Читать книгу Ice Lake: A gripping crime debut that keeps you guessing until the final page - John Lenahan A - Страница 9

If you turn right out of the lake and head east for five miles, you come to Ice Lake’s nearest town – Oaktree, PA. The Lakers call that stretch the Five Mile Road. If you go left to St Elizabeth’s, that road is called the Seven Mile Road. Collectively both roads are known as the Thirteen Mile Road. No one knows where the extra mile comes from. It’s a Pocono mystery.

Cirba drove Harry to the site of the other Pocono mystery. About two miles along the Five Mile Road they pulled left onto a gravel slip known as the Horseshoe. Its name refers to the fact that the road simply goes into the woods and comes out again in a semicircle. After five hundred yards Harry could see the police tape and another squad car in the distance. The young statie in the car was obviously asleep with his head back and his mouth open. That’s what it initially looked like but then Harry felt a horrible lurch in his stomach as the idea came to him that maybe he had been shot. The feeling didn’t last long. The young trooper snapped awake as they drew closer to the car.

The cop popped out of his vehicle and tried not to look as if he had just woken up. Cirba met him and tried to pretend he hadn’t seen him asleep. He was a cadet and had been on the overnight watch at the scene. Cirba sent him home and then started pulling the police tape off the trees.

“Is this no longer a crime scene?” Harry asked.

“We got all the information from here that we’re gonna get.”

“And what was that?”

Cirba broke the plastic tape, rolled it up and, for the want of a better place to put it, stuffed it into his pocket. The forest of scrub oaks in this part of Pennsylvania didn’t seem that dark from the road, Harry thought, but once you were in them it was hard to see more than a short way ahead. Together they walked up a dark path that opened into a glen. In the centre was a ring of stones surrounding a firepit that looked like it had been used recently. Scattered around were broken and unbroken beer bottles and empty rifle shells. A bit further up the hill was a mound of earth that looked as if it had been made by the push of a bulldozer. In front of the mound were pulverized cardboard boxes with silhouettes of deer and men, as well as years of broken bottles and perforated rusted beer cans. One of the target practice silhouettes on the ground portrayed a man in a turban.

“The vic, Bill Thomson,” Cirba said, pointing just downhill of the firepit, “was found here. He had shotgun wounds to both knees and a double-barrelled shot to the back of the head.”

“Ouch,” Harry said without trying to be funny.

“Yeah, nasty stuff. The leg wounds were pretty – close range – we found some stray shot in the dirt but not much. My theory is that the shooter was behind the vic and put a shot in the back of the knee to drop him. But instead the vic turned on him so he emptied the second barrel into his other knee from the front. The vic went down here,” Cirba said pointing to a patch of dirt just downhill of the firepit that still had dark stains on it, “then the perp reloaded and put both barrels in the back of his head.”

“Cold,” Harry said, “a pro hit?”

“It doesn’t feel like it. There were no bruises on the guy so I’m inclined to say that he knew the shooter and was walking in front of him without a care in the world. Also pros don’t usually use shotguns.”

“Effective though, wouldn’t you say? You can’t get ballistics from a shotgun, and I don’t suppose the shooter left any empty shells with his fingerprints on them?”

“This place was littered with shotgun shells when we first got here. This is the local shooting range. But there weren’t any around where the shooter must have been standing. We picked up all the empties but we won’t get anything out of them.

“Any forensics – footprints, tyre tracks?”

“This is also the big teenage party spot. The vic seemed to have been cleaning it up. We found a plastic bag of bottles and cans with his prints on ’em. Word has it that there was a shindig up here three nights ago. So there are zillions of tyre treads. The local boy that found the vic came up to target practice. He drove over any tracks that would have been there, as did the local cops when they got here.”

“When was he shot?”

“Two days ago, just before midday. He was still a little warm when the boy found him.”

“Anybody hear anything?”

“Nobody around to hear. The only building close enough is the strip club but nobody would be there before noon.”

