RATTLEMAN: Praise for 18 Seconds 'Excellent! Stephen King Page 14

  Rolfe passed car radios and television sets, boots and leather coats and a display case full of handguns. At the end there was a tall wooden counter with a cash register and scale.

  “Help you?” a boy asked. He was in his teens or early twenties, wearing a black T-shirt displaying a flaming red skull. His hair was the color of gold and combed to a spike on top of his head.

  Rolfe put two wristwatches on the counter, one of them gold and the other sparkling with diamonds, three gold rings and a diamond solitaire earring. The boy picked up the watches and held them to the light. “Replica,” he said, tossing the gold Rolex on the counter. He squinted at the rings, studied the earring and dropped it as well. “Give you fifty for the watch and thirty for all the rings. That other stuff in front of you is junk.”

  Rolfe nodded and the man reached for a form, scribbled with his pen and pointed to where he wanted him to sign. Rolfe made an illegible mark on the document and waited while the man counted eighty dollars, hesitated after he took it and leaned over to remove something from his new leather bag.

  The boy looked at him when he set it on the counter, a dusty looking cake of white powder wrapped in cellophane and banded with duct tape. He couldn’t imagine what it was until he turned it over and saw the powder was sparkling on his hand.

  “You buy?” Rolfe asked.

  The boy was still looking in disbelief at the residue on his hand when Rolfe repeated himself.

  “You buy?”

  The boy held his hand up to the light. “Christ,” he said in wonder, glancing toward the men playing cards. He looked back at Rolfe and took a step back from the counter. “Why’d you bring that here?” the boy whispered, eyes darting toward the door.

  Rolfe was unsure what to say.

  “Who told you to bring that here?”

  Rolfe shook his head, confused. “No one.”

  He was conscious of the boy looking at him carefully, studying his face and his ragged clothes. Studying the scars on his wrists and the ugly graft of skin where someone who was not a doctor had found it necessary to amputate his thumb. “What’s up, boy? No need to be scared.”

  “Pick that up,” the boy whispered and nodded his head toward the back of the store. Then he stepped from behind the counter and Rolfe followed him to a door.

  The boy undid a deadbolt and pulled it open a crack. He peeked out and looked down the alley. “Go to the end where it meets the river. It’ll be the first house on the right. Knock loud and ask for Tiny. Tell him Jay sent you. You can remember that? Jay.”

  Rolfe nodded and repeated the word, “Jay.”

  The alley smelled of urine and old garbage. It was dusk and people were sitting on their back porches, laughing raucously, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes.

  Dogs growled and fires burned in vacant lots. People moved through the shadows as he made his way to the river.

  “Ain’t friendly walking by like that,” a voice called out of the dark.

  “That’s right,” another said.

  A man stepped out of the shadows with a knife at his side. A second was brandishing a baseball bat and he slapped it against his open hand. “Come on big fellow!” They circled him. “What you got in the sack?”

  The man with the knife stepped forward, slicing an X through the air. The man with the bat stepped to the right, moving around behind him.

  Rolfe shot his arm out, seized the knife wielder’s neck and began to squeeze until cartilage popped, then he lifted him off his feet and turned to face the other.

  It took a moment to register, but the second man locked eyes with his friend, watched his hands go to his throat trying to claw Rolfe’s fingers away.

  Rolfe dropped the first man and took a step toward the other, but he turned and ran into the shadows, leaving his friend writhing on the ground. Rolfe looked down at the man, then shrugged and walked toward the river.

  The street at the end was lined with rotting row houses, all of them gray, some of them windowless, some of them boarded over. The near one had a plastic chair on the landing. Trash was heaped in the basement stairwell, spilling out onto the sidewalk.

  He climbed the steps to a wooden door, knocked and glanced up at the windows.

  There was no response.

  He looked up and down the street, saw no one and knocked again. This time a woman’s head appeared; she had a mane of uncombed hair, cigarette hanging from her lip.

  “What do you want?” she barked.

  “I’m looking for Tiny.”

  She coughed and spat in an empty flowerbox, looked down at him and cocked her head to one side. She took a long deep drag on the cigarette and the ember burned hot orange.

  “He ain’t no cop,” she yelled over her shoulder, and a man’s head, much smaller than hers, appeared alongside.

  “What do you want?” the little man growled.

  “Jay sent me.” Rolfe held up the gym bag.

  The man withdrew his head and Rolfe could hear the sound of footsteps on stairs. Then a bolt being thrown back and the door swung open to a man no taller than his knee.

  “Get in,” the midget demanded. “Get in.” He slammed the door behind him and locked it. “What do you want?”

  Rolfe took the brick from his pocket and held it out in the palm of his hand. The midget stared at it, then slowly his hand came up and he pointed at the stairs.

  The second floor apartment was furnished with red vinyl chairs, dirty shag rug and a dingy green velvet sofa. Dark jagged water stains reached across the ceiling, pale nautical wallpaper peeling off the walls.

  The midget led Rolfe to a metal table scarred with cigarette burns. A plastic Budweiser pool table lamp hung overhead. There was a quart of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the table and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. A paring knife lay across a plate of cold sausage. Flies walked around the edges. The midget topped off his water glass with beer and stared at the gold Rolex on Rolfe’s arm.

