Time Release (9 page)

How old was that investigator, Ramsey, anyway? Maybe thirty, tops. Probably still chugging beers at his fraternity and skipping crime-scene-procedures classes in 1986. The latest killing was a baffling mystery to him; to Downing, it was a familiar story. After their morning-long conversation, Downing was not only sure Corbett had poisoned the woman, but that the bastard was getting smarter about it.

He wedged himself into the Ford's driver seat and pulled the small spiral notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket. Flipping to the section he'd headlined “Insertion Method,” he studied his notes while he peeled another grapefruit. How simple. Elegant, really. Insert the needle in a dark part of the printed foil yogurt lid, inject liquid hydrogen cyanide, seal the hole with an invisible dab of clear polyurethane, return it to the store.

By contrast, penetrating the triple-seated Primenyl bottles in 1986 had been major surgery. But even then, Corbett was smart. He'd made a basic assumption about protective product packaging—that people check what they're supposed to check. A pre-1986 Primenyl bottle held upright in the hand seemed secure enough, the bottle's mouth double-sealed in foil and protective plastic, then sealed again inside a glued display box.

So Corbett worked backwards, razoring open the glued
bottom
flap of the boxes to remove the plastic bottles. So much for seal one. Then he took an X-Acto knife and cut dime-sized holes in the bottle bottoms. After inserting a loaded capsule, he superglued the plastic piece back to the bottle, then simply sanded the incision smooth. Who'd ever suspect as long as the seals at the bottle's mouth weren't broken? Then it was just a matter of putting the bottle back into the box, regluing the bottom flap, and putting his little time bomb back on a store shelf.

Once Downing and the other investigators had understood what was happening, Corbett's technique was as obvious as a red flag. But it was effective. Not a single victim suspected.

Downing remembered all the hype about “tamper-proof packaging after Tylenol in 1982. When Primenyl happened four years later, the drug companies threw up their hands and quietly started using the term “tamper-resistant.” What else could they do?

Downing rummaged through his glove compartment for the Greene County map. Even on that, Corbett's community of choice was a speck at the end of an unpaved road. And since Downing hadn't been to Outcrop in at least a year, he wasn't exactly sure where to turn to get up into the hills. There were definite risks in nosing around on his own. If the locals found out, they'd accuse him of big-footing their doomed little investigation. If DeLillo found out, Downing figured he'd be retiring sooner rather than later. Fuck it. It's my day off, he thought. He crushed his smoke in the ashtray and started the car.

Waynesburg was like a lot of other small college towns in Pennsylvania—a pretty campus surrounded by fast-food joints surrounded by crappy off-campus apartments and run-down rental houses owned by townies who'd moved out. Here and there were the imposing fraternity houses, which on the outside looked like colonial mansions. Inside, usually, they looked like the path of a tornado.

The road that took him off the pavement was in much worse shape than last time, little more than a rutted goat path that had been the access road to a strip mine worked out years ago. He'd been here a few times, just to keep tabs on Corbett, but he didn't remember much detail beyond a general impression of the place as a grim pocket of rural poverty. Corbett's state disability income—a stress claim, probably bogus—no doubt made him the richest guy in town. The Ford bumped along, its ball joints creaking and moaning like a haunted-house sound track.

A quarter-mile in, he passed a rusted trailer on the right. In a small front window plastered with UMW stickers, the paper-thin curtains suddenly parted, then closed again. What looked like an outhouse stood about ten yards beyond the trailer, as did a small mound of coal and a satellite dish. The Home Shopping Club comes to Appalachia.

The road dropped sharply, then rose. Downing steered across a one-lane wooden bridge above a small frozen creek, then into a stretch where he was surrounded on both sides by snow-covered pines. It was almost pretty, but it didn't last. The road opened into what looked like a bomb crater the size of a city block—the mine—then veered right and ran along the mine's perimeter for another quarter-mile.

Downing stopped the car. About a hundred yards away, a dozen houses stood in two tidy rows along each side of the road, an outhouse behind each. Smoke rose from a metal vent pipe in every roof, and plastic garbage bags were taped as insulation in most of the windows. He backed up past the T-intersection he'd just passed and into an open area hidden from the houses by a small mountain of gray slag.

