Next to Die Page 5

  “I’m getting there; we’ll talk.”

  * * *

  “Hey,” Connor said. “This is nice.” He walked into the living room.

  She’d done what she could with the place, which wasn’t much. At least there was plenty of light from the several large windows facing the church next door.

  “How many other apartments are there?” Connor asked.

  “Five.” She closed the door on the hallway, locked it.

  Connor seemed to notice. “You meet all your neighbors yet?”

  “Just two of them. One guy’s a cook, I think, the other guy is… well, he’s Frank Gilbert. At least, that’s what it says on the door.”

  He laughed. “I saw that – he’s got his name taped up. That’s helpful, huh?”

  “Hey, well, it saves time on introductions, right?”

  “And the landlord, you said…?”

  “He lives out of town. I think California.”

  “Yeah, that’s definitely out of town.”

  The banter was nice, but she could sense their nervousness. Jolyon had dropped his pack in the middle of the floor and was bouncing up and down on her couch, the one real piece of furniture she owned. Otherwise the place was practically unfurnished.

  “Spacious,” Connor said, smirking.

  She gave his shoulder a playful slap. “I got that couch on Craigslist the first week I moved in. The guy delivered it for me. Otherwise, everything here is what I was able to fit into my car.”

  Connor called to his son. “Hey, sport, hop down from there, okay?”

  Jolyon jumped off, landed on the floor with a thump, rattling the window panes, and started pulling things out of his bag.

  She showed Connor the rest of the apartment, starting with the bedroom. He stopped and leaned against the doorway, jammed his hands in the pockets of his coveralls. “You rope that mattress to the top of your car?”

  “Yup. Drove up in the middle of a snowstorm, too. It took about two weeks to dry out – I was sleeping on the floor. I’m going to get rid of it as soon as I get a bed. It still smells damp.”

  She’d been anticipating this, the first time he saw her place; it was the right time in their blooming relationship. But there was a pit in her stomach, a buzzing in her brain that wouldn’t go away:

  All the people, the police, the reporters.

  The glimpse inside the tent, Harriet sitting in her car.

  The car, so similar to her own.

  Connor poked his nose in her bathroom then walked himself back into the bright living room. Off the living room was a kitchenette – she’d thought it cute, with flower-patterned linoleum, a pass-through window, and an old-fashioned range with cast iron griddles. She trailed him, trying to keep one step ahead of darker thoughts. “You’re not looking for a place, are you? Your house is nice.”

  “Mortgage and taxes are killing me. Having a roommate helps, but, you know…” His gaze wandered to Jolyon, who had removed several toys from his backpack and was laying them on the floor.

  They stepped into the kitchen and she pointed. “The fridge is on its last legs. When that thing kicks on in the middle of the night it sounds like a truck.”

  Connor faced the appliance, leaned to the side to get a look around the back of it. She had a look at his backside – there was a red rag sticking out of his pocket, and for some reason she liked seeing it.

  “It’s probably your evap fan motor,” he said. He crouched and slid out the lower freezer compartment. “It’s in here. Pulls air in over the evap coils when the compressor is running. That’s the loud noise. I can fix it.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean—”

  “Hey, Bobbi,” Jolyon called from the living room, “where’s your TV?”

  She stuck her head out of the kitchen. “I don’t have one.”

  The boy gaped at her. “You don’t have one?”

  She shook her head and walked toward him. “Nope. I watch some shows on my laptop, though.”

  “Oh.” He seemed relieved.

  “Internet router is right over there.” She pointed to the storage crates forming makeshift shelves. They made the place look a bit like a college dorm room, meant to be temporary, but now they were cluttered; a permanent fixture.

  “I think you’ve got a detached grommet here,” Connor said. His voice was muffled as he rummaged around in the freezer. “Yeah, that could be vibrating and causing the noise. I’ll have to access the evap fan, though, to be sure.”