  “How do you know Jay?” he asked.

  “The pawn shop,” Rolfe said.

  “What is this supposed to be?”

  Rolfe didn’t answer.

  The midget took the knife from the plate and put the tip against the cellophane, looked at Rolfe and pushed it through. A small mound of powder spilled on the table.

  “There are eight others,” Rolfe said. “Be ten dollars a one.”

  The midget scooped a small amount on the tip of the knife blade and brought it to his nose. He snorted and put his head back and fixed his eyes on the cracks in the ceiling. When he lowered them again he was looking at Rolfe.

  “How many more?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Eight,” Rolfe said.

  “And you want ten dollars for each? Ninety dollars in all?”

  Rolfe nodded less certainly.

  And Tiny, who had never been blessed with any more luck than having lived through childbirth, took a deep breath. He remembered with unusual clarity the words spoken in Jewel’s last night – a drunken conversation between a prostitute and a volunteer fireman. It was just minutes after last call and the firemen said he had been up to see the plane crash on the mountain and that a federal drug agent had come to see the Sheriff and she was all the way from Washington DC.

  “You got these outside?”

  Rolfe shook his head. “Kettle Hollow.”

  “When can you bring the rest?” the midget demanded.

  “First light.”

  “First light, first thing, you don’t go anywhere else until you come here?”

  Rolfe nodded.

  “Don’t be late.” The midget shook his head. “I’ll have your money right here on the table.”

  Chapter 16

  Somerset County, Pennsylvania

  It was a retired borough policeman who first noticed the gray pickup in the parking lot of the rundown motel. Half obscured by a wrecked panel truck set on blocks, it had been backed into a corner with its license plate against a guardrail, driver’s side facing the trees.
When he squeezed in behind it to have a look at the tag he saw it was from Florida, and quickly called the tip line for the FBI. The motel had been closed to tourists for years he told them, but the owner had started renting rooms by the month, mostly to minimum wage employees who worked at a nearby resort. Immigrants, he said contemptuously, were taking over the goddamned place.

  Fielding got the message and thirty minutes later he was climbing down a grassy hillside to the parking lot. The air was unseasonably cool and there was a ring around the moon. The motel was badly neglected, the roof in a state of disrepair. The doors were dented, the walls peeling paint. A dumpster in the parking lot was spilling over onto the pavement. A clothesline draped between roof supports was laden with children’s clothes, and a single halogen streetlamp illuminated a row of old cars. A silver panel truck was sitting on concrete blocks, a broken driver’s side window replaced with a piece of waterlogged cardboard. Someone had spray-painted the word SPIGGER in white across the side. In the corner of the lot against a wall of trees sat the gray Ford truck. Fielding squeezed in behind it, noticing the chipped chrome letters F-15. The zero was missing. It was the wanted truck! Was the murder weapon inside, he wondered.

  He knelt and quietly requested a registration check on the vehicle, quickly determined to be in the name of one Juan Rodriguez of Florida. He climbed back up the hillside and had a Pennsylvania State Trooper order a Transportation Department tow truck to be delivered to the scene. Then he sent an agent to the resort a mile away, checking the name against management’s file for employees.

  It turned out that Juan Rodriguez had been hired by the resort as a landscaper on the morning of April 12th, two days after the fire and double homicide that had been discovered in Tennessee. The photo on a Florida driver’s license he had presented as identification bore little resemblance to the man in the surveillance video from the gas station. He had been given employee housing in the nearby motel, in room number three.

  A voice came over the radio. Fielding acknowledged it and a minute later a procession of cars came racing down the road, turning sharply into the motel parking lot, cops spilling from every open door.

  The man calling himself Rodriguez was asleep in room three. A woman and child watched open-mouthed as they placed him in handcuffs and tore the room apart. The truck was put on the crane, Rodriguez in the back of a police car and both were taken to the Somerset state police barracks fifteen miles east.

  Fielding knew from the time sheets collected that Rodriguez had been at work when the Canaan Mountain lawyer went missing. That was the good news. He would call the parents of Jessie Spangler and tell them he had the Mountain State Butcher. That he hadn’t taken their daughter. They could at least take some comfort in that and who knew, she might only be lost in the woods – and still be alive. But first they had to read Rodriguez his Miranda rights and Fielding wanted to be there.

  Minutes later in an interrogation room, Fielding watched as a junior agent had Rodriguez sign the Miranda card to acknowledge his understanding of his rights. It was the weekend and the man was an indigent. A judge would have to appoint him a public defender, but that would not happen until Monday morning when he was arraigned.

  Fielding could spend the rest of the night disbanding the mountain state task force, prepare a press release for the Assistant Director and then drive back to Washington where he would sleep for two days.

