Very Bad Men Read online

  She took forever answering and he dropped the cat as the door swung open. It darted inside.

  “Roscoe!” she cried, spinning after it. Lark watched it dash through the kitchen and duck under a recliner in the living room.

  He thought it best to close the door. Wasn’t sure which side of it he should be on. She made the decision for him. “Come in,” she said.

  He went as far as the threshold between the kitchen and the living room and watched her crouching by the recliner with her ear against the carpet.

  She talked to the cat first—“Roscoe, baby, are you all right? I was so worried. Where have you been?”—but after a while she got up and talked to Lark.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You don’t know—” She didn’t finish the sentence; astoundingly, she threw her arms around him.

  He patted her shoulder and tried not to focus too much on the smell of her: lavender and something else—peach shampoo, he thought.

  After a moment she stepped back. “Where did you find him?”

  “By the Dumpsters,” Lark said.

  “I’ve looked there every day.”

  “There’s a hole in the fence. He was behind that, in the bushes.”

  He told her how it had gone. She admired his trick with the turkey. The cat’s whiskers edged out from underneath the recliner, but the rest of him stayed hidden.

  The conversation trailed off. “I should go,” Lark said.

  She followed him out through the kitchen, thanking him all the way. When he reached the door something changed. He felt her fingers on the bare skin of his arm. Something intimate in the touch. He thought she would ask him to stay.

  “Listen,” she said, her voice suddenly a whisper, “are you in trouble?”

  He turned, found her standing close. Her expression serious.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Someone came looking for you.”

  He thought at once of the lady cop—the one he had seen at the hospital, and at the Spencer house. “What did she say?”

  His neighbor’s answer surprised him. “Not a she. A he. He told me a story—about how you’d run out on your wife and now she was raising your kids on her own. And she asked him to find you and get you to do the right thing. ‘I can’t say he’ll be glad to see me,’ he said. ‘But you’ll be doing his wife a kindness if you keep an eye out for him and call me if you see him.’ He gave me a card, but it had no name on it, just a phone number.”

  “When was this?”

  “About an hour ago. Was any of what he said true?”

  Lark shook his head. “I don’t have a wife, or kids.”

  “That’s what I thought. Is he a private detective? He didn’t act like a proper policeman.”

  “I don’t know who he is.”

  “He had the look of a policeman, though, the way he carried himself. Like someone used to giving orders, and having them obeyed. . . . I’ll tell you who he reminded me of—the actor who starred in that movie with Sidney Poitier. What’s his name? Rod Steiger.”

  The description made Lark uneasy, though he couldn’t say why.

  “Do you think he’s gone now?” he asked.

  “Dunno,” she said. “But I haven’t seen him—and I’ve been looking out into the hall, watching for you. I can tell you I saw someone else at your door, after he left. A skinny man wearing a windbreaker and a ball cap. When I tried to speak to him, he hurried off. I thought about calling the police.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Maybe we should call them. I got the feeling those men could be dangerous.”

  Lark stood with his back to the door, his mind working fast.

  “No,” he said. “I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding. Maybe they had the wrong address. If they come back, they’ll take one look at me and realize they’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Not at all. But it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to stick around.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. But I should go. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow, see how Roscoe’s doing. How would that be?”

  “All right.”

  “Good night, then.”

  He got the door open and went out before she could think of an objection. The door closed with a metallic click and he stood looking from one end of the barren hallway to the other.

  No time to dawdle. She might be watching him through the peephole. He crossed the hall in three strides, keyed open his door and went in, switching on the light in the entryway. No sign of damage to the door; he didn’t think anyone had been in the apartment. But he wanted to be sure. He put on the overhead light in the kitchen and grabbed the chef’s knife from the drawer.

  Down the short hall at a slow walk and at the end he faced a choice: bathroom on the right, bedroom on the left. From the hall, both looked empty. But the shower curtain was thick, white, opaque—someone could be hiding there. And most of the bedroom was out of view. If you wanted to hide, the bedroom would be the obvious place. Press yourself against the wall beside the doorway and you’d be invisible from the hall.

