Chapter 20
1
5:30 AM.
Holly doesn’t sleep well unless she’s in her own bed, and the stress of being Kate’s security has further unbalanced her sleep cycle. She’s awake before dawn but forces herself to lie quiet and do her morning meditations before getting up. When those are finished, she checks her phone and finds two new texts.
John: I went to a meeting in Upsala last night. 2 old guys remembered Trig. No descriptions worth beans. Guy was white, had a beard, shaved it at some point. Called himself Trig or sometimes Trigger, like Roy Rogers’s horse (?). A few times, maybe early in sobriety, he might have called himself by his real name, which could have been John. Or Ron. Or Don. Or maybe Lon as in Chaney bwa-ha-ha. I’ll try again next week.
Izzy: Praying for rain so game will be canceled.
Holly goes to the window and pulls open the drapes. The sun is coming up and there isn’t a cloud in the sky. She texts Thank you keep me informed to John Ackerly. To Izzy: Looks like you’re out of luck .
This turns out to be so true, Boo.
2
There’s a Starbucks down the street from the hotel. Holly gets a caffè Americano and a breakfast sandwich. She loves the way coffee brings the morning world into focus. Loves mornings, period. It’s when she feels most herself. She walks the seven blocks to Dingley Park to look at the field where her friend will find either glory or shame tonight (probably an exaggeration, but she’s full of coffee). The bleachers now are empty, the foul lines scuffed almost to invisibility. She sits on the bottom bleacher for awhile, feeling the first sun warm her face, digging the day. A young man in a headscarf and tattered jeans bops up to her and asks if she has any spare change. Holly gives him a fivespot. He tells her thanks, ma’am, and gives her a soul shake before she can protest. When he’s gone, she uses her hand sanitizer, sits awhile longer, and strolls back to the hotel, stopping on the way back to pick up—O rare luxury—an actual print newspaper.
This is the best part of the day , she thinks. Hold onto it a little. Except, of course, it’s like the poet says: nothing gold can stay. As a seasoned investigator, she knows this.
3
In her room, she checks for fresh messages (none), reads her newspaper, and brews another cup of coffee (not as good as Starbucks but passable). At eight-thirty she knocks lightly on the door of Kate’s suite. Both women are there. Kate is making notes for a speech she won’t, as it happens, be giving. Corrie is on the phone in the suite’s bedroom, working out logistics for Pittsburgh, the next stop on the tour. Kate is scheduled to speak at the Carnegie Library Lecture Hall, but given the way things have snowballed, that venue’s now too small, and the PPG Paints Arena, which seats almost twenty thousand, is too big. Corrie tells whoever she’s talking to that she doesn’t want Kate to see a lot of empty seats. Listening to her, Holly thinks she really might be a presidential-level chief of staff someday.
“I’m going over to the Mingo to look around,” Holly tells Kate. “Scope the place out. Do you need anything?”
“Nope.”
“Please stay in the room until I come back. A few eBayers and right-to-lifers have already arrived.”
“Yes, Mom,” Kate says without looking up, and Holly realizes—with a kind of comic despair—that Kate will do exactly what she wants.
Holly pilots her Chrysler to the Mingo Auditorium and parks next to the Transit van. She has phoned ahead, and the Program Director’s assistant, Maisie Rogan, is there to let her in.
“The boss isn’t here yet, but I expect him by ten or so.”
“Don’t need him,” Holly says. “Just want a look around.”
“Before you ask, the entire staff has either gotten pictures of this Christopher Stewart dingbat or will get them as soon as they come in.”
“Excellent, but there’s something you should be aware of. He may be dressed as a woman and wearing a wig.”
Maisie looks troubled. “Then how are we supposed to—”
“I know, it’s a problem. You’ll just have to do the best you can.”
They take the elevator up to stage level, where Maisie shows her the video set-up. It’s very good. Many cameras, many angles, few blind spots. The stage itself is littered with amps, monitors, mics, and music stands. Holly takes pictures so Kate will see what she has to work around. They go down a few steps at stage left and enter the auditorium. Holly is happy—no, delighted—to see that eventgoers will have to pass through metal detectors to enter the auditorium. Maisie shows Holly the various exits.
