alarmed again because Raymer had allowed his hand to slip back into view. “You know, you might really be a holy man. You got the mark, dude. It’s right there, plain as day.”
“You think so?”
“That’s what my mother would say. She’s real religious.”
“Okay, then I got a message for you.”
“From who? Like God or something?”
“Or something,” Raymer said, holding out his stigmata. “Lay off the weed.”
“Okay, I will,” the kid said. “I mean it, too.”
Back in the SUV, Dougie said, Are you understanding all this, or do I need to paint you a fucking picture?
I get it, Raymer told him.
—
THE TRAIN STATION IN Schuyler Springs was little more than a brick hut and a concrete platform. The small indoor waiting room was empty. A couple sat on the bench outside, the woman asleep with her head on the man’s shoulder. Four trains a day ran between Albany and Montreal, two north, two south. The first of the Albany-bound trains had departed an hour ago and the next wasn’t until late afternoon.
Raymer showed his badge at the ticket window. “Nice likeness of you in the paper this morning,” the man said.
Sensing that Dougie was about to offer a rude rejoinder, Raymer closed his mouth and swallowed hard, which seemed to do the trick. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m looking for a guy who might’ve bought a ticket to Albany this morning. Medium height and build. Wearing a white T-shirt, stretched and yellowing at the collar. Eyes kind of heavy lidded, like he’s half asleep. Probably wearing a backpack, possibly carrying a small box or Styrofoam cooler.”
“Sorry. Not ringing a bell. You can buy tickets from the machine, though,” he said, pointing at one just inside the door.
“Does it take cash?”