“A strip club you say? I think we need to investigate. Wouldn’t be called Nirvana by any chance?”

Cirba shook his head, walked over to a tree and removed the last remaining bit of crowd control tape. “There will be no investigating in any strip clubs. When you see the place, you’ll see that this is not Vegas – and that’s no lie. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you mentioned Nirvana again.”

“Oops. So who was the vic?”

Cirba sat down at one of the makeshift benches by the firepit. “He was a local guy named William Thomson – everybody called him Big Bill. Just turned thirty, been in trouble all his younger years, almost flunked out of high school, got busted for selling pot and for some graffiti stuff when he was a minor. I arrested him myself for joyriding, but his dad knew the man whose car he stole, so he got off. I knew his father, he was a really good guy. I’m glad he’s gone – this would’a killed him. Actually, Bill was a good kid. He got in trouble but he had that bad kid charm that made it so you couldn’t get mad at him. You know the type?”

Harry nodded. “The mayor said he worked for him.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing. Bill hadn’t been in trouble for years. His brother, Frank, inherited his dad’s old construction company. In the summer he worked for him, and in the winter he helped out as the handyman/super at the mayor’s ski condos where he had a basement apartment. We searched the place but there wasn’t much in it – a real bachelor pad. There were a lot of the mayor’s real estate books, weights for lifting, and a laptop. The laptop and the no-contract phone he was wearing when he got shot were both password-protected. They’re with the crime lab now.” The trooper took off his hat and wiped his brow.

“So who wanted him dead?”

“Don’t know but they tell me it’s my job to find out. In his younger days he used to hang out with a character that Narco’ thinks is cooking most of the crystal meth in the area. Feel like meeting the local freelance pharmacist?”

“Sure,” Harry said. “Then can we go to the strip club?”

* * *

There is a winding stretch on the Five Mile Road that has a series of banked s-turns. Legend has it that the road was originally an Algonquin hunting path – this bunch of turns is known locally as the Drunken Indians. People from all over, especially ones with new sports cars, make a trip here to speed through the racetrack-like bends. It’s not unusual to find Dom Barowski, the local Oaktree cop, sitting in a hidden spot at the end of the Drunken Indians with his speed camera. Two hours a day there pretty much funds Dom’s full salary.

Cirba took the Drunken Indians at high speed as Harry held on to the handle above his head. He honked and waved at Dom as he shot out of the last turn.

“I see the local constabulary doesn’t mind you busting up their speed limits,” Harry said as he straightened back up in his seat.

“Professional courtesy,” Cirba said.

“Are there any other turns like that between here and Oaktree or can I throw up now?”

“Throw up in my squad car and I’ll arrest you, Harry.”

“For what?”

“For throwing up in my squad car.”

“The taxi driver in Vegas was cool when you threw up out his—”

“Seriously, will you stop talking about that night?”

They turned onto a back road before entering town and ended up in a section that wasn’t in the brochure produced by the Oaktree Chamber of Commerce. Ed slowed to a crawl while negotiating the potholes. The sides of the road were strewn with litter, bottles, and the occasional roadkill. They passed white wooden houses, one after another, all desperately needing paint jobs and lawn mowing. Behind chain-link fences in almost every yard, a large dog barked so loud that Harry had to raise his voice a bit.

“They don’t seem to like you.”

“I used to be a dog lover before I took this job,” Cirba said. “I think some of these hillbillies have actually trained their dogs to attack anyone in a state police uniform.”

“How would they do that?”

“I don’t know but listen to them.”

Cirba slowed past another house, this one in better shape than the rest. The grass was still high and there was a bumperless body of an old Chevy Impala on the lawn but the house was newly painted, with modern windows behind metal security grates. Cirba drove by and said: “How about some lunch?”

“We’re not buying crack?”

“His car’s not there. Come on, I’ll treat you to the finest potato pancakes in north-east Pennsylvania.”