He knew which house was Corbett's. He'd spent a summer night crouched in a dense grove of pines just behind it, watching through an open bedroom window as Corbett and a guy he recognized as Corbett's next-door neighbor took turns with the neighbor's peroxide-nightmare of a wife. When he wasn't part of the humpfest, Corbett kept busy videotaping the action and draining most of a bottle of Jim Beam. Real high-society stuff, but something kept Downing there longer than he really needed to stay.

He took off his shoes and pulled on his snow boots. A trail that started just behind him circled wide of the houses and ended near the clump of trees. Even during the day he could probably get within twenty yards of Corbett's house without being noticed. He just wanted to see how the old boy was doing, see what car he was driving these days, see if he'd made any new friends or picked up any new hobbies. He definitely didn't want to get in Corbett's face, not like in 1986. He'd paid too high a price for that luxury. This time he planned to work the perimeter quietly until it was time to pull the trigger, so to speak. He'd even let the locals take credit.

The trail was where he remembered it, and Downing climbed up a steep bank and followed the frozen path. The cold air should have been refreshing, but the sulfur smell of burning coal stung his nose. If living near an abandoned strip mine had any benefits, cheap heat had to be one. There was usually enough coal left open and uncollected to keep a few small furnaces burning for years.

Downing stumbled on an exposed root as he entered the clump of pines just behind Corbett's house, and was startled how loud his whispered
Fuck!
seemed in the surrounding silence. He'd have to be more careful. He wasn't worried about being seen—thank God for evergreens—but hadn't considered the possibility of being heard. He leaned around the sturdiest trunk, looking for some sign of life.

The house hadn't seen paint in decades. What remained of the last coat was chipped and chalky, its original color uncertain. The entire structure leaned at the same angle as the outhouse, like they'd been precision-engineered to look like hell. But someone was in there. Smoke trickled from the roof vent. The snow between the back door and the coal pile was worn into an icy path. A fresh carcass hung by its neck from a rusted metal pole beside the coal pile—a small deer, skinned and gutted. The snow underneath it was pink, but the deer had been cleaned somewhere else. Its eyes were half closed, not wide with terror, like it had been expecting death. The protruding tongue was the only feature that ruined a look of utter calm.

Around the left side of the house, Downing could see the rear quarter of a pale yellow car parked around front. Not the same '79 Mercury that Corbett was driving the last time he was here, but he was sure Corbett hadn't moved. He still got his mail at the same post-office box in Ruff Creek.

Downing shivered. He wasn't dressed for this. He pulled his overcoat closed, buttoned it all the way to the top, and cinched the belt. In the bottom of the pockets he found a forgotten pair of worn leather gloves. They weren't lined, but they'd do. This would have to be quick. He'd love to watch Corbett come and go, but that wasn't going to happen, at least not today. If he could just verify that Corbett was still here, he'd be satisfied.

After ten minutes of nothing, he made his way toward the house, hiding first behind the shithouse, then the coal mound, his heavy breathing the only sound. The back windows were too high, and he didn't see anything to stand on. Plus, the windows were covered in black plastic. That was good, in a way. While he couldn't see in, at least Corbett couldn't see out.

The back-door window still had glass. If he could get up the three concrete steps unnoticed, he could at least get a quick look inside. He waited another couple of minutes.

Bent over, staying low, he moved quickly from the coal pile to the back-door steps. All three were covered by compressed layers of snow. They looked icy, so Downing skipped the bottom two and stepped with some effort onto the top step. The ice creaked, loud, as his weight settled. Shit. How loud?

Downing leaned against the house, still bent at the waist, keeping his head well below the window. He was breathing hard, and told himself that he was too old for this stuff. The only sound inside was the television, a game show. Probably toward the front of the house, since the bedroom and kitchen were toward the back. He lifted his head and peeked through a corner of the back-door window.

