This time, he did look at me. “You caught me when I did it last.”
Clever answer. I smiled. “Okay. Here’re the ground rules. We need to have some questions answered, but it’ll probably mean admitting to a few illegal activities. We’re willing to cut you some slack there, assuming they’re not too bad, but only if you’re as honest as you can be.”
“What’s ‘not too bad’ mean?”
“You tell us you killed someone, or played a role in killing someone, the deal is off. You tell us you dealt a little dope to make ends meet, we’ll give it a pass.”
“This once,” Willy amended.
“There’s a big hole between those two.”
“According to the rules,” I said, “we’re not supposed to make any deals without a state’s attorney’s say-so. We’re sticking our necks out as it is.”
A small look of irritation crossed his bland face. “What do you want, anyhow?”
I liked that-a small step toward us. “We want to know if you sold drugs to a girl a few years ago. Lisa Wooten.”
His eyes narrowed and he looked from one of us to the other suspiciously. “She died, right?”
“Yes, but not because of anything in the dope. She just OD’d.”
“But if I sold it to her, that makes me an accessory, doesn’t it? You said you’d nail me for something like a murder. Wouldn’t that be murder?”
“I’m not going to call it that,” I told him, angry at my own clumsiness. “She was going to do herself in one way or another. No reason you should be blamed.”
But he was like a dog with a bone. “The State’s Attorney might not think so. How do I know he won’t be coming here next?”
Willy had reached the end of his patience, as I was afraid he might. He got up abruptly, swung his chair around, and slammed it down directly in front of Meade, straddling it so they were knee-to-knee. Despite his enormous size, Meade seemed to shrink back a little into the cushion.
“Look, asshole,” Willy said, “we’re not here to dick around. You either tell us what we want to know and we keep it between ourselves, or I let Walter Freund find out you been mouthing off, and you can discover if all that firepower and all your stupid alarms out there are going to do you any good. Does that make things easier to figure out?”
“This is got to be illegal,” Meade said, but his heart wasn’t in it. Willy’s Walter Freund trump card had done the trick.
Kunkle jerked his thumb at me. “Probably, if it was only me. My reputation’s worse than yours. But that man wouldn’t do anything illegal-God-damn saint.”
Meade looked genuinely sad, as if his fate in life were to be forever confronted with such hopeless puzzles. “All right. Yeah, I sold it to her.”
“You mix the batch yourself?” I asked him.
“I always do-did. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
I ignored the absurdity of that. “And how long had you been supplying her?”
“A few months.”
Willy moved his chair back and now asked in a less threatening tone, “You were her only source?”
Meade hunched his shoulders slightly. “I think so. She made a big deal about seeing me. If she’d had somebody else, she probably wouldn’t have.”
If true, that let Brenda Croteau off the hook and supported the thesis that Owen Tharp had been set up.
“Tell us about Walter Freund,” I said.
His face closed down. “What about him?”
I got up and began pacing the width of the narrow trailer, suddenly reminded of something only he would know. “Let me put it another way. The medical examiner who autopsied Lisa said that addicts usually OD because they take a dose they’re no longer used to, either ’cause they couldn’t come up with the money for a while, or they tried to go straight. In any case, their tolerance drops, and the next time they take their standard hit, it kills them.”
Meade just watched me walking back and forth.
“You were Lisa’s exclusive supplier, according to you. Given that fact, did you think her tolerance had dropped just before she died?”
“What’s that got to do with Walter?”
I obviously had made another mistake by re-mentioning Freund’s name prematurely. Like a dog distracted by a powerful scent, now Meade couldn’t get his mind off it. That did tell me something about Walter Freund, though.
Tearing a page from Willy’s book, I stepped close enough to him that he had to tilt his head back to look up at me. “Nothing yet. Keep with me here, Eric. You paying attention?”
I waited until he nodded. “Good. What about Lisa’s tolerance?”
“She was buying the same amounts, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yes, I do. But if you were selling to her regularly, and in the same amounts, didn’t it strike you as a little strange that she suddenly died?”
“I don’t know. That’s what they do. I thought maybe she’d mixed it with something else.”
I remembered the autopsy that Bernie Short had faxed following our phone conversation. It had found Lisa Wooten’s body chemistry free of all other toxins except a little alcohol. “Was that one of her habits?”
“I don’t know. I just sold to her.”
“Bullshit, Eric,” Willy broke in, quick as a trap. “She’s been dead for years, and you remembered her right off. She wasn’t just a customer.”
The big man squirmed in his seat. “She was nicer than the others. That’s all.”
“What?” Willy persisted. “She give you freebies?”
I thought he’d gone too far, but Meade surprised me by letting slip a flitting boyish smile.
“She did, didn’t she?” Willy laughed. “You dog.”
I sat back down, aware that with that one breakthrough, the whole mood had become friendlier. “Okay, so you were pals. Did she ever mix her drugs with anything else?”
“Not that I ever saw,” he finally conceded.
“Who else was in her life? Any other boyfriends? Or were you it?”
The smile returned, but embarrassed this time. “Oh, no. She was just nice to me sometimes. Owen was her real friend. I liked him, too.”
“Owen’s a wimp,” Willy declared. “What’d she see in him?”
Eric Meade frowned. “Owen was a good guy. Everybody just treated him like a loser. It wasn’t fair. Lisa knew that. He and Lisa were kind of the same that way-real gentle.”
It was the longest sentence we’d heard from him yet, and told me something of where his prejudices lay-which I now hoped to use to redeem my earlier fumble.
“Not like Walter, right? The wannabe Marine.” I glanced at the military shrine on the wall behind him.
Meade became angry. “He’s no Marine.”
“He acts like one, strutting around. Looks like he gets pretty much what he wants, too. Popular guy, well liked, doing well financially.”
Eric’s face had darkened. “He’s a jerk.”
Willy laughed. “Oh, yeah. Some jerk. When we mentioned him a minute ago, I thought you’d shit your pants.”
“I did not,” Eric shouted, moving about in his chair.
“Come on,” Willy kept up. “He’s got the real stuff. The Corps threw you out. That’s why you compensate with all these stupid guns. Walter’s got what it takes-they’d take him in a heartbeat if he asked.”
“That’s a lie.” Meade tried to lurch to his feet. Willy placed his hand against his chest and shoved him back against the cushion.
“Sit down. What’s the big deal? Some people got it and some people don’t. It’s a fact of life.”
“He doesn’t got anything. He hurts people. That’s why they follow him. He messes with their minds. He would never be a Marine.”
I caught Willy’s eye, and he instantly resumed his seat, as peaceful as if he’d never said a word. Eric Meade stared at him in surprise, his chest heaving with emotion, confused by the abrupt change of pace.
“Eric,” I said gently, “it’s okay. Take a few deep breaths. You must’ve really hated him for what he did to Lisa.”
But I’d overplayed it. He looked at me doubtfully. “Walter did that?”
“He knew her, didn’t he?” Willy asked calmly.
“Sure.”
“He ever do drugs with her?”