The Whole Lie (35 page)

They kept me from thinking about what I'd just done.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

We rolled up to the Blackstone Valley Salvage gate just after nine.

“This it?” Lacross said.

I nodded, climbed out.

He'd been my first call. Caller ID had told him it was me. “Talk to me about Emily Saginaw,” he said first thing.

So they were reporting it. They were naming names.

“Later,” I'd said. “What are you doing right now?”

“Same as any decent human being. Getting set to watch the Patriots kick the living snot out of the Jets.”

“Want to do something else instead?”

“No. What?”

“I'll show you,” I'd said, and told him Floriano's address.

Most storms roll into Massachusetts from the southwest. But this one had been an honest nor'easter, pounding in from the Atlantic. Here at Blackstone Valley Salvage, thirty miles from the coast, there was barely an inch of snow.

I stepped to the gray metal box Mikey Guttman had told me about.

He'd been my second call.

“Big favor,” I'd said. “Very big, and one you don't want to know about. Think before you say anything. You hang up now, I don't mind. Hanging up is your smartest move.”

Then I'd gritted my teeth and hoped. Because if Mikey didn't come through, I was screwed.

“What is it?” he said.

“Access to your yard.”

“When?”

“Now. For an hour, maybe two. Like I said, best if you don't know why.”

Another long wait.

“You got a good memory?” he finally said.

“Sure.”

Then Mikey Guttman had said an eight-digit code. He'd said it once, then hung up.

I punched the code into the keypad on the gray box. The gate rolled open. Lacross drove his Crown Vic inside, killed its headlights. I gestured
wait a sec,
found a fifty-five-gallon drum near the fence, stepped atop it, looked up and down the road. I made myself stand there a full five minutes.

Give Lacross credit: He'd stood over Vernon Lee's dead body, which had still been warm enough to melt the snow that fell on it. He'd looked at the mess that used to be a head.

And all he'd said was, “What do you need?”

“How much do you like that car?” I nodded toward his Crown Vic.

“I paid six hundred and twenty-five bucks for it,” he said. “And got ripped off.”

That had been the right answer.

In my five minutes atop the drum, no cruiser showed up. Not even a casual swing-by. Everybody was watching the Pats on
Sunday Night Football.

I jumped down, found the yard's tool storage. Dug out a grinding wheel with a decent-looking blade, hooked it to the air compressor. Fired the compressor. It made a racket, but there wasn't anything I could do about that.

I opened the driver's door for Lacross. “Climb out,” I said. He did.

Ten minutes later, all VIN info had been cut from the Crown Vic. I dropped the metal plates, still hot from the grinding wheel, in my pocket. Stowed the tools, nodded Lacross back into the car, climbed in beside him.

I directed him to the back of the yard. To the Granutech crusher Mikey was so proud of.

While the Granutech warmed up, I parked the big car parallel to its maw, fired a propane-powered forklift, backed it into position, and moved its forks to the height I needed. Lacross watched, blowing on his hands and dancing around to fight the cold.

I eased forward. The forks went through the car's right-side windows. When the lift itself touched the car's doors, I raised the forks. Up went two tons of Ford, just like that. I drove the forklift a foot at a time, glancing left and right to make sure I was on target.

Then I lowered the car into the crusher and backed away.

As I got down and stepped to the Granutech's control panel, everything hit me. I had to stop walking. My legs just about gave way.

I fought it.

Then I stopped fighting and relaxed into it.

I went to one knee in snowy mud.

“Sax?” Lacross said.

I said nothing.

Soon the shaking stopped.

I rose. I stepped to the panel.

The big red button, the only one that mattered, was labeled:
COMPRESS STAND CLEAR
.

I stood clear.

I punched the button.

I compressed.

*   *   *

Half an hour later, after forklifting the Crown Vic—which was by then the size of a fancy refrigerator—to a two-acre pile of other crushed cars, Lacross and I stepped through the gate, punched the code again, and watched the gate roll shut behind us.

Randall was idling away in my F-150.

He'd been my third call.

We climbed in.

