“Before you go all doe-eyed on me, you probably ought to hear the rest.”
“Now, you’re really making me nervous.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a pisser.” He grimaces. “The deputy superintendent has no idea I’m here.”
That isn’t what I expected him to say. “What?”
“I’m on leave. It’s mandatory.”
“Because of the anxiety attacks?”
He sighs. “Because of ancient history.”
“Maybe you ought to tell me everything.” Despite my efforts, my voice is tight.
“A few weeks before the Slaughterhouse case, I didn’t pass a drug test.”
I’m still trying to absorb the part about the panic attacks. It’s not easy. John Tomasetti is one of the strongest, most capable people I’ve ever known. To learn he’s suffering with an anxiety disorder truly stuns me. “Is your job going to be okay?”
“The deputy superintendent says once I get a clean bill of health, I can go back, pick up where I left off.” One side of his mouth curves, but his eyes remain sardonic. “I guess the good news is they haven’t tried to put me back in the loony bin.”
I’m one of the few who know that after the murders of his wife and kids, Tomasetti spent a few weeks in a psychiatric facility.
After a moment, he gives me a sage look. “The night you called me, the night you chased someone into the cornfield . . .” He lets the words trail, but I already know where he’s going with it. “It scared the hell out of me.”
“Is that why you’re here? Because you’re afraid something will happen to me?”
“That might be part of it.”
I study the hard lines of his face, trying to see more than he will reveal. “You know nothing’s going to happen to me, right?”
His smile is rigid and false. “We’ve been cops long enough to know you can’t make those kinds of guarantees.”
Before I can refute the statement, his cell phone trills, sounding inordinately loud in the silence of the house. Snatching it from his belt, he brushes past me and answers with a curt, “Tomasetti.”
I watch as he pulls out a notebook and scribbles. “I got it. Fax the whole list to the station down here, will you? Thanks.”
Shoving the phone back into his belt, he turns to me. “The dark pickup truck you asked about?”
I’m still thinking about everything he just told me. The rapid shifting of gears to another topic jars me. “You got something?”
“BCI broke it down by color and by county,” he answers. “They’re faxing it to Glock now.”
“I thought you weren’t official?”
He smiles. “I have friends in low places.”
“How many vehicles?”
“Forty-two.”
“How many black and blue?”
He glances down at his notes. “Six black and eleven blue.”
I’m already pulling my phone from my belt, punching numbers. Glock picks up on the first ring. “You get the list?” I ask without preamble.
“Right here.”
“Any of the owners have a record?”
“Working on that now.” I hear computer keys clicking on the other end. “I got three. Colleen Sarkes. 2007 blue Toyota Tundra. DUI back in 2006. Another one last year.”
“Males,” I say.
“Robert Allen Kiser. Black 2009 F-250. Convicted domestic violence last year.”
“Who else?”
“Todd Eugene Long. 2006 Black Chevy. Convicted on a burglary charge a year ago.”
“Give me their addresses.”
Click. Click. Click. “Kiser lives in town.” He pauses. “Long lives in the Melody Trailer Park out on the highway.”
The Melody Trailer Park is closest to me. “I’ll take Long. Grab T.J. or Pickles and go talk to Kiser.”
“I’m on it.”
Shoving my phone back onto my belt I turn to Tomasetti. “I’ve got a name. Let’s go.”
He’s already striding toward the door. “Saved by the bell.”
The Melody Trailer Park is ten minutes from the Plank farm. The place has been around since before I was born, but its heyday has long since passed. Back in the seventies, it was the premier location for trailer homes and RVs. Young couples and retirees made the park a showplace for the up-and-coming. But time and circumstance have a way of eroding even the most en vogue of places, and the Melody Trailer Park was unable to escape its inevitable fall from grace.