A Dead Issue (6 page)

“Oh, it was locked all right—when I tried it. But it was unlocked when you tried it.”

Ray let this possibility settle in and then his eyes widened also. “That means there was someone in there while we was at the door!”

“That's right. And when we went around to the front door, he must have slipped out the back. Jesus Christ!”

Ray let out a silent whistle, cheeks puffed out, and shook his head. “Makes sense, don't it?”

Dusty and I exchanged a quick glance. He gave his eyebrows a flick and his rings bounced. His attempt not to smile created a smirk. It was like he was trying to get us caught.

“And that ain't all,” Billy added. “If Jonah was doing the shooting, then somebody got a hold of his gun. Christ! We could have been killed!”

The bartender poured another round of shots. Billy and Ray tossed theirs down. Dusty sipped at his. I just held mine and stared at Dusty, wondering why he would take Jonah's gun.

CHAPTER 11

“Where's the gun?” I demanded as soon as we were in the car.

Dusty shook his head. “Don't know. Somebody took it.”

“Yeah, you!” I said. “You freakin' idiot. You went back didn't you? You went back for the wallet and you couldn't help yourself. You took the gun, too.”

Dusty looked shocked that I would suggest that. “Swear to God. I never touched the wallet. I don't have it.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Mark,” he said with as much sincerity as he could muster. “I don't have the gun or the wallet. You were with me. Did you see me with a gun?”

“Gee,” I said. “Let me think . . .” I glared at him. “You sat on it. You wiped your prints off it. Yeah, I saw you with a gun.”

“What would I do with a gun?” he asked.

“You could start by shooting yourself.”

We sat quietly for a long moment, and when the silence became uncomfortable Dusty started his car and pulled out of Miller's parking lot. We had stayed at Miller's long enough for Billy and Ray to rehash the events of the evening several times and add fresh details as they remembered them, and when the details were repeated, we left, explaining that we had to work Saturday. Evidently some of the boys had had enough also. Two of them climbed into their cars as we headed down the highway.

When Dusty had gone through all the gears and had settled into a gentle cruise, I turned toward him. “So, if you didn't take the gun, who did?”

He took his eyes off the road long enough to look directly into my eyes. “That's a good question.”

A half-mile of highway slipped under us before I spoke. “Dusty,” I began, trying to speak as clearly and sincerely as I could, “You had to take it. There was no one else.”

He looked at me, checking the road ahead several times before breathing a sigh of frustration.

“OK, how about this,” he said at length. His mouth closed into a tight line. “Those two guys took it.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“No, it don't, but you said there was no one else and there was.”

I conceded with a nod.

“Then try this. There was someone upstairs.”

I let the idea roll around in my head for a moment. Maybe it was possible that someone was upstairs with Jonah while we were downstairs looking for my wallet. I tried to imagine the mechanics of the dance, the intricate choreography, the delicate timing that would enable four or five people to move about in a small farmhouse without running into one another.

Dusty continued. “Maybe someone was upstairs robbing the place. The guy thinks Jonah's not home, just like we did. He goes up the stairs, and Jonah hears him. Jonah gets his gun, making some noise in the process. The guy knows Jonah is going to come out of his bedroom, so he slips into the room at the top of the stairs. This is where we come in. We're downstairs banging around, and Jonah goes to the top of the stairs and shouts, ‘Who's down there?' Before we can answer, the guy pushes Jonah from behind. Remember the grunt?”

I did. Right before the first shot—the one that blew a hole in the plaster at the bottom of the steps, Jonah let out a grunt. I hadn't thought about it, but if I had, I would have assumed that he twisted his ankle. Now it sounded like a grunt, not of pain, but of surprise—as if he had been pushed.

“We scamper out of the house, and the guy upstairs waits for the coast to clear. We drive off. He figures we aren't coming back, and we sure as hell aren't going to report being shot at because we had no business being there. Now he has plenty of time to go over the house. It's dark, so he turns on a light just as we return on foot. Surprise! We're back, peeking in windows, yelling for Jonah. The guy has to hide. Maybe he goes to the basement, or the parlor, but probably he goes upstairs.”

