“Strange,” I said.
“What is?”
“He seems to know you.”
I had his full attention now. He didn’t even bother to hide his alarm.
“What do you mean?”
“He was the one who told me to talk to you. He said you might know why he was looking for Daniel Clay.”
“That’s not true. I told you, Clay’s dead. Men like him don’t just drop off the face of the earth only to pop up again later someplace else under a different name. He’s dead. Even if he wasn’t, there’s no way he’d be in contact with me. I never even met the guy.”
“This man, Merrick, was of the opinion that your wife might have told you things that she kept from the authorities.”
“He’s mistaken,” he said quickly. “She didn’t tell me nothing. She didn’t even speak about him much.”
“Did you think that was odd?”
“No. What was she gonna say? She just wanted to forget him. Nothing good would come from talking about him.”
“Could she have been in contact with him without you knowing, assuming that he was still alive?”
“You know,” said Legere, “I don’t think she’s that smart. You see this man again, you tell him that.”
“The way he was talking about you, it sounded like you might get the chance to tell him yourself.”
The prospect didn’t appear to give him much pleasure. He spit on the ground, then rubbed the spittle into the dust with his shoe just to give himself something to do.
“One more thing, Mr. Legere: what was the ‘Project’?”
If it was possible to freeze a man with a word, then Jerry Legere froze.
“Where did you hear that?”
The words were spoken almost before he realized it, and I could see instantly that he wished he could retract them. There was no anger left now. It had disappeared entirely, overwhelmed by what might almost have been wonder. He was shaking his head, as if in disbelief.
“It doesn’t matter where. I’d just like to know what it is, or was.”
“You got it from that guy, right? Merrick.” Some of his belligerence was already returning. “You come here, making accusations, talking about men I’ve never met, listening to lies from strangers, from that bitch I married. You got some nerve.”
His right hand shoved me hard in the chest. I took a step back and he started to advance. I could see him preparing to land another blow, this one harder and higher than the first. I raised my hands in a placa-tory gesture, and positioned my feet, my right foot slightly forward of the left.
“I’ll teach you some-”
I came off my left foot and hit him in the stomach with a door-breaker kick, following through with the full weight of my body. The force of the impact drove the air from his body and sent him sprawling backward in the dirt. He lay there gasping, clutching his hands to his belly. His face was contorted in pain.
“You bastard,” he said. “I’ll kill you for that.”
I stood over him.
“The Project, Mr. Legere. What was it?”
“Fuck you. I got no idea what you’re talking about.”
He forced the words out through gritted teeth. I took one of my cards from my wallet and dropped it on him. The other man appeared at the entrance to the warehouse. He had a crowbar in his hand. I raised a finger of warning to him, and he paused.
“We’ll talk again. You might want to think some on Merrick and what he said. You’re going to end up discussing this again with one of us, whether you like it or not.”
I started to walk back to my car. I heard him get to his feet. He called after me. I turned around. Lang was standing at the entrance to the warehouse, asking Legere if he was okay, but Legere ignored him. The expression on his face had changed again. It was still red, and he was having trouble breathing, but a look of low cunning had taken shape upon it.
“You think you’re clever?” he said. “You think you’re hard? Maybe you ought to make some inquiries, see what happened to the last guy who started asking about Daniel Clay. He was a private dick too, just like you.”
He put a lot of emphasis on the word “dick.”
“And you know where he is?” Legere continued. “He’s in the same fucking place as Daniel Clay, is where he is. Somewhere, there’s a hole in the fucking ground with Daniel Clay in it, and right next to it is another hole with a fucking snoop rotting to hell inside. So you go right ahead, you keep asking questions about Daniel Clay and ‘projects.’ There’s always room for one more. It don’t take much effort to dig a hole, and it takes less to fill it up again once there’s a body in it.”
I walked toward him. I was pleased to see him take a step back.
“There you go again,” I said. “You do seem certain that Daniel Clay is dead.”
“I got nothing more to say to you.”
“Who was the detective?” I asked. “Who hired him?”
“Fuck. You,” he said, but then he reconsidered. A broad, bitter grin creased his face. “You want to know who hired him? That bitch hired him, just like she hired you. She was fucking him too. I could tell. I could smell him on her. I bet that’s how she pays you, too, but don’t think you’re the first.
“And he asked all the same questions that you did, about Clay and ‘projects’ and what she said or didn’t say to me, and you’re gonna go the way he did. Because that’s what happens to people who go asking after Daniel Clay.”
He snapped his fingers.
“They disappear.” He wiped the dirt from his jeans Some of his false courage began to dissipate as his adrenaline failed him, and for a moment he looked like a man who had glimpsed his own future, and what he saw frightened him. “They disappear…”
Chapter X
I touched base with Jackie Garner when I got home. He told me that all was quiet. He sounded vaguely disappointed. Rebecca Clay said the same when I called her. There had been no sign of Merrick. He seemed to be keeping his word, and his distance, the phone call to me apart.
Rebecca was working in her office, so I drove over to speak to her, acknowledging Jackie’s presence outside with a small wave when I arrived. We ordered coffee at the little market beside the Realtor’s, and sat at the single table outside to drink it. Passing motorists looked at us curiously. It was too cold to be dining al fresco, but I wanted to talk to her while my conversation with her ex-husband was still fresh in my mind. It was time to clear the air.
“He said all that?” Rebecca Clay looked genuinely shocked when I told her of what had passed between Jerry and me. “But they’re all lies! I was never unfaithful to him, never. That wasn’t why we broke up.”
“I’m not saying he was telling the truth, but there was real bitterness behind his words.”
“He wanted money. He didn’t get it.”
“Is that why you think he married you? For money?”
“Well, it wasn’t for love.”
“And what about you? What was your reason?”
She shifted in her seat, her discomfort at discussing the subject manifesting itself physically. She looked even more tired and drawn than when I had first met her. I didn’t think she would be able to take the strain of what was happening for much longer without breaking in some way.
“I told you part of it,” she said. “After my father disappeared, I just felt completely alone. I was like a pariah because of the rumors about him. I met Jerry through Raymon, who installed the alarm system in my father’s house. They come back once a year to check that everything is working okay, and Jerry was the one who arrived to do the maintenance a few months after my father went away. I guess I was lonely, and one thing led to another. He was okay, at the start. I mean, he was never exactly a charmer, but he was good with Jenna, and he wasn’t a dead-beat. He was surprising, too, in some ways. He read a lot, and knew about music and movies. He taught me stuff.” She laughed humorlessly. “Looking back, I guess I replaced one father figure with another.”