Authors: S.J. Rozan
The place was a disaster. From the sidelight I was looking into a vestibule; if the inner door had been closed I couldn't have seen anything, but it stood wide, and I saw enough. Glass from smashed pictures sprinkled the stairs, glittering in the hallway lights still burning now, in full daylight. Broken furniture, maybe from the rooms upstairs, littered the landing. I looked left and right through the sidelight, then came back down off the porch and walked through the shrubs to the windows beside it.
They gave into the living room. The living room was wrecked. No furniture stood upright; a lot of it was ripped, stuffing hanging out, throw pillows thrown, side tables on their sides. One lone oil painting hung on a wall, its mates all fallen, their frames twisted, their canvases slashed. Beer cans, some crushed, some still round and upright, covered the carpet, the mantelpiece, any surface that could hold them, like an occupying army after a mighty battle.
I walked around the house, looked in other windows. The kitchen, dining room, den were no different. I took out my cell phone and called the police.
"It's Bill Smith," I told the young cop.
"Oh, hey, yeah, Sullivan's available," he said. "You want him now?"
"Yes. But not on the phone. Maybe he, or someone, better get out here." I gave the Wesleys' address.
"Why?" the cop asked. "What's up?"
"It looks to me like someone had a party."
Four
I was sitting on the porch steps smoking a cigarette when the cops got there. They came up the curved drive in a blue-and-white with gold Warrenstown PD insignia sparkling on the doors. The cop behind the wheel pulled next to my Acura. A tall man ducked his head to get himself out of the passenger seat, reset his hat as I came down to meet them.
"Jim Sullivan," he said, offering his hand. "You Smith?"
"That's right."
"What's wrong here?"
"Take a look."
Our footsteps crunched over the expanse of marble chips that blanketed the drive. "You called before. You wanted to talk to me about Gary Russell," Sullivan said. He had a marine's weathered face, a marine's bristled haircut and straight back. He was an inch or so taller than I was, younger but not by much, and thinner, hard-looking, a man who still spent time in the gym. All the cops I knew who made detective grabbed the chance to go back into civilian clothes, but Sullivan wore a uniform, same navy pants and tie as the cop who'd driven him, flawless white shirt, short jacket with bars on the shoulders.
"I'm trying to find him," I said. "I came out here to see Tory Wesley. I heard she's a friend of his."
The bushes rustled as we pushed through them to reach the living room windows. Sullivan said, "Oh, Jesus."
The other cop, the one who'd been driving, came to stand beside us. "Wow," he said.
Sullivan gave a short laugh. "Burke's new," he told me. "Your first, huh?" he said to Burke.
"Yes, sir."
"First what?" I asked.
Sullivan's look said it had just occurred to him I might be new, too. "Parents Are Away Party. P double-A P, they're called. Tradition in this town. Parents go away, leave the kid home alone. Kid invites a few friends over, have a little party Saturday night. Word spreads, next thing you know, every kid in Warrenstown's there. Usually ends up like this."
"Like this?" I said. "This place is destroyed."
"Like this. We get two or three a year, some not this bad, some worse. Two years ago they burned a house down."
"And this is what you call a tradition here?"
He shrugged, looked in the window, back at me. "You try to get in?"
"No."
Sullivan's eyebrows lifted. "PI, situation like this, you weren't curious?"
"Dying from it. But this isn't my problem. I'm looking for Gary Russell. I didn't want to have to talk my way out of it when you found me in the house."
He gave a small smile. "Smarter than you know. This town's real touchy about these things. Especially with outsiders."
"What does that mean?"
He shrugged again. "Something like twenty years ago, girl got beaten up, raped at one of these things. Boy who did it shot himself a few days later."
"I guess living down that kind of thing could make a town touchy."
Sullivan looked at me. "What made them touchy was, they'd already arrested the captain of the football team and it made the national news. Heads rolled over that." He turned to Burke. "Come on. We better see if we can get in. Gas may be on, something like that." He stepped back up on the porch, turned the door handle: nothing. He didn't tell me to get lost, so I stuck with them as they headed around the back.
"Can I ask you about Gary Russell?" I said.
