5
I was back at Joel Tobias’s place early the next morning. Instead of the Saturn, which, as on the night before, I sometimes used for surveillance, I’d been forced to drive the Mustang, just in case Tobias had any suspicions that he was being followed after our encounter the previous night. The Mustang wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, but I’d parked behind a truck in the lot of the Big Sky Bread Company on the corner of Deering Avenue, and had angled myself so that I could just about see Tobias’s house on Revere from where I was, but he would have trouble spotting me unless he came looking. His Silverado was still in the drive when I parked, and the drapes remained drawn at the upstairs window. Shortly after eight, Tobias appeared at the front door wearing a black t-shirt and black jeans. There was a tattoo on his left arm, but I couldn’t tell what it was from a distance. He got in his truck and hung a right. Once he was out of sight, I went after him.
There was plenty of traffic on the streets, and I was able to stay well back from Tobias while still keeping him in sight. I nearly lost him at Bedford when the lights changed, but I caught up a couple of blocks later. Eventually, he pulled into a warehouse complex off the Franklin arterial. I drove by, then slipped into the lot next door, where I watched Tobias park by one of three big rigs parked close to a chain link fence. He spent the next hour performing routine maintenance checks on his rig, then got back in the Silverado and returned to his house.
I filled up the Mustang’s tank, bought a cup of coffee at Big Sky, and tried to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. All that I knew so far was that Tobias’s finances didn’t add up, and he might be having troubles with his girlfriend, as Bennett had suggested, but I couldn’t help feeling that, in the end, little of this was any of my business. In theory, I could have stayed with him until he embarked on his planned run to Canada, followed him across the border, and then waited to see what transpired, but the chances of his not making me if I did follow him all the way up there were pretty slim. After all, if he was engaged in illegal activity, he was likely to be alert for any kind of surveillance, and a proper pursuit would require two, maybe three vehicles. I could have brought in Jackie Garner as the second driver, but Jackie didn’t work for free, not unless he was guaranteed a little fun and the possibility of being able to hit someone without legal consequences, and following a truck up to Quebec hardly sounded like Jackie’s idea of a good time. And if Tobias was smuggling, so what? I wasn’t an arm of US Customs.
The issue of whether or not he was hitting his girlfriend was another matter, but I couldn’t see how my involvement was going to improve that situation. Bennett Patchett was in a better position to make a discreet approach to Karen Emory than I was, perhaps through one of her female colleagues at the diner, since a complete stranger coming up to her and asking if her boyfriend had beaten her up lately was unlikely to endear himself to her.
I called Bennett’s cell phone. It went to voice mail, so I left a message. I tried the Downs, but he wasn’t there, and the woman who answered the phone told me that she didn’t expect him today. I hung up. My coffee was going cold. I opened my window and poured it out, then tossed the paper cup in the back of the car. I was bored and frustrated. I took a James Lee Burke novel from the glove compartment, sat back in my seat, and started to read.
Three hours later, my ass was aching and I had finished the book. The coffee had also made its way through my system. Like every good PI, I kept a plastic bottle in the car for just such an eventuality, but it hadn’t reached that stage as yet. I tried Bennett’s cell phone again, and once more it went to voice mail. Twenty minutes later, Karen Emory’s green Subaru appeared at the intersection, with Karen at the wheel. She was already wearing her blue Downs t-shirt. There appeared to be nobody else in the car with her. I let her go.
Half an hour later, Tobias’s Silverado appeared and headed for the highway. I followed him to the Nickelodeon Theater in Portland, where he bought a ticket for a comedy. I waited for twenty minutes, but he didn’t come out. For now, it seemed that Joel Tobias wasn’t heading to Canada, at least not today. Even if he was preparing for a night run, there was little that I could do to follow him. I was also due at the Bear that night, and the next, and I couldn’t let Dave Evans down. I felt that I had wasted a day, and Bennett wasn’t going to get his money’s worth out of me, not like this. It was now 5 p.m. I was due at the Bear by eight. I wanted to shower first, and I wanted to use the bathroom.
I drove back to Scarborough. It was a warm, close evening, with no breeze. By the time I had showered and changed, I had made a decision: I would charge Bennett for the hours I had put in so far, then give him back the rest of his money unless he could come up with a pressing reason why I should not. If he wanted me to, and he acted as an intermediary, I’d sit down with Karen Emory for free and advise her on her options if she was experiencing domestic abuse. As for Joel Tobias, assuming that he wasn’t making up the shortfall in his finances through entirely legal means of which I had no knowledge, he could continue doing whatever it was he was doing until the cops, or customs, caught up with him. It wasn’t an ideal compromise, but then compromises rarely were.
The Bear was buzzing that night. There were some state cops drinking at the far end of the bar, away from the door. I considered it politic to avoid them, and Dave agreed. They had no love for me, and one of their number, a detective named Hansen, was still on medical leave having involved himself in my affairs earlier in the year. It was no fault of mine, but I knew that his colleagues didn’t see it that way. I spent the evening taking care of orders from the waitstaff, and left the two regular bartenders to look after those seated at the bar. The night passed quickly, and by midnight I was done. For the sake of it, I took another ride past Joel Tobias’s place. The Silverado was still there, along with Karen Emory’s car. When I went to the warehouse complex off Federal, Tobias’s rig hadn’t moved.
My phone rang as I was halfway home. The caller ID showed Bennett Patchett’s number, so I pulled in at a Dunkin’ Donuts and answered.
‘Calling a little late, Mr. Patchett,’ I said.
‘Figured you for a night owl, like myself,’ he replied. ‘Sorry for taking so long to return your call. I was tied up with legal business all day and, to tell you the truth, when I was done with it I didn’t much feel like checking my messages. But I’ve had a nightcap, and I feel a bit more relaxed now. You find out anything worth mentioning?’
I told him that I hadn’t, apart from the possibility that Joel Tobias’s finances didn’t quite add up, and Bennett had suspected as much already. I went over my concerns with him: how I believed that following Tobias would be difficult without additional manpower, and that perhaps there were better ways of dealing with the possibility that Karen Emory was a victim of domestic abuse.
‘And my boy?’ said Bennett. His voice cracked when he said it, and I wondered if he’d had more than a single nightcap. ‘What about my boy?’
I didn’t know what to tell him. Your boy is gone, and this won’t bring him back. Post-traumatic stress took him, not his involvement with whatever Joel Tobias might be doing under the guise of a legitimate trucking business.
‘Look,’ said Bennett. ‘It may be that you think I’m a foolish old man who can’t accept the circumstances of his son’s death, and, you know, that’s probably true. But I have a good sense for people, and Joel Tobias is crooked. I didn’t like him when I first met him, and I wasn’t happy about Damien getting involved in his affairs. I’m asking you to keep on this. It’s not a question of money. Money I got. If you need to hire some help, then do it and I’ll pay for that as well. What do you say?’
What was there to say? I said that I’d give it a few more days, even though I believed it was pointless. He thanked me, then hung up. I stared at the phone for a time before tossing it on the seat beside me.
That night, I dreamed of Joel Tobias’s rig. It stood in a deserted lot, its container unlocked, and when I opened it there was only blackness, blackness that extended farther than the rear of the container, as though I were staring into a void. I felt a presence approaching fast from out of the darkness, rushing toward me from the abyss, and I woke to the first light of dawn and the sense that I was no longer quite alone.
The room smelled of my dead wife’s perfume, and I knew that it was a warning.