“We need to get out with as little fuss as possible,” Holly says. She has no hope of dodging all the eBayers, but if Stewart is here (“the dingbat,” she likes that), they may be able to dodge him. “Do you have any ideas?”
“I might,” Maisie says. “It worked for Neil Diamond when he was here.”
They take the elevator down to the break room, where a dozen or so employees are grazing at a buffet consisting of coffee, fruit, yogurt, and hardboiled eggs. On one wall is a sign reading REMEMBER YOU ARE DEALING WITH THE PUBLIC, SO SMILE! Below this are framed pictures of staff members, including not one, not two, but three stage managers.
“Why so many managers?” Holly asks.
“They rotate in and out. Mostly because our big shows are keyed around holidays. Those guys all work when we put on The Nutcracker . What a horror show that is, runny-nosed kids everywhere, don’t get me started. Come on back.”
She leads Holly past the buffet and back into the small kitchen. There’s a door between the stove and the fridge that gives on the far end of the employees’ parking lot.
“This is your escape route,” Maisie says.
Holly takes pictures. “I’ll tell Kate’s assistant. And do me a favor?”
“I will if I can.”
“Don’t tell anyone we’re going out this way.” She says this with no real belief they can fool the eBayers, but as always, she has Holly hope.
4
11:15 AM.
Corrie spends five minutes on hold, all the time worrying she’ll be late for her scheduled meeting with Donald Gibson at the Mingo. She’s about to kill the call when the program coordinator at the North Hills Event Center breaks into the hold music and confirms (finally!) Kate at the venue for Tuesday, June 3rd, eight PM. It’s just twelve minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, the seating capacity is ten thousand, and the Event Center’s fee is reasonable.
She hangs up, lifts fisted hands over her head, and murmurs, “Anderson shoots, Anderson scores.”
She hurries down to the second-floor fitness center to tell Kate, who is swimming early today. Holly is sitting by the pool, holding Kate’s towel and reading about the Real Christ Holy Church on her iPad. Kate herself is churning tirelessly in her red bathing suit. Corrie tells Kate about the favorable change of venue in Pittsburgh. Kate gives her a thumbs-up, barely losing a stroke.
“I sat on hold forever, waiting to nail down that venue, and all I get is a quick attagirl,” Corrie grumbles.
Holly gives her a smile. “Some poet or other said, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ Or in our case, make phone calls and hold towels.”
“That wasn’t just ‘some poet or other,’ that was John Milton, the original cool-daddy versifier.”
“If you say so.”
“Have you heard anything more about Chris Stewart?”
“If you mean has he been arrested, I wish I could say yes, but he hasn’t.”
“What about the other man? The one who’s killing jurors?”
“Not jurors, innocent people who stand for jurors, at least in this dingbat’s mind. That’s actually Isabelle Jaynes’s case.”
“But you’re interested, right? Sent out one of your minions to investigate?”
Holly thinks of the little yellow creatures in Despicable Me and laughs. “John’s not a minion, he’s a bartender.”
“Nothing from him?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Okay. A girl can hope. I’m off to the Mingo to sign some insurance papers.”
Holly frowns. “Really? I thought all that was done in advance.”
“So did I, but the paperwork never seems to end. It’s seventy per cent of my job. Make that eighty. I might stop at a couple of stores on the way back for a skirt and a pair of jeans. I also need pantyhose.”
“Be careful.”
“I’ll be fine,” Corrie says, and cocks a thumb at Kate. “She’s the one you have to look out for.”
5
11:30 AM.
While Corrie is in the hotel lobby waiting for an Uber, Izzy Jaynes is at Dingley Park’s softball field and getting her game face on. She would much rather be doing police work, but since she has to be here, she means to do the best job she can. In part because the ceaseless razzing is slowly but surely making its way under her skin.