I remembered my gut feeling that Jonah had gone back upstairs.

“Jonah comes to and hears voices,” Dusty continued. “Maybe he can't make out words, but he hears voices, and he knows he was pushed down the stairs. He picks up his gun and goes into the parlor to hide, or maybe he went to the door after we saw his hand move. We come into the den and Jonah starts blazing away, throwing lead all over the place.”

So far, the story Dusty was telling sounded plausible and I found myself nodding in agreement.

“When Jonah drops over, we hang around trying to figure out what to do, and the guy upstairs—he don't know what to do. He has to wait until he's sure we leave before he stirs again. He's been burnt once by us returning. Then Billy and Ray show up with their shotgun. Now we're all stuck. You're stuck in the mudroom barring the door, I'm stuck in the kitchen, and the guy is stuck upstairs wondering who has the gun and how many bullets are left.”

Dusty gave me a look. “How am I doing so far?”

“Keep going,” I said.

“OK,” Dusty said flicking his eyes from the road to me. “This is were it gets sticky. While we are hiding in the kitchen, the guy comes down and sees Jonah on the floor and the gun next to him. He picks up the gun because he don't want Jonah coming to again and grabbing it. After all, he done it before. He knows we're going out the back door, so he goes into the parlor to slip out the front door. That's when Billy and Ray come around and try the door. It's locked. The guy backs into a corner and hides in the shadows. Billy and Ray kick the door in and go right past him. They're too worried about Jonah. We scoot out the back door. When Billy and Ray see the mess Jonah made, they run out the back door to get the shotgun. The guy sees his chance and slips out the front door.” Dusty gave a single nod of satisfaction.

I shook my head. I had to admit, it was perfect.

CHAPTER 12

Dusty pulled up to the curb in front of my apartment, the upper floor of a double house converted into four units. He waited for me to jump out, and when I didn't, he looked over at me.

“Some night,” he said with a wink and a tired smile. He popped the black plug from his right ear lobe and slipped his pinky finger into the hole, stretching it. He shook his head as if amazed that we got through it. “I'm going to sleep till noon—if I ever get to sleep,” he added.

“We're not done,” I announced quietly.

He slowly swung his head around until his eyes, unfocused, rested on me. Then he froze in deadpan disgust.

“Look,” he said at length. “I'm beat, half drunk. I want to go home.”

“We need to talk,” I said firmly. “There are way too many loose ends.”

“Like what?” he squeaked.

“The big one—are you going to run off and let me hang?”

Dusty replaced the plug in his ear and worked at the other. “I'm staying.”

“Then we have to face this one,” I continued. “How long do you think it's going to take for them to find out we weren't at work on time? It looks like we were covering ourselves. Christ, that makes us look guilty—paying someone under the table to take our shift. Punching us in so we could be late. Now we have to explain what we needed the time for. We've got to come up with something.”

“Maybe it won't come to that,” Dusty said. “The cops will be looking for somebody that Jonah shot at. Do you think they'd believe he'd shoot at us? We work for him, remember? They'll talk to us. We say we were at work at McDonald's and they look somewhere else. Or they look at the time cards to check our story and then move on.”

“But he did shoot at us,” I said. “That's the point.”

“Yeah, I can't hardly believe it myself.”

“That's not the point. The point is they won't stop until they find out who he was shooting at! It all comes back to us!”

Dusty was gearing up to roll his eyes, but I continued.

“Don't you get it? We tell the little lie about being at work, and they go looking for someone else. When that someone else doesn't surface, they'll take a closer look at us. And when they find out we were not at work—and they will find out

it becomes the big lie.”

As if on cue, a patrol car slid around the corner. We froze as it cruised by. Only our eyes traced its movement as it passed. Dusty watched it disappear into the distance in his side view mirror. When he resumed breathing, I knew it was out of sight.

I continued. “They're going to want to know why we had to lie to them—in a murder investigation! What were we afraid to tell them? What are we hiding?”