  He stood and opened the main refrigerator door. “Ah,” he said, gazing into the barrenness. “Okay. So, taking things out of the fridge while I kill the power is not going to be a problem.”

  Bobbi came up from behind and wrapped her arms around him. “You don’t need to worry about this.” She pulled him away from the appliance. “Come on.”

  He relented and let her lead him back into the living room. “So are you guys hungry or what?” She looked between them. Jolyon, who’d moved back to the couch, shrugged. His freewheeling mood had shifted and he seemed to be watching them closely.

  Bobbi became acutely aware of her body language and the signals she might be sending. She suddenly felt overwhelmed – this was a six-year-old boy without a mother in the picture. She liked Connor, but where was the line? When was it okay to give Jolyon the idea that she and his father were together? What if they didn’t stay that way?

  Connor, perhaps sensing something, left her side and sat down beside his son, put an arm around the Jolyon’s shoulder. “What do you think, bud? You want to get something to eat?”

  Jolyon stared off, his face slack. Then, just as it had come on, the pensiveness was gone. His eyes cleared and brightened as he looked up at Bobbi. “Pizza? Can we get pizza?”

  “Sure…” Connor started, and glanced at her for confirmation.

  “Yeah, of course. You guys happy if we order in?” She didn’t want to go anywhere, or be seen. “How about this – I’ll call and order. Jolyon, if it’s okay with your dad, you can watch something on my computer – Netflix, Amazon – and your dad and I can chat. Then we’ll dig in when the pizza comes. Sound good?”

  * * *

  They squared Jolyon away with Kung Fu Panda – in his “top five of all time,” according to Jolyon – and left him in the living room while they set up in the bedroom. She had a couple folding chairs and offered him one, but Connor opted to sit on the floor, leaning against the wall.

  “The property manager brought me these,” Bobbi said. She left the chairs collapsed in the corner and sat on the floor beside Connor. “I think she got them from the church, actually.”

  “How is living behind a church?”

  “Oh, the noise, the parties. It’s a total pain in the ass.”

  He was terribly handsome, even more so when he smiled. Rugged, natural good looks. After the narcissism displayed by her ex, Jamie, she’d decided to look for the quiet, bookish guys. The shy ones. Connor wasn’t exactly shy, but he wasn’t cocky either, and he was tender enough to raise a child alone, it seemed.

  “Police called me today,” Connor said.

  She’d gotten them a couple of beers and paused before she drank. “Really? Why? Oh – the surveying…”

  He nodded, took a sip of his own beer. It looked like he’d washed his hands, but there was residual dirt beneath the nails.

  “What did they say?” she asked.

  “They asked if I’d had a background check. I hadn’t. I think maybe the construction crew did, but we subcontracted the job. I mean I was only there for two days. And that was, what? Six months ago?”

  “Four and a half.” She knew because it was during those two days she’d first laid eyes on Connor; he’d been just coming out of the woods, carrying one of those tripods they used, and she’d spied him from her window. Three months after that they were bumping into each other at her karate class, on May 26.

  She knew all the dates: After a month’s worth of classes they’d finally struck up a conversation on June 2
3. That led to their first liaison on June 30, their second on July 7, and their most recent on July 13 – today. Between her on-call hours and regular schedule and work that took Connor all over the region, it had been a slow start to dating.

  “What did they want to know?” she asked.

  “Just the dates I was there. The names of the other guys on the survey team. Not much, really. I told them I’d never met Harriet, just dealt with someone else. Shalene Jaquish.”

  Bobbi nodded. “She’s the assistant director for DSS.”

  “So, tell me about it,” he said. “I mean – holy shit. How are you doing? Are you okay?”

  She took him through the whole thing, from arriving at work to leaving shortly after her talk with Jessica. She left out her personal feelings about Jessica’s attitude and implications, but then she told him how Harriet had been covering for her.

  He stared into her eyes a moment. “That could’ve been you.”

  “Yeah.”

  When Connor said it, she didn’t feel the same spike of fear she did earlier, but there was a still a terrible weight, and her mind drifted to Jamie.

