“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.”
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.
Tomasetti turns the Tahoe onto a patchwork of crumbling asphalt pocked with potholes. A row of walnut trees runs parallel with a derelict privacy fence, separating the park from a wheat field to the south. Opposite, two dozen mobile homes line the street like wrecked cars waiting for the crusher. Most of the homes are streaked with rust and black grime that’s run down from the roof. I see broken windows, flapping screens and one storm door hanging by a single hinge. Two mobile homes are missing the skirting that encircles the base to keep the plumbing from freezing in the wintertime.
Seeing this kind of poverty in my own backyard saddens me. My family and I were far from wealthy, but we weren’t poor, either. My parents always provided food and shelter, and instilled a sense of security. My life wasn’t ideal, but the problems I experienced had absolutely nothing to do with money.
“Dismal place,” Tomasetti comments.
“Wouldn’t want to live here when the temp dips below zero.”
“What’s the address?”
I glance down at my notebook. “Thirty-five Decker. I think it’s the last street.”
The final fringes of daylight fade as Tomasetti turns onto Decker. The lot numbers painted on the curb are faded, but we find number thirty-five at the end of the street. A handful of maple and sycamore trees surround a nicely kept mobile home, casting it into perpetual shadow. Fallen leaves the color of blood cover the yard and driveway. Some enterprising individual had built wooden steps and a deck off the front door. But time and the elements have bleached the wood to monochrome gray and eroded any semblance of prettiness. A black Chevy pickup with a big crease in the door is parked in the driveway.
“There’s the truck,” Tomasetti says.
I get out and head toward the front door. The steps creak as I ascend them, and I find myself hoping the wood holds. I knock and wait. In the driveway, Tomasetti peers into the truck windows. From where I stand, I see several beer cans in the truck bed. A toolbox. A length of nylon rope.
The door swings open, and I find myself facing a tall man with strawberry blond hair and a scruffy beard the color of peach fuzz. “Todd Long?” I ask.
His gaze flicks from me to Tomasetti, who’s coming up the stairs. “Can I help you?”
I show him my badge. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
He stares at my badge and his adam’s apple spasms twice. “Uh . . . what about?”
“A crime that was committed a few days ago.”
“I don’t know anything about a crime.”
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I sigh. “You don’t even know what I’m going to ask you yet.”
He stares at me, his eyes blinking.
“Can we come in?” I ask.
I can tell he doesn’t want to let us in. But he can’t seem to come up with a good excuse for refusing. Reluctantly, he steps back and opens the door. “Sure.”
I step into the living room. The trailer is too cold for comfort and smells of cigarette smoke and burnt pizza. Todd Long is about six feet tall with a lean build and big, slender hands. His pale complexion and strawberry blond hair makes for a nice contrast with the navy Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt and faded jeans. His face is an interesting one with high cheekbones, a chiseled mouth that would put Marlon Brando to shame and eyes the color of a deep-water lake on a sunny day.
“What’s this all about?” His eyes flick from me to Tomasetti. He seems nervous. I wonder what he’s got to be nervous about.
“Someone reported seeing a truck like yours out by the Plank farm the night that family was killed,”
