Murder Book E-Book

Thomas Perry

• Herausgeber: Grove Press UK
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 564

Beschreibung

When a sudden crime wave hits several small midwestern towns, the U.S. Attorney for the region calls on Harry Duncan to investigate. An ex-cop known for his unorthodox methods, Duncan is reluctant to go up against a widespread criminal organization - but the attorney in question is Ellen Leicester, the wife who left him fifteen years earlier, and to her, he can't say no. Initially brought in as a consultant to determine if the racketeering is severe enough to require an all-out investigation by the FBI, Duncan quickly finds himself in conflict with a syndicate far more violent than first suspected. As the investigation develops, he begins compiling a 'murder book,' the notebook in which a detective keeps records, interviews, photos - everything he needs to build his case. But his scrutiny of the gang soon makes Duncan a target. And Ellen, too. A thrilling and suspenseful tour of crime-addled midwestern towns, Murder Book is signature Thomas Perry, with characters you won't soon forget, crisply-described action sequences and breathlessly tense plotting that will keep you racing through the pages.

Leseprobe

‘A master of nail-biting suspense’

Los Angeles Times

‘Perry’s characters come to life with a single sentence.… He’s one of the greatest living writers of suspense fiction’

New York Sun

‘The pages melt away as the story maintains a breathless pace throughout. This is further proof that Perry is a dominating force in the world of contemporary suspense thrillers’

Publishers Weekly

‘Top-drawer thrills from an author whose hard-nosed hero is as professional as he is’

Kirkus

‘Harry is a thinking person’s action hero, and Perry is the ultimate thinking person’s thriller writer

Booklist (starred review)

‘A thrilling and suspenseful tour of crime-addled midwestern towns, Murder Book is signature Thomas Perry: a police procedural suspense thriller of a read with memorable characters, crisply-described action

sequences and breathlessly tense plotting’

Midwest Book Review

Also by Thomas Perry

The Butcher’s Boy

Metzger’s Dog

Big Fish

Island

Sleeping Dogs

Vanishing Act

Dance for the Dead

Shadow Woman

The Face-Changers

Blood Money

Death Benefits

Pursuit

Dead Aim

Nightlife

Silence

Fidelity

Runner

Strip

The Informant

Poison Flower

The Boyfriend

A String of Beads

Forty Thieves

The Old Man

The Bomb Maker

The Burglar

A Small Town

Eddie’s Boy

The Left-Handed Twin

Hero

First published in the United States of America in 2023 by The Mysterious Press, an imprint of Penzler Publishers

This paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2024 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove Atlantic

Copyright © Thomas Perry, 2023

The moral right of Thomas Perry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN 978 1 80471 060 9

E-book ISBN 978 1 80471 061 6

Printed in Great Britain

Grove Press UK

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.groveatlantic.com

For Jo

1

Larson parked the car in the lot behind the Mini Market where there were no lights over the lot after closing, and he and Kirk got out and walked. The streets of Groomsburg were so quiet and deserted late on a weeknight that Larson thought he probably could have parked in the middle of the street and nobody would have noticed. That was an exaggeration, but the store windows along here had all been dark for hours. People in these old towns on the river all seemed to get up with the sun, and go to bed with it too. The stop light at the intersection ahead of them that blinked red in the daytime was blinking yellow now.

Their destination was just past the light, so it wouldn’t be long. As they walked closer, he and Kirk scanned the area for signs of life, and saw nothing worth mentioning—no pedestrians, no headlights, nothing to worry about. They walked up to the electronics store, past the sign that said, “Computers, Phones, Warranty Repairs.”

The big problem with electronics stores was that every last one of them had cameras recording everything that went on inside or outside. Larson and Kirk never paused or looked up, so there wouldn’t be a recording of them peering into the shop or anything. They kept going past the window before they turned and went down the side of the building toward the back. They put on black face masks and Larson took out the roll of trash bags and peeled one off before they emerged and stepped toward the back door. Larson looked behind him and saw a car edged up to the rear of the building. What was that doing in the alley? But it wasn’t a police car, it was empty, and not running, so he didn’t let it distract him. He looked forward and saw Kirk standing under the first security camera pointing up at it.

Larson joined him, squatted and let Kirk, who was only about 160 pounds, climb up onto his shoulders. Larson stood and waited while Kirk slipped the trash bag over the camera and taped it closed with electrical tape. Then Larson carried Kirk to the next camera and stood still while Kirk put another bag over that camera and slid down to the pavement. Larson took out the crowbar, stuck the flat end into the space beside the metal door, and pried the door away from the jamb far enough to let Kirk push the blade of a screwdriver in to depress the lock’s plunger and push the door inward.

As the door swung open, they were surprised to see lights on inside. They both slipped in and Larson quickly swung the door closed behind them, but it didn’t seem to fit right anymore, probably because the door had gotten bent a little when he’d pried it aside. He saw a rubber doorstop on the floor, held the door shut, and jammed the doorstop under it with his foot.

He didn’t expect to be in the store for long anyway. All they had been sent to accomplish was to smash the computers and phones that were there for repairs and mess the place up, and that wouldn’t take much time. They were supposed to leave all the new computers and phones in the front alone. The bosses didn’t want Donald Whelan to go bankrupt and stop earning money. They just wanted to show him who he was dealing with—people who could get to him, his store, his family anytime they wanted and make him hurt. Steel doors and locks wouldn’t stop them.