Three grown men on a bench seat. Tight fit.

Randall nodded at Lacross, who nodded back, then looked at me a long time. He said nothing. He handed us each a steaming Dunkin' Donuts cup.

I took one. But couldn't get a sip from it: My hand was shaking too much. Randall and Lacross pretended not to notice.

We drove.

Randall worked northeast and said nothing.

Everything was grainy, raw, black and white. Audio hallucinations screwed around with my ears, my head.

“Need to grab a few hours' sleep,” I finally said.

“Want me to drop you at Floriano's place?”

“No. Drop him first”—jerking a thumb at Lacross—“then I'll sleep in my truck.”

“May I ask why?”

“One more thing to do.”

“May I ask what?”

I said nothing.

We drove quietly for a few miles.

“Pull over,” I said as we thumped up a sleepy road in Upton. “By that pond.”

I looked ahead, looked back, saw nobody, stepped out quickly. Took from my pocket a handful of metal tiles, the VIN plates from Lacross's car.

I threw them hard enough to make my shoulder sing. Threw them sidearm, the way you'd skim a rock. Watched them scatter, watched them plonk into the pond.

“Did I do right?” I said as we pulled away. I was asking both of them, or neither, or myself. Hell, I didn't know who I was asking.

Lacross said nothing.

Randall didn't answer for a long time. “You weren't exactly swamped with good options,” he finally said.

When we hit Framingham, the snowfall was over, but the plows and sanders were still working.

“You know what's been bugging me?” Randall said.

“The third set of pics,” I said. “Shep's little insurance stash without the red dots.”

“Yes! How the hell'd they get to Thomas Wilton's house?”

“Tell him what you told me,” I said. Lacross had filled me in on the trip to Blackstone Valley Salvage.

“Wilton has a top-end security cam setup,” he said, “but a bunch of clowns manning it. Took me ten minutes reviewing video to spot a man coming out of the hedge and dropping the dirty pics on a patio chair.”

“And that man was?”

“That man,” Lacross said, “is currently residing in the trunk of my car, which I'm gonna report stolen soon as the game's over.”

“Tell him the rest,” I said.

“Scituate cops don't get a lot of what you'd call hardcore crime,” Lacross said.

Randall looked confused.

“Scituate's where Wilton lives,” I said.

“Aha,” Randall said.

“The Scituate cops just about peed in their panties,” Lacross said, “when one of them took a routine look in a car parked at the harbor and saw the ignition had been busted out.”

“The car was stolen two blocks from Betsy Tinker's house,” I said.

“So Vernon Lee laid his hands on Shep's set of the pictures somehow,” Randall said after thinking it through, “stole a car, made his way down to Scituate, and set them out for Wilton to find?”

“About how I see it,” Lacross said.

Randall thought awhile.

“But how?
Why?
” he finally said. “That is, how'd he learn about them in the first place, and why would he take them to Wilton? Where was the profit supposed to be?”

That was for me to answer.

“Margery Lee said it. Vernon was a corruptor, a befouler. Got his kicks screwing up anything and everything that was even a little sweet, a little pure.”

“Okay.” He stretched the word, needing more.

“Vernon's blackmail play had been toast ever since that day in the parking garage,” I said. “Who knows how bad he was hurt. He'd killed Savvy, he'd killed Blaine, and he hadn't been paid a nickel by Emily Saginaw because he hadn't found the pics in Blaine's car. So take the corrupter and befouler bit, and cross them with the wounded-and-cornered-animal bit. I think he turned on Emily, decided to go for the double-cross. He must have known throwing the election to Wilton was the best way to get back at Emily.”

Randall nodded. “So he blindly searched Shep's quarters.”

“Tinker's house was easy enough to break into,” I said. “I proved that.”

More nodding. “Then he stole the first car he could and made a beeline for Wilton's place.”

“Lashing out,” I said.

“Tasmanian devil,” Lacross said.

Nobody spoke the rest of the trip.

When Lacross climbed out in the dumpy parking lot of his office-that-was-also-his-apartment, he nodded once and closed the door of my truck. Then he hesitated, turned, gestured at me to roll down the window.