The kitchen was neat, filled with garage-sale castoffs. The refrigerator had seen better days, and the oven door of the battered electric range was wide open, probably on for heat. The one chair at the small table meant Corbett probably still lived alone. Steam rose from the percolator coffeepot on top of the stove. Through the doorway into the front room, Downing saw an overstuffed chair and a footstool facing the television, which he could see was fed by a rooftop antenna. The chair was empty.

Not good. Corbett was up and around. Probably in the bedroom, maybe asleep, but how many other rooms could there be in a mine-company shack like this? If Corbett was sleeping, Downing figured, he could back down the steps and retrace his track to the trees without being noticed. If he wasn't asleep, goddamnit, where was he? Two doors, front and back. He was vulnerable even if Corbett went out the front.

“The fuck you doing?”

Downing froze with the click and slide of a pump-action shotgun from the right corner of the house. That voice, unnaturally deep, a cross between a hoarse baritone and a heavy-equipment breakdown. The man sounded like an idling Harley. Downing stood up but didn't turn around as he raised his hands above his head. He'd stand a pretty good chance, the Glock against a shotgun at close range. But it didn't matter. His pistol was buttoned up tight inside his overcoat.

“Hey, asshole, look at me.”

Downing turned slowly. Corbett was sighting down the barrel of a 12-gauge Winchester, about twenty feet away. He wasn't aging well. Probably forty pounds heavier than he was in 1986. A week-old beard, flecked with gray, started at his trachea and covered his neck, chin, and face, nearly up to his eyes. Same Nixonian hairline, and one of the worst haircuts Downing had ever seen on a grown-up. A half-finished cigarette dangled from his lips, waggling as he talked and leaving a tracer trail of smoke in front of his face.

Big smile. “Say, aren't you Ron Corbett, the famous ex-pharmacist?”

Corbett stopped squinting, took a hard look, then put Downing back in his sights. “I could drop your body into one of the pits around here and nobody'd ever know,” he said. “One of the nicer things about rural living. Tight little community like this, nobody trusts a stranger. You kill one for looking in your window, everybody understands.”

“Ron. I'm hurt. I'm no stranger. Besides, half the cops in Pittsburgh know where I was headed today.”

No reaction. Corbett took his finger off the trigger long enough to flick the smoldering butt of his cigarette at Downing. “I know who you are, asshole. Figured you'd be around again, but figured you'd at least be smart enough to bring a search warrant this time.”

Downing imagined Corbett's knobby head exploding. Why had he buttoned his goddamned coat?

“I usually call first, just as a courtesy,” Downing said. “But I was in the neighborhood and all. Old friends shouldn't need an invitation.”

Corbett jerked the shotgun to one side, and the snow at the base of the steps exploded in a roar that echoed into the hills. Downing's left leg collapsed, like someone had knocked it out from under him with a baseball bat. He caught himself on the doorjamb before he fell, wondering how bad. He was still standing. Probably just a spray of pellets bouncing off the concrete. Corbett pumped another shell into the shotgun's chamber, aimed the barrel back at Downing's head.

Downing checked his leg, his fingers digging into the door frame. A dozen tiny holes in the rubber of his left boot. Felt like a deep bruise from the knee down. A man poked his head out the back door of the house behind Corbett. The guy with the willing wife.

“Need any help over there, Ray?”

“Got me a salesman,” Corbett said. “You got any use for him?”

The man laughed. “Be needing some fertilizer come spring,” he said, then went back inside. Downing's leg was on fire, but he steeled himself. No fear. No fear.

“Ray?” Downing said. “Now what kind of upstanding citizen goes by a different name when he moves to a new neighborhood? Not trying to hide anything, are you, Ron?”

“Got more secrets than you'll ever know, asswipe, but you got nothing on me. Never did.” Corbett shuddered, drew his shoulders tighter. All he had on was a sweatshirt and jeans. “You just like busting my balls.”

Blood was seeping into Downing's sock. It wasn't bad, just a trickle. He could probably dig the pellets out himself.

“Oh, but we do have a problem, Ron,” he said. “Just wanted to warn you, you know, as a public service. There's some bad yogurt going around. Nasty stuff. Just check those expiration dates carefully next time you're in the dairy aisle.”