Kirk was ahead of him, going through an open doorway into a larger space that was clearly a workshop. Larson followed him in, and then saw a spotless white table on each side of the next door, with a couple of stools under it. Above them and around the walls were sets of metal shelves with boxes that held cell phones, chargers, laptop computers, big-screen desk models, some with handwritten notes taped to them that looked like descriptions of computer problems, and bills that implied some of them were already fixed, waiting for somebody to pick them up and pay.

Kirk reached to the top shelf of the biggest set of metal shelves and stepped backward to pull it over. Boxes slid off shelves, dumping computers, phones, and parts onto the floor, and then the steel frame crashed down on top of them. Kirk looked back at Larson with a gleeful, delighted expression. Larson smiled too. Whelan would have to tell all those customers why he hadn’t fixed their stuff. It would pass the fear to the others like an infection.

Suddenly the door between the two workbenches swung open, and an older man looked in, already staring in shock at the floor. Larson knew it had to be Donald Whelan confirming what he thought he’d heard. Whelan gaped when he saw Larson and Kirk, but he didn’t shout or swear at them. He instantly pulled back and slammed the door behind him.

Kirk was after him in an instant like a dog after a squirrel, through the door and into the showroom. Larson was a few steps behind, and he saw Whelan crouch at the counter, reach under it, and pop back up to face Kirk holding a pistol. Kirk’s eyes widened as he stopped short, but Larson kept coming. He swung the crowbar into Whelan’s head, splitting his skull and sending a spray of blood across the counter and onto the white floor beyond.

It was midafternoon and Harry Duncan was in the office in his apartment on Huron Street in North Center Chicago. From the window above his desk, he could look between two old gray stone buildings and see the North Branch of the Chicago River a bit over a block away. He was gathering the last notes and records of the investigation he had just finished and adding them to the case’s fat loose-leaf notebook to be stored, when the desk phone rang. He picked it up. “Harry Duncan.”

“Mr. Duncan, this is Lena Stratton in the office of Ellen Leicester. She asked me to call because she’d like to meet with you this week. Would you be available for that?”

It took Duncan enough time to consider it that he had to cover the delay by saying, “Let me just see when I’m free. When and where would she like to meet? Her office?”

“She’d like to meet you at the Atwood Restaurant on West Washington. If you could make it tomorrow after three, that would work.”

Duncan realized his strongest response to the idea was curiosity, so he said, “I’m sorry, I’m busy tomorrow. Does she have any time today?”

“She could be available after six today, if that’s better.”

“I can do that. Let’s say six-thirty. And you said the Atwood?”

“Yes. I’ll make the reservation.”

“Thank you,” Duncan said, and hung up the phone. He couldn’t help wondering if Lena Stratton knew who he was. Assistants eventually came to know just about everything about their bosses, which was one of the reasons why when his last one left he had never replaced her. He decided that this woman probably didn’t know he and Ellen had once been married. To her Ellen was probably just US Attorney Ellen Leicester, and he was—what? Nobody. Ellen had been good at keeping a wall between what she knew and what others knew. He wondered what she wanted from him after all this time.

He finished the case record and stood the notebook upright on a shelf that held the last dozen, waiting for him to put them into storage when he got around to it. As he always did, he reminded himself to do it before the weight of them broke the shelf and dumped them on the floor. He had learned to call these notebooks “Murder Books” when he had worked Homicide. Too often these days that name wasn’t inaccurate.

At six-thirty he walked up to the restaurant. It was all windows, right in the State Street shopping district, and he spotted her from a distance, sitting alone at a table for two, facing the back of the room. She had just turned forty-two on March 20th—there was no way he could erase his ex-wife’s birthday and get that memory space back—and she still looked young. He stepped inside and she waved. As he walked toward her, he noted that she didn’t smile.

He arrived and said, “Hello, Ellen. How are you?”

“Fine, Harry,” she said. “Thank you for coming. She made a slight gesture to indicate the two coffee cups. “I assume you still take it with no sugar and a little bit of cream.”

“Yes.”

It was business. Her tone told him that, so he said, “What can I do for you?”

“Please sit down,” she said. When he was seated across from her she said, “You know that I’m a US Attorney now, right?”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you. I’ll try to give you the reason I called, as briefly as I can. Some disturbing trends have been emerging in the crime reports we’ve been getting lately. In the past year or so, there have been a number of career criminals showing up in unexpected places. The way this first came to me were reports that certain past offenders from this district began to disappear from here and turn up committing crimes in places like rural Indiana.”

Duncan said, “What sorts of crimes?”

“Assaults and robberies by teams rather than individuals, extortion, and that sort of thing. There have been a few robberies that included murders. If it had been happening here, some of these crimes might not have made the TV news. It isn’t that one crime is a big deal. But having a lot of them at once where there weren’t any before might be. What we’re noticing could be the very start of an organized crime syndicate.”

“It’s possible,” Duncan said. “There’s always somebody trying to be the next mafia.”

“I’ve talked to a few colleagues inside Justice, trying to find people who might take something like this seriously. What I’ve found is that nobody else thinks it merits taking FBI agents away from espionage, homeland security, and financial crimes to look. Some people point out that we’ve got a huge backlog of criminal cases, as though I hadn’t noticed. And so on. Everybody’s got a reason not to do anything. And technically, most of this stuff should be the business of the state of Indiana, or at least the Indiana US Attorney’s office.”

“But you want to look into it.”

“I can’t see ignoring it,” she said. “But I’ll need more than a suspicion to launch a full-scale investigation, especially in another district. I think the solution is to have an outside expert take a look and either verify it or rule it out. It has to be done quietly. I looked at the private consultants and investigators who have been hired by the department in the past and kept on a short list. I saw your name.”

“And you figured I must be on the skids by now and would be glad to take a job looking at muggings in East Jesus, Indiana.”