"What's your interest?" Sullivan asked, as Burke rattled the handles on the french doors to the living room. One of them had a broken glass panel, but you couldn't reach the inside lock from it. We kept going. "Family hire you?"
"Not exactly. He's my nephew."
Burke was trying all the windows as we rounded the house. Sullivan said, "That right? You the mother's brother?"
"Yes."
"They didn't tell me she had a brother in the business. When'd they call you in?"
"They didn't."
"You're here."
"Gary was arrested last night in New York. That was the first I heard he'd run away."
"Arrested for what?"
"He picked a guy's pocket, but they dropped it. They released him to me. He ran again."
"Oh, shit."
"Right."
Sullivan's mouth twisted sympathetically. "Well, at least you can tell them he was okay last night. Bet you're in the doghouse, though."
I took out another cigarette, lit it in answer. I shook out the match, said, "How come you guys are involved? No offense, but most police departments don't put a lot of effort into teenage runaways."
"Your brother-in-law is from here. Played football with my chief. Called him the first day after the kid didn't come home."
"Old buddies, huh?"
Sullivan just looked at me.
"Hey, Sullivan," Burke called from behind some shrubs. "Back door's open."
"Go on in," Sullivan said.
"Detective," I said, and Sullivan looked at me, "if Tory Wesley was home alone and this was a party that got out of hand, where's she now?"
He eyed me. "Haven't seen her around town, it's true. You're thinking she ran away, too?"
"If it was my fault something like this happened to my folks' house, I'd run away."
"I might do the same," Sullivan agreed. "She tight with Gary Russell?"
We rounded the well-pruned plantings, followed Burke inside.
"I don't know. My sister thinks they saw each other for a while over the summer. I also talked to a kid named Morgan Reed."
Sullivan snorted. "Little bastard," he said. "Punk-in-training, Morgan Reed."
"Who does he train with?"
"Upperclassmen. Seniors and juniors. We got some doozies here, Smith. This is a quiet week, seniors are at Hamlin's."
"They're football players? All your doozies?"
"This town, you can do whatever the hell you want all week, long as you win on Friday night. Morgan says Tory Wesley and Gary Russell are an item?"
"Were. He says it's long over."
"Long over? Russell kid's only been in town a couple of months."
"Morgan said he only was interested in her before he knew kids who were cooler."
"Yeah," Sullivan said, stepping over the remains of a kitchen chair. "I guess that would be this crowd."
We all stood for a moment, looked around. "Shit," Burke said. "Stinks in here."
It did. The gas wasn't on, but beer, chips, and pizza had had days to meld with the ashes of cigarettes and joints and bake in the angled autumn sunlight. Flies buzzed and darted in the rancid air with the energy of an unexpected reprieve.
Sullivan took a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket. I gave him my cigarette to light off of. He offered his pack to Burke.
"I don't smoke," Burke said.
"Helps with the smell," said Sullivan; still Burke shook his head.
"Wonder where the parents are," Sullivan said.
I said, "Neighbors might know."
"Neighbors. Tell you something: less classy neighborhood than this, houses closer together, neighbors would have heard the party. Somebody'd have called us before things got this bad."
Things were pretty bad. Graceful dining room chairs lay crippled, broken, around a mahogany table with deep gouges in its shining polish. China shards sprinkled a corner of the dining room as though there'd been a dish-hurling contest. In one spot in the living room the pearl-gray carpet was still squishy underfoot; there must have been a lake of beer spilled there. Unexpectedly, a cat appeared at the top of the stairs and meowed. With clear distaste, it tiptoed down through the broken glass to join us, rubbed against Sullivan's leg. Sullivan bent down, scratched its head. "When's the last time anyone fed you, huh?"
"You want me to take a look around upstairs?" Burke asked.
"Might as well."
Burke's face said that was the wrong answer, but he went to do his duty. Sullivan headed back to the kitchen. He found the cat's plastic water dish under the radiator, filled it, pulled a can of food from a cabinet. When he ran the electric can opener the cat spun around like a whirlwind.
