The cops tracked Freddy to earth at his new girlfriend’s place and charged him with second-degree murder in Frank Zamar’s death—since he hadn’t intended to set a fire, just to short out the wires. They arrested Aunt Jacqui as an accessory—which somehow seemed really fitting: if charges stuck, if she ended up in Dwight doing time, she could run a class on how to accessorize your wardrobe with a murder charge. William and Grobian made bail within hours, as did Aunt Jacqui, but poor old Freddy was left to the mercy of the public defender, without money for bail—he would probably spend not just Thanksgiving in Cook County, but Christmas and maybe Easter, given the speed with which the state brings people to trial.
When Freddy realized he was being hung out to dry by Pat Grobian, he started to sing like one of Mt. Ararat’s choristers. He told Conrad about his meeting with Grobian in the warehouse, the one I’d seen, where Grobian ordered him to break into Bron’s house to look for Marcena’s recorder. He told Conrad about planting the little frog full of nitric acid at Fly the Flag. He even told Conrad about driving the Miata into the undergrowth below the Skyway for Grobian: he was bitter about that, because he thought Grobian should have given him the car in thanks for all his, Freddy’s, hard work, but all he’d gotten out of his night’s labors had been fifty dollars.
Conrad didn’t tell me all this at the hospital, but when he came by Lotty’s to ask me more questions, he filled in gaps in the story. He added that it was a source of pure pleasure to him to listen to Grobian and William turn on each other. “That’s how they got that big old semi over on its side—they were arguing over whether William was really a weasel or Grobian was a thug—I kid you not, Ms. W., the two reenacted their fight for my benefit—and William grabbed the steering wheel, saying he was a big enough man to drive the truck. They fought for control of the wheel and the truck went over. I love it, I really do, when the rich and famous carry on with the same attitude that my street punks do.
“By the way, that truck you rode in was Czernin’s rig, or the one he’d been driving the night he was whacked. Why Grobian didn’t scrap it is beyond me: we found Czernin’s and the Love woman’s blood on that conveyor belt dohingus, along with your own AB negative. Trust you to have the weirdest blood on the planet.”
I ignored that crack. “What about Aunt Jacqui? She was at the factory with them Thursday night; where was she when the truck went over?”
“She’d driven back to Barrington Hills. Now she’s saying that she was acting under Buffalo Bill’s orders. She says when she told him that Zamar was welching on Fly the Flag’s deal with By-Smart, Buffalo Bill told her she needed to teach Zamar a lesson, that he used to do it all the time in his younger days, until word got out on the street that no one messed with By-Smart. If they’re forgetting their lessons, we need to teach them again, she claims the old Buffalo said something like that.”
Conrad said Jacqui insisted that Buffalo Bill told her dealing with Zamar was supposed to prove she was ready to sit at By-Smart’s management table. With that bunch, I could believe anything of any of them. I could hear the old man say it, going “hnnh, hnnh, hnnh,” but if Jacqui thought she was any match for the old buffalo she was either gutsy or delusional.
Tuesday, when Lotty was in surgery, Morrell came by her apartment to visit me. He’d been over at County Hospital to see Marcena, who was recovering from her first skin graft. She was in intensive care, but she was finally conscious, and seemed to be recovering well—she was alert, with no signs of brain damage from her own ordeal in the By-Smart semi.
Having gone through the same harrowing ride as she had, with the semi’s hand conveyor belt rolling over me, I felt a more personal relief at her recovery than I might have before. She couldn’t remember the moments leading up to her accident, let alone the accident itself, but now that he knew where to look Conrad had sent a forensics team into Fly the Flag. They figured that Marcena had jumped clear of the falling forklift, but that Bron hadn’t; the fall broke his neck. Marcena was probably knocked cold when she hit the ground, with the rest of her injuries coming during the ride to the marsh.
Another point that we could only speculate on was Marcena’s scarf, the one Mitch had found that had led him to her. The forensics team guessed it was coming loose from her neck when Grobian tossed her into the trailer; perhaps it got caught in the doors and then was snagged on the fence when the truck left the road to go cross-country to the landfill.
These were just little points, the ones that I worried over. I had a private belief, or wish, that Marcena regained consciousness and left a deliberate trail: the scarf had been torn, with a big piece on the fence, and a smaller piece that Mitch found first. I liked to think she’d taken some kind of active steps to try to save herself, that she hadn’t lain passively in the truck, waiting for death. The idea of anyone’s helplessness terrifies me, my own most of all.