She sighed. “But we’re… I don’t know. It’s true Dodd’s got a shaky alibi for the night of Harriet’s murder…”
“Real shaky.”
“… and Harriet and Corina Lavoie were both involved in placing his son in foster care, even if Lennox Palmer wasn’t, that we know of. So he’s got motive for them…”
“Yup.”
“… He’s local, he knows the area, knows DSS. If we can connect him to the Fullers, maybe that gives us opportunity.”
Mike was silent, letting her talk.
“Lennox Palmer was familiar to me from the beginning – the name. It’s a unique name. I want to go back to an old case of mine and have a look at something. Jesus, Mike, this thing…”
“Regardless of whether Palmer was part of Dodd’s casework back then, he still works at DSS now,” Mike said. “So he’s not just connected by race. There is that overall through-line: these are all social workers, all civil servants.”
“I hear you, but I don’t know… maybe we’re looking at this whole thing the wrong way…”
“Here he comes,” Mike said.
They watched the man mount the bike, knock away the kickstand, and walk the motorcycle down the sloping driveway to the street.
“We need to follow him,” Mike said, and Lena went for the radio.
Mike grabbed her hand. “Let’s keep it off the air, remember?”
She withdrew. “I want to know where he’s going.”
“Me too. Call Mullins on your cell.”
“What about his cousin?”
“Mostly I didn’t want the two caseworkers to know what we’re doing – Bobbi and the other, Rachel. I think we can let Mullins in.”
Lena was already bringing up his contact info. “Thank God. I thought you were going totally rogue – Mullins is good; we can trust him to keep quiet.”
Mike dropped the car into gear. “Have him come here, wait here. We’re going to follow.”
“Alright.”
Mike rolled out with the headlights off, giving the Caruthers house a look as they cruised by. He glimpsed a couple of shapes in the window and then they were moving on. The Harley guy made a right turn at the end of the street. Lena was giving Mullins instructions on the phone.
Mike didn’t hurry, got to the stop sign, made the turn. A short street, connecting to another in just fifty yards. No visual on the Harley, but he could hear it – the guy had made another right. Mike popped on the headlights, followed, this time goosing the gas, catching up a little bit.
The night was wet, everything glistening. The houses in the neighborhood were old, cure-cottage vintage, with big porches, small lawns. The streets were a crazy scramble, and Mike drove with his ears more than his eyes. Finally, they dropped down a steep hill and hit the main road through Lake Haven. He saw the Harley up ahead, passing the fire station, some cheap apartments, a sandwich shop.
They kept rolling, the bike zipped through a stop light just as it changed from yellow to red. Mike hit the brakes. “Shit.”
Not a lot of other traffic, but he didn’t want to run the red in case the guy was watching in his mirrors. The Harley slipped along, past the post office, past a restaurant on the river, the guttural gurgle of it amplified as it cut through the canal of storefronts. Mike was ready to bust the intersection – he didn’t want to completely lose visual contact; the guy could end up stopping somewhere in town, or park down by the river in the municipal lot, and they’d lose him.
But the light changed, Mike hit the gas, they sped down past the post office, the sound of the Harley engine sinking into the night. Cresting the hill, the Haven Hotel was on the left, Main Street veered off to the right; they passed the bank, gift shop, bike shop, a couple of bars, no sign of the Harley.
Mike felt a pulse from Newberry’s parking lot, thought he saw a couple of people standing around way in the back, on the edge of the dark. The Bark Eater was next, plenty of people out on the deck, drinks in hand, music clanging, the open front door throwing a sticky yellow light.
“Gonna circle around,” Mike said. “Think maybe he stopped in for a drink.”
He turned at the main intersection. The immediate left after it was a one-way, coming the other direction. No one was out on the road, Mike took the turn, sped up the hill going the wrong way, sensed Lena tensing beside him. The back end of the parking lot, though, fed out onto the one-way. Mike looked, no longer saw the people there, and whipped into the lot. He found a parking spot right away near the back and jerked to a halt.
They stared at a row of about fifteen motorcycles, most, if not all of them, Harleys.
He got out and walked along near the bikes, acting casual, going slow, pretended to pick at something in his teeth. The bike near the end of the line gave off some nice heat. The engine pinged once. That was their Harley. The guy driving it had definitely gone into the bar – nothing else was open for business.
Mike returned to the Impala, dropped into the driver’s seat as Lena was getting off the phone. “Mullins is there,” she said. “Says all-quiet. Still one bike in the driveway, plus Dodd’s truck – he said now there’s music coming from inside.”
“Poor Bill,” Mike said. “How does the guy get any sleep?”
“It’s a shit world for an old man,” she mused. Then, “Are you kidding? He’s probably partying the hardest.”
The way the parking lot was L-shaped, they had a view on the back, where a border of trees separated it from the residential street beyond. An alley cut through to the street, another one-way, and the Haven Hotel. Mike keyed the engine and rolled forward a little, tucked them into the corner, against the trees, facing out so they had a good view of the whole lot. The closest street light was far enough away that they were in the dark.
“We’re not going back?” Lena asked. “This guy is just getting his drink on.”
He showed her his palm, where he’d written down the license plate number of the Harley. “Let’s see who he is first.” He tilted the MDT monitor to face him a bit better, tapped the plate number into the small keypad.
The info showed up after a few seconds: Randall Bates, age forty-two, from Malone, New York. He was bald, blank-eyed, with a brush mustache. No wants or warrants, but had an order of protection against him from a woman named Tricia Long.
Lena leaned over and read from the screen, looked at the picture. “Yeah, okay, he’s interesting.”
Mike called BCI and had a researcher log into the eJustice database – Stephanie was off and it was a new kid named Sven. Sven plugged in the information on Randall Bates and in half a minute came back with criminal records. Bates had done seven years at San Quentin for armed robbery.
Mike hung up and said, “Real interesting.”
* * *
Another hour. They’d exhausted the small talk. Lena knew everything about Kristen that Mike knew – which wasn’t much, he admitted. “How can someone be so close to you, and familiar, and so exotic at the same time?”
“That’s a good thing,” she said. “That means you’re alive. That’s what real parenting is.”
“What did you do with your boys tonight? That same neighbor come over?”
“My neighbor, Rita, yeah.”
“Rita?”
“Yeah, I know. Bit spooky. But I’m lucky to be one of those people with an empty-nester living right next door who loves kids.”
“Is her full name Harriet?”
“Margaret. She’s got eight grandkids. Doesn’t see them much because they’re all over the country. But she seems to love my boys. Her husband spends half the night watching TV, falls asleep in the chair; she’d just as soon come over to my place.”
“Where does she sleep?”
“A sixty-eight-year-old woman, and she crashes on the couch. I’ve told her to take my bed, but she’s too polite.”
“Do the boys each have their own room?”
“We remodeled the basement, Eric moved down there when he was fourteen. He actually did a lot of the work. The kid is handy.”