“No. It’s not like that at all. You should see the evaluations other prosecutors have given you.” She lowered her voice. “The reason I’m asking you is that when I looked at the list of approved names, I saw yours. Our marriage didn’t work, but it left me with all the knowledge I needed about you. I know you have the intelligence, the honesty, and the courage. I know from your record since those days that you have the experience. I don’t really know those things about any of the others. This is also a job that’s delicate. There are a lot of people who are very rigid about things like jurisdictions.”

“I can imagine,” he said.

“All I’m asking is that you go to some of the places where these things have been happening. It’s a scouting mission by a well-respected consultant. You make your observations and write a report telling me it’s something the government should investigate or it’s not.”

“I assume you know I get paid for this kind of thing.”

“And you know the range of fees the Department pays,” she said. “I’ve set your fee at the top level. It’s not a gesture for old times’ sake. I don’t make any gifts of public funds. The record of your other services justifies it. And of course you can submit a claim for necessary expenses.”

“Anybody know I’m your ex-husband?”

“I haven’t mentioned to anyone I was doing this, let alone which consultant I want to contract. Ex-spouses are not relatives, you’re not an employee, and I’m not your supervisor.”

“True enough,” he said.

“Look, Harry. I don’t know what you feel about me after all these years, I suppose because you’re too decent to say. If you don’t want to help me with this, I’m in no position to blame you. But feelings aside, you also know me. I’m not lying to you about any of it.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll take a look.” He instantly felt a stab of regret. She’d had no right to bother him for any reason, let alone something like this. It wasn’t even a smart plan. It was likely to alienate her colleagues and bosses and accomplish nothing. He considered saying, “On second thought, I take that back. This isn’t for me.” The words didn’t come. Instead, he stood. “I’ve got to go. Email me the details and I’ll start in a day or two.”

A town slid into view as Harry Duncan drove around a curve in the road that ran beside the Ash River in Indiana. The river was a nearly opaque gray flow fifty to a hundred feet wide that meandered for eighty miles through flat farm country and second-growth woods. Duncan was fairly sure this town was the one that he had chosen as the place to start his assignment, but on maps these little towns were just dots along the water, and it was possible this one might be the wrong dot.

He had driven here from Chicago, which was the most recent of several cities where he had built his skills and reputation as a cop, and where he then became a private investigator and added to the number of people who would have liked to see him dead.

He was driving a boxy-shaped Toyota that he had bought in Illinois and driven straight from the dealer’s lot to a custom shop, where they put in a bigger engine, and then removed every piece of shiny metal and all words, numbers, and logos, so the car would have been difficult to identify by name or to describe. His first act after heading into Indiana had been to install the set of Indiana license plates he had obtained through Ellen Leicester’s office.

He wasn’t exactly sure why he had agreed to take this assignment. His marriage to Ellen had lasted about three years. A divorce between two law students who had no children and virtually no money was quick and efficient, and then he’d left law school and driven to California. During the succeeding fifteen years they had never been in touch.

Since he had just finished a case, he’d had some time he hadn’t yet agreed to devote to anything else, so he had given in to his curiosity about what she could want after all this time. He’d walked into the restaurant with the word “no” waiting on his tongue, but during the conversation he had delayed delivering it until he’d heard too much. He still wasn’t sure why he had said he’d do it. She’d assured him this was going to be a simple, undemanding observation of a couple of small towns and a report. Maybe she was right.

Harry Duncan was exactly six feet tall with light brown hair and an athletic body that had sustained the sorts of scars incidental to a history of jobs that involved differences of opinion, but he could keep them unseen without much effort. Over the years he had become adept at making himself seem less formidable than he was so he could observe. The long drive had made him hungry, and he hoped the next town would have a good place to stop.

He drove the next two curves of the river and noticed a large one-story building with clapboard siding that identified it as antique situated in the middle of a vast parking lot with a tall lighted sign mounted above it that read, “The Elbow Room.” It looked like a bar, and most bars served some kind of food.

There were a few cars parked around it, which he hoped meant it was open. He veered to the left and coasted across the lot into a parking space near the building, got out of his car, and walked inside the nearest entrance. He sat on a stool at the fifty-foot polished wooden bar and waited until the woman behind it came up to him and smiled. “What can I bring you, sir?” she said.

“Are you serving lunch?”

She smiled. “I’m sorry, sir. Lunch is eleven to one and it’s now one-fifteen. You can have the same food, but we can’t call it lunch.” She reached under the bar and pushed a plastic-covered menu in front of him.

He looked at the menu. “Is the hamburger okay?”

“We’ve been assured that it’s ground beef, made from an animal recently deceased. I’ll be cooking it myself, so it will be safe to eat too.”

“Then I’ll chance it.”

“I’ll get it started. Before I come back you should think about what you want with it—lettuce, tomato, French fries, beer and what kind, onions and what kind.” She went through a swinging door into the kitchen. About thirty seconds later she reappeared.

Harry Duncan confirmed his first impression, which was that he didn’t want to stop talking to her, or even look away from her. She had long, straight, reddish-brown hair and green eyes that seemed constantly amused. Duncan had long ago become aware that the most beautiful sight on the planet was an adult female human being. This was a trait shared in some degree by every woman if she was watched by an astute observer, but this woman was striking. She was still smiling as she wrote down the rest of his order and offered him a local lager called “Ash River’s Best.” She set the brown bottle in front of him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Have you seen the water in that river?”

“Drink a little of the beer. If you don’t like it don’t pay and I’ll pretend to spill it.” She took the bottle, twisted off the cap, and poured some into a tall pilsner glass.

