‘I’m not sure they should have released you,’ she said, managing a laugh. She went back inside.
Leo shut the rear door and came around to the passenger side.
‘You’re clear on what to do when we get to the ski lodge?’ I asked.
‘Let me do it alone. It’ll save me another round trip up here.’
‘The less you know…’
‘You’re being irrational. It’s Lamm in the trunk of that car at Second Securities.’
‘Who knows what Canty and Delray were thinking? I have to be sure it’s not Wendell, and if it is, I want him moved, away from such a link to Lamm.’
He gave it up. ‘That nurse that called Amanda and me?’
‘Yes?’
‘She also called Jenny’s cell number. Jenny called me from California, and made noises about flying in. I said you’d had a slight accident, nothing serious.’
‘I’ll call her when I’m done.’
‘If we haven’t been arrested.’
I held up my phone as Amanda came outside. ‘Had it after all,’ I lied, by way of explanation.
‘Meds,’ she said, accepting, and we drove away.
Fifteen minutes later, she pulled to a stop under a stone-pillared canopy. The resort was old, made of logs darkened by tens of decades of winters and moss-covered, rough-hewn roof shingles. She told me it had gently sloping halls, a restaurant with wide booths, and firm leather couches that were easy to get out of. They were used to people on crutches.
‘I can bird dog the sheriff by myself,’ she said, for the fifth time.
And I agreed, for the fifth time, telling her I knew she was perfectly capable of harassing the sheriff until he found her father. Her worst fear, and my second-worst fear, was that Wendell was lying dead somewhere in the surrounds of Bent Lake.
They walked, and I hobbled, to the registration desk. The lobby was deserted.
‘You said three rooms for tonight, then two for the next week?’ the desk clerk asked.
From old habit, Amanda hesitated. So did I. So did Leo.
‘That’s correct: three for tonight, then two,’ she said.
‘As I told you on the phone, I can only do coffee, cold cereal and milk in the morning,’ the desk clerk said. ‘Our handyman goes home at three. After that, I’m the only one here until the next morning.’ She smiled at me. ‘You’ll have the run of the place,’ she said to me, offering a joke about my crutches.
Amanda said we’d manage. She and Leo were given rooms down the long hall, in the new wing. The desk clerk gave me a room just four doors past the lobby, saying it had been fitted with thick grab handles and wider doors should a wheelchair become necessary, of which she had two, right on the premises.
The desk clerk handed us old-fashioned, square steel keys. I walked, of a fashion, the few steps to my room. Leo went ahead, as if to go into his room.
‘You’ll sleep?’ Amanda asked.
‘I’ve been well medicated,’ I said, offering a yawn as proof. I unlocked my door and went in.
I waited a minute, then stuck my head out. The hall was empty. The door to the back parking lot was only a few feet away.
Leo had pulled the Jeep around to the back. He pushed open the passenger door; I put in my crutches and got in.
‘Que?’ he asked in Spanish. It is a language he does not know.
‘Pronto,’ I responded in kind, sounding every bit as fluent as him.
SIXTY-SIX
‘I’m here merely to shift your gears; I get that,’ he said after we’d driven a dozen miles in silence. ‘You’re sure you’ll be able to drive the little Ford?’
‘It’s got an automatic transmission. No shifting.’
I repeated what I’d outlined quickly in front of the clinic while we waited for Amanda. ‘Total turnaround time will be less than twelve hours, most of it in darkness.’
‘Except the last few, when I cart you back to the ski resort in broad daylight.’
‘We alibi each other. We went out to hunt up doughnuts.’
‘What about cell tower pings? I saw on TV that cell phones can place people at a site of perpetration.’
‘Perpetration?’ I asked. ‘That’s a stretch of a word, even for you.’
‘Don’t obfuscate. You didn’t think of that little detail, did you?’
‘I’ve only got tonight to perpetrate.’ I told him where I wanted to be picked up so we wouldn’t have to use our phones and risk being identified as perpetrators. Still, he handed his over and I removed the batteries from both our phones.
He reached to rattle the key in the Jeep’s ashtray. ‘This time, remember to leave the key on the floor,’ he said.
I took it out and put it in my pocket. ‘I hope I’ll feel it was a good thing I didn’t, the last time,’ I said.
‘How did Canty get in after you’d been there?’
‘Or Delray?’
‘Or Delray,’ he agreed.
‘They must have used Lamm’s key,’ I think I mumbled, before I fell asleep.
Five hours later, Leo tapped my neck. Thanks to the lingering meds, I’d slept all the way down to Chicago. He’d stopped around the corner from Second Securities. I grabbed the yellow gloves from the back, planted my crutches on the asphalt, and slid out of the Jeep.
‘Wondering about surveillance cameras?’ he asked.
‘I have to risk them,’ I said, pulling my knit hat low and tugging up the collar on my pea coat. ‘Krantz will probably have his search warrant later this morning.’
I slipped on the gloves and started down the short half-block to Milwaukee Avenue. I hobbled more than I walked, and scraped along more than I hobbled. Ligaments in both legs were torn, and it would be some time before I got the hang of the crutches.
The middle of the block was dark, and I kept my head down as I unlocked the door, but I didn’t imagine Krantz would have any difficulty identifying me from surveillance photos, if any were being taken. Men on crutches aren’t often out in the middle of the night.
The scent of the glitter girl’s cheap perfume and spearmint gum had gone; the place now smelled only of the stench I’d set free when I’d cut through the dead man’s plastic shroud. I locked the door behind me and dropped the key to the floor. I wouldn’t be going out that way.
I went through the door I’d splintered and into the garage. The smell of death was so thick it stuck to the back of my throat like rotten paste. I pushed what was left of the door closed behind me.
I needed a fast, clear look. I switched on the overhead fluorescents. The car sat in the center of the garage, rank and dented, exactly as I’d left it. I switched off the lights, crutch-walked across the garage to the overhead door’s power switch and raised the door. Moonlight flooded into the garage.
I hobbled back to the car, slipped in, twisted the key I’d left in the ignition and backed out into the alley.
I wanted badly to speed away; a corpse was rotting in ripped plastic just three feet from my head. But an open door would draw cops too soon, and I was clutching at the faint hope that time would dissipate the smell before Krantz showed up with his search warrants. I got out, reached in to push the door button, got back in the car and drove to the end of the alley.
Leo was waiting around the corner, as we’d agreed. He must have been crazed with worry as he followed me deeper into the city. I was driving the Carson kill car, with someone else’s body in the trunk.
He stayed well back when I turned off and parked on a side street in a run-down neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. It was the middle of the night but I knew there were a hundred eyes on me, and him. It couldn’t be helped. What I was doing was done often enough, on those blocks. I shut off the engine and left the key in the ignition. Leo shot forward, I got in, and he drove us west to the tollway north to Wisconsin.
He told me to unzip my side curtain as he did the same. I’d brought the stink of the death in that small Ford with me. After a few minutes I started shivering, from the cold and from worry that I’d left some trace of my DNA behind.