“Yeah, it was probably when I tripped on the steps outside. I probably cussed or something.”
“You tripped?”
The insolent smile. “Me and Mary Jane got together a little while ago.”
“Mary Jane is marijuana, Mr. C.”
“So you’re smoking dope and trying to sneak in. But you’re stoned and you trip. You gave him plenty of warning.”
“That’s your version, man. My version is I scared him off. He doesn’t want to tangle with me. He’s had a chance to see me, so he knows he’s dead if I ever get my hands on him. So he splits.” Not only was Turk’s bravado irritating, it was foolish. His arms had no definition, he had tiny wrists, and he was getting a small potbelly from all the beer Jamie’s money was buying. “You dig?”
“He doesn’t split, he hides. And he lets you go into my office again and then he slugs you across the back of the head, and while you’re unconscious he goes back to trashing my office.”
“You bet your ass he hits me from the back. He ever tried it from the front, I’d rip him apart.”
“Turk is very strong, Mr. C.”
“Uh-huh.” I pointed at his eyes. “Open them as wide as you can.”
“No way, man. You’re not no doctor.”
“Very perceptive of you to recognize that, Turk. Must be your 20/20 hearing.” To Jamie I said: “Doc Mayburn is just down the street. Take Turk down there and have him checked. He’ll probably need a few stitches in that wound anyway.”
“Stitches? No way, man. I had to have eight of them one time when I was six. I fell out of a tree and landed headfirst.”
It would be too easy to point out that landing on his head might explain a lot of things about the latter-day Turk, but I liked Jamie too much to say it. Besides, I wanted to try and figure out what the asshole burglar had been looking for.
“Go on now. Tell Doc Mayburn to put it on my account.”
“You think he has a concussion, Mr. C?”
“Well, he’s got something, that’s for sure.”
“Here, honey, let me help you up.”
“I ain’t no invalid.”
Jamie looked as if her new puppy had just been run over by the train.
Turk got up. He jerked in pain and grabbed his head. At least I was getting a little pleasure out of this. “We’ve got band practice tonight.”
“Oh, no, Turk. You’re in no condition to practice.”
“Have to. Next week we send our tape to Dick Clark.”
She beamed at me. “Isn’t that cool, Mr. C? He’ll be on Bandstand in no time.”
“If the conditions are right. Don’t forget that. I don’t want no crummy background the way the rest of those bands get. I want somethin’ really sharp.”
“He’s got a good business head, too, Mr. C.”
“I can see that. Dick Clark doesn’t know what he’s in for.”
By then, thankfully, they were in the hall and edging toward the door.
“No stitches, remember.”
After they were gone, I started picking up file folders and putting them back in their proper places. I gave each one a minute or so of consideration. I was trying to figure out if one of them was the reason the thief had been in here. But most of them were old and pedestrian. Mortgages, divorces, wills-nothing that would be worth stealing.
When I was finishing up, I realized that this was a ruse, dumping everything out this way. He was searching for something else, and the piles of folders were nothing more than a distraction for my sake. Like many attorneys, I was file-rich and money-poor. But I’d never worked on a case that would prompt somebody to toss my office. Until now, the murder of Lou Bennett and the aftermath.
Since there was only one possible explanation, I went to my desk and opened the manila folder on it. I’d made copies of the material about Karen Shanlon’s death in the fire. There were six sheets in all. I had put them in order of the date on which the newspaper story had been published. When I went through them now, they were out of sequence.
I went back and finished the filing. I walked down the hall and got a Pepsi from the machine, and then came back to try and think this through. The thief obviously thought I had something he didn’t want me to have. And it had to do with the Karen Shanlon fire.
A picture of DePaul stared up at me from the folder. He’d been the chief at the time of the fire; he’d been the authority who’d called it accidental. I found myself thinking the unthinkable and enjoying the hell out of it. What if DePaul, the great patriot and overseer of public virtue, had taken a bribe? It wasn’t exactly unheard of. Big town or small, a certain number of public officials were always on the take.
Since DePaul was the man who’d written the report on the fire that killed Karen Shanlon, he was the man I needed to start with.
I was halfway out of my chair when the phone rang. I answered and heard: “Somebody really hurt him, Sam. Really hurt him!”
Sue was usually an unflappable woman. Her presence allowed Kenny to be as flappable as he wanted to be and still function. But right now Sue was angry and scared and confused.
I pretty much knew what she was going to say but I let her say it anyway.
“I came home and I found Kenny on the ground in front of the trailer. He was facedown. I thought he was dead. There was so much blood on the back of his head.”
“Where are you now?”
“Here. Home. But I’m headed to the hospital emergency room. Could you meet us there?”
“Absolutely. I’ll leave now.”
“He still hasn’t told me what you two are working on-he never tells me until afterward-but I want your promise that you’ll stop.”
What else could I say? “I’ll stop, Sue. I promise. Now I’ll see you at the hospital.”
16
The medicinal scents of the emergency room brought back memories of the three times I’d spent in the hospital. I’d had my tonsils out, I’d broken my leg falling off the top of the garage, and I ran a fever the doc thought might affect my brain and heart. All this before I was nine years old. There were bonuses for being in the hospital. I got all the comic books I wanted, and I didn’t have to pay for them with my own allowance. I remember especially a certain issue of Hawkman teaming up with Batman. I also got chocolate malts and a radio that seemed to play only the shows I wanted to hear. Sometimes being in the hospital is within pissing distance of being outright fun.
I had time for a cigarette and a cup of hospital coffee before Sue appeared with her arm around Kenny’s waist. They wore contrasting expressions. Sue appeared to be ready for his funeral; Kenny smiled at me. He had blood all over his short-sleeved blue shirt.
She got him into the seat next to me and said, “You make sure he doesn’t move, Sam. He’s in pretty bad shape.” Then she was off to fill out forms so that Kenny could see a doc.
“The bastard was good, McCain. He must have come up from the creek behind my trailer and waited me out. I came out of the trailer to take a break-you know how I walk around sometimes because I get stiff sitting at the typewriter?-and he got me as soon as I got on the ground. Just came right up behind me and wham! I was out.”
“You didn’t get a look at him?”
“Nothing.” For the first time his face crosshatched with pain. “I may have a little concussion. But man, Sue has gone batshit.”
“She loves you.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“Lots of people are asking the very same question.”
“What the hell was he looking for at my place?”
“I may be wrong, but I think this has something to do with the fire that killed Karen Shanlon. You’ve been asking around about Lou Bennett and so have I. And I’ve been to the library reading up on the fire. Somebody thinks we either know something or are about to find something out. He can’t be sure which it is, so he has to make sure we don’t already have something. He trashed my office, too. Knocked out Turk.”
“Well, then he can’t be all bad.” But his face twisted up when he tried to laugh. Up close he looked pale and shaken. The blood on his shirt was lurid, like blood in a crime-scene photo.