“Jesus. And what does this have to do with you?”
“Sarah.”
“Look, tell her to get a good lawyer.”
I laughed. “Yeah, fat chance in this town.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll see what there is, but the services are probably mostly in the city. I can’t imagine there’s much like that up in Braynor.”
“And one last thing.”
“Shoot.”
“Does the name Orville Thorne mean anything to you?”
Sarah took a moment. “No. Should it?”
“He’s the local police chief, and from the moment I’ve gotten here it’s been bugging me. He reminds me of someone, and I can’t figure out who. I feel like maybe I’ve run into him before someplace, like maybe doing a story for the paper, or something. I thought, if that was the case, maybe you’d recognize it.”
“Hang on,” Sarah said. I could hear her tapping some keys. “I’m just keying the name into the system.” She was referring to the paper’s library system. If we’d ever run a story with Thorne’s name in it, it would come up. “Is that Thorne with an ‘e’?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s nothing,” she said.
“Google?” I said, glancing at Dad’s computer. I could have checked myself. But Sarah was already on it.
“Absolutely nothing,” Sarah said.
“Okay, thanks. It was worth a shot.”
“Can you send me a picture?” Sarah said.
“What?”
“A picture. Maybe I’d recognize him, too, even if the name doesn’t ring a bell.”
I glanced over to the shelf where Dad’s digital camera sat. I knew Dad used his computer to send guests pictures he’d taken of them with their catch.
“I might be able to pull off something like that,” I said. “Leave it with me. Listen, while you’re keying in names, I’ve got another one for you.”
“Fire away.”
“Timmy Wickens. Maybe Timothy Wickens. Or Tim Wickens. If he’d ever been arrested, it’d probably be Timothy.”
“Arrested?”
“Sarah.”
“Okay, hang on. Nothing in our own files. Let me check Google… Okay, there’s a writer…”
“I don’t think that’s him.”
“And a hairdresser in Reno.”
“Definitely not.”
“And a story here, from, like, five, six years ago, it’s just one name among a dozen, bunch of people arrested for causing a disturbance at a Holocaust memorial event in Pittsburgh. They were Holocaust deniers.”
“Read me some of the names.” I grabbed a pen and Dad’s yellow legal pad and began scribbling.
“Uh, other than Wickens, there’s Randall Stilton, Gregory Bent, Michael Decker, Charlene Zundman-”
“Hang on. Charlene? What was that?”
Sarah repeated it. Then she read the rest of the names, all of which I made note of, but no other ones rang any bells.
“Anything else come up?”
“Nothing,” Sarah said. Then, with more gentleness in her voice than before, “Zack, you’re being careful, right?”
“Of course,” I said.
“There’s nothing dangerous going on up there, is there?”
“Of course not,” I lied.
“Because, I’ve had enough, you know?”
“Sure,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Lately, you seem to have this knack for attracting trouble.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “those days are over.”
17
MY NEXT CALL was to Lawrence Jones.
I got his machine when I phoned his home/office. I left a message, saying I would try his cell, which I then did.
“Jones,” he said.
“It’s Zack,” I said.
“Zack, my man, how’s it going?” In the background I could hear some piano, probably one of Lawrence’s jazz CDs.
“Pretty good, you know, more or less.”
“Yeah, well, people don’t usually call me unless they’ve got a problem, so I’m guessing you’re going to work up to it slowly.”
“Am I catching you at a bad time?”
“Just sitting in my car, listening to some Oscar Peterson, parked down the street from a motel where Mr. Corporate Executive is boffing his secretary, and by the time I get the photos back to his missus he’s going to be a lot more agreeable when it comes to working out the terms of the divorce.”
“I didn’t know you did that kind of work.”
“Oh, Zack, I bet you still believe there’s a tooth fairy, too.”
“This is a long-term job you’re working on?”
“I’ll be done soon as this guy walks out and gives his sweetie a kiss goodbye for the camera.”
“You got anything lined up next?”
“Zack, there’s always work. We live in cynical times. Did you know that people don’t trust each other anymore? It’s a very disturbing development, but it pays the bills. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m up in Braynor. You know Braynor.”
“I know I got called one all the time when I was in high school. The teachers thought I might be gifted, and I always did my homework. Of course, I also got ‘browner,’ but that might have had more to do with my skin tone.”
“Braynor’s an hour and a half north of the city. Lakes and mountains. Fishing. Wildlife.”
“Sounds nice. I’m not due for a vacation.”
“I’m up here at my dad’s place. He’s got some cabins he rents out. Lawrence, there’s a whole lot of shit going on up here and I think I could use your help.”
“I see. What sort of shit?”
“Well, there’s some people up here you might find interesting. They think the world’s going to hell in a handcart because of blacks and gays.”
“Hmmm,” said Lawrence. “That makes me a kind of double-header worst nightmare for them. Tell me more.”
I did.
“I could come up tonight, maybe tomorrow,” Lawrence said.
“I haven’t cleared this with Dad,” I said. “But I think he’d be prepared to hire you. He was ready to pay a lawyer. And if he’s a bit short, I can-”
“Zack, shut up. Every day I get, I thank you.”
I swallowed. “Okay.”
When I was finished talking to Lawrence, I found Dad plopped onto the couch, reading the Braynor Times I’d bought him at the grocery store.
“Poured you your coffee,” he said, nose in the paper. “Cream and sugar’s already in it.”
I grabbed my mug off the counter and sat down opposite him. “I’ve called in the cavalry,” I said.
“I figured, with your newspaper connections, it’d be Superman,” Dad said.
I told him about Lawrence Jones. That he was an ex-cop, an experienced private investigator, and, as a bonus in dealing with whatever the Wickenses might throw at us, black and gay.
“That’s comforting,” Dad said. “We’re gonna be rescued by a poofster.” I decided to let that one go, figuring Lawrence himself would be able to dispel the stereotypes once he got here.
As I took a sip of my coffee, Dad said, “I did a little checking on the Internet while you were outside.”
“Yeah?” The notion of Dad surfing the net was still difficult to imagine.
“I looked up ammonium nitrate. Fertilizer.”
I said, “Go on.”
“What McVeigh did was, he used four thousand pounds of the stuff and mixed it with diesel fuel, and some blasting caps, then put everything in fifty-five-gallon plastic drums, loaded it up into that Ryder truck, lit a fuse, and ran like stink.”
“I’ll bet,” I said, “even if you stole a lot less than four thousand pounds of that stuff, you could still make a hell of an explosion.”
“I suspect,” Dad said.
“A day ago, you didn’t even want to consider the possibility that something other than a bear ripped that man apart, and now look where your mind’s taking you.”
“You haven’t thought the same thing?”
“Of course I’ve thought the same thing. You know what kind of paranoid I am. I’m this close to pinning the Lindbergh kidnapping on the Wickenses. But we don’t have anything to suggest that Wickens had a thing to do with the murder of Tiff Riley. If we hadn’t seen that picture of Timothy McVeigh on their wall, hanging where most people might hang a picture of Jesus Christ, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. You know, the Wickenses aren’t the only crazy people in the world, probably not the only crazy people in this county.”