He sipped it and admitted to himself it was very good, but to her he only held his right thumb up. She curtsied, as though accepting applause. Duncan ate his food while she opened a dishwasher under the bar, polished glasses with a clean white dish towel, and put them in an overhead rack. As he watched her work, he detected very small crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, and guessed she was probably just about his age. He would never see forty again, but his thirties were recent enough so he hadn’t noticed any changes yet. She was better off, probably lied about her age and easily got away with it. He felt an urge to get her to talk so he could listen to her voice some more. “What’s the name of this town?” he asked. “I didn’t see a sign when I drove in.”

“A guy clipped it on the turn one night and it flew into the river. We’re all waiting for the new one to be delivered. The town is called Parkman’s Elbow.”

“Unusual.”

“It’s an old name. The first man here was named Lafayette Parkman. He built a thousand-acre farm along the water and named the river the Ash-Gray River. I guess it was because there was a Blue River and a White River already. Maybe Red was taken too. The name was gradually worn down to the Ash River. As you probably noticed, it meanders. Seventeen turns. People named the meander on Parkman’s land Parkman’s Elbow.”

“I suppose that’s why this bar is called The Elbow Room.”

“Right.”

“Is it a nice place to live?”

“That’s probably one of those things we all ought to vote on. It’s always been good enough for me.” She looked at his empty plate. “Was the food all right?”

“It tasted very good, and I’m still healthy.” He started to reach for his wallet.

“Don’t get up. Finish your beer,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute to give you your check. You can even have another beer if you don’t get rowdy.” She took his plates and disappeared into the kitchen again.

She was gone again for thirty seconds, and then came back in with her bill pad. She said, “Is your car the black one with no chrome on it?”

“Yes. Did I park in the wrong space?”

“There are two men outside checking out your car. I just thought you should know.”

He said, “Thanks,” and walked into the back hallway, past the men’s room, and then out and around the back of the building. He looked in the parking lot and then up and down the nearby streets. There were no police cars parked on the lot, and no plain cars equipped with aftermarket devices like spotlights or extra electronics, so he knew the two men couldn’t be cops.

He stepped to the corner of the building to look and saw a large man with a shaved head that was too small for his body so it seemed bullet-shaped. The man took a slim jim out of a small canvas tool bag, slipped it into the space between the driver’s side door and the window, then gave it a tug to unlock his car door and swung it open. The man sat in the driver’s seat, returned the slim jim to his tool bag, and brought his hand out holding a large screwdriver.

Duncan said, “I wouldn’t pop the ignition lock if I were you.”

The man looked up and a mischievous smile appeared on his face. He ducked his head to get out, stood up, and faced Duncan, now tapping the screwdriver on the palm of his other hand. “Why not?”

“It’s my car, and I don’t want it stolen.”

“You’ve got that wrong. It’s about to be towed by the transportation department. The plates are not new, but the car is, and the inspection sticker seems to be a fake. You can straighten it out at the department, pay the towing fee, and pick up your car after that. The fine for the fake sticker shouldn’t be more than a thousand bucks, but you’ll have to deal with the DMV to get a new registration.”

“I’m guessing there’s a way to get around all that?”

“Some people like to just pay their fines on the spot, if they have the cash with them. You could do that, but don’t take time deciding. Once the car is up on the truck, they don’t take it down.”

“Since you’re from the transportation department, I’d like to see your ID.”

“It’s in the tow truck. You can see it when they get here.”

Duncan nodded. He took out his phone and took the man’s picture, then pressed the video icon.

“Give me that phone,” the man said, and started walking toward Duncan. He held the screwdriver low against the side of his leg, like a man in a knife fight.

The woman in the bar had said there were two men. As Duncan slipped his phone into his pants pocket he spun his head to look for the other man. The missing man was only a few steps away, walking quietly up behind him. The moment he saw Duncan’s glance he started to reach behind his back, but then saw that the turn of Duncan’s head had launched his friend toward Duncan, so he ran toward him too.

Duncan knew the one behind him was the more urgent danger, so he threw his left elbow back to catch the man between his nose and upper teeth, pulled him forward and jerked the man’s shirt up to snatch the pistol out of the back of his belt, then brought it down hard on the back of its owner’s head and then up again toward the chest of the man with the screwdriver.

The big man stopped short, put his hands in the air, and dropped the screwdriver.

Duncan said, “You are both under arrest on suspicion of impersonating a public official, attempted grand theft auto, soliciting a bribe, and assault with a deadly weapon. Get down on the pavement ten feet apart with your arms stretched out. If you don’t comply, I’m perfectly happy to shoot you and then handcuff you so you I can keep track of you while you’re bleeding out.”

The two men obeyed.

“Bring your hands behind you and cross your wrists. I’m sure you know the position.”

The two men followed his orders, and he took out of his jacket two sets of handcuffs and applied them to their wrists. “I’m going to search you. If there’s something on you that can hurt me, tell me now.”

The two men were silent.

He patted them down and found their wallets, glanced at their driver’s licenses, and said, “Ray Barstow and Timothy Vance. Your licenses say you live in Chicago. Why would two guys like you turn up in another state shaking down people in a parking lot?”

They said nothing.

“It wouldn’t be because there’s a warrant for you in Illinois, would it?”

The big man said, “Are you even a cop? Let’s see your badge.”

“It’s in the truck with your ID.”

The other man said, “These cuffs are too tight.”

