“So what’s the catch?”
“Money. If I bring her in, my office has to pay.”
“And you’re as broke as everybody else.”
She didn’t answer at first, but a slow smile crossed her face as she abstractly watched Leach remove the last of the skeleton from its grave, destined for the nearby hearse that would carry it to Burlington. Finally, she turned to me. “Look, let me get back to my office and make a couple of phone calls. There might be a way around this. Will you be available tomorrow?”
“Absolutely,” I answered without hesitation.
She gave my forearm a squeeze and began walking toward the slope leading out of the trench. “We’ll get this fellow to talk one way or the other.”
11
Five hours had been spent disinterring our nameless skeleton, and in that time, an inordinate number of haphazardly parked cars, trucks, and other vehicles had washed up on Fred Coyner’s front lawn, like debris left over from a flash flood.
It took twenty minutes or more in the rapidly fading light to sort this mess out, a period in which Hillstrom, Leach, the hearse driver, and several other early birds-now all buried in the back of the pack-had to sit in their cars or stand around and wait. I, too, wanted to leave so I could attend the postponed squad meeting at the office, but I spent the enforced delay coordinating the conclusion of our search for the gun, which we still hadn’t found. At this point, I was none too optimistic about our chances, so I put a couple of experienced patrolmen to the task, rather than members of my own team.
When I finally emerged from the woods, the driveway was almost clear. Coyner’s house, in contrast to the bustle of moving vehicles, was as dark and still as it had been all day, seemingly abandoned by its owner in the face of overwhelming odds.
“You talk to him about the body yet?” a quiet voice asked me as I stood alone near the edge of the lawn that overlooked the darkening valleys below.
I turned from the house, surprised both by the gentle tone and by the fact that its owner had never been known to use one. Stanley Katz, abrasive, cynical, ambitious, and unrelenting, covered the “cops-’n’-courts” beat for the local daily Brattleboro Reformer. He was also, I had to reluctantly admit, one of the best reporters they had; for all his obnoxious ways and superior manner, he went after a story with grim determination, not caring who might be injured, so long as the facts were considered accurate up to deadline time. On the sliding scale of Truth, he sometimes hit lower than midpoint, but not because of any lack of integrity. The nature of his job was to report a story often before it was finished, a handicap that almost guaranteed an occasional shot in the foot.
Not that any of this meant I liked him. Like everyone else I knew who’d suffered at his hands in print, I thought the man was a pain in the ass.
I therefore took my time responding to his question, weighing the pros and cons of a simple “no comment” versus a running dialogue about Fred Coyner, whom I wasn’t even sure Katz knew about. I finally hedged my bets and reacted solely and specifically to the question: “No.”
Katz, small, narrow, and perpetually pale, merely nodded. “That was a bullet Leach found, wasn’t it?”
“It looked like one, but that may not mean much.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“There’re quite a few people running around with old bullets in them.”
I expected an incredulous outburst at that, which is partly why I brought it up, but again he merely nodded, his hands still nonchalantly buried in his pockets, as if he was merely passing the time of day, instead of pursuing a story.
I finally turned to face him fully. “You all right, Stan? You seem a little under the weather.”
He gave me an echo of the shifty-eyed leer that had often made my blood boil in the past. “Why? Because I haven’t given you the third degree? You shouldn’t hold yourself so high, Joe. While you’ve been sitting in a hole for the past five hours, I’ve been grilling almost everyone here, including members of your illustrious profession. Besides, you don’t talk to me much, anyway.”
“That never stopped you in the past,” I persisted, sensing something else.
He shrugged and glanced toward the hundred-mile panorama facing Coyner’s house. It was almost dark by now, the distant, broken horizon a thin crimson line fading to dim starlight high above. As if mirroring the sky, pinpoints of light had appeared in the shadowy valleys beneath us, leading me to wonder, as I often did at night, what all those people were up to and whether their activities would eventually cause our paths to cross.
“I resigned today,” Katz murmured, half as explanation and half, I thought, as confession. “Effective next week.”
I was stunned. Katz and the Reformer had been one and the same for years, as inseparable, some would have said, as death and the plague. His announcement, therefore, left me groping among several emotional responses. I was sad for the paper, which would only suffer from his departure; happy for us, from whose back he would finally be plucked; and curious about the community’s response, which, like most small towns, viewed any and all change with an initial burst of befuddlement.
I decided to let him be my guide. “Jesus, Stan, I hope that’s good news for you.”
Now his grin returned with most of the familiar malevolence in place. “Well, Joe, if it is, it ain’t going to change much for you. I’ve already sold my talents to the Rutland Herald, which, as you know, is just over the mountains. Which means,” he added, with a condescending pat on my shoulder, “that I’ll still be as tight on you as a tick on a dog.”
So much for the lessening of our burden, not that I actually believed him. Rutland was a large town, quite capable of keeping his exclusive interest. “That’s nice, Stanley. I hope you starve to death.”
I was halfway to my car, seeing that the traffic jam had finally untangled itself and that both Hillstrom and the hearse driver had started their cars, when I heard Katz swear loudly behind me. I turned, to see him staring openmouthed at a small hatchback vanishing down the driveway.
“Miss your ride back?” I asked.
“Yeah-that son of a bitch-I told him to wait.”
“That’ll teach you to jump ship.” I continued toward my car.
I could hear him running after me. “Hey, Joe, wait a minute. Can you give me a lift?”
I opened my door. “I don’t know, Stanley. You were a little hostile a few minutes ago. Didn’t leave me in a great mood to do you any favors.”
He stopped and looked around, checking his options. But aside from the hearse and the medical examiner, I was it. He was now looking downright peeved. “Come on, goddamn it, don’t jerk me around.”
I shook my head. “Get in.”
We were the last of the caravan, and as I reached the first curve of the driveway, I glanced into my dark rearview mirror, half-expecting to see Coyner climb out of the woods to return home. There was nothing.
“Thanks, by the way,” Katz muttered.
“No problem. So why the big change?”
“It was just time,” he answered carelessly and immediately switched subjects. “What’s your angle on our bony friend with the flashy kneecap?”
I ignored him. “Was it the new Midwestern bosses and their bite-sized news?” The Reformer had been purchased several months ago by a minor USA Today clone, which had promptly changed the page-one banner to bright red and had reduced its articles to ten column inches maximum, with no overruns to other pages. It was now peppy, perky, and pointless to read. Katz’s articles had been among the few to make the blood circulate, and the only ones allowed occasionally to extend the length limitation.
“Something like that,” he answered. “So are you treating this as a homicide?”
“You should’ve been happier than a hog in heaven-chief investigative reporter, or whatever they named you.” Stanley looked out the window at the tenebrous, flashing shadows of passing trees, his neck rigid with irritation. After a few venomously silent moments, during which I smiled happily in the dark at Hillstrom’s taillights before me, Katz finally let out a long sigh.