The firemen have ceded the field to the cops, but they’re hanging out in the bleachers, snarking up hotdogs and fish tacos, amusing themselves with trash talk. Because she’s slow-pitching batting practice for her PD guys, most of it is aimed at her. Some of it’s harmless, but a lot of it is unpleasant sexist bullshit. Nothing she hasn’t heard before—George Pill wants to know if those legs go all the way up—but that doesn’t make it any better.
Izzy was a competitor in college, and a competitor on the cops. She’s smart, but it was mostly that competitive streak that caused her to rise in a mere ten years from a police academy grad with a newbie short haircut to her current position in the detective squad. She may not be up to Holly Gibney’s deductive skills—knows it, actually—but she also knows she’s better than Tom Atta and most of the others on the detective squad. Lew Warwick knows it, too. It’s why he called her in to look at the letter from Bill Wilson, aka Trig, aka who knows.
Let them think this is how I’ll throw once the game starts , Izzy thinks. Let them just think that .
She can’t throw as hard as Dean Miter, who last year held the FD team hitless for three innings, but she has that dropball, her secret weapon, and she has no intention of throwing it in front of Pill and the rest of the Hoses hosers.
Her phone vibrates twice in the pocket of her shorts, but she ignores it until everyone on the PD team—those who are here; more will arrive when their shifts are over—has had a chance to hit. The Surrogate Juror Murders are important, but the State Police have that for the time being. Keeping the peace in Buckeye City is important, but the County Sheriff’s Department is supposed to be handling most of that tonight. She’s worried about Kate McKay, too, but she has faith in Holly to keep the McKay woman safe.
All these things matter. The game tonight does not… except to Izzy it now does. She may not be able to no-hit the firemen as Dean Miter did for three innings last year, but she intends to stand up for the team and for herself. She intends to stuff some of that FD trash talk right down their smoke-eating throats. Her job has, for the time being, taken a backseat.
That would never happen with Gibney , she thinks as she totes a bucket of balls back to the PD dugout. She’d keep her eyes on the prize . And surprise-surprise, both of her missed calls are from Holly, who says she’s in the hotel fitness center.
“Improving our skinny little bods, are we?”
“Watching my boss improve hers,” Holly says. “I think she’s almost done. Have you found out anything about anything?”
“Nope,” Izzy says, hoping the guilt she feels doesn’t show in her voice. The fact is, she hasn’t even checked with Ken Larchmont, back at the station. Ken won’t be playing softball tonight. He has to go two-fifty, and is nearing retirement.
“Nothing on Trig from any of the cops who go to meetings. Nothing on Stewart, either. Detective Larchmont is calling around at hotels, motels, and b-and-b’s, double-checking, but so far, nada .”
Feeling more guilty than ever, Izzy checks her phone to make sure Ken hasn’t called her in the interim.
Holly says, “Stewart’s gone to ground somewhere. Take it to the bank.”
“Sounds about right.”
“You’re at the field?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Don’t feel guilty. It’s for a good cause, Izzy, and I have faith in you. You’ll do well.”
“Doing well would be nice,” Izzy says. On the field, some of the firemen are heaving a ball around while the rest take batting practice. George Pill looks at Izzy, puts his hands on his hips, and does a comic bump and grind.
Keep laughing, shithead , Izzy thinks. Wait until I get you in the batter’s box .
Be careful what you wish for.
6
12:00 PM.
The Anderson woman, Kate’s assistant, shows up on the dot, which Trig appreciates. He’s expecting to have an extremely busy day, but there’s an upside: once it’s over, he can rest in eternal darkness. He has “a god of his understanding,” because the AA program insisted it would help to keep him sober, and it has, but he doesn’t expect heaven or hell. The god of his understanding is a selfish being who assigns humans to oblivion and keeps eternal life all to itself.
He’s waiting at the service entrance for her. He knew she probably wouldn’t send the Uber driver away, as she’s only expecting to sign a few papers, and he’s prepared for that. He gives her a wave with one hand. The other remains in the pocket of his sportcoat jacket, touching a hypodermic needle loaded with 200 milligrams of pentobarbital.