  Then again, if you were clever, you might not choose the obvious place.

  Lark stepped into the bathroom, the knife held down at his side. He flipped the light switch and his own image loomed in the mirror. His heart skipped and he looked behind him at the darkened bedroom. Nothing stirred. Turning back to the shower, he stepped closer. Reached for the curtain with his free hand. Swept it back.

  The shower was empty.

  “Bad guess,” said a voice behind him.

  He spun around to see a tall solid shape in the doorway—a man dressed all in black, like someone on a secret mission in a second-rate movie. Black boots laced high, black trousers, black T-shirt stretched tight over a bulging stomach. Broad shoulders, black hair streaked with silver. Lark recognized him; he had seen him on television in Sault Sainte Marie. Walter Delacorte, the sheriff of Chippewa County.

  Lark brought the knife up automatically. Delacorte raised a pistol in a thick-fingered hand.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said.

  Lark felt a laugh burst out of him. It doubled him over. He was hearing his father’s voice, another bit of wisdom: Never bring a knife to a gunfight.

  He straightened and lunged at Delacorte, leading with the knife. At least he would have surprise on his side. But Delacorte proved nimbler than he looked. He turned sideways and his left hand caught Lark’s wrist, slamming the knife into the wall beside the light switch.

  The knife fell to the floor. Delacorte let go of Lark’s wrist and seized his collar, shoving him into the mirror above the sink. Lark caught the impact on his shoulder, shattering the glass. One-handed, Delacorte spun Lark around and propelled him through the doorway. Momentum carried Lark into the bedroom and sent him sprawling, the air rushing out of his lungs as he hit the carpet. Before he could get up, he felt Delacorte’s boot between his shoulder blades and the cool muzzle of the gun at the back of his neck.

  “You got that out of your system now?” the sheriff said quietly.

  CHAPTER 30

  Lark gave no answer, but when Delacorte ordered him to put his hands on his head, he complied, and he didn’t resist when the sheriff brought one wrist and then the other around to his back to snap on the handcuffs.

  He felt Delacorte searching through his pockets, tugging out his wallet and his notebook. He heard the flick of a switch and the overhead light came on, a weak bulb that gave off a yellow glow.

  “You’re an odd little bird,” he heard Delacorte say. Then the sound of pages being turned. The rough feeling of the carpet beneath his cheek.

  “Do you mind if I sit up?” he said.

  Delacorte chuckled, a rumbling, lazy sound. “Oh, I don’t mind, Mr. Lark. Go right ahead.”

  Lark rolled onto his side, used an elbow to push himself up. He sat with one leg extended, the other bent. There was a wall two feet behind him; he slid along the carpet
and leaned his back against it.

  Across the room, Delacorte had dumped out the contents of a plastic crate so he could turn it over and use it as a stool. He sat reading Lark’s notebook, the wallet forgotten at his feet. The pistol was out of sight.

  “What is this,” Delacorte said, “your diary?”

  Lark looked around the room, at his clothes and books on the floor, at the mattress and the wrinkled sheets. On the far end of the mattress he saw a bar of black metal with a ninety-degree bend. A tire iron.

  “Answer my question,” Delacorte said.

  Lark closed his eyes against the yellow light. “Could I have some ice?” he asked.

  He heard an edge in Delacorte’s voice. “What?”

  “I have a headache.”

  The lazy chuckle again. “You answer my questions, maybe I’ll get you some ice. Is this your diary?”

  Lark shrugged as well as he could with his hands cuffed. “I like to write things down.”

  He inhaled deeply. The pain behind his eyes was all sharp corners, like the bend in the tire iron. Deep breaths. That was something Dr. Kenneally always used to say to him. As if deep breaths could solve any problem. Feeling stressed? Take deep breaths. A headache coming on? Deep breaths. Held prisoner by a sheriff dressed in black?

