Very Bad Men Read online

  She started to answer but he interrupted her. “What’re you after? You wanna hear my hit?”

  “Your hit?”

  “The Great Lakes Bank. It’s the only song I ever sing. That what you’re here for?”

  She told him it was.

  “What’s the angle?” he said.

  She said nothing, unsure how to answer him.

  “Callie Spencer?” he prompted. “That why you’re here?”

  “Yes. She’s running for Senate.” Lucy felt clumsy, stating the obvious. But Dawtrey made her nervous.

  “I heard about that, cuz,” he said. “You wanna make her look good, talking to the bad man who shot her father?”

  “I want to hear whatever you want to tell me,” she said.

  Dawtrey fell silent, rubbing at the base of his neck. “The morning of the robbery,” he said at last, “we all met at the hotel where Floyd Lambeau was staying. He had a minibar in his room. I had a drink before we got in the SUV. A shot of whiskey to calm my nerves.”

  “That’s what you want to tell me—that you were drinking?” Lucy said. “Do you think that helps explain what happened that day?”

  “No. But some of the stories back then said I was drunk. It takes more than a little whiskey to get me drunk. I want to set the record straight.”

  Lucy thought she saw a touch of mischief in his eyes, but she said, “All right. What else?”

  “Floyd was a piss-poor bank robber,” said Dawtrey. “He should have thought more about what could go wrong. About escape routes. You don’t think about banks having more than one exit, but they do. I found out later that the Great Lakes Bank had a door in the back that opened into an alley. We never thought to look for it at the time. Floyd went out the front, where the sheriff was waiting. So did I. That’s one thing I regret.”

  “Do you regret shooting Harlan Spencer?” she asked him.

  He looked around the visitation room. “It put me in here.”

  “So you would have made a different choice, if you had it to do over?”

  “Is that your angle?” he said, his voice sharp. “You want me to say how sorry I am?”

  “I don’t have an angle—”

  “You can say whatever you want. Say I’m sorry as hell. I’m sorry the SUV drove off. Sorry that Floyd was lying dead in the street. That Sutton Bell shot me in the goddamn leg. You can say I’m sorry I didn’t make a different choice, with my blood running out of me and Spencer’s gun aimed at my face. Say I wish I took more time to reflect on my decision.”

  Dawtrey’s voice had risen, and one of the guards came over to tell him to calm down. The guard put a thick-fingered hand on his arm and Dawtrey seemed to wilt. He bowed his head and didn’t lift it again until the guard went away.

  Lucy pitched her voice low. “Is it the guards?” she asked him. “Are they the ones who beat you up?”

  Dawtrey squared his shoulders and his smile came back. He shook his head at her.

  “You’re cute, cuz,” he said. “What paper you from?”

  “The National Current,” she told him.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” he said, laughing. “If I knew that, I coulda give you something juicy. Tell you about the time I slept with Callie Spencer. You looking for a good story, all you got to do is ask.”

  “I’m only looking for the truth,” she said.

  “You sure that’s not the truth?” Dawtrey said. “You know everybody Callie Spencer ever slept with?”

  “Okay. When did you sleep with her?”

  “You fill in the details any way you want. I’m just giving you the idea.”

  “That’s not an idea I can use,” Lucy said. “What else have you got? Something real.”

  He glanced around, leaned closer to her. “I got something real. But I don’t think you’ll use it.”

  “Try me.”

  “Floyd Lambeau,” he said.

  Lucy raised her brows. “Lambeau slept with Callie Spencer?”

  “You got a one-track mind, cuz,” Dawtrey said, laughing. “She woulda been awful young for him. But Floyd and I did see her once, in Sault Sainte Marie.”

  That got Lucy’s attention. “When?” she asked.

  “A month before the robbery. We went there to take a look at the bank.”

  “And?”

  “And Floyd pointed her out to me. That’s the daughter of the sheriff of Chippewa County, he said. At least, that’s what the sheriff thinks.”

