“Will it help?”
“Honest answer? I don’t know. Have you got anything back on the stuff you found on the clothes and hay in that barn?”
“Not yet. Let me see what I can find on Bolton.”
“Thanks.”
“What are you up to right now?”
“Grocery shopping.”
“Hope you remembered your wife’s coupons.”
Ralph smiled and looked at the rubber-banded stack on the seat beside him. “As if she’d let me forget,” he said.
7
He came out of Kroger with three bags of groceries, stowed them in the trunk, then looked at his phone. Two messages from Yune Sablo. He opened the one with the photo attachment first. In his mug shot, Claude Bolton looked much younger than the man Ralph had interviewed prior to the Maitland arrest. He also looked stoned to the gills: thousand-yard stare, scraped cheek, and something on his chin that might have been egg or puke. Ralph remembered Bolton saying he went to Narcotics Anonymous these days, and that he’d been clean for five or six years. Maybe so, maybe not.
The attachment on Yune’s second email was the arrest record. There were plenty of busts, mostly minor, and plenty of identifying marks. They included a scar on his back, one on his left side below the rib cage, one on his right temple, and about two dozen tattoos. There was an eagle, a knife with a bloody tip, a mermaid, a skull with candles in the eyesockets, and a good many others that didn’t interest Ralph. What did were the words on his fingers: CANT on the right hand, MUST on the left.
The burned man at the courthouse had had tattoos on his fingers, but had they been CANT and MUST? Ralph closed his eyes and tried to see, but got nothing. He knew from experience that finger tattoos weren’t uncommon among men who had spent time in jail; they probably saw it in the movies. LOVE and HATE were popular; so were GOOD and EVIL. He remembered Jack Hoskins telling him about a rat-faced little burglar who’d been sporting FUCK and SUCK on his digits, Jack saying it probably wasn’t the kind of thing that would get the guy girlfriends.
The one thing Ralph was sure of was there hadn’t been any tats on the burned man’s arms. There were plenty of them on Claude Bolton’s, but of course the fire that had wrecked the burned guy’s face might have erased them. Only—
“Only no way was that man at the courthouse Bolton,” he said, opening his eyes and staring at the people going in and out of the supermarket. “Impossible. Bolton wasn’t burned.”
How weird can this get? he had asked the Gibney woman on the phone last night. Weirder, she had replied, and how right she had been.
8
He and Jeannie put the groceries away together. When the chore was done, he told her he wanted her to look at something on his phone.
“Why?”
“Just take a look, okay? And remember that the person in the photo is quite a bit older now.”
He handed her his phone. She stared at the mug shot for ten seconds, then handed it back. Her cheeks had lost all their color.
“It’s him. His hair is shorter now, and he’s got a full goatee instead of that little mustache, but that’s the man who was in our house last night. The one who said he’d kill you if you didn’t stop. What’s his name?”
“Claude Bolton.”
“Are you going to arrest him?”
“Not yet. Not sure I could, even if I wanted to, being on administrative leave and all.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Right now? Find out where he is.”
His first thought was to call Yune back, but Yune was digging away on the Dayton killer, Holmes. His second idea, quickly rejected, was Jack Hoskins. The man was a drunk and a blabbermouth. But there was a third choice.
He called the hospital, was informed that Betsy Riggins had gone home with her little bundle of joy, and reached her there. After asking how the new baby was doing (thus provoking a ten-minute rundown on everything from breast feeding to the high cost of Pampers), he asked her if she would mind helping a brother out by making a call or maybe two in her official capacity. He told her what he wanted.
“Is this about Maitland?” she asked.
“Well, Betsy, considering my current situation, that’s sort of a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of deal.”
“If it is, you could get in trouble. And I could get in trouble for helping you.”
“If it’s Chief Geller you’re worried about, he won’t hear it from me.”
There was a long pause. He waited her out. Finally she said, “I felt bad for Maitland’s wife, you know. Really bad. She made me think of those TV news stories about the aftermath of suicide bombings, survivors walking around with blood in their hair and no idea of what just happened. Could this maybe help her out?”
“It’s possible,” he said. “I don’t want to go any further than that.”
“Let me see what I can do. John Zellman isn’t a total asshole, and that town line titty-bar of his needs a new license to operate every year. That might incline him to be helpful. I’ll call you back if I strike out. If it goes the way I think it will, he’ll call you.”
“Thanks, Betsy.”
“This stays between us, Ralph. I’m counting on having a job to come back to when my maternity leave is over. Tell me you hear that.”
“Loud and clear.”
9
John Zellman, owner and operator of Gentlemen, Please, called Ralph fifteen minutes later. He sounded curious rather than irritated, and was willing to help. Yes, he was sure Claude Bolton had been at the club when that poor kid had been grabbed and killed.
“Why so positive, Mr. Zellman? I thought he didn’t go on duty until four PM.”
“Yeah, but he came in early that day. Around two. He wanted time off to go to the big city with one of the strippers. He said she had a personal problem.” Zellman snorted. “He was the one with the personal problem. Right under his zipper.”
“Gal named Carla Jeppeson?” Ralph asked, scrolling through the transcript of Bolton’s interview on his iPad. “Also known as Pixie Dreamboat?”
“That’s her,” Zellman said, and laughed. “If no tits count for shit, that ole girl’s gonna be around for a long time. But some men kind of like that, don’t ask me why. Her and Claude have got a thing, but it won’t last long. Her husband’s in McAlester now—bad checks, I think—but he’ll be out by Christmas. She’s just passing the time with Claude. I told him that, but you know what they say—a foreskin just wants to get in.”
“You’re sure that was that day he came in early. July 10th.”
“Sure I am. Made a note of it, because no way was Claude gonna get paid for two days in Cap City when he had his vacation coming right up—with pay, mind you—less than two weeks later.”
“Kind of outrageous. Did you consider firing him?”
“No. At least he was honest about it, you know? And listen. Claude’s one of the good ones, and they’re scarcer than hen’s teeth. Mostly security guys are either pussies who look tough but don’t want anything to do with a brawl if one breaks out in front of the runway, as they sometimes do, or guys who want to go all Incredible Hulk every time some customer gives them a little lip. Claude can throw somebody out with the best of them when he has to, but most times he doesn’t. He’s good at quieting them down. He’s got a touch. I think it’s on account of all those meetings he goes to.”
“Narcotics Anonymous. He told me.”
“Yeah, he’s up-front about it. Proud, actually, and I guess he’s got a right to be. A lot of guys never get that monkey off their backs once it climbs on. It’s a tough monkey. Long claws.”
“Staying clean, is he?”
“If he wasn’t, I could tell. I know from junkies, Detective Anderson, believe me. Gentlemen is a clean place.”