Judgment of the Grave (21 page)

Marcus Churchill sat across from them, his long, grubby-looking white rugby shirt untucked and hanging over his baggy jeans, which, as he’d walked into the interview room, had threatened to fall down around his ankles with every step.

“Do you know where your father is, Marcus?” Andy started, and the look the kid gave them told them that either he didn’t know or he had a future on the stage.

“What? No. Of course not.”

“So how come you have his credit card?”

“He gave it to me. For stuff for school.” Marcus reached up to fiddle with the little penguin earring. Quinn noticed that it was inlaid with tiny pieces of turquoise.

“How come your mom didn’t know about it, then?”

“He doesn’t tell her every time he gives me something.”

“But don’t you think he would have told her if he’d given you his credit card?”

Marcus just shrugged, then scratched his chin and looked around the room as though he were appraising the furniture.

“When did he give you the credit card?” Quinn asked.

Marcus narrowed his eyes and Quinn suddenly felt the same chill he’d felt when he passed the boy at Beverly Churchill’s house. “I don’t know. A couple of weeks ago.”

“Well, he’s been missing for two weeks now, so it must have been longer than that, unless you’ve seen him since then.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Marcus said defensively. “It was probably like a month ago, then.”

Quinn went for some detail. You usually tripped up people on the details. “Did he tell you to keep it, or did he want it back right away?”

“I don’t know. He just gave it to me, okay?” He was playing with a piece of thread hanging off the shirttail hem of his rugby shirt.

“What did you need to buy that made him hand over the credit card?”

“Books.”

“What books?”

He gave a sardonic little grin. “Schoolbooks.”

Andy was pissed. “We know schoolbooks. What were the titles of the books?”

Quinn could see the kid making it up. “
War and Peace,
” he said finally. “And
Madame Bovary
.”

“Let’s assume you’re telling the truth,” Quinn said. “Why were you out buying gas at a Mobil station out on Ninety-five? According to your mother, you don’t even have a car.”

“I was with a friend,” Marcus said. “In his car.”

“What’s your friend’s name?”

Marcus folded his arms across his stomach. “I forget.”

“Wasn’t a very good friend, was he?”

“No,” Marcus said. “He’s kind of an asshole.”

Andy stood up, glaring at the boy. “Marcus, I get the feeling you’re not being entirely honest with us here. Is there anything else you want to tell us? Now would be a good time.”

But there wasn’t and when it came right down to it, there wasn’t anything they could hold him for. He was in possession of a credit card that, after all, had his own last name on it. There wasn’t anyone to say that his father hadn’t given it to him. Quinn’s instinct told him Marcus was either lying or holding back, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

Beverly Churchill was waiting for them outside. “What’s going on?” she asked Quinn when she saw him. “Should I get a lawyer? I don’t understand what Kenneth’s credit card has to do with—”

“You don’t need to get a lawyer,” Quinn told her, gesturing for her to follow him into the hallway, where they could talk privately. “Marcus hasn’t done anything. He claims that his father gave him the credit card to buy books. Is that possible?”

“I don’t know.” She put her face in her hands for a minute. “I don’t know anything anymore about what Kenneth would or wouldn’t do. Why would Marcus be at a gas station out here?”

“He says he was driving around with a friend, but he wouldn’t tell us who it was.”

“I don’t know what to do with him,” Beverly Churchill said, and Quinn recognized the look on her face. He’d seen it so many times on the faces of the parents of kids he’d arrested for drugs or assault or even murder. “It’s not my fault,” the parents’ faces seemed to say. “Please don’t think I made him like this.” And was it their fault? It was hard to say. He thought of Megan. What was he doing to screw her up? He didn’t even want to think about it.

“Well, we’ll let you know if anything else comes up. If he seems willing to talk, try to get him to talk to you.”

“Thank you.” They were standing very close together in the small hallway and Quinn looked down at her, into those odd ice-blue eyes. He blushed.

“You’re welcome. It’s no problem.”

Her eyes were so light, they almost seemed like they couldn’t belong to a human. And her lips were very lightly moist. He felt himself leaning toward her very slightly and then he stepped suddenly away, afraid that he had been about to kiss her.

Shaking, he said good-bye and went back to find Andy.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19

Sweeney got the e-mail when she got up that morning. “Ms. St. George,” it went.