Corrie waves back and he stands aside, extending a hand to usher her into the little kitchen. Once she’s past him, he grasps her around the waist good and tight, kicks the door shut, and injects her in the soft spot at the base of her neck, just above the collarbone. Corrie’s struggles are mercifully short. She collapses limply forward over his arm. He drags her to the L -shaped counter and props her against it. Her eyes are open but rolled up to whites. She’s standing, but her chest doesn’t appear to be moving.
Has he killed her? Even with this modest dose? Does it even matter? Because it might—if McKay’s smart, she will demand proof of life—Trig slaps her across the face. Not with all his strength, but plenty hard. She takes a gasping, whooping breath. Trig finds the other hypo, ready to give her another, smaller dose, but Corrie slides sideways until her cheek rests on the counter. Her eyes are still open, one iris now showing, the other still gone. Drool trickles from the corner of her mouth, but she’s breathing again on her own. Her knees buckle. Trig helps her down to the floor. He decides she can be left for a short time. Very short.
He goes out to the employees’ lot and taps on the window of the Uber driver’s car. “She’s decided to stay a little longer.”
Once the driver is gone, happy with his hefty cash tip, Trig opens the Transit van’s back doors. He tries to lift Corrie in his arms and can barely manage. She’s slim but muscular. He gets her under the arms instead and drags her to the service entrance door. Looks around. Sees no one in the sunstruck back parking lot. Well, maybe the ghost of his father. A joke but not a joke.
“Fuck you, Dad. Not flinching.”
He takes two deep breaths, psyching himself up, and heaves her into the back of the van. Her lolling head bonks on the floor and rolls to one side. She makes a fuzzy interrogative sound, then begins snoring.
In the van, everything is prepared. He rolls her on her side—which will help in case she vomits—and binds her ankles together with gaffer tape he takes from a reusable Giant Eagle shopping bag. He puts her hands behind her and binds them to the small of her back, winding long strips of tape around her waist and cinching it tight. He would like to tape her mouth closed so if she wakes up she won’t be able to scream, but there’s the chance of her choking to death if she does vomit, and the internet says that can happen after a dose of pento.
He’s sweating like a pig.
Trig has no more than slammed the Transit van’s door when another car shows up, this one a black Lincoln sedan with GC PLAZA HOTEL COURTESY CAR on the turned-down visor. Getting out is Sista Bessie, looking as big as a battleship in a madras caftan. With her is another woman so skinny she’s little more than a stuffed string.
“This is the boss of the venue,” Sista Bessie says to her skinny companion. “I don’t remember your name, sir.”
He almost says Trig.
“Donald Gibson, Ms. Brady.” And to the skinny woman: “Program Director.”
What if she wakes up now? Wakes up and starts yelling?
“We are just going to look at some costumes and see if they need to be let out,” Sista Bessie says. “I have put on a pound or three since starting rehearsals.”
“More like ten,” the skinny woman says. “Once you start singin, you a pig for your food.” Her snow-white afro looks like a dandelion puff.
“This is Alberta Wing, my costumer and dresser,” Sista says. “And I don’t need to tell you she got a mouth on her.”
“I say what I mean,” Alberta Wing responds.
Trig smiles politely, thinking, Go in go in GO THE FUCK IN!
The hotel’s courtesy car starts to pull away, but Sista Bessie yells, “ Wait up, now! Wait up! ”
The driver has got the windows closed so the air conditioning can get traction, but the Sista has got a set of lungs on her, and he hears. The taillights go on, then the backup lights. The driver’s window rolls down. Sista takes a bulging wallet from her purse and extracts a bill. “For your trouble,” she says.
“Oh, ma’am, you don’t have to do that. It’s part of the hotel’s—”
“I insist,” she says, holding the bill out.
“Isn’t it just powerful warm,” Alberta Wing says to Trig.
Is she waking up yet? Does she hear us?
