Right, Gabriella. I sent an e-mail to each client, explaining that an investigation had roused Homeland Security wrath, that they had impounded my hard drives, and that while I would take extra precautions in the future (what, I didn’t say because I didn’t know) I couldn’t guarantee the safety of their confidential data in the present.
Sometimes not only is honesty the best policy, but it actually helps. One of the law firms I work for wrote back to say that they were talking to the federal attorney for the Northern District to demand guarantees of privacy for all my data. Another client, also a law firm, was going to the federal magistrate to demand the return of my drives. A couple of customers weren’t so happy. They asked for refunds on their retainers, but on the whole, I felt it was V.I., the Solo Op, 1, Homeland Security 0.
I was writing out the last of the refund checks when I got a call that the ID identified only as coming from Palfry. I was tempted to let it go—I didn’t think I could take Sheriff Kossel’s hearty laughter—but picked it up right before it rolled over to my answering service.
“I’m looking for the detective? V. I. Warshawski?” a woman said.
I knew the voice but couldn’t place it. “Yes, speaking. And you are—?”
“This is Susie Foyle from Lazy Susan’s?”
“Of course, home of the world-famous BLT. What’s up?”
“This—I’m not sure I should be telling you this, but Bobbie Wenger and I talked it over this morning with Jenny Orlick, because she’s Glenn’s partner, and we finally decided you ought to know.”
I made reassuring noises.
“This is a bit awkward, you know, because what if we’re making something out of nothing?”
“If it’s something out of nothing I will not do anything with the information,” I promised.
“It’s Glenn, Glenn Davilats, the deputy, you know.”
We established that I knew who she was talking about: the deputy who’d waited with me while his pals went into the cornfield after Ricky Schlafly’s body. Jenny Orlick was his partner.
“He’s driving a new Charger. I know for a fact he’s got two babies and a mortgage that he’s behind on, so where he got money for a brand-new muscle car, it’s worrying Jenny, so she talked to Bobbie. Bobbie’s her aunt, you know.”
I didn’t know, but in a small town everyone is connected.
“Anyway, well, like I say, maybe he won the lottery, and if he did, I’m embarrassed to be bothering you with this.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not a bother, and don’t be embarrassed.”
As Susie continued to talk herself into a happier frame of mind, two Palfry images came to me: standing in the motel parking lot at four in the morning, watching a Dodge Charger roar away from me with the two punks who’d busted my trunk lock to steal the dresser drawers.
Even more vivid was the memory of standing by the cornfield in the hot sun. I’d asked Deputy Davilats to help me put Delilah, the emaciated Rottweiler, into my car. She’d been gentle with me, she was sweet with everyone at the clinic, but she’d bared her teeth and shown hackle at Glenn Davilats.
32
CHOP SHOP
MY FIRST IMPULSE was to call Sheriff Kossel, but for all I knew, the whole Palfry County sheriff’s department was working with local drug dealers. Roberta and Frank Wenger had said there were at least two other meth houses in the county.
It could be that one of the dealers had bribed Davilats to work with him, but no one else in the county knew about it. My experience of police corruption said otherwise. You didn’t usually get a solo bad apple: people don’t feel immoral when they’re doing what the group is doing. The two deputies who’d answered the 911 at the motel had been unenthusiastic about tracking the Charger: maybe they only suspected it belonged to their buddy. On the other hand, they could be getting a cut.
I wandered up Milwaukee Avenue toward the Subaru, so involved in my tortuous thinking that I almost got hit crossing the three-way intersection at North Avenue. That would be a gallows-humor ending—surviving a shoot-out in a drug den only to die under a semi.
Davilats’s being on the take explained the two sets of people paying attention to me. Homeland Security was watching for action on the King Derrick auction of nuclear secrets, but Davilats wanted any valuables I’d found at the meth house. Davilats knew I’d found the desk drawer, because he’d heard about it during the Palfry football game. Homeland Security had read my e-mail to Cheviot Labs, saying I’d found the drawer with papers stuck to it, but they didn’t know about the theft. That was why they hadn’t believed me.
So far so good, or so bad. Davilats had been in the Lincoln Navigator that Judy Binder tore off in. He or his accomplice had shot Ricky and Bowser.
I paused in front of a sushi restaurant. Judy gave Freddie Walker the Navigator in exchange for a little oxy, but Freddie did drugs, not cars. License plates, though. There’d been a stack of plates next to the drug cabinet. I wondered if Ferret Downey or his evidence techs had thought those worth bagging and tagging.