Every Dead Thing

A nurse entered the room and Martin stopped talking, preferring instead to seethe quietly as she spoke. “There’s a call for you, Mr. Parker,” she said. “A Lieutenant Cole from New York.”

I winced at the pain in my arm as I rose, and she seemed to take pity on me. I wasn’t above accepting pity at that point.

“Stay where you are,” she said with a smile. “I’ll bring in an extension and we can patch the call through.”

She returned minutes later with the phone and plugged the jack into a box on the wall. Alvin Martin hovered uncertainly for a moment beside me and then stomped out, leaving me alone.

“Walter?”

“A deputy called. What happened?”

“Two of them tried to take me out in the motel. A man and a woman.”

“How badly are you hurt?”

“A nick on the arm. Nothing too serious.”

“The shooters get away?”

“Nope. The guy’s dead. The woman’s in a coma, I think. They’re patching in the pics and the prints at the moment. Anything at your end? Anything on Je

“The jar was spotless. It was a standard medical storage jar. We’ve tried checking the batch number with the manufacturers but they went out of business in nineteen ninety-two. We’ll keep trying, see if we can access old records, but the chances are slim. The wrapping paper must be sold in every damn gift shop in the country. Again, no prints. The lab is looking at skin samples to see if we can pick up anything from them. Technical guys figure he bounced the call-no other way the cell phone could have shown a callbox number-and there’s probably no way we can trace it. I’ll let you know if there’s anything further.”

“And Stephen Barton?”

“Nothing there either. The amount I know, I’m starting to think that I may be in the wrong business. He was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, like the ME said, and then strangled. Probably driven to the parking lot and tipped into the sewer.”

“The feds still looking for So

“I haven’t heard otherwise but I assume they’re out of luck too.”

“There doesn’t seem to be much luck around at the moment.”

“It’ll break.”

“Does Kooper know what happened here?”

I could hear what sounded like a choked laugh at the other end of the line. “Not yet. Maybe I’ll tell him later in the morning. Once the name of the trust is kept out of it he should be okay, but I don’t know how he feels about the hired help whacking people outside motel rooms. I don’t imagine it’s happened before. What’s the situation at your end?”

“The natives aren’t exactly greeting me with open arms and leis. No sign of her so far, but something isn’t sitting right here. I can’t explain it, but everything feels wrong.”

He sighed. “Keep in touch. Anything I can do here?”

“I guess there’s no way you can keep Ross off my back?”

“None whatsoever. Ross couldn’t dislike you more if he heard that you screwed his mother and wrote her name on the wall of the men’s room. He’s on his way.”

Walter hung up. Seconds later, there was a click on the line. I kind of guessed Deputy Martin might be the cautious sort. He came back in after allowing enough time to elapse so that it didn’t look like he’d been listening. The expression on his face had changed, though. Maybe it hadn’t been such a bad thing that Martin heard what he did.

“I need to find Catherine Demeter,” I said. “That’s why I’m here. When that’s done, I’ll be gone.”

He nodded.

“I had Burns call some of the motels in the area earlier,” he said. “There’s no Catherine Demeter checked in at any of them.”

“I checked before I left the city. She could be using another name.”

“I thought of that. If you give me a description, I’ll send Burns around to talk to the desk clerks.”

“Thanks.”

“Believe me, I ain’t doing this out of the kindness of my heart. I just want to see you gone from here.”

“What about Walt Tyler?”

“If we get time, I’ll drive out there with you later.” He went to check with the deputies guarding the shooter. The elderly doctor appeared again and checked the dressing on my arm.

“Are you sure you won’t rest up here for a while?” she asked.

I thanked her for the offer but turned her down.

“I partly guessed as much,” she said. She nodded toward the vial of painkillers. “They may make you drowsy.”

I thanked her for the warning and slipped them in my pocket as she helped me to put on my jacket over my shirtless chest. I had no intention of taking the painkillers. Her expression told me that she knew that as well.

Martin drove me to the sheriff’s office. The motel had been sealed up and my clothes had been moved to a cell. I showered, wrapping my bandaged arm with plastic first, and then slept fitfully in the cell until the rain stopped falling.

Two federal agents arrived shortly after midday and questioned me about what had taken place. The questioning was perfunctory, which surprised me until I remembered that Special Agent Ross was due to fly in later that evening. The woman had still not regained consciousness by 5:00 P.M., when Martin came into the Haven Diner.

“Did Burns turn up anything on Catherine Demeter?”

“Burns has been tied up with the feds since this afternoon. He said he’d check some of the motels before calling it a day. He’ll let me know if there’s any sign of her. You still want to see Walt Tyler, we’d better get going now.”

23

WALT TYLER lived in a dilapidated but clean white clapboard house, against one side of which leaned a teetering pile of car tires that were, according to a sign on the road, For Sale. Other items of varying degrees of sellability that rested on the gravel and the well-trimmed lawn included two semire-stored mowers, various engines and parts of engines, and some rusting gym equipment, including a full set of bars and weights.

Tyler himself was a tall, slightly stooped man with a full head of gray hair. He had been handsome once, as his picture had suggested, and he still held himself with a kind of loose-limbed grace, as if unwilling to admit that those looks were now largely gone, lost to cares and worries and the never-ending sorrow of a parent who has lost an only child.

He greeted Alvin warmly enough, although he shook my hand less cordially and seemed reluctant to invite us in. Instead he suggested that we sit on the porch, despite the prospect of further rain. Tyler sat in a comfortable-looking wicker chair and Martin and I on two ornate metal lawn chairs, the lost elements of a more complete set and also, according to the sign hung from the back of mine, For Sale.

Without Tyler making any effort to ask for it, coffee was brought out in clean china cups by a woman younger than he by maybe ten years. She, too, had been more beautiful once, although in her the beauty of youth had matured into something perhaps more attractive yet, the calm elegance of a woman for whom old age held no fears and in whom lines and wrinkles would alter but not erase her looks. She cast a glance at Tyler, and for the first time since we arrived, he smiled slightly. She returned the smile and went back into the house. We didn’t see her on the porch again.

The deputy began to speak but Tyler stopped him with a slight movement of his hand. “I know why you’re here, Deputy. There’s only one reason why you’d bring a stranger to my home.” He looked hard at me, his eyes yellowing and rimmed with red but with an interested, almost amused, look in them.

“You the fella been shooting up folks in the motel?” he asked, and the smile flickered briefly. “Excitin’ life you lead. Your shoulder hurt?”

“A little.”

“I was shot once, in Korea. Shot in the thigh. Hurt more’n a little. Hurt like hell.” He winced exaggeratedly at the memory and then was quiet again. I heard thunder rumble above us, and the porch seemed to grow dark for a time, but I could still see Walt Tyler looking at me and now the smile was gone.