Sweeney logged off and sat at the desk, thinking about his offer. If Churchill had taken a “quick look through” and hadn’t found anything supporting his theory about Whiting being a spy, then it was unlikely that Sweeney would either. But on the other hand, maybe he had found something and just didn’t want Jones to know.

It might be worthwhile, but she really had no idea whether she would find anything. And what if she did find proof that Josiah Whiting was a spy for the British? It would be an interesting footnote to her study of Whiting’s gravestones, and it might even explain the evolution of his stones, but she wasn’t a historian.

Besides, she felt a responsibility to stay in Concord and help Quinn as much as she could. As soon as she acknowledged that she felt a responsibility to him and to Megan, she found she was annoyed. She didn’t mind helping him out, but he had barely said thank you. Why did he think she was just available to him anytime he needed her? Was it because she had been there when he’d found his wife, and he knew she felt sorry for him?

She checked the clock. It was 8
A.M
. in Massachusetts, which meant it was noon in London. She dialed Ian’s cell phone number and sat down, her stomach nervous as she heard his voice.

“A daytime phone call,” he answered. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I was just thinking about you. I’m sorry if I sounded strange the other night.”

“Hang on. I’m just going to head back to my office.” She could hear his footsteps and then a door shutting. “I felt like I was pressuring you,” he said.

“No, no, you weren’t. I’m just…I want to see you. I’m glad you’re coming to visit.”

“Good.” But he didn’t sound convinced.

“Anyway,” she said. “I was also wondering if you could do me a favor.” She told him about Hamish Jones and the collection of letters. “I don’t think it would take more than an hour or so to just skim through them, see if you see the words ‘Whiting’ or ‘Concord.’ I would completely understand if you don’t want to. It’s just that I think there may be something in there that would prove this theory one way or the other.”

“Of course I’ll do it,” he said. “It may have to be this evening, though. Will that be all right?”

“Yeah, I’ll just tell him. Thank you so much. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.”

“What you have to understand, Sweeney,” he said with a touch of humor in his voice, “is that I’d do anything for you.”

She was preparing for her class when Quinn came by with Megan and what Sweeney had started referring to as her accoutrements. “I put a couple of bottles in there, and there are Cheerios and a couple of bananas. We’ll just be downstairs and I should be done by two or so and I’ll come get her then.”

“Okay.”

He studied her for a minute. “You know how much I appreciate this, right? I don’t know how I’ll ever make it up to you, but I really, really appreciate everything you’ve done for us.”

“It’s okay,” Sweeney said. But she knew that the annoyance she’d felt earlier was showing on her face.

Quinn stood in the doorway for a moment. “I know I need to find a better day-care solution,” he said. “I think I need a nanny or something. Maura’s sister offered to do it, but there’s so much baggage there. I think I just need to hire someone who can come every day and who won’t care if I’m late sometimes. But I don’t even know if there’s anyone like that. I don’t know how I’m going to….” Sweeney watched his face. For a second she thought he was going to cry. His face softened and she saw how tired he was, not tired like tired from the past week, but tired from the past year.

“You’re doing okay,” she said. “You really are. I don’t know how you’re even doing as well as you are. I would be a total mess. But Megan’s doing fine, and once this is over, you’ll be back to a schedule.” It sounded lame even to her ears.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Sweeney told him. “Now go talk to your Marine.”

Quinn and Andy had decided to meet with Frank Pebbles at the tavern at the Minuteman Inn. Andy said he was hoping that a more relaxed atmosphere would loosen up Frank Pebbles’s tongue, but when Quinn suggested that Andy just wanted a beer with his lunch, Andy grinned and said maybe he did.

Pebbles was early and when Quinn and Andy came in at 11:30, he was sitting at the bar with a pint of Guinness, reading the bar’s copy of
USA Today
. Quinn would have known it was him even if he wasn’t the only person in the tavern. He was a big guy, wearing a leather jacket that had the Marine Corps insignia embroidered across the back, and when he turned around to greet them, he looked the way Quinn had expected him to from his gruff voice on the phone when he’d called back. He had a worn, abused-looking face pocked with old acne scars and a permanent sunburn, and his smile was broad when he shook Quinn’s hand.