They exited pothole city and swung onto Main Street. Trooper Cirba drove slowly as he texted something on his cell phone. Here the town looked every bit like the Pocono Mountain dream that real estate agents and holiday home builders put on the front of their brochures. All the buildings on Main Street were old-school wood and painted the same brick red. There was a quaint hardware store, the kind you could imagine buying nails by the pound, that outside had a display of weathervanes. There was a fruit and vegetable stand laid out so pretty that it looked like a postcard. Next to that was a sporting goods store and then a pizza shop. It all had that mid-Atlantic rustic charm that made city slickers sigh.

The Oaktree Diner was at the end of the street. Harry and Trooper Cirba entered and walked to a booth in the back. A 70-year-old guy with a grey beard and a matching grey braided ponytail said: “Uh oh, it’s the fuzz.”

Cirba reacted with a tolerant smile.

The Oaktree Diner was one of those small-town American diners with so many items on their menu it made you wonder if the cook was an eleven-armed alien.

A middle-aged, tired but friendly waitress plonked down two ice waters and filled their coffee cups while saying: “Hiya, Ed, who’s your friend?”

“Darlene, this is Harry. Harry, Dar—”

“He calls us all Darlene in here,” the waitress said cutting him off. “I’m Sue.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sue.”

“So, is Ed here buying you a last meal before he hauls you off to jail?”

“I came because I heard you have the best potato pancakes in the Commonwealth.”

“Well that’s no lie. Anything else?”

“He’ll have the meatloaf,” Cirba said.

“Apparently, I’m also having the meatloaf.”

“Now don’t let him push you around, sweetie, just ’cause he wears one of those funny hats. You have whatever you like.”

“I will have the meatloaf,” Harry said returning the menu.

“Same for me,” the trooper echoed.

“Comin’ right up.”

After she had left Harry said: “You gonna let her diss the hat like that.”

“She’ll have a parking ticket on her car in the morning.”

Harry laughed. “If you hadn’t taken me to that other part first, I would have said this place was perfect small-town America.”

“Used to be. Not anymore.”

“You grow up around here?”

“Yeah, well, about thirty miles west. Around here, that’s next door.”

“You sure you’re not just being nostalgic about your childhood?”

“Oh, no, there’s been a real demographic change. With the rise of the Internet, lots of the financial types can work mostly from home. If they have to go to Wall Street it’s only two hours away. That commute is too much for every day but once or twice a week it’s manageable. People often moved here because their children in New York and New Jersey were falling in with bad kids. Problem is that a lot of the bad kids were actually their own children. Now we have the bad kids. These days we got tons of drugs up here we never had before, and we’ve even got gangs. There are kids wearing colours at the high school in Hilltop.”

“Like Sharks and Jets?”

“More like Crisps and Bloods.”

“Sounds bad.”

“It is. Maybe it’ll settle down, but at the moment people don’t know how to cope.”

Lunch arrived and even though it most certainly would not have made the American Heart Association’s recommended menu, it was awfully delicious.

As Cirba pushed away his plate with a satisfied sigh, Harry said: “I thought you were on a diet?”

“I’m on a diet when Mrs Cirba is cooking. The less I eat of her food the better.”

“So I can’t mention to your wife about Nirvana or that you eat lunch at the Oaktree Diner?”

“You wanna get found in the woods like Big Bill?” Cirba’s phone beeped. He checked the text, then opened his wallet and threw money on the table. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to Feather.”

Back in the squad car Harry asked: “Who or what is Feather?”

“Feather’s the pothead that wasn’t home before. Officer Barowski just texted me to say he was back in town.”

“Interesting name, Feather.”

“It’s short for his nickname from when he was young – Featherbrain. Strangely, he likes the moniker enough to have it tattooed on his neck.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“You know, a lot of people live up here because they want a simple life, and that’s all well and good, but there is a minority who are here because they are just simple. Feather is part of that – more tattoos than teeth brigade. Prepare yourself.”