  Dawtrey rolled his shoulders back and waited.

  “So . . . what?” Lucy said to him. “You’re telling me Harlan Spencer isn’t Callie’s real father?”

  “Better than that, cuz,” he said with a sly grin. “You think about it.”

  She thought about it, and it dawned on her. “Lambeau?” she said.

  Dawtrey winked at her. “Puts a whole different spin on Callie Spencer, doesn’t it? It’s one thing if she’s the daughter of the cop who shot the bank robber. It’s another if she’s the daughter of the robber. That won’t get her in the Senate, will it?”

  Lucy shook her head slowly. “I can’t print this.”

  “I told you you wouldn’t.”

  “I’d need proof. Otherwise it’s hearsay.”

  “Go get some proof, then.”

  “It would have to be DNA,” she said. “How am I going to get DNA?”

  Dawtrey gave her a disappointed look. “You make me sad, cuz. I tell you just about the best story I got, and all you do is complain.”

  “It’s not like I can ask Callie Spencer to give me a blood sample. I don’t even know if you’re being straight with me.” Lucy gazed at the ceiling of the visitation room, her thoughts racing. Suddenly she looked back at Dawtrey. “Wait a minute, what did you say? This is just about the best story you’ve got?”

  His sly grin returned. “You heard that, huh?”

  “I heard it,” she said. “If this is just about the best, what have you got that’s better?”

  He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “You’re not ready for that, cuz.”

  Naturally it was right then that the guards announced that visitation was over. Dawtrey stood up out of his chair.

  Lucy stood too. “What the hell have you got?”

  “I like you, cuz,” Dawtrey said. “You come back, we’ll talk again.”

  “Tell me.”

  “One thing at a time,” he said. “You print what I told you and—”

  “And what?”

  “And then we’ll see. Maybe I give you the driver.”

  BY THE TIME Lucy finished her story, she had stopped pacing. She stood by the window in her pale yellow dress, looking at me expectantly.

  “The driver?” I said. “He was talking about the fifth robber, the one who got away? Do you think he was putting you on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “If he knew the identity of the fifth robber, why would he keep it secret all these years?”

  “I don’t know that either,” Lucy said. “I never got a chance to talk to him again.”

  “What about Dawtrey’s story about Callie Spencer? You didn’t print it.”

  I watched her shoulders shrug beneath the straps of her dress. “Even the National Current has standards.”

  “Could it be true?” I asked her. “Could Floyd Lambeau be her father?”

  “Dawtrey’s not the only one who thinks so,” she said. “I found an obscure website that mentions the idea, with pictures that are supposed to show the family resemblance.”

  “Do they?”

  “They do if you want them to. Otherwise no. As far as I can tell, the website went up during Callie’s first campaign for the Michigan House of Representatives. But the idea never caught on. No respectable news outlet would touch the story.”

  “But you looked into it.”

  She spread her hands in a noncommittal gesture. “It could be true. Floyd Lambeau and Ruth Spencer were about the same age. He’s known to
have given lectures in Sault Sainte Marie. You can place him there around the time Callie Spencer must have been conceived.”

  “Which proves nothing.”

  “Right,” she said. “So Lambeau may or may not have been Callie Spencer’s father. But what I know for sure is that Dawtrey told me he was—and a few weeks later, Dawtrey wound up dead.”

  I shook my head. “I have a hard time believing Callie Spencer had anything to do with that. How would she even know you talked to Dawtrey?”

  “There were other people in the room. Visitors, prisoners. Guards.”

  “So someone overheard you? And then what?”

  “And then it got back to Harlan Spencer. You think he doesn’t have connections at Kinross Prison?”

  I shot her a skeptical look. “So he told his daughter and she arranged to send a nut with a rifle to kill Terry Dawtrey at Whiteleaf Cemetery?”