Sullivan put the can on the floor and the cat plunged its face into it. Sullivan started sifting through the papers that littered the terra cotta tiles, papers that had once been piled on the stone counter or held by magnets to the fridge. "Parents might have left the number of the place they were going," he said, cigarette dangling from his lip. He glanced at front and back, collected in his left hand papers that didn't help.
He was picking up papers and the cat was eating and I was smoking when Burke called from upstairs, "Sullivan! Oh, Jesus, Jim, you better come look at this."
Sullivan and I exchanged looks; he dropped the papers, rose, tossed his cigarette in the sink. I followed as he strode for the stairs, where Burke, white-faced, waited at the top. We worked our way over the debris. The second floor was pretty much in the same shape as the first: wrecked. It smelled worse, though, and the stench got stronger as Burke led us along the hall to a bedroom where we had to step over what was left of a desk to get in the door. When we did, we knew why Sullivan hadn't seen Tory Wesley around town, and why no one would ever wonder where she was again.
* * *
Sullivan and I stood on the lawn, watched the ambulance pull in, the medical examiner's man pull out. Huge trees with golden leaves blazed in the midday sun. The cop at the bottom of the drive was telling the neighbors, the joggers and dogwalkers, to go home because there was nothing to see. I'd given a statement, shown my license to Sullivan and various other people who wanted to see it, asked a few questions myself. Now we stood, watching.
"I've got to go see your sister," Sullivan said.
"I know. I want to be there."
"No. For all I know you knew all about this and came out here to cover it up."
I stared. "Then why did I call you?"
Sullivan considered. "Because you're an idiot?"
"That's true, but it's not what happened. If half the kids in Warrenstown were here, they're all as likely to know what happened to Tory Wesley as Gary is."
"He's the one who ran away."
"He said he didn't run away. He said he'd gone to New York to do something important."
"Yeah," Sullivan said. "Like run away."
"If that's it, why was he still in New York three days after he left home?"
Sullivan nodded thoughtfully, but he didn't answer the question.
"He may not have even been here," I said.
"We'll check that." A cop wearing surgical gloves carried a bag of trash, now evidence, from the house, dumped it in the back of a tech van. It would go to the lab, along with a dozen or so other bags, to be checked for prints. A lab director's nightmare.
"And we're tracking down the other kids," Sullivan said. "Starting with your buddy Morgan Reed. We'll find out who was here."
A fresh fall breeze shivered the leaves.
"I want to work together on this," I said. "You want to find out what happened to Tory Wesley. I'm looking for Gary."
"Could be we're looking for the same thing."
"I don't think so," I said, though a part of me was saying, hell, sure it could.
Sullivan was silent. Then, "No," he said.
"No, what?"
He turned to face me, spoke quietly. "What do you want me to say, Smith? That I don't think Tory Wesley died in her sleep, that I think someone who was at that party killed her and I think it may have been Gary?" He shook his head. "Until someone proves otherwise, Gary Russell's a suspect. You're his uncle. Drop it, go back to New York, keep out of my way."
"You don't really think I will?"
He looked over the lawn again. "You licensed in this state?"
"So far I'm not doing anything you need a license for. I'm just driving around asking questions."
"You carrying?"
"No." I opened my jacket to show him: nothing. I don't have a New Jersey carry permit, so the .38 I usually wear in a shoulder rig was back at my place. I had a .22 strapped up under the dash in the car, but he hadn't asked about that.
"Get out of town," he said.
"Sullivan—"
He shook his head. "You're Gary's uncle. You find him first, I'll never get my hands on him."
"You don't know that that's true."
He gave me a sideways look, didn't answer that. "You're looking for a runaway. I'm looking for a killer. Whether they're the same or not, my investigation takes precedence."
"I'm only interested in Gary."
"I'm sorry," he said, and it sounded like it might be true. "But you're in a bad position."
"Gary's in a worse one."
"I'll find him."
The wind gusted, stronger now. Leaves and shadows skidded around the unmoving trunks of trees. Sullivan slipped a cigarette out of his pocket. I offered him mine, for the light, but he took out a lighter, used that.
"I could refuse," I said. "To leave. As long as I'm not breaking the law—"