* * *

They parked on the street and Harry jogged three paces behind Trooper Cirba as he walked up Feather’s driveway. Inside the house, what sounded like a pack of wolves went ballistic. Venetian blinds parted enough for a peek and then closed.

“Feather,” Cirba shouted. “I don’t have a warrant. I just want to talk.”

“How come you told him you don’t have a warrant?” Harry asked quietly.

“He just saw me and is now about to flush all of his junk down the toilet. I want him to talk to me, not to be mad at me.”

The door opened a crack and half of a scrawny unshaven face appeared. “You promise, Officer Ed, you got no warrant?”

“I swear, Feather. I just want to talk.”

“’Bout what?”

“Big Bill.”

Feather’s face disappeared from the doorway. “Sheeeet, you think I killed Big Bill?”

“Did you?”

Feather’s face reappeared in the crack. “Nooooo. He was my bro’.”

“I’ll take you at your word, Feather. Can we come in and talk about it?”

“Not ’less you have a warrant. I know the law. If I let you in you can bust me for anything you see.”

“I just want to talk, Feather. I won’t see nothing. Hell, you can even smoke a joint while we talk if you like. I know we’ve had our differences but I’ve always been square with you – right?”

“That’s no lie,” Feather said, pushing the door closed and undoing the safety chain. “Not like that fuckwit Barowski. Wait here while I put the dogs away.”

They waited while Feather screamed at his baying hounds. The front door opened and Harry got his first look at the man called Feather. He was one of those guys that was probably still in his twenties but had been so tough on himself that he looked a decade older. He wore a red plaid shirt and baggy blue jeans. His hair was in the style of an unkempt Jesus, and his fingers were nicotine stains on top of home-made star tattoos.

He pushed open the screen door and said: “Entre chez Feather. Hey, can I smoke crack while we talk?”

Cirba stepped into the house and said: “Don’t push it, Feather.”

The place was neater than Harry expected.

Feather noticed the two of them looking around. “I got a cleaning lady.”

“I’m impressed,” Cirba said. “You have to give me her number.”

“You can’t afford her,” Feather said while flopping into a pink overstuffed sofa and putting his feet on the Ikea coffee table. He shrugged. “She works for dope.”

Harry and Cirba sat in matching pink armchairs.

“You’re very forthcoming.”

“Who he?” Feather said, pointing at Harry as if he had just noticed him.

“He’s with me. A trainee of sorts.”

Feather snorted out a laugh. “A troopee?”

Harry nodded.

Feather opened a drawer on one of the side tables and took out a pre-rolled joint. He looked around to see if the two cops were going to stop him. When neither did, he lit it and said: “This is fun. Well, Mr Trooper and Mr Troopee Junior, you’re obviously not here about my proclivity with controlled substances so wad’d’ya want to know?”

“Bill wasn’t a user?”

“He smoked a joint every once in a while, but who doesn’t? You’d be surprised the upstanding citizens I have dealings with.”

“So you’re saying Bill wasn’t a user?”

“If it was night-time and we were playing Cinch or somethin’, he’d smoke a joint but he’s been boring for a long time.”

“How about meth?”

“Na, he never liked that stuff. He sold a bit of weed years ago. Hey, didn’t you bust him for that?”

“Wasn’t me,” Cirba said, “but I know about it.”

“Not long after, the crystal came round and he decided he didn’t want nothin’ to do with any of it.” Feather said “crystal” with a French accent. “He wouldn’t even shift weed. When Billy got an idea in his head there was no punchin’ it out of him.”

“You known Big Bill for a long time?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, we went to Oaktree Elementary together. We hung out. In junior high we boosted a few cars together.” Feather pointed at the trooper. “That was the one you busted him for.”

Cirba nodded.

“After that, old man Thomson wouldn’t let him hang with me, but we still did. We sold a bit of weed together until his big brother found out. That time Frank and old man Thomson came round with fucking baseball bats. I thought Frankie was gonna really do my noggin’ in. Ya know? He’s a crazy fuck. The old man stopped him though.”