  Connor set down his drink then came closer, moving on hands and knees. He pulled her into a hug. She could still smell the outdoors on him, the day’s sunshine bleached into his clothing.

  “That’s insane,” he said, releasing her. “What are the police saying?”

  “Not much. They talked to most everyone on staff, I think. Rita’s car was still there when I left. They left her sitting there for hours. I mean they had to; they had to assess everything as it was. I have no idea if it told them anything. I hope it did.”

  She drew closer to him again. They kissed, and she pulled him on top of her.

  Bobbi felt like she could see herself from an outside perspective, a desperate woman trying to forget the morning; all that blood splashed against the windshield. And the idea that the killer could have been after her instead of Harriet. But she stayed in the moment, closing her eyes, managing to keep it all at bay.

  At least for a little while.

  Six

  Mike opened his eyes and groped for his ringing phone, knocking over a glass of water on the nightstand.

  “Dammit.” He found his phone and cleared his throat. “Nelson.”

  “Investigator Nelson. Officer Daniels, Lake Haven PD. Sorry to call you so late, sir. But I know you live close and we’ve got Steve Pritchard hooked up for disorderly conduct.”

  Mike sat up in bed. “He’s in town? Where was this?”

  “The Bark Eater called, sir. Said he was getting rowdy with some of the other patrons. We swung over there and he was fighting in Newberry’s parking lot. That’s the lot between—”

  “Fighting?”

  “Arguing. A little shoving – we’re still interviewing people.”

  “Where’s Lena Overton? You call her?”

  “She doesn’t take calls at night, sir. She has kids. I mean, she’s… you know, a single mother.”

  “So you have him in custody now?” Mike slipped into the shoes beside the bed then wriggled his wrist into his watch. He’d been asleep in his clothes.

  “Yes, sir. We’re going to take him to the station. He’ll want to sleep this one off, he’s pretty intoxicated. But… he started talking.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “Well, he asked Mullins and me… He wanted to know if we knew about his sister. If we knew who he was. We told him we did, and he acted… I don’t know how to describe it. He was arrogant, or something. Said a bunch of stuff about her.”

  “Like what?”

  “Just… You should talk to him, sir.”

  “I plan to. Who’d he get into the fight with?”

  “It’s Dmitri Petrov; local guy, runs a used sporting goods store. The bartender said they were arguing, told them to quit it or take it outside. So Petrov left and Pritchard followed him into the parking lot, and they kept at it. He was belligerent with us, too, really torqued. It took me and Mullins to get him settled into the back of the cruiser.”

  Mike picked up the spilled glass and walked into his kitchen. “I’m coming down there. Could you do me a favor?”

  “Sir?”

  “Could you let Pritchard marinate a bit? Let him sit. Go ahead and reduce code if you’ve got your lights on; just keep things calm. I’m on my way there.”

  “You want to talk to him here, sir? I have eyes on him right now, I’m just a few yards away. He’s pretty agitated, sir. He’s sitting there in the back of the car, yelling.”

  “I’d like to talk to him right away.” Mike ran the sink tap, filled the glass.

  “Alright, sir. You can be here soon?”

  “Be there in ten.”

  Mike popped an aspirin, downed the water, then wiped his mouth on a dishtowel hanging from the cabinet above the sink. The dishtowel with the owl on it. For some reason he was just noticing it now: something his wife Molly had bought twenty years ago had resurfaced in his life, as if by magic – that owl with the large, watchful eyes.

  But it wasn’t magic, it was that he’d gone into the basement the other day and brought up some household items in preparation for his daughter’s arrival, had hung the towel there without paying much attention.

  Of all things, Kristen was about to visit him for the first time in months, and he was in the middle of a murder investigation. One where the brother of the victim was showing up in the middle of the night, getting into fights.