  Lark took deep breaths. He understood now how Delacorte had gotten into the apartment. The bedroom had sliding glass windows behind white vertical blinds. The bottoms of the windows were just about level with the ground. If you had a tire iron, you could pry a window open and climb through.

  Lark heard Delacorte get to his feet and cross the room. He opened his eyes, squinting against the yellow light. The sheriff was showing him a page of the notebook. Three names—Henry Kormoran, Sutton Bell, Terry Dawtrey—the first and the last lined through. The red letters rippled and breathed.

  Deep breaths.

  “You wrote these names?” Delacorte said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did someone give them to you? Did someone hire you?”

  “No.”

  “Then why? Why would you go after these three?”

  “Don’t you know who they are? What they did?”

  “They tried to rob a bank.”

  “They shot Harlan Spencer in the spine.”

  “Terry Dawtrey did that. Not the other two.”

  “All three of them decided to rob that bank. They’re responsible for what happened. They’re all bad men.”

  Delacorte snorted. “I’ve seen a lot worse.”

  “Men like that have to be stopped. Or they’ll just keep on doing bad things.”

  “Sutton Bell’s a nurse, for Chrissake. What do you think he’s gonna do?”

  “He’s as responsible as the others,” Lark said. “If you don’t stop men like that, then whatever they do, that’s on you. Because you didn’t stop them.”

  “So you stopped Terry Dawtrey and Henry Kormoran, and you crossed them off your list.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you’re not the one who killed Dawtrey. One of my deputies did that.”

  “I wanted him dead. He’s dead. Close enough.”

  Lark watched Delacorte page ahead in the notebook. Another name in red: Charlie Dawtrey.

  “Was he a bad man too?” Delacorte asked.

  “He was necessary.”

  “He didn’t rob any bank. Didn’t shoot anybody.”

  “I needed him, to get to his son,” Lark said. “I couldn’t think of another way.”

  “You beat him to death with a tire iron.”

  Lark glanced at the mattress, the folds of the sheets, the hard lines of Delacorte’s tire iron lying there. Even if he could get to it, he wouldn’t be able to make any use of it, not with his hands behind his back. He looked at the windows, covered by the blinds. No one would be able to see what was happening in this room. No help would come to him.

  Delacorte backed off. He closed the notebook and tucked it under his arm.

  “I didn’t believe in you at first,” Delacorte said. “Even when they sent me that story you wrote.”

  “How did you find me?”

  Delacorte drew a small plastic bag from his pocket. When he held it up, Lark saw a slug and a shell casing and an intact cartridge.

  “You left some things behind at Whiteleaf Cemetery,” Delacorte said. “I couldn’t get a decent print off the casing or the cartridge, but at least they told me you were real. So I started looking for you. Showed your sketch at hotels. I found the one you stayed at, but it was the kind where they take cash for a room and have fuzzy memories. I had to try something else. What did I know about you? You were a fella with a rifle on a hill. I started showing the sketch at sporting-goods stores. It didn’t pan out at first, but I kept going. I found a clerk in Traverse City who recognized you, said he sold you a Remington rifle. You paid with a credit card.

  “Once I had your name, I could have found you in my sleep. When you rented this apartment, they ran a credit check. It’s in your records.” Delacorte returned the plastic bag to his pocket, along with Lark’s notebook. “And now I’ve got you. You’re not much of a killer, are you?” he said, with a gesture that encompassed the room. “Living like a bohemian. Making friends with the neighbors. That gal across the hall likes you. You should have seen her face when I came around asking questions—I think she was worried for you.”

  The pain behind Lark’s eyes twisted around on itself.

  “Let’s leave her out of this,” he said.

  “Fine by me. You come along peaceful, she doesn’t need to be involved.” Delacorte stepped back and retrieved Lark’s wallet from the floor, and the tire iron from the mattress. He slipped the wallet in his pocket, the tire iron through a belt loop. “I don’t figure I want to climb out the window towing you behind me,” he said, “so we’re gonna walk out the front door. My car’s not far away.”

