that? Listen for a second shot, when that doesn’t happen, they think, must have been a car, they go back to watching TV.”
That did sound like the world we lived in.
“You got any idea who might have done this?” Barry asked me.
“No,” I said. “But it won’t be long before you find out he and I weren’t getting along. We’d had a couple of run-ins this week. One of them at city hall.”
“That a fact?” Barry asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I seem to be running into you all the time now. That seem odd to you?”
“A bit.”
“You hang around, okay?”
“Sure. I’m just going down to my truck.”
I’d already spoken to Drew once, after I’d concluded it was blood leaking down through the floor into the apartment below, told him we were going to be stuck here awhile. When I went down to see him again, he was leaning up against the truck.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
I told him.
“I’m starting to think you’re bad luck to be around,” Drew said. There wasn’t a hint of irony in his voice.
The mayor walked over to where Drew and I were standing. He spoke directly to me, didn’t so much as nod in Drew’s direction. People skills.
“Can I talk to you a minute?” he said.
I walked with him a few yards down the sidewalk. “This is a hell of a thing,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Imagine, someone not taking a liking to Lance.”
“Oh shit, Cutter,” Randy said. “If being an asshole was all it took to get yourself killed, you and I would have been dead long ago.”
I agreed with half of that.
“Barry brought me up to speed on what happened at your place last night,” he said. “Ellen, she’s okay?” His concern seemed nearly genuine.
“Yes,” I said.
“Those guys, you think they were out to kill you?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said.
“All that, plus your boy still in jail,” Randy said. “When it rains, it fucking pours, isn’t that what they say?”
“What did you want to talk to me about, Randy?” I asked.
“I need a driver,” he said bluntly.
“You’ve got others on the city payroll who already filled in when Lance was off,” I said. “Get one of them.”
“I want you to come back and work for me,” he said.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You know I don’t respect you. I punched you in the goddamn nose.”
“I had that coming,” he said. “I was going through a bad spell.”
Randall Finley’s life was one long bad spell.
“The thing is, I think that’s what I like about you,” he said. “You’re solid, and you don’t take any shit. I need more than a fucking driver. You help keep me in line. If that’d been you with me last week, when I went to that unwed mothers’ place and made an ass of myself, you’d have found a way to get me back in the car before I did too much damage. Lance, he wasn’t so good at that kind of thing. He just kissed my ass and did what I told him to do. He didn’t know how to keep me from crossing the line.”
“I wasn’t always successful that way, either,” I said. “That night, with that girl, that was an ugly scene, Randy. She was a child.”
“But see, there’s a perfect example. It was Lance who set that up. He’d had a go at her himself, I’m guessing. See, you’d never have arranged that for me in the first place. You’ve got, whaddya call them, standards. And morals. Lance indulged my weaknesses, where you know how to keep them in check.”
“So you need a keeper,” I said. “Not a driver.”
Randy grinned. “If it makes you happy to think of it that way.”
“I hope that kid sorted herself out.”
“Who?” the mayor asked.
I sighed. “The one you kicked in the face when she bit your dick.”
“Look, Cutter,” he said, waving his hand dismissively, “the thing is, I learned a valuable lesson that night. I stopped messing with hookers. You see what I’m talking about? You taught me that lesson. I mean, I was pissed with you, about the nose and all, but you made me see the error of my ways. I’m grateful to you.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “You sure are in the right line of work, Randy. You can lay it on thicker than anybody.”
He grinned. “I like you, Cutter, even though you hate my guts. I’ll pay you twice what I used to. Council’d never approve it, but I can find the money someplace. That’s probably a hell of a lot more than you’re making pushing a fucking mower.”
That gave me pause. I didn’t know how long Derek’s legal problems might continue. And even if they didn’t go on long, Natalie Bondurant was going to cost us a good chunk of change regardless. The lawn business was okay, but it wouldn’t pay as well as my old salary doubled.
“Let me get back to you,” I said.
Randy flashed me a huge smile, made a fist, and tapped me on the shoulder. “We’ll talk later.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You need time to grieve.”
He punched me again in the shoulder. “You’re a pistol, that’s what you are.”
Part of me didn’t want to be bothered, but I couldn’t help but think about Lance, and why he was dead. I couldn’t see any way that he might be mixed up in the murder of the Langleys or the missing computer.
I felt a headache coming on when Barry came down to talk to me. Again, I was dragged away from Drew so that I could be spoken to privately.
“What are you doing with that guy?” Barry asked me, tipping his head in the direction of my new employee.
“He was in the right place at the right time, more than once,” I said. “You ever think things happen for a reason? I didn’t used to, now I’m not so sure. I had an accident out front of his mother’s house, he helped me out, I found out he needed work and I gave him some.”
“He robbed a bank,” Barry said.
“So you said. I’m not planning to get him to do my taxes or make my deposits.”
Barry shrugged. “Your call.” He cleared his throat, a signal that he was about to switch gears. “Tell me about this little spat you had with Lance,” he said.
“The other day, the mayor took me for a drive, and when we got back, Lance was pushing my buttons and my elbow found its way into his stomach. He got back at me a couple of days later. Hid behind my trailer when I was out on a job, sucker punched me, left me rolled up in a ball on the street. And then I returned the favor while he was reading the sports pages.”
“You two never did get along.”
“No.”
“We found somebody lives next door says she heard something yesterday, late afternoon, just before six. She was getting ready to watch the news, heard a shot, didn’t hear another, didn’t think another thing about it.”
“Just like you said,” I said.
“I suppose you can account for your whereabouts at that time?” Barry asked.
“I’ve got a witness who can put me at my place right about then,” I said.
“Not the dead guy I found in your shed, I hope.”
“No, he came later. One of your cops. The one you had babysitting the house. He was leaving about that