I did.

Lacross stuck his head and right arm through the window and leaned across me. It was an awkward move, and when his long hair drooped I saw the knotty remnant of his ear.

He shook hands with Randall. “You're okay,” he said, and pulled himself out of the truck and walked away.

A few minutes later, Randall turned onto Floriano's street. He shut down my truck right behind his own car.

We sat.

Dozen had done a good job fitting plywood to the gap where Vernon and I had destroyed stained glass. He'd also screwed a two-by-four across the busted porch railing. Good for him.

The F-150's engine ticked as it cooled.

“What is it you still need to do?” Randall said.

I said nothing.

He sighed. “Can I help?”

“No.”

“When is it enough, Conway?”

I said nothing.

Randall sighed, climbed out, began clearing snow from his Hyundai.

I lay down. Or maybe I fell down.

I was out before the truck got cold enough to bother me. I slept hard.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

It was late Monday afternoon when I rolled into Level Cross.

I'd woken at first light feeling awful.

But I was born to drive. Red Bull, Slim Jims, ibuprofen, and twelve hours took me to the former home of Vernon and Blaine Lee.

And, for a while, Savannah Kane.

Randall had described it well. Raw little ranch house set on a short hill fronting a four-lane road. I had to wait a long time to grab a left turn up the driveway, and the street—nearly a highway—was busy enough so I kept a nervous eye on traffic behind me. Stop to take a left on a road like this, you were a sitting duck for highballing semis.

It had probably been a decent little one-story home, a decent little neighborhood, before they added extra lanes to the road. Now it was wind-scrubbed and achy, a house and lot that would be part of a strip mall in five years max. Somebody had once planted a hedge to shield the lot from cars streaming past, but the hedge had about thrown in the towel.

I rolled up the driveway's short hill, parked in front of the door—the paving carried right to its jamb—and looked around. Yard: grass that didn't look much different from dirt. Ahead: a detached building, a cross between a shed and a one-car garage, painted the same fading yellow as the main house. Next to the shed: a pile of car-related crap, rims and a pair of seats and who knew what else. Parked in front of the shed: a dark-blue Chevy Tahoe, dirty, six or eight years old.

I killed the F-150, heel-rubbed my eyes. My head throbbed. My breath could knock a buzzard off a shit-wagon. I'd spent most of the drive trying to un-see things—Vernon's mushy skull, Moe's face when he told me about being diaper-smothered, Emily Saginaw daintily stepping from a ninth-floor window.

I saw those things still.

Climbed out, stretched, knocked. Sensed and heard a flurry, waited a while. Finally she opened up.

I said, “Miz Lee?”

“Margery,” she said, keeping most of herself behind the door. “And you are?”

I told her, reminded her we'd spoken, waited to be asked in.

And waited.

The Southern hospitality I'd known in my racing days was in short supply.

“I've got something for you,” I said, looking over her shoulder.

“Well,” she said. And stepped aside. Finally.

Looking around the kitchen, I couldn't see that Margery Lee had anything to be ashamed of, house-wise. The place was as tired inside as out—no-color linoleum, a Formica table with only three chairs, duct tape on the arms of the sofa in the parlor to my right—but from the way she'd hidden behind the door, I'd half-expected a hoarder's home full of one-eyed cats and old magazines.

“The state has been coming around,” she said, reading my puzzlement. “Child Protective Services.”

“I'm not them.”

“I know. Now. Please sit.” She waved toward the parlor. “I'll get you a drink.”

“Okay,” I said, but stood instead. Watched.

Margery Lee suited this place. Faded and run-down now, she'd been plain-vanilla pretty once. She was a woman who would've hosted bridge games back when people played bridge.

My mother had loved bridge.

As Margery Lee bent at the waist to pull a Mountain Dew from the yellow-gold fridge, I saw how her jeans, which had already been taken in at the waist, bagged. I saw the crown of her head where her hair had thinned. I saw black moles on her neck that a woman with money would've had removed.