  Lark breathed deep. “Where are you taking me?”

  “For a long drive.”

  “I’m under arrest, then?”

  Reaching behind his back, Delacorte came out with the pistol.

  “You’re under arrest. Let’s move.”

  In the moments that followed, the pain in Lark’s head found new ways to bend back on itself. He felt a series of disjointed sensations. Delacorte gripping his arm and lifting him to his feet. The floor of the hallway listing beneath him. His eyelids fluttering in the bright light of the kitchen, and the light coming through, coiling around inside his skull, pressing in at his temples like a vise.

  He hesitated as he came to the line where the vinyl floor of the kitchen met the carpet of the entryway. Delacorte pressed the muzzle of the pistol into his back.

  “I need ice,” Lark said.

  “You need to keep moving,” said Delacorte. “I’ll give you ice when we get where we’re going.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  Lark felt the sheriff’s fingers on the back of his neck, felt himself falling forward toward the wall beside the entryway. His feet hurried to catch up. He landed soft, turning his face to feel the cool of the wall against his cheek.

  Delacorte’s voice a whisper in his ear. “You don’t want to try me, son.”

  The fingers left his neck and he heard the door opening. The muzzle hard between his shoulder blades as Delacorte guided him out into the hall. The dim light a reprieve. The gray steel of the neighbor girl’s door. She might be behind it now, watching through the peephole.

  Or she might be playing with her cat.

  Lark turned his head to the left and the coiled ache behind his eyes played a trick on him. He felt Delacorte’s pistol against his back and at the same time, impossibly, he saw it coming toward him. A black void, smooth and round and perfect, and the foreshortened shape of the gun around it. A finger on the trigger, the white of the nail like a crescent moon. Eyes looking down the length of the barrel at him. A face shadowed by the bill of a ball cap. A skinny man in a loose windbreaker.

  Lark hear
d Delacorte’s voice soft behind him. “Jesus Christ, Paul. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I could ask you the same thing, Walt,” said the man in the windbreaker.

  LARK STOOD IN the center of the bare living room, his eyes half shut against the unforgiving light from the kitchen. Paul Rhiner was a gray silhouette rimmed in a white glare. His right arm rigid, holding his pistol level, the muzzle less than a foot away from the bridge of Lark’s nose.

  Paul Rhiner, one of the deputies from Whiteleaf Cemetery. The one who had shot Terry Dawtrey as he tried to escape.

  Lark took deep breaths, tried to get the pain in his head to hold still. He was vaguely aware of the touch of Walter Delacorte’s gun at his back. He felt the floor solid and steady beneath him. Progress. He tried to focus on minor discomforts: the bite of the handcuffs on his wrists, the stiffness of his arms.

  Delacorte had pulled him backward through the doorway, through the kitchen, to the living room—a slow reverse march as if they were traveling back in time. Rhiner had followed, closing the door behind him. His pistol had never wavered.

  Now they were continuing the conversation they had begun in the hall.

  “You shouldn’t have come here, Paul,” Delacorte said. “I don’t know how you managed it. Did you follow me the whole way?”

  “You’re not that hard to follow, Walt,” said Rhiner.

  “Well, what you want to do now is walk away,” Delacorte said. “Get yourself home and stay there. That’s where you belong.”

  “I like it right here,” said Rhiner. “This is him, isn’t it? The rifleman from the cemetery. He’s not made up. He’s real.”

  “Walk away, Paul.”

  “You know I can’t, Walt. I need to talk to him. He killed old Charlie Dawtrey. That’s how everything started. I need to know there’s a reason for what happened.” Rhiner’s eyes shifted to Lark. “You killed Charlie so they’d let his son out of prison. Isn’t that right?”

  Lark nodded.

  “And you meant to kill Terry Dawtrey. That was your plan.”