Duncan said, “Be glad you have them. The cuffs mean I’ll look bad if I shoot you. Get in the car. Remember to duck your head a little.” He opened the back door of his car and held his hand on each man’s head in turn to guide it in past the roof. Each of the rear doors had a ring welded to it, and a chain ran through them. He slipped it through both men’s arms above the cuffs and secured it with a padlock. “One more word of advice,” he said. “If you manage to kill me while I’m driving you in, make sure my body tips to the right so I don’t drive into the river. You’ll never get out in time.”

Duncan started the car, drove out of the lot, and headed north along the river. “What are you two doing out here?” They said nothing. “You’re both going to be charged with enough felonies just from the past fifteen minutes to put you away for years. I can make it worse, or I can forget a lot of things that make for longer sentences.”

He took his phone out of his pants pocket, hid it under his road map on the passenger seat, and began recording. “We’re going to know everything about you twenty minutes after the cell door closes on you, but I’d rather know what you’re doing here. How did you even know about this town?”

“We heard there were jobs. We didn’t have any.”

“What was the job?” Duncan asked. “What do you do?”

“We were open.”

“Who recruited you?”

“Where are you driving us?”

“100 North Senate Street, Indianapolis. That’s the State Police.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s for your own good. Would you rather be in a spotless first-rate place run by highly trained State Police officers or some remote village lockup that feeds you bologna sandwiches on white bread twice a day if they remember to? They know me in Indianapolis, and they’ll take you off my hands without making you sit handcuffed to a bench for hours while they fill out forms.”

2

It was four hours later when Duncan returned to the parking lot behind The Elbow Room. He walked in the rear door and went back to his seat at the bar. A minute later the woman who had been bartending when he had come in earlier walked up behind the bar and leaned back on her elbows on the narrow counter below the shelves of liquor bottles.

She said, “I saw you handcuffing those two guys who were checking out your car.”

Duncan said, “Did you?”

“Yeah. It’s not often I get to see one guy win a fight with two and then put handcuffs on them. How do you get to arrest people?”

“I was the one who ended up with the gun.”

“Usually it takes a badge too. Where do you work? Are you a sheriff’s deputy or state police?”

“I’ve been both of those. I’m working out of my car at the moment.”

“Did you get fired or something?”

“A few times, but that isn’t the reason why I’m working alone.”

“What is?”

“Those two guys looking over my car wanted me to pay them a thousand dollars not to hot-wire it or tow it away. It turned out that they were wanted, and there were rewards for bringing them in adding up to thirty thousand dollars. Cops can’t get reward money.”

“You got thirty thousand?”

“So far. They might be wanted in other crimes that will come up when the report of their apprehension gets around to other states.”

“Did you already get the check?”

“Yes. That was what took me so long to get back.”

“Can I see it?”

“I deposited it as soon as I could. I don’t like to have to hold on to a check for long, and it was an easy way to pick up some traveling cash.”

“Good. You never did pay your lunch tab.”

“That reminds me. You contributed to the detection and arrest of two dangerous felons. I think you should share part of the reward.”

She laughed. “You can put my share in the jukebox if you’ll pick a good song.”

He took an envelope out of his inner coat pocket and placed it on the bar in front of her. “Three thousand dollars.”

She looked shocked for a second and suspicious for another second, staring into his eyes. Then she put a fingernail in the opening of the envelope, lowered her head, and squinted into it. “Really? You’re giving me that?”

“I’m just being fair.”

“Did I forget to mention I wasn’t stupid?”

“What’s your name?”

“Renee.”

“Okay, Renee. I swear to you I’m not trying to buy your affection or anything. Being a private investigator is a business, and when somebody helps me, I try to make sure that they know I’m grateful. If something else comes up I want them to consider doing it again.”

“I’m sorry I insulted you. Just take the money back. Warning somebody shouldn’t be something you take money for.”

“Do you still have my bill for lunch?”

She turned toward the cash register and hit a key, and when the drawer opened, she took the little white slip out and set it in front of him. He took a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to her. She handed him his change, a dollar and thirty cents, and the envelope full of money.

“You know, when I went to turn those guys in to the state police, one of the cops mentioned that there seemed to have been a lot of other crimes happening around here. Is that true?”

“I can’t say he was wrong,” she said. “This area wasn’t ever that way, but places change, sometimes not for the better. Lately there have been some worrisome things—tough-looking strangers coming around, some really nasty fights. There actually were a couple murders this year, one of them just about two weeks ago in Riverbend. You probably drove past the town to get here. There was another one a month or so before that in Groomsburg, in the other direction. Both were elderly men found in their businesses. It sounded like both times somebody broke in to rob the place, and they got in the way.”

“Did the police arrest anybody yet?”

“Not that I know of. To tell you the truth, right now what I’m getting worried about is what happened to you this afternoon. Criminals in the parking lot trying to rob customers in midafternoon? That’s a big deal for a bar.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It could be.” He took a card out of his wallet and set it on the bar in front of her. “Please put this where you won’t lose it. I’d appreciate a call if you notice anything else that worries you.” He turned and walked toward the back door.

“Hey wait,” she called. “You forgot your money.”

“No I didn’t.” And then Duncan was out the door.

Duncan had been lying to Renee most of the time while they had been talking. He had never been fired from any of his law enforcement jobs. He had simply outgrown them, learned everything he could, and then left for a better one, usually in a different large city, where he might learn other things. The Indiana State Police had not said anything to him about an increase in crime in the Ash River area either. The suspicious rise in crime had been why he’d come here, the reason he’d been hired. He had not received a reward for bringing in the two shakedown artists. The money he’d given her had been part of the operating budget he’d taken from his bank when he’d left Chicago.