Dusty's eyes flicked to his side view mirror and I looked over my shoulder. The street was clear.

“Drugs,” he said.

“We're going to tell them we were hiding drugs? Are you completely nuts?”

“Not hiding them—buying them.”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. “Now we're buying drugs,” I said to myself.

“Now you're not getting it,” Dusty said. “We lied because we didn't want to get in trouble.”

“We are in trouble.”

“Not because of Jonah. We lied because we don't want the cops to find out about the drugs.”

“The drugs we were going to buy,” I said.

Dusty let the idea sink in a little bit, and I started to get it.

“We skipped work because we went to score some weed. That's why we didn't tell the truth.”

It was beginning to make sense, and that scared me.

“We don't want to get busted for drugs, so we lie—even during a murder investigation. Hell, we're not even thinking about that. We didn't have nothing to do with it. Why should we up and tell them we was trying to buy some weed that night? We're so worried about getting busted for pot we lied. Who wouldn't believe us?”

This was so absurd that it might just work. Dusty saw me nodding and continued enthusiastically.

“They're not interested in busting us for going after some weed. Christ, they're looking into Jonah's death. They have better things to do.”

“What do I say when they start asking questions—pushing for details? I don't know anything. I don't know anyone who sells drugs or uses them—except you.”

“You'll look like a liar just like everybody else they bust for drugs.”

“If I want them to believe I'm trying to get high while Jonah was getting killed, I better be able to come up with something to back it up.”

Dusty stared at me for a moment and started nodding decisively. Then he started his car and dropped it into gear.

“Where are we going?”

He gave me a smile, a wink, and a shit-eating grin. “For a walk on the wild side.”

CHAPTER 13

Dusty made a few quick right turns, and we headed back toward Miller's. He was in no hurry and drove looking into his rear view mirror as if he expected DiNuccio to pull up behind him, lights flashing, siren wailing, but the road was empty all the way to Miller's. Billy and Ray's pickup truck was still there—the only one left.

“Where are we headed?” I asked.

“Easton. I know a guy.”

The road twisted and turned next to a stream that eventually joined the Delaware River. Route 611 ran next to it all the way to Easton. On the far bank, a campfire sent sparks up into the night.

“This guy . . .” I said, and stopped, letting Dusty pick up the rest and go with it.

“Stemmy, AKA Stemcell,” he explained. “He's a creepy little weasel who dabbles.” Dusty smiled at his word choice. “His real name is Eric Stem, which is kind of funny because in high school he sold some weed to this kid and it was mostly seeds and stems. That earned him a black eye, some broken ribs, and the nickname Stemcell—selling stems? Anyway, it stuck. In tenth grade, he sold oregano to some dimwit. That's the kind of crap he does. Now he plays amateur pharmacist. Nothing big time—just enough to keep himself high. We'll see if we can hunt him up, ask around—leave a trail of people that will remember I was asking for him. We're covered. When cops ask Stemcell, he'll say, ‘Yeah. I saw Dusty that night—him and some squeaky-clean doofus.

“Give me a break,” I said, smiling because the description was right on target, at least the squeaky-clean part.

“He's not going to admit he was selling—we're not going to admit we were buying—but it puts us where we said we were.”

I looked over at him. “At the wrong time.”

“Don't matter. We say we couldn't find him before work and decided to hunt him up after. The important thing is that people will remember we was asking. Don't matter if it was before or after work. We can't help it the cops didn't run into nobody we asked before work. They can't talk to everyone.”

Dusty kept nodding like he was satisfied with his plan. I looked out at the river sliding by, cottages casting long reflections of light across the black water. In the silence that followed, it hit me. Jonah was dead—really dead. If I didn't think about it, I could almost convince myself that we'd be driving down Jonah's lane tomorrow and he'd greet us with a wave and some comment about Tuesday's storm. But the fact of the matter was that we'd never work for Jonah again. We'd never sip iced tea in his yard or relax in his kitchen after work. We had cleaned up one storm, and now Dusty and I faced a big one brewing on the horizon.