  “Maybe Spencer never told her. Maybe he arranged it himself.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” I said. “The nut with the rifle didn’t kill Dawtrey. One of the deputies did—Paul Rhiner. Did Spencer arrange that too? Did he arrange for Terry Dawtrey to try to escape?”

  “I still have some details I need to work out.”

  “You have nothing but details you need to work out.”

  Lucy came away from the window and sat down across from me again.

  “First things first,” she said. “I need to talk to Callie Spencer. You’ll call her for me?

  “I’ll call her. Don’t expect much.”

  She pointed to the manuscript on the desk. “What about this? What’s it going to take for me to walk out of here with a copy?”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “The Current would pay.”

  “Not interested.”

  “No. You’ve got ethics, and not the journalistic kind. Maybe you could answer a couple of questions for me, then.”

  “You don’t quit, do you?”

  “Two questions, Loogan. First, the man who wrote this—why did he send it to you? It would be more natural to send it to the police, or to the newspaper. Why send it to the editor of a mystery magazine?”

  I could have told her my theory—that the man in plaid had been drawn to Gray Streets because of a story I’d written, a story based on the Great Lakes robbery. But I didn’t feel like explaining it all to her.

  “Maybe he’s a fan of mysteries,” I said with a shrug. “What’s your second question?”

  She smoothed an errant lock of hair from her brow. “Who would want to break into your office?”

  “You mean, apart from you?”

  “Apart from me.”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because somebody did. I came here tonight with every intention of breaking in, but I didn’t have to. Someone else cut that square of glass out of your door.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The knock on Anthony Lark’s door came at noon on Monday.

  Perched on a stool by the kitchen counter—one of the few pieces of furniture that came with the apartment—he listened to the sound. A soft tapping, not the loud thump that a cop’s fist would make.

  He swallowed a mouthful of orange juice and refilled his glass. Whoever was tapping gave up and went away.

  Lark had taken a tablet of Keflex on Saturday night. He had taken two more on Sunday and another this morning. His fever had broken. The wound on his left hand seemed less swollen, but was still painful to the touch.

  The orange juice was good, better than anything Lark could remember tasting in a long time. He thought about going out to get something to eat. It would be too risky to sit in a restaurant and order a meal, but he toyed with the idea just the same. He wanted a steak. And a beer to wash it down.

  He would settle for take-out Chinese. He knew a place nearby. As he looked around for his keys, the tapping started again. Soft. Persistent.

  He shuffled to the door. Through the peephole he could see a woman’s face. Brown-skinned: Indian, or Pakistani. Young, slightly exotic, with fine cheekbones and black hair that came to her shoulders.

  He watched her raise her hand to tap again on the door. Her dark eyes stared at him, as if she could see him through the peephole. He waited for her to leave.

  When she brought her hand up yet again, he opened the door.

  She stepped back as if he had startled her. “Here you are after all,” she said.

  He heard a trace of an accent. Not Indian. British.

  “I was getting dressed,” he told her.

  “Sorry to be a bother. We haven’t met. I live ’cross the hall.”

  She offered her hand. Long, delicate fingers, no polish on the nails. He clasped it for a polite interval and let it go.

  “I wonder,” she said, “have you seen a cat?”

  “A cat?”

  “He’s a faded calico, gray and orange.” The woman took a stack of flyers from under her arm and handed one to Lark.

  “His name is Roscoe,” she said. “I had a friend visiting at the weekend.” She stressed the second syllable: week-end. “She left the patio door open and Roscoe got out. He’s not used to being outside.”

  Lark made a show of studying the picture on the flyer. “Have you looked out by the Dumpsters? I’ve seen cats there before.”

  “I’ve tried there,” the woman said.

  He offered the flyer back to her. “Sorry I can’t help.”

  “Hold on to it, would you?” she said. “My number’s there. In case you see him.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She lingered in the doorway. “You’re new here, aren’t you? Just moved in?” “That’s right,” Lark said.

  “Where from?”