He had not anticipated that he would run into a pair of criminals within the first hour of his first day in sight of the Ash River. After he had captured them, the reason he’d taken them to the distant State Police headquarters was to avoid letting that obliterate his cover. The fact that Renee had seen the fight had presented a serious problem. He had told her he was a private investigator—and he was, with a real license—and handed her his business card, but he could just as easily have handed her one of the cards that said he was a furniture company executive or a personal trainer or a real estate salesman. He was aware that she may have been lying to him too. She wouldn’t be the first woman to give a stranger a false name.

But Renee had been his first contact in Parkman’s Elbow, and she had been observant and responsible enough to tell him about the men showing suspicious interest in his car. She seemed smart, and also worked in a perfect position to know about things going on in the town. During his career he had learned a lot from bartenders. They served people alcohol, a chemical that made them more talkative and less guarded, more willing to reveal personal information, and made the ones who had something to hide worse at it. The fact that she was physically attractive must add greatly to her appeal to both male and female guests. He had been lucky to find her, but he had to be careful with her.

For the next three days, Duncan drove from one small town along the river to the next, studying each one and searching for familiar signs of criminal activity. In many cities where he’d worked, houses that had been fitted with metal doors and bars on the windows were a sign of drug dealing. Adult women on the streets at night who weren’t in a hurry to get somewhere were often working for traffickers. When more than one man rode in the same car on a route that seemed aimless, they might be casing buildings for burglary or armed robbery. Any building where there were lots of cars coming and going after midnight could be the scene of any combination of crimes.

He stayed in a Stop Inn chain hotel in Riverbend, which had a bar so he could watch and listen to people talking to the bartender, ate breakfast and lunch in diners up and down the river where he could overhear conversations at other tables, put on a friendly smile when he was in public, and talked to anyone who seemed receptive. Whenever he got into a friendly conversation that went past the weather and into the subject of the town and the region, he would try to get a sense of what people were feeling about crime, particularly the two recent murders. He drank in bars and restaurants in the evenings, but found no bar that seemed as promising as The Elbow Room. When he drove past in the evening, it had more cars parked in its big lot, and was livelier than the others. It seemed to be the place lots of locals preferred.

For a few evenings he drove by at different hours, sometimes parking down the road out of sight of the building but able to watch people coming and going at the lot’s entrance. And then one afternoon, at about the time of day when he had first gone in, he pulled up to The Elbow Room, went inside, and sat at the bar.

After a minute Renee came out of the kitchen and saw him. “You fooled me. I thought you’d be back here sooner.”

“Why? Did you miss me?”

“No. Actually, I just wanted my expectation confirmed. You’re lucky. I haven’t taken time out to spend your money yet. If you’ll wait a few minutes, I’ll get it out of the safe for you, and you can be on your way.”

“No, thanks. It’s yours.”

She stopped and looked at him, her expression suspicious. “What are you doing here?”

“I came back for another hamburger.”

She picked up a pad of order sheets, set it down in front of him, and wrote. “Rare? Medium rare? Medium?”

“Medium. Dill pickle slices, sauteed onion, lettuce, tomato. French fries. A salad. A bottle of Ash River’s Best.”

“Cheese on your burger?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I have no objection to cheese, but not this time.”

In a few minutes she was back with the plated food on a tray, set the tray down to unload it, and stood back against the counter beneath the wall of liquor bottles. “I’ve got to tell you, if I don’t have any interest in you—and I don’t—money doesn’t change that at all.”

“I understand,” he said. “I don’t have time for a girlfriend anyway. The hamburger is good.” He took another bite.

She said, “Thank you.” She began to wipe down the bar away from him with a cloth, walking along behind it and polishing it vigorously. Finally, after she reached the distant end, she walked casually in his direction, looked down at his plates as she passed, said “Everything still okay?” and when he nodded, continued to polish the other stretch of bar beyond him.

After he finished the food, she piled the plates on the tray and took it into the kitchen. She came back, opened the refrigerator under the bar, took out two bottles of Ash River’s Best, and held up one of them toward him. “Want another one?”

He looked at the big mirror behind the liquor bottles to verify that the big room was empty except for a couple of busboys setting tables near the front, and said, “Sure.”

She twisted off the tops of the two bottles, set one down beside his glass, and reached up to the rack above her, took a glass, poured the other bottle into it, and took a sip. “How long are you planning on staying around here?”

“Until my curiosity is satisfied, I suppose.”

“Curiosity about what?”

“The town. The people. A person like you has probably got so much to tell me that it might be enough to get rid of me.”

She gave a little laugh and took another sip from her glass. “I’ll try. Parkman’s Elbow kind of limits you. Not many people become geniuses because the school doesn’t have the sort of faculty who can teach that. People don’t have a lot of money because the only thing you can do to get big money is let a conglomerate buy your family’s farm, and the last two generations sold about all of them already.”

“Do the young people move away?”

“Not many. There’s a kind of lethargy to some small towns. Parkman’s Elbow is the kind of place where a lot of people who are born here never go anywhere else to live and never learn anything after age fifteen. The best-looking young women graduate and marry the boy in their high school class who’s most conceited and assumes if he asks them to, they’ll say yes. They do. After the woman realizes that wasn’t a good idea, she divorces him and goes to live with the other classmate she cheated on him with. That’s why there are twenty-three-year-old women with three kids by different men, and ones who have slept with everybody by age thirty-five.”

“Is this you?”

“No, I’m just setting the scene for you. I could talk about my own marriage for longer than it lasted, but that would only make me depressed and you bored. Or I can say it didn’t work out and be done with it.”

“I’m okay with that,” Duncan said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Yes you did. You ever marry?”

“Yes. Not much joy left in that story either.”