“As Detective Quinn told you on the phone,” Andy said, “Kenneth Churchill has disappeared. We don’t know what’s happened to him, but we suspect that his disappearance may be connected to the death of a man named Tucker Beloit, whose body was found here in Concord a little over a week ago. Tucker Beloit also served in the Marines and we’re trying to figure out if they could have known each other. Does the name ring a bell?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Frank Pebbles said. “At least, I think so. But then I met a lot of guys over there. It was a long time ago now. And my memory isn’t so good.” He put a hand to his head and Quinn watched him for a second as something passed across his face. “I got this Gulf War syndrome thing, headaches, joint problems. I been doing better lately, though.”

“Tell us about Churchill,” Quinn said. “How did you get to know him?”

“We served together,” Pebbles said simply. “Best way to get to know a guy there is. We were two of the older guys in our unit. Most of the others were nineteen, twenty, just kids who didn’t know their ass from their elbow and had joined up because if they didn’t, they probably would have been in jail the next year. Ken and me, for us it was about something else. He had been in when he was younger and the Corps had put him through school and when old Saddam Hussein got busy over there, he felt like it was his duty to go back in when they needed him. For me, it was more that I just needed something, and joining up gave me that something. Call it structure, purpose, whatever. I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into, of course. War isn’t something you should get into because you don’t know what else to do.”

“What was Churchill’s time over there like?” Quinn asked him. “Tucker Beloit was dishonorably discharged for his role in the shooting death of a fellow Marine. Hank Giordano. Was Churchill involved in anything like that? Do you think he knew about it?”

“I would have known about it if he had. No, Ken was an exemplary soldier, in every way,” Pebbles said. “I really mean that. He believed in what he was doing over there and he saw it as his duty. Not like some of us.”

“Can I ask you something?” Quinn said. “Would it surprise you to know that he was unfaithful to his wife in the months before he disappeared?”

“Nah. Kenneth was kind of a whaddyacallit, ladies’ man. Yeah, he was always like that. Ever since I’d known him. We never talked about his marriage, but I kind of had the sense that it wasn’t so great. He mentioned women sometimes, students a few times, which seemed to me to be skating on pretty thin ice. But no, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Thank you,” Quinn said. “What did you mean when you said he believed it was his duty, ‘not like some of us.’”

“Oh, I got pretty cynical about the whole thing pretty quick after I got over there. I don’t know if you know what’s it’s like, but you get there and it’s like something out of
Star Wars,
I swear to God. The desert and these crazy people who you don’t understand and they don’t understand you and you’re there to help them, but you kind of feel like nobody told ’em that. I started feeling like there was nothing I could do to change anybody’s situation, you know?”

Andy was looking pissed and he said, “That’s why there’s a chain of command. You don’t know what your part of the whole thing is, but your leaders do. You have to follow commands.”

“You serve over there?”

“U.S. Army, 105th Field Artillery Division,” Andy said proudly.

“Well, I admire you, I really do. Just like I admired Kenneth. I wanted to keep the faith, but I just couldn’t. There was this one night when we were coming into a village way out in the middle of the desert and I remember as I walked in I felt like I was going to my death. I wanted to take off, but that damn desert was all around me. I think that was the first time in my life I knew that the desert could drive you crazy. All that sand and loneliness.

“There was weird shit that happened over there,” he went on. “We heard about this one guy who was court-martialed because he was giving information to the Iraqis. What would make somebody do that?”

“And why didn’t you stay in touch in the last couple of years?” Andy asked him. “Churchill’s wife said you’d been good friends and then you just kind of lost touch.”

Pebbles looked up at them. “I don’t know,” he said. “Life gets busy, you know.”

“Well, we thank you for coming all the way out here,” Quinn said. “Is there anything you can think of that we should know?”

“If he did kill that guy, it’s the Marines’ fault, you know,” Pebbles said suddenly. “What they do is they make you into a killing machine. That sounds terrible, but it’s true. You’re a controlled killing machine. They give you a switch, and the thing is, you never know what or who’s going to flip it. That movie,
The Manchurian Candidate,
you ever see that? It’s not as crazy as you might think. It’s not like they put the chip in your brain, but it might as well be.”

He finished his beer in a long gulp. “Maybe that’s what happened to Kenneth.”