  “Ohio.” A safe answer. No one cares about Ohio.

  “Toledo?” she asked. “That’s the only place I’ve visited in Ohio.”

  Lark tried to make sense of her. The questions were friendly and she seemed genuinely interested in him. She was making eye contact, but she was also stealing glances past him into the apartment.

  “Not Toledo,” he said. “Cincinnati.”

  She looked past him again and he realized what she was doing. She wanted to see if he had her cat.

  “Where are my manners?” he said. “Would you like to come in?” Without waiting for an answer he stepped back from the door and into the kitchen. He put the flyer on the countertop.

  “Something to drink?” he said. “I’ve got orange juice.”

  She hesitated in the doorway and then made up her mind. “That would be lovely.”

  He filled a glass from the cupboard, one of a set he’d bought at a Salvation Army store. She came in and stood on the other side of the counter in his living room, looking around at his bare possessions. He had a small television set; a milk crate filled with books and magazines.

  “I’m still waiting for my furniture to be delivered,” he said, sliding her glass across the counter.

  She turned back to him and laid down her flyers. “Are you at the university?”

  “No.”

  “What do you do?”

  “Claims processing,” he said, “for an insurance company.” It was the last job he’d held.

  “That sounds interesting. Do you enjoy it?” She asked the question carelessly, looking down the narrow hall that led to the bathroom and his bedroom. He could tell she wanted to go down there, to reassure herself that he wasn’t holding her cat prisoner. He watched her thinking about how to manage it.

  “I like it well enough,” he said. “And it pays the bills.”

  She frowned. “What’s that?”

  “Claims processing.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Right.” Her eyes lighted on the orange juice. He could see her making a decision.

  She picked up the glass and drank. Orange juice dribbled down the front of her blouse. It seemed almost like an accident.

  “Look what I’ve done,” she said, wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “Do you
mind if I use your bathroom?”

  “Down the hall,” he said helpfully. She was already heading that way.

  She passed out of his line of sight and he heard the door of the bathroom close, water running. He waited in the kitchen, decided to let her take her time. Let her look in the bedroom; there was nothing to see. A mattress, some clothes. The apartment of an untidy man, but not a dangerous one. Not a stealer of cats.

  There was nothing to alarm her, he thought. His rifle was in the trunk of his car. And though he had no mirror handy he believed he looked passable. He had showered and washed his hair. He had on clean clothes. A drawing of him had been in the newspaper, but she might not have seen it. She was probably a student. How many students read the newspaper?

  In any case, the drawing resembled him only vaguely. Among other things, it showed him with a hat and two days’ stubble, and now he was hatless and clean-shaven. He didn’t think she had recognized him. If she thought he was a killer, she would never have come in.

  So she didn’t think he was a killer. She thought he was someone who might have taken her cat. When she realized he hadn’t, she would go back to her apartment and he could forget about her.

  He heard footsteps and looked up to see her emerging from the hall, dabbing at her blouse with one of his towels.

  “Everything all right?” he said.

  She smiled shyly and nodded. “I should get out of your hair. I’ve troubled you enough.”

  “Not at all.”

  Folding the towel, she set it on the counter. Lark thought she would leave. Not yet.

  “Maybe you need to get to work,” she said.

  It took an effort to keep his expression friendly. Why was she still here?

  “It’s such a nice day,” he said. “I called in sick.”

  “Are you?”

  He considered idly how he might kill her. He still had the chef’s knife he’d bought to use on Sutton Bell. It was in a drawer close by.

  “Am I what?” he asked.

  “Sick,” she said. “I noticed your hand. What happened?”

  Both his hands rested lightly on the counter. He looked down at the left one, wrapped in its gauze. Maybe she recognized him after all. His wound had been reported in the paper.

  The drawer with the chef’s knife was within reach. He could picture the dark wooden handle. Out of the corner of his eye Lark saw the flyer she had given him. LOST CAT. The letters glowed like hot coals.