Two of them, both wearing dark suits, got out of the Ford sedan. The one on the other side of the car walked off toward the woods. Carmen saw the State Police detective out by the tree line looking this way. The one that got out from behind the wheel had thick dark hair, beginning to show gray, and was nice-looking. He nodded to them on the porch saying, “Mr. and Mrs. Colson, I’m Paul Scallen, I called you earlier. May I come up?”
Carmen said, “Please.” Wayne didn’t say a word.
The man was taller than she’d thought, growing as he came up the steps, taller than Wayne and older, probably in his late forties, showing them his credentials now in a case with a gold shield pinned to it. Carmen saw
Wayne was staring at the credentials. Carmen wondered if he was reading the small print until he said, “That’s the same color as the guy’s car”— meaning the light-blue
Swell, Carmen thought. Here we go.
She was surprised when the FBI man said, “You noticed that too,” sounding a little surprised himself. “It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the car. The Windsor Police found it at the airport, the one over there.”
“So they’re gone,” Wayne said.
Carmen thought he sounded disappointed. It seemed to perk up the FBI man, who said, “Well, not necessarily. They found it the same day Mrs. Colson chased one of them off, I understand with a shotgun.” Giving Carmen a nod as he said it. “And the other one killed the girl in the store. So they didn’t fly out and they haven’t come back for the car. The Windsor Police have it under surveillance, but we think the two guys dumped it.”
Wayne said, “But you don’t know if they’re still around.”
“We think they are.”
“You’re not sure though.”
“Let me say we have reason to believe they are.”
“You check the car registration?”
“It belongs to a company in Toronto. We contacted the police there, they followed up and were told the car was stolen. But we don’t believe it. We think they gave the car to one of the guys to use. For another matter first, something that happened in Detroit the day before they came to the real estate office.” The FBI man looked at Carmen. “I understand you work for Nelson Davies.”
“I did; not anymore.”
“Well, I can understand, after what happened.”
“That wasn’t why I quit.”
“Wait a minute,” Wayne said. “What kind of company loans a car to a guy that kills people?”
“A company that hires him to do it,” the FBI man said. “A company that’s operated by the organized crime people in Toronto. Mafioso, just like the ones we have here.”
“You say they gave the car to one of the guys,” Wayne said. “Which one, the Indian?”
“Part Indian, Ojibway, part French-Canadian. His name’s Armand Degas, at least that’s who we think we have here. We know he was seen on Walpole Island last week and we assume, if it’s the same guy, both you and Mrs. Colson got a good look at him.” The FBI man paused, staring at Wayne. “You had to have been pretty close to hit him with that iron-working tool. What do you call it, a sleever bar?”
Wayne nodded and seemed to think about it a moment, Carmen wondering what he was going to say next.
“What I should’ve done was broke a few bones, put those guys in the hospital, in traction.”
Now the FBI man was nodding. “That’s not a bad place to question suspects, when they’re in pain and can’t move.”
Carmen watched. Neither one of them smiled but it didn’t matter. She could sense that all at once they had tuned in to each other’s attitude and were going to get along fine from here on. Now Wayne was asking Scallen if he wanted a beer. Another good sign. Or he could have instant coffee; they were temporarily out of the real stuff. Scallen said no thanks, he didn’t care for anything, but went into the kitchen with them and took a place at the counter. Carmen turned on the overhead light. She watched Scallen take a white envelope from his inside coat pocket. Wayne asked her if she wanted a beer and she hesitated because a federal special agent was sitting there and then said, okay, why not? Wayne said, “We’re not working, he is.” Scallen smiled. He said to Carmen, “That slug barrel gives a kick, doesn’t it?” Carmen touched her shoulder and rolled her eyes just enough. He said,
“It took an awful lot of nerve, what you did, to stand up to a man like that.” Carmen said she hoped she’d never have to do it again. She saw Scallen taking two black-and-white photos out of the envelope, laying them on the counter. Wayne popped open the cans of beer and handed one to her saying, “My wife’s a winner, that’s why I married her.” She saw Scallen half-turned on the stool, waiting.
He said, “Are these the two men?”
She felt Wayne’s arm slip around her shoulders, his hand creeping down her arm, moving with her to the counter. They looked down at the photos, posed, front-view mug shots: the photo of the Indian, Armand Degas, dark; the photo of the other one much lighter, pale skin, a drugged expression.
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” Wayne said. “They look different there, but those are the guys.”
After a few moments Carmen nodded and looked up at Scallen. “If you get them, you want us to identify them in court, is that it?”
“There’s nothing we’d like more,” Scallen said. “But I should tell you something about them first, before you agree to do it. These guys are both pretty bad.”
Carmen pointed to the one with long hair. “What’s this one’s name?”
Scallen glanced at the photo. “Richie Nix. He’s a convicted felon with a number of federal and state detainers out on him. That means he’s a wanted criminal.”
Carmen said, “Richie?”
“That’s the name on his birth certificate.”
She was looking at the photos again. “Both of them have killed people?”
Scallen nodded. “That’s right.”
Wayne said, “You know they’re the ones killed Lionel?”
Scallen nodded again. “Bullets taken from his body match the three that were found in Nelson Davies’s office, they dug out of the wall. And, the same gun was used to kill the girl in the Seven-Eleven, when Richie Nix was trying for you.”
Carmen looked up. “Is that what you want to tell us?”
“There’s more,” Scallen said.
Six p.m., nine miles north in Marine City, Armand found a gas station where it looked like only one man was on duty, a run-down place that offered discount prices. Armand drove Donna’s red Honda up to the row of pumps, got out and told the man to fill it up and check the oil and the tires. The gas-station man looked at Armand but didn’t say yes sir or okay or you bet or anything, just looked at him and walked over to the car. He wore a hunting cap cocked to one side and was older and bigger around in his dark-brown uniform than Armand, but seemed worn out, not much life in him.
Armand went inside the station, picked up the phone on the desk and dialed a number in Toronto. Standing away from the plate-glass window he watched the gas-station man take the hose from a pump and stick the nozzle into the Honda’s filler opening. A voice came on the phone saying this was L and M Distributing and Armand said, “This is the Chief. Let me talk to him.” He waited, watching the gas-station man move to the front of the Honda and raise the hood while gasoline continued to pump into the tank.
The son-in-law’s voice came on saying, “The fuck’re you doing? Where are you?”
Armand said, “You don’t want to hear about the old man, ’ey?”
There was a pause before the son-in-law said, his voice lower, “It was in the papers, pictures of both of them.”
Armand said, “Both?” And said, “Oh. Yeah, I forgot. Listen—what he said, don’t tell me it was in the papers.