“It surely is.”
“This kind of weather is just boogery. No other word for it. What do you think, Mr. Gibson?”
“It is.”
She nods. “Yes indeed it is. You sweatin hard .”
The black Lincoln glides away. Sista Bessie comes back. “You are nice to wait by the door for us,” she says. “I’ll probably spend most of the afternoon.”
Is that a thump from inside the van? Or his imagination? Trig has a crazy yet vivid memory of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” where the sound came from beneath the floorboards. Like a watch wrapped in cotton , Poe wrote, and how can he remember that from freshman year in high school? And why now?
Because all my plans can be undone by one cry from that van. Like a billion-dollar SpaceX rocket blowing up on the launching pad.
“I may even take a nap,” Sista says. “Wonderful dressing room. Big long couch. I’ve stayed in some real dumps in my time.”
“Lord, yes,” Alberta Wing says. “Remember Wild Bill’s in Memphis?”
“ That place!” Sista laughs. “I was singin away and this fella in the front row ejected his night’s worth of beer in his own lap. Never got up at all!”
That was a thump. He’s sure of it.
“Let’s go in, ladies, out of the hot sun.” He ushers them into the kitchen and sees one of Corrie Anderson’s loafers lying on the linoleum. He kicks it aside, into the shadow of the door. “You know to take the elevator to three, Ms. Brady, right?”
“Oh, I know my way,” she says. “Two facts of show business: Know your way around the hall you’re singin at, and never lose track of your purse. Come on, Albie, through this little coffee bar.”
“I have to run an errand across town,” Trig says. “Don’t let anyone steal the silverware while I’m gone.”
Sista Bessie laughs. Alberta Wing doesn’t. Even in his distracted state, Trig thinks she’s a woman who doesn’t laugh much, and so what? All that matters is that they’re on their way. Out of his hair.
Back outside, he hears muffled yells from the back of the van. He opens one of the doors and sees the troublesome woman rolling from side to side, trying to get free, and yes, she has vomited. It’s on one cheek and in her hair.
He gets in back, shuts the doors, reaches into the pillowcase, and takes out the Taurus .22. He digs the muzzle into her breast. “I can stop you making noise this second. No one will hear the shot. Do you want that?”
She stills immediately, eyes wide and full of tears. “What do you want?” Slurry.
“You can live through this,” he says, which is a lie. “But you must be still.” He puts the gun in the pocket of his sportcoat and pulls a strip of tape from the roll.
She sees what he means to do and turns her head aside. “No! Please! My nose is clogged from throwing up! If you put that over my mouth I’ll suffocate!”
He takes the spare hypodermic out (there are others, fully loaded, in his desk drawer). Hypo in one hand, tape in the other. “Which do you prefer? Always assuming you want to go on living, that is.”
What if Sista Bessie comes out while he’s dealing with this troublesome woman? Sista Bessie wanting something else? Stars always want something else. Bottles of water, fresh fruit, M the newcomers are back to her. A man has his arm around the waist of a girl or a young woman. Her hands are bound behind her with what looks like duct tape. Her ankles are likewise bound, and one of her shoes is gone. Although the man is taking as much of her weight as he can bear, she can still only manage a series of drunken hops. They go into the arena.
Chrissy removes her own shoes, runs on tiptoe to the central door opening on the rink, and peers in. She could stand there totally exposed and not be seen. The man is guiding his prisoner slowly and patiently across the crisscrossing ties to what used to be the penalty box. He seats her on the bench inside, takes a roll of duct tape from the pocket of his sportcoat, and begins binding her neck and shins to one of the steel posts.
Chrissy considers shooting the man when he comes out, because he is of course the same man who killed the girl Chrissy has already found. He hasn’t killed this one yet—maybe means to rape her or molest her in some twisted way first—but Chrissy is sure he will.
