"Arnold Shea? The big guy?"
"Yes."
Brinkman narrowed his eyes at Jimmy, smiled a little smile. "He's stretched out there by your van, Jimmy, deader'n hell. Go get the key off him. For your buddy here."
Jimmy swallowed hard, turned, climbed down off the mound of rock.
"You didn't have to do that, Brinkman." I coughed, closed my eyes.
"I like to see that kid sweat," he said. "Now how about you telling me what went on here?"
"Later," I said, my voice sounding distant, even to me.
Chapter 21
MacGregor died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
After Brinkman had unlocked my handcuffs, he’d told Jimmy to get me down to the cruiser, where it was warm. He moved Lydia there also, laying her on the back seat while I slumped in the front, and we were there like that until the ambulance came; but before that, after I had worked my way down the rocky mound with Jimmy's hand tight on my numb arm, I had crouched by MacGregor, motionless in the dust.
Brinkman's fat deputy had covered MacGregor with a blanket from the cruiser. There was blood on the blanket. MacGregor's face was ash gray and his breathing was shallow, ragged.
I spoke his name. His eyes opened. "Smith."The corners of his mouth moved weakly. "I guess no trout this spring, huh?"
"Summer," I said. "They'll be bigger by then, anyhow."
"Yeah." His face contorted with pain. He said, hoarsely, "I wouldn't have done it, you know." He gestured toward Jimmy with his eyes. "If you'd left it alone, I'd have found a way to let him off. I knew it was a frame. I wouldn't've let it happen."
I had no way to tell if that was true, but MacGregor's gray eyes were locked onto mine, and I said, "I know, Mac. I know."
His eyes closed. I saw him struggling to keep them open, not to lose yet.
"Take it easy," I said. "They've got an ambulance coming."
I tried to find something else to say, but there was nothing. Jimmy tugged gently on my arm, and I stood, my eyes stinging in the cold gray light.
The "later" I had promised Brinkman happened in the outpatient department of the hospital in Cobleskill. Lydia was in a room upstairs. Brinkman had been right: she had a concussion, not serious. Prognosis excellent. I'd waited until they could tell me that before I let them take me down the hall and put four stitches next to my left eye. I lay now on a bed in a curtained-off stall in Outpatient because, although they'd made a room ready for me upstairs too, I had refused to be admitted. The doctor who'd sewn me up, a round man named Mazzeo, popped in every ten minutes to tell me a man in my condition couldn't leave the hospital.
"You can't drive," he pointed out, a pudgy finger smoothing his thick mustache. "You probably can't even see straight. You have a headache to beat the band, am I right? And your hands won't be much good for hours."
I flexed my swollen fingers. The numbness was receding slowly, leaving the billion pinpricks of returning circulation behind. My wrists were bruised, red and purple under the icepacks that wrapped them.
"No," I said. "I'm leaving." I didn't try for anything else. I knew that I couldn't argue with him, but I also knew I wasn't staying. Everything here was sharp and bright, and outside the curtain I could hear voices and footsteps and the sounds of endless activity. There was no peace here, no darkness, no silence. No music. I couldn't stay.
Immediately after the third or fourth of Dr. Mazzeo's disapproving visits the curtains parted again and Brinkman stood smiling and very tall next to the bed. "Shit," he said, took his hat off. "I brought in four corpses today, Smith, and they all looked better than you do."
"Go to hell."
"Christ! For a man whose life I saved, you're an ornery son of a bitch."
"Yeah," I said. "I always was." I paused, went on, "But I owe you for that, Brinkman. And for Lydia and Jimmy."
"So pay up, city boy. What the hell's going on around here, and how come I shouldn't lock you up, you and Jimmy and that china doll of yours?" He dropped his hat on the bed, pulled a stool close.
I turned my pounding head carefully, groped with thick fingers for the button that would raise the bed. Brinkman vertical and me horizontal was bad odds to start with.
I tilted the bed as upright as it would go, and then I asked Brinkman to find me some water. By the time he got back I'd found a way to tell it, very close to the truth.
"Ginny Sanderson," I said, after a drink.
"Snotty little bitch," he drawled. "What about her?"
That jolted me; but then I realized he didn't know.
"She's dead, Brinkman. Grice killed her."
Nothing moved but his eyes. They narrowed into slits. "The hell you say."
I drank more water, spoke slowly. "She wanted to be part of Grice's in-crowd. But Grice wasn't having any. She thought it was her, so she tried harder. She took up with Jimmy; she robbed a house."
"Robbed what house?" Brinkman interrupted.
"Eve Colgate's."
"Miss Colgate didn't report that."
"No," I said. "She called me instead."
"Why?"
I shrugged. "Some people aren't crazy about cops." "Smith—"
"Oh, Christ, Brinkman, will you shut up and let me finish? Let me get through this, then you can arrest me or shoot me or whatever the fuck you want."
His face darkened, and I wondered briefly whether it was beyond him to beat up a man lying in a hospital bed. Maybe I'd get to find out.
Meanwhile, I went on. "I traced the burglary to Ginny pretty easily. She denied it, but sooner or later she'd have come across. But there was a wrinkle: some of the stuff she'd stolen was really valuable. She thought Grice would be impressed with that, so she showed him. He wasn't."
Brinkman asked through gritted teeth, "Why not?"
"Well, he was, but it was hard stuff to fence. And Grice had a sweetheart deal going with her father. He didn't want to blow that by getting caught fooling around with her."
"Grice? You're telling me Frank Grice was making deals with Mark Sanderson?"
"Uh-huh. Based on blackmail, I think."
"Blackmail over what?"
"The murder of Lena Sanderson."
"The what? Jesus, city boy, what the fuck are you talking about?"
"When Lena disappeared," I said, "Sanderson called the cops, it's true; but it would've looked too odd if he hadn't. But he didn't hire anyone to look privately, after you guys turned up nothing. Okay, so maybe he figured good riddance. But he also didn't cancel her credit cards. He didn't close bank accounts she had access to. He never filed for a legal separation. He didn't make any effort to protect himself from her. All I can figure is he knew he didn't have to."
"You're saying—"
"I think Sanderson killed her. Either that, or he hired Grice to do it; but my money's on him. In anger; probably by accident. She played around one too many times; the whole county was full of it, from what I hear, but it took him forever to catch on.
"Then I'll bet he lost his nerve. He called Grice. They knew each other: Grice did muscle work for Sanderson. So Sanderson calls. I've got this body in my living room, get rid of it. No problem, Grice gets rid of it. And suddenly Grice is a big shot. He's running the county. Sanderson buys him a cop, Sanderson buys him information, and he and Sanderson go into business together."
Brinkman's eyes were hard, his mouth tight with anger. I thought he was going to tell me to shove my theories, but when he spoke, it was to ask, "What business?"
"Appleseed Holdings." I told him about that.
Brinkman sat silent for a while when I was through, then stood abruptly. "City boy," he said, "the Sandersons fought under George Washington. When that war was over they came up here and settled this county. My county, Smith. Now you want me to believe Mark Sanderson murdered his wife and bends over for Frank Grice?" He shook his head. "I don't know, city boy. I don't know."
"I don't give a shit what you believe, Brinkman. I'm telling you what happened. A real cop would check it out."