“So you didn’t hang out after that?” Harry asked.

“Yeah, but not much. I’d see ’um in a bar or maybe up the Horseshoe. He was friendly but our bidness days were done.”

“So you’ve had no dealings with him in how long?” Harry asked.

Feather lit another cigarette. “Not since then.”

“You haven’t sold so much as a joint to him since you were teenagers. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Absolutely.”

Harry looked to Cirba and said: “OK, I know you gave your word not to bust this clown but can we haul him in for questioning?”

“Hey,” Feather protested.

“Look, Featherbrains,” Harry said standing, “there’s a dead guy and you’re fucking lying to me. Cuff ’m, trooper, let me have him in a proper interrogation room and I’ll find out what he knows – along with the location of his meth lab if you’re interested.”

Cirba stood up and reached for his cuffs.

“Hey hey, chill. OK, OK I sold him some grass like a month ago.”

Cirba and Harry sat down again.

“What is he?” Feather said, pointing to Harry. “Some sort of fucking Jedi?”

“That just about describes him – so don’t screw with us, Feather. How much?”

“He bought an ounce.”

“Was that his usual?”

“No, I’ve been straight with you, man. He hasn’t bought nothing in years. I mean sometimes when I saw him he’d bum a joint for old times’ sake, but he wasn’t getting any shit from me.”

“So why the change?”

“He said he needed it to pay his lawyer with.”

“His lawyer?”

“That’s what the man said.”

“Why was he seeing a lawyer?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. I asked him if he was in trouble and he said on the contrary, that he was great. He said he was, ‘sorting his life out’.”

“Who was the lawyer?”

“Didn’t say. Didn’t ask.”

Cirba looked to Harry, who nodded.

“Who would know?”

“Word had it he was seeing a chick that worked down at the Dew Drop Inn.”

“A stripper?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Name?”

“I want to say Harmony.”

“Harmony what?”

“What do you mean ‘Harmony what’? How many strippers do you know got a last name?”

“Where were you Wednesday ’bout eleven?”

“Here watching the golf.”

They both gave him a sideways look.

“What? You think I’m too much of a lowlife to dig golf?”

“Anything else?”

“No, I told you everything, and that ain’t no lie.”

“Say that to him,” Cirba said, pointing to Harry.

Feather looked him straight in the eye and said: “That’s all I know.”

Harry held up his hand like he was Obi-Wan Kenobi and said: “This isn’t the meth dealer you are looking for.”

They all stood up.

“And I ain’t no meth cooker no more neither.”

“Don’t go straight on me, Feather, you’ll put me out of work.”

“It ain’t by choice. All this shake and bake shit has ruined the crystal biz.”

“Shake and bake?”

“The fucking Internet, man. Buy some drain cleaner, some Colman fuel, and a pack of lithium batteries and you can make your own meth. Fucking whole market’s collapsed. I’m gonna move to California and open a legal grass store.”

Cirba chuckled. “You will be missed, Feather.”

* * *

Back on the Five Mile Road, Cirba asked: “Was he being straight about not cooking meth anymore?”

“I’m sure he was telling the truth about that shake and bake thing, but I’m not so sure he’s not entering the priesthood soon. So it sounds to me like we’re going to a strip club tonight.”

The trooper sighed and said: “Not a word to Mrs Cirba.”

“Aw, come on. This is in the line of duty. She can’t complain about that?”

“Not a word, you hear me.”

They stopped at the Oaktree supermarket and Harry bought bachelor-pad essentials: round beef, rolls, sliced cheese, food, chips, and diet root beer. Then they stopped into the Hillside Tavern for a six pack.

“I was gonna bring you here for dinner, but if you’re lucky, MK will cook you something after floating. I’ll pick you up at 10. Wear something strip clubby-ish.”

“Hot damn,” Harry said, rubbing his palms together. “Cirba and Cull back on the town. Watch out Oaktree.”

“When you see this strip club you’ll realize that it’s you who should watch out.”