Then the bound girl turns her head and Chrissy gets her first good look at her. Recognition is instant in spite of the tape over the girl’s mouth. It’s Corrine Anderson, Kate McKay’s assistant. Corrie sees Chrissy as well. Her eyes widen. Chrissy pulls back before the man can follow his prisoner’s gaze—so she hopes—and runs lightfooted back to the snackbar.
Has he seen her? She doesn’t know. If he has, she really will have to shoot him, but she no longer wants to do that unless she has to.
The man finally returns. She hears his footfalls approaching as he walks from one of the beams to the next, then the gritting of his shoes on the dusty lobby floor. She waits, gun clasped in her hands.
Look for his shadow , she tells herself, but the lobby is gloomy and there may be no shadow. Listen, then, just listen .
The gritting steps don’t approach the snackbar, nor do they pause. The man goes back to the double doors instead. For a moment the lobby brightens as he steps out, then the gloom returns. There’s a clunk as he uses the keypad to lock the door. Ears straining, she hears an engine start up, then dwindle.
He’s gone.
9
12:55 PM.
Midday custom is slow at Happy, because there’s no juke, no TV over the bar showing sports highlights, and they don’t serve food other than peanuts and chips until evening, when it’s only hotdogs. John Ackerly is taking advantage of the lull to load glassware into the dishwasher when his phone rings.
“Hey, is this John?” It’s the voice of an old man who’s spent most of his life smoking two packs a day. There is a juke wherever his caller is; John can hear Bonnie Tyler telling the world about her total eclipse of the heart.
“Yeah, this is John. Who’ve I got?”
“Robbie! Robbie M., from the Upsala meetin? I’m at the Sober Club in Breezy Point. Borrowed Billy Top’s phone. You know Billy Top?”
“Seen him at meetings,” John says. “Crewcut. Sells cars.”
“That’s him, right. Billy Top.”
A Mr. Businessman type bellies up to the otherwise empty bar. He’s red of eye and pale of face. To John’s eye he looks like trouble. Mr. Businessman yells for a Scotch, no rocks. John serves him with a practiced pour.
“What can I do for you, Robbie?”
“I still can’t member the name that guy used a couple of times instead of Trig, but I do member something he said at that Upsala meeting, had to’ve been more’n a year ago, but it stuck in my head because it was so fuckin funny. Got a big laugh from the group.”
Mr. Businessman tosses back his Scotch and calls for another. John is good at reading people—as a bartender it’s a survival skill—and besides being trouble (or because of it), this guy has the look of a man who just got bad news. I’ll be pouring him out of here around three o’clock , he thinks, but the guy is still relatively sober, so John pours him another drink but tells him to slow down.
“What?” Robbie asks.
“Wasn’t talking to you. What did John or Ron say that was so funny?”
“He said, ‘Have you ever tried to hire someone to clean up elephant shit at ten in the morning?’ Got a big laugh.”
“Thanks, Robbie.” Thinking, For nothing . “If you think of his name, call me back.”
“I’ll do that, and if your friend gets some money, push a few bucks my way.”
“I don’t—”
Just then Mr. Businessman picks up his glass, rears back, and throws it at the backbar mirror, which shatters and knocks several bottles of booze—not well pours, either, the expensive stuff—off the shelf. He then bursts into tears and puts his hands over his face.
“Gotta go, Robbie. Trouble in the valley.”
“What kind of tr—”
John ends the call and dials 911. Mr. Businessman puts his face down on the bar and begins sobbing. John goes around the bar and gives him a squeeze on the shoulder. “Whatever it is, buddy, it’ll pass.”
10
In the Breezy Point Sober Club, Bonnie Tyler has been replaced by Chrissie Hynde talking about life on the chaingang. Billy Top is holding out his hand for his phone. Robbie hands it over.
“That guy didn’t call himself Ron or John,” Robbie says. “It was Don. It just come to me. Out of the blue, like.”
“That always happens when you stop trying to think of sumpin,” Billy Top says. “Rises up to the top of your mind. Want to play box hockey?”
“You’re on,” Robbie says, and five minutes later he’s forgotten all about the guy who needed elephant shit cleaned up at ten in the morning.