“I would like it if you would make an exception and tell me the truth about the money you gave me. You didn’t get paid thirty thousand dollars for taking in those two guys, did you?”

“Yes and no. Governments don’t cut a check instantly. The two guys will have to be charged and returned to other places. One of them disappeared near the end of his murder trial and the other will be put back in prison for a violation of his parole from an old sentence for armed robbery. The State Police will have to file to say I brought them in, and the state authorities in Illinois approve payment. It happens, but it all usually takes at least a year.”

“So why did you give me that share?”

“Nobody wants to be thanked a year later.”

“You have a point.” She lifted her glass to him and took another sip, like a toast. “I’ll try to spend it in one place. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. You know, I’ve been thinking about that day. Those two guys couldn’t have been waiting here for me. I’d never been in this area before, and stopped at this bar because I happened to see it when I was driving by. You might want to think about that, and watch for something else to come up.”

“There hasn’t been anything else at The Elbow Room. A few faces nobody had seen before, but none of them did anything except drink, like everybody else.”

“Do you still have my card?”

“I don’t remember throwing it out, so I must.”

He set one on the bar. “Here’s another one.”

She picked it up. “Thanks.” She looked at her watch. “Ooh. We’ve got to get ready for the after-work happy hour people. Thanks again for the money.”

He said, “You know my name. It’s on my card, but I only know your first name. What’s your last name?”

“Parkman.”

She took her glass to the sink and poured the beer out, and kept going past the end of the bar and turned right, where she disappeared. He left a twenty-dollar bill on the bar under his empty glass and went out the back door to his car.

3

The Elbow Room was a much livelier place in late afternoon than it had been during the after-lunch lull. He spotted Renee behind the bar wearing a long black apron with the belt pulled around her waist and tied in front in a bow. He watched her tip an aluminum beer keg onto its side, roll it along the floor to its spot with her foot, tip it back onto its end, insert the tap, pump the siphon’s handle, feather the spigot to release excess gas and foam into a pitcher, then pour it down the sink and close the cabinet.

She looked up and saw Duncan staring at her.

He said, “Very impressive.”

“I learned something in college after all,” she said.

Duncan moved on and looked at the customers coming into the big room. There were small groups at about half the tables, and Duncan noted each of the people who caught Renee’s eye or waved to her as they came in. If he saw them shake hands with or hug any of the waiters or waitresses, he noted that too. Something was going on around here. He hadn’t forgotten that the two career crooks he had turned in to the state police had been loitering outside this building. If the bar heated up during the evening, he would not waste eye time on the people who were already on Renee’s side.

Duncan began to survey the rest of the crowd, looking for people whose faces showed either strategic watchfulness or habitual expressions that made him suspicious. He noted a couple of those too, but drew no conclusions about them.

He had not yet decided what Renee was up to. She showed every sign of knowing quite a bit about the world. When he had been younger, he had assumed that women who were so physically attractive probably saw only the nice things the world offered, and not the cruel ones, but since he’d spent time as a cop it had seemed that something approaching the opposite was truer. The only advantage he had seen for them was that more men were interested in them. To a professional expert in human troubles, that didn’t appear to be entirely an advantage.

Now that he had greater respect for her mental acuity, he knew he should beware. Very little human behavior, bad or good, was not premeditated, and he didn’t know what she wanted, or who she really was.

He was as much a stranger here as the criminals were, but he believed he had accidentally made contact with a woman who was a popular, maybe even important, local native. He had instantly known he should try to strengthen their connection, but there was something in her personality that repelled him. Her casual air of superiority, her assumption that he, and probably every man, had a strong interest in seducing her were tiresome. He had ulterior motives for talking to her, and he assumed she had hidden motives also.

He watched her move along the bar and hug the woman she seemed to be replacing as bartender. He watched her interactions with people who stood at the bar to order drinks, and others who took to barstools and stayed. Duncan added a few people to his mental gallery of friendly regulars for the next hour so he could ignore them if the time came. Soon a man arrived to help tend bar and another woman arrived to wait on tables.

Duncan studied whatever he could—the flow of the crowd as the people who had a drink before or after having dinner at The Elbow Room were slowly replaced by the real drinkers.

After a few more minutes the young waitress taking drink orders came to his table. Her smile was friendly.

“I’m Madeleine. What are you drinking?”

“A glass of tonic with a slice of lemon.”

“What alcohol?”

“None, please.”

“You’re not being scouted for the Olympics or on duty with the Secret Service, or about to fly an airliner to New York, are you?”

“Nope. I just don’t want to be easy for women to tempt.”

“That’s smart. Even I can’t be trusted, and I have to work for six more hours.”

“Thanks.”

When Duncan had his drink, he stood and walked out the door to the parking lot. He surveyed the lot, watching the cars coming in and their occupants walking to the entrance.

His eyes caught three men in their late thirties to late forties getting out of a pearlized white SUV in the lot. In a moment they were inside, striding single file up the aisle toward the bar. His eye was accustomed to settling on men like this as ones to watch. They were tall and had arms with the sort of knotty muscles a man acquired by doing pull-ups on a cell door rather than swimming and playing tennis. Two of the three had noses that had been broken at some point. Looking at them closely convinced Duncan that they were probably relatives. Their ages made them likely either cousins or brothers.

He estimated that given the number of people already waiting at the bar for drinks, he had time to take a quick look at their vehicle. He went to his own car, opened the trunk, and took out the slim jim he had taken from the man who had used it on his car, along with a large tube of epoxy cement he brought on car trips. He walked to the white SUV, looked around him to be sure nobody was watching, slid the slim jim between the driver’s door and the side window, felt for the lock mechanism, tugged upward, and popped the lock. He opened the door and turned off the interior lights.