  On Monday the prosecution would give the public defender a courtesy copy of the surveillance video of Rodriguez using the victim’s credit card. The United States Attorney would then point out the broken emblem on the quarter panel and the old Jerry can in the bed of the pickup that had been found on the murder scene. He would inform the court of the government’s intent to seek extradition for capital murder charges in Georgia. They would start with the murder of the Girl Scout Megan Lawson. Anyone who knew about death penalty cases knew you didn’t want to be convicted of capital murder in the Peach State. Jurors with crime scene photos would be wanting to put the needle in him themselves.

  But Rodriguez surprised the agents after he signed the card and put down the pen. He said he wanted to talk to them now and without a lawyer. Fielding dragged a chair into a corner and straddled it and watched with interest as the interrogating agent opened a yellow legal pad.

  Yes, he knew the victims, Rodriguez told them, but he worked two jobs and never owned a TV. In fact he had not even heard about the murders until he was brought into this room.

  He had said he met the couple in a Home Depot in the town of Lenoir Tennessee. He’d been working there part time, stocking shelves and cleaning the warehouse. They had asked him about replacement bars for a chainsaw and while they were talking he told them he had experience as a professional logger. The woman wanted to know if he could work for them and he agreed, but only for a week. He had told them he was moving his family to Pennsylvania.

  As for the credit card, he said the man asked him to fill up the gas can and also gave him permission to fill his truck tank before he left town.

  “And when was this that you left town?”

  “April tenth,” Rodriguez answered without hesitation.

  “And you’re sure about that date?” The agent looked up at him. “You don’t want to look at a calendar?”

  Rodriguez shook his head slowly.

  Fielding nodded imperceptibly from the corner. The interrogator’s job was to lock down every detail, to establish the foundation for what would become a house built on lies. In time Rodriguez would trip up on his story, try to amend it and before long he would be buried under his own words.

  “No.” Rodriguez shook his head more firmly. “We arrived here on the morning of April eleventh. It was my son’s birthday. He turned six.” Rodriguez actually smiled.

  “You’re telling me you were on the road all night?” The agent was unimpressed, scratching a line on his pad. “And of course no one saw you.”

  Rodriguez nodded. “Yes. We drove on Interstate 81 the whole way.”

  “All right. And when you arrived here on the morning of the eleventh, who saw you then? Who can verify you were here and not in Tennessee?”

  The agent coughed, pen poised to write. A hidden microphone picked up every sound in the room; a small domed camera caught the expression on every face.

  Rodriguez spoke for a minute and when he was finished Agent Fielding leaned forward and rested his fingertips on the edge of the table. Someone would say later that the blood had drained from his face.

  “Repeat that time.” Fielding raised a finger to silence the interrogator.

  “Five a.m.,” Rodriguez said. “You can see it for yourself. It’s on the ticket in the glove box.”

  Chapter 17

  Marion, West Virginia

  The Sheriff closed the door to his office and dialed the state capital.

  He was put on hold and a minute later Major Lazarus came on the line.

  “Johnny,” Marty said. “What the hell’s going on up there on the Canaan Mountain?”

  “Trying to figure that out now,” Johnny said. He sounded strained. “I’ve been on and off the phone with Agent Fielding all evening.”

  “They’re still in Pennsylvania?”

  “Yeah and they’ve got the suspect and truck in custody.”

  “So it’s over?”

  “He’s under arrest is all I said.”

  “Can you tell me who he is?”

  “Immigrant from El Salvador, uh … name is Juan Rodriguez. INS shows him entering the country on a work visa in 1998. Was sponsored by a deadhead logging company based out of Sarasota Florida.”

  “Deadhead logging?”

  “They harvest sunken trees from the swamps.”

  “And when the work visa ended he failed to leave the country?”

  “No, actually he married a citizen and got his green card.”

  “Okay, let’s back up. This work he was doing. Does it have anything to do with the investigation?”

&nb
sp; “Well, it would explain how he could know the mountains so well.”

  “Because?”

  “Park Services contract logging companies to clean up their trails.”

  “Blood Mountain?”

  “They’re checking that now.”

  “And you’re thinking that’s how he ended up in Kentucky and West Virginia?”

  “Man working for a logging company would know plenty of remote locations,” Lazarus said.

  “What about his truck. If he moves around he would have had to renew his license and registration.”

  “Original address in Sarasota was demolished in 2006. He’s been using a Post Office Box in Sarasota Springs to renew. They only changed the law in Florida requiring a physical address in 2010.”

  “So he could have been living anywhere the last six years?” Marty said.

  “Precisely.”

  “But there’s something else, Johnny. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Like I said, they’re trying to figure it out now.”

  “You’re not worried you have the wrong man?”

  “They’re checking on something is all,” Lazarus said flatly.

  “There’s a hitch?”

  Lazarus sighed out loud. “He claims to have an alibi for morning of the murders in Tennessee.”

  “You keep reminding me he used the victim’s credit card.”

  “He may have an explanation for that as well,” Lazarus said. “But Marty, give me time. This is only just unraveling.”

  “What if it unravels that he’s not the Butcher?”

  “I hear you and I understand there’s another missing person in your county. But we can only take this a step at a time. The FBI has people heading for the Canaan Mountain now. We’ll get a more definitive answer from Pennsylvania in the next couple hours.”“Just between friends, Johnny. This alibi could be good?”