  * * *

  The night was warm, the concrete and asphalt holding the earlier sunshine. Downtown Lake Haven was charming enough with its privately owned shops, a bank, and the town hall at the far end. When it was late and quiet the place looked fake, as if the buildings were façades in some Hollywood studio backlot, and voices and footsteps sounded hollow.

  The old department store hadn’t been around since Kristen was a little girl, but locals still referred to the spot as Newberry’s parking lot. On the other side was a popular bar, the Bark Eater, a Lake Haven Police SUV idling near. Mike parked in the lot and slowly approached, having a long look at the man in the back seat: Steve Pritchard was wild-haired, thickly bearded, dressed in a flannel shirt. He looked like a local carpenter or maybe a farmer, on the ragged edge of life.

  Officer Daniels was talking to a man nearby, the two of them beneath a bright street lamp on the sidewalk. Mike turned toward them, not getting too close to the SUV yet. Daniels offered his hand and introduced the fellow beside him. “This is Dmitri Petrov.”

  Petrov was smoking a cigarette. He squinted one eye against the smoke and nodded at Mike. Mike didn’t see any obvious injuries on the guy, no split lip or black eye forming, just sweaty skin shining beneath the street lamp.

  “Thanks for waiting,” Mike said to Daniels. He saw the other local cop, Mullins, down the street a ways, talking to a handful of bar patrons beneath a cloud of cigarette smoke.

  “Alright,” Mike said, “I’m going to have a word with Pritchard.”

  “Good luck,” Daniels said.

  Mike reached the SUV, opened the front passenger door, and slipped inside. He peered through the metal grate, into the back seat.

  Pritchard’s eyes were watchful despite his drunkenness. “Who’re you?”

  “Mr. Pritchard, I’m heading up the investigation into your sister’s death. Very sorry for your loss.”

  Pritchard glared a moment then turned his face away. He snorted back some phlegm, said nothing. He reeked of cigarettes and liquor.

  “When did you get back into town?” Mike asked.

  Pritchard cut him a sidelong look but stayed facing toward Dmitri Petrov, who was still standing beneath the street lamp, talking to Daniels. “While ago.”

  “A while ago? So this isn’t because you’d heard about your sister and came back?”

  “No. I been here.”

  “We weren’t sure where you were. Someone thought maybe Colorado.”

  Pritchard pulled a crooked smile,
as if the world were a joke and only he knew the punchline. “Oh yeah? That’s what someone thought?”

  “You weren’t in Colorado?”

  “I been back on the east coast for months.”

  “So you were close, before this afternoon? Where about?”

  He finally looked directly at Mike. “Here and there.”

  Mike shifted in the seat, trying to get more comfortable. Twisting around to look at Steve Pritchard through the mesh was hurting his neck. “Well, I’d like to narrow that down a little bit, Mr. Pritchard.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Just to get a sense of everything. But if you’ve been ‘here and there,’ and you’re now ‘here’…”

  “I heard about Rita. Yeah.”

  “How did you hear? Because we didn’t have a number for you. Terry didn’t have a way to contact you so I’m wondering—”

  “Terry? Terry is a fucking faggot. He wouldn’t know if—”

  “Let’s tone down the language please.”

  “Listen, officer, my sister’s husband has got balls the size of chickpeas. Is that toned down enough for you? Thirty years he had his cushy little state job, riding around in his plow truck. Please. I worked a grain elevator for three years in South Dakota. I did more work in that time than Terry has done his whole life.”

  “Sounds like you have some resentment.”

  “He doesn’t know shit. He doesn’t know who was talking to who.”

  “So you’ve had contact with your sister lately?”

  “And she’s an even bigger idiot for marrying him. For listening to him. Joe – you think Joe gives a fuck? Joe has his own life, he makes good money. He doesn’t care about that place.”

  “You’re talking about your parents’ farm in Gloversville…”

  “Joe wouldn’t have cared. But Rita, Rita and that stupid fuck husband of hers…” Steve trailed off, looking through the glass again. “Hey, what the fuck are you looking at?! Huh? You fucking commie piece of shit!”