In a second, he was sitting in the car. He opened the console between the front seats and found a Sig Sauer 9 mm pistol. Under the driver’s seat was a Kimber .45 pistol, and under the passenger seat a Glock 9 mm pistol. He reached to the dashboard and pressed the button to open the rear hatch, and hurried to look inside. Under a thick rubber mat he found three identical AR-15 style rifles in a row.

He took out his tube of cement and squeezed some into the three rifles’ muzzles and some onto the upper receivers, and then pressed the mat down on them. Then he glued the Sig Sauer onto the side window beside the rear seat, and the .45 to the top of the dashboard. For the Glock pistol he ran a stripe along the top of the steering wheel on the side that faced the windshield, and pressed the pistol against it for thirty seconds to be sure the cement had set. As a last touch he switched off the dome lights, opened the four doors, and ran a stripe of cement along the place where each door lock would grasp the bar on the chassis. He left each of them open just enough so the two parts didn’t touch.

Duncan returned the slim jim and epoxy cement to his car trunk and then walked back into The Elbow Room, already scanning to locate the three men. They were just behind three women sitting at the bar, and he could see that they were talking to them. After a moment the three women all got up and stepped away. Duncan could tell that whatever the men had said had upset them.

The three men sat in the women’s seats at the bar, and Duncan watched Renee notice them and approach. “What can I get you, gentlemen?” she asked. The one who seemed to be the oldest and had led them in said, “We’ll all have the free welcome introductory special.”

She grinned. “I’m afraid there is no free special. This establishment strictly adheres to the rules of the world. The bar has to buy liquor and glasses, refrigeration, air conditioning in summer, and heat the rest of the time. We charge good prices, but we do charge. Knowing that, what would you like?”

“All right, three double shots of Laphroaig single malt scotch with a Budweiser chaser.”

She beckoned to Mick, the tall curly-haired waiter, and repeated their order.

The same man said, “You’re not going to make our drinks yourself?”

“Sorry,” Renee said as Mick took the bottle off the upper shelf and reached up for the glasses. “I see some other customers who need my personal touch.”

“We don’t want the drinks if you don’t make them.”

“Anybody can pour a shot in a glass and set a beer beside it as well as anybody else.”

The man leaned forward on his elbows, and his two companions seemed to crouch to get closer to hear. “Listen carefully, honey. We came here to have you buy us a drink so we can be comfortable and welcome while we explain to you the way this establishment is going to operate in the future.”

She said, “Is this really going to be that kind of pitch?”

“It’s not a pitch. It’s an easy and simple business plan, both to understand and to operate. We will pay all necessary fees and provide one hundred percent of the services to keep this restaurant and tavern safe from fire, robbery, vandalism, and other contingencies. Your only contribution to overhead will be three hundred dollars per night and five percent of gross receipts. It could hardly be better.”

“Did you tell me your name? I don’t think I heard it.”

“Clark,” he said.

“Mr. Clark,” Renee said. “I’ve listened carefully to your proposal. You were right that it’s simple and easy to understand. In fact, it’s very familiar. We will not be accepting your offer. It’s extortion.”

Duncan stepped forward so he was right behind the men. “Hi, Renee,” he said. “Can you get me a draft beer, please?”

She smiled. “Sure, Harry.” She walked down toward the taps, at least fifteen feet from the three men, where he wanted her.

One of the three men turned to look at Duncan. “Did she send you out to call the police?”

“Men’s room. Why would I need police? I used to be in law enforcement myself.”

“Get scared or get fired?”

“Neither. I just take breaks between careers now and then to study and explore.”

“Study and explore what?”

“Lots of things,” Duncan said. “Painting, music, foreign languages, photography—”

“Renee looks glad to see you. If you’ve got a thing going with her, tell her to pay right away or the prices all go up.”

Duncan seemed not to hear him. “—piano, Brazilian Jiu-jitsu,” he continued.

The older man took the last swig of his scotch, lifted the short, heavy glass, and pulled back preparing to hurl it at the shelves of liquor bottles.

Duncan’s arm suddenly coiled around the man’s head, dragged him off the barstool, and dropped him on his back.

One of the man’s companions stepped toward Duncan, but Duncan seemed to have seen the next move forming in the man’s mind. As the man threw a punch, Duncan grasped his wrist and redirected it into the wooden bar. The third man made it off his barstool and tried to throw his shoulder into Duncan to tackle him, but Duncan sidestepped, grasped the man’s arm, and spun to the side, simply adding to his momentum so his head continued an extra six inches into the bar.

He said, “Gentlemen, don’t try to leave. I lied about not calling the police. They’ll be here in a few minutes, and they’re going to want to talk with you when they arrive.”

Duncan walked close to Mick and Renee by the taps and whispered, “Keep them in sight, but don’t do anything to stop them unless they try to hurt somebody on their way out.”

“What am I supposed to do then?” Mick asked.

He saw Renee’s eyes move to watch something behind him. “Too late.”

He turned in time to watch the three hurrying toward the front door. “A good start,” he said, and took his time walking to the front window to watch them leave.

They were looking at him over their shoulders at that moment. Jerry Clark, the older man who had done the talking inside, reached his car. He flung the driver’s side door open, and experienced a momentary disruption of his thoughts. The door hadn’t been latched. But the interior lights weren’t lit, and that man Harry was coming after them, maybe to get the license number and maybe for something worse, so he sat in the driver’s seat, yelled “Get in!” to his brothers, and slammed his door shut.