“You can if Scott Trent works here.”
“He does.”
Quinn showed his ID. It didn’t seem to impress the man.
“You the boss?” Quinn asked.
The man nodded.
“I need to talk with Trent, is all. Won’t take more than a few minutes.”
“His minutes belong to the company during working hours.”
Quinn moved closer to the man. “I’m working under the auspices of the NYPD, and I didn’t come here looking for a pissing contest, but I can win one.”
Something in his voice made the Amalgamated boss look closer at Quinn and then blink. He shrugged. “Okay. Makes me no difference. He’s out sitting in that truck cab, checking over his manifest. At least, he damned well better be.”
“I noticed him when I came in,” Quinn said. “Tell me about him.”
“Ain’t got the time.”
“Are you sure you can’t find the time?” Quinn asked, in a way that prompted the boss to think about it.
“Aw, screw it,” the boss said. “There’s not much to tell. Trent’s been working here about a year as an over-the-road trucker. He ain’t got much seniority so he takes the long runs, delivering on Thursdays or Fridays, and has weekends to himself before turnaround. That’s so the company doesn’t have to pay him overtime on weekends. So he has weekends off here in the city, where he lives. Listen, the man’s an ordained minister of some sort. The cops have already been here talking to him. He wouldn’t attack anybody. He’d pray for them instead.”
“Amen,” Quinn said, He nodded to the boss and moved toward the gray steel door.
“Don’t take up too much of his time.”
“Not to worry,” Quinn said. “I know it’s money.”
He walked the length of the trailer that was hooked up to the blue Peterbilt truck, then around to the driver’s side of the cab. He rapped on the metal door with his knuckles. A man about forty, wearing gray work pants and a black T-shirt like the boss’s, only with AMALGAMATED lettered in white on the chest, opened the door and looked down at him.
Quinn flashed his ID as he had with the boss. Trent gave it only a glance.
“Let’s have a talk,” Quinn said. “I cleared it with your boss.”
“I don’t have much time. Gotta be in Georgia tomorrow with this carpet pad.”
“Everybody here is in a rush,” Quinn said.
Trent set aside the clipboard he’d been holding, tucked a pencil in the T-shirt’s saggy pocket, and swung down from the cab.
Quinn saw that he was wearing brown Doc Martens boots. He was slim and muscular, slightly shorter than Quinn.
“This about Jane Nixon?” he asked.
Quinn said that it was.
“I already talked to a police detective,” Trent said. “They accepted my alibi.” He dug into his hip pocket for his wallet and handed Quinn a ticket stub for God Is My Sales Manager. The address on the stub was in Lower Manhattan.
“This is what?” Quinn asked.
“A motivational talk. I was there listening to it the night Jane was attacked,” he said, as if that settled the matter and now he could get back to work.
“Truck drivers do much selling?”
“No. That’s the problem. It’s why I’m thinking about getting into sales.”
“You know the name Lincoln Evans?” Quinn asked.
“Sure. It’s been all over the news.”
Quinn’s cell phone abruptly vibrated in his pocket. He drew it out to silence it, but when he glanced at it and saw Pearl’s name, he thought he’d better take the call. He excused himself and moved a few steps away, half turning his back for privacy but leaving enough angle so he could keep an eye on Trent.
“Whadya got, Pearl?”
“I did more checking on Jane Nixon’s exonerated rapist, like you told me,” Pearl said. “He’s been mixed up in some bad stuff, and used forged papers and different identities, buying and selling stolen goods. The name Scott Trent is an alias he was using at the time of his rape conviction, and he’s been using that name in New York since his release.”
“You don’t say,” Quinn said, trying to sound casual in case Trent was tuned in.
Quinn suddenly remembered Trent’s words: “Gotta be in Georgia tomorrow with this carpet pad.”
“Quinn, he’s also Beth Evans’s former husband, Roy Brannigan.” Pearl gave Quinn a few seconds to absorb what she’d said. “He supposedly raped Jane Nixon not long after he left Beth in Missouri and found his way to New York.”
“And the DNA evidence that sprang him?”
“He was convicted on blood type and Nixon’s identification. Turns out it wasn’t his blood.”
“Then he really was innocent.”
“That time, anyway,” Pearl said. “Like a lot of those other guys who’ve been set free thanks to DNA.”
Quinn kept his voice low and told Pearl where he was. She’d know what to do.
“Be careful,” he heard her say, as he broke the connection.
Trent-or Brannigan-hadn’t moved while Quinn was talking, but there was something different about his stance, a subtle tenseness. How much had he overheard?
Quinn smiled and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. “I do have a few more questions about Jane Nixon,” he said, letting Trent think the conversation wasn’t about anything he had to fear. “The woman you were convicted of raping.”
“I was later exonerated. DNA don’t lie.”
“Far as we know.” Quinn worked his way closer.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Brannigan’s eyes were beginning to roam. Quinn knew the signs.
“Listen, Scott-”
Brannigan hit him hard in the stomach with his fist, and then slammed the clipboard into his head.
Quinn shook off the clipboard blow easily enough, but he sank to his knees trying to catch his breath. Brannigan was on the run, and he had a stride like a deer’s.
When Quinn was just beginning to suck in air, the steel door opened at the top of the steps and the big boss peered down at him.
“What the shit’s goin’ on here?” he asked.
Quinn tried to speak but only made a squeaking sound. He raised a forefinger for the boss to give him a few seconds.
The boss came halfway down the steps and leaned so he could get a better look at Quinn.
“The employees park in this lot?” Quinn managed to wheeze.
“No. They park in a lot out front.”
“That the only gate?” Quinn tried to motion with his head, but his head didn’t move.
“That’s it,” the boss said.
“Lock it,” Quinn said.
“Says who?”
“Me,” Quinn said, and drew his police special from its holster. “And when you’re finished, go back inside and lock that door.”
When the boss was headed toward the chain-link gate, Quinn worked his way to his feet. Holding the old revolver at the ready, he began moving cautiously along the line of trailers, now and then pausing to peek beneath them. He tasted blood trickling down from the clipboard cut on his forehead, but it was Roy Brannigan’s blood that he smelled.
90
Roy Brannigan was terrified. If he managed to work his way along the building and get to a section of fence where he thought he could wriggle beneath it, he might be okay.
He’d known who Quinn was the second he’d seen him, and he couldn’t let the big detective catch him. He’d hit Quinn hard and heard the breath rush out of him, but he didn’t know how long he’d be down.
It was amazing, Roy thought, how suddenly everything had turned to crap. Jock Sanderson had been blackmailing him about the ticket stubs, and Roy was increasingly reluctant to pay. Sanderson’s threat to expose Roy and then live large in some country where there was no extradition treaty was losing credibility. It was easier to talk about setting yourself up as a wanted blackmailer and accessory to murder, and taking refuge in a foreign land, than it was to actually take the step.
But it wouldn’t hurt for Roy to have alibis in case the police happened to connect the dots. The stubs would be plausible. Some men let ticket stubs and the like build up in their wallets or on their dresser tops. The stubs would make it difficult if not impossible for him to be convicted of any of the Skinner murders.