A couple of hours after Jazz and Wally got home from their walk, she’d dug deeper into Mansfield’s shady past. She knew not just about the murder of Joshua Raab but also about Mansfield’s early crimes. She found court records online, too, and discovered that most of his heists were worked with a career criminal named Marcus Gerchek.
A little more time, a little more internet magic, and she knew exactly where to find Gerchek.
Big Mack’s Motorcycles was in a part of town she didn’t usually frequent, not because there was anything particularly wrong with it, but because there wasn’t much to recommend it, either. Mom-and-pop stores, a couple with boarded-up windows. Off-brand gas stations. A freeway exit. Streets of seen-better-days houses and corner bars that advertised cheap beers and fish fries in their front windows.
Big Mack’s was right across the street from a place called Sid’s Saloon, which, if the vehicles in the parking lot meant anything, attracted bikers and drivers of pickup trucks with rusted bumpers.
The motorcycle shop was housed in a cinder-block building with a view of a long-closed hamburger joint on one side and a small cemetery on the other that was badly in need of having its grass cut. If it was ever busy there at Big Mack’s, it wasn’t by the time Jazz arrived after school on Tuesday. Unlike Sid’s, the parking lot of the bike shop was empty. So was the showroom inside the front door where glass display cases were filled with things like sweatshirts, leather gloves, and safety goggles. There was a display of helmets behind the cases and over on the far wall a pegboard crammed with parts and gadgets, none of which she recognized or would have the slightest idea what to do with. There was no one behind the cash register, but a wide door nearby led into a back bays and from there Jazz heard the twang of old-time country music, metallic pounding, and the low, throaty grumbles of what sounded like an angry bear.
She approached the bays with caution and looked inside.
There was a garage door at the back of the building and it was wide open, but despite the outdoor air, the place reeked of grease and gasoline. Two of the bays were empty. Two others had bikes in them, a bright blue model with two big back wheels and a smaller wheel up front, and a black motorcycle with its front tire and fender missing. The music was coming from a radio in the corner. And the growls? Those rumbled out of the very large man kneeling in front of the hulking black bike. Just as Jazz cleared her throat to let him know she was there, he gave the bike a whack with a hammer and a metallic knock reverberated through the shop.
Once the echo faded away, she tried again, “Hello!”
He was on his knees and he didn’t get up, just looked over his shoulder at her, an older guy if his wrinkles meant anything, with a long white beard and a mane of gray hair hanging from the back of a leather cap. He had an unlit cigar pinched between his front teeth, a scar like a rattlesnake that slithered across his neck, and his arms were bare. When he turned just a little more, she saw that except for the black leather vest he wore, his torso was bare, too. He wasn’t fat; he was simply huge, with rippling muscles and an acre of chest adorned with a gallery of tattoos that included the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a tiger, and an American flag.
In the most recent mug shot she’d seen online, Marcus Gerchek was twenty years younger, clean-shaven, bald, and sixty pounds slimmer.
He rolled his cigar from the right side of his mouth to the left. “Yeah?”
“Hi! You’re Marcus Gerchek?”
With a grunt, he pulled himself to his feet. Gerchek was as tall as he was wide, the Incredible Hulk in blue jeans and black leather boots. “Who wants to know?”
“I’m looking for information and I hoped you might be able to help.” It was an evasive answer at best, but she felt more comfortable, somehow, with that than with giving him personal information. “I wanted to talk to you about Dan Mansfield.”
He grabbed a rag from a nearby table and swiped his hands. “What makes you think I know anything about him?”
She lifted a shoulder. “I know you two worked together.” It seemed a better way to put it than bringing up the burglaries, the convictions, the jail time. “Back in the day.”
There was no way he was getting his hands clean with a rag that dirty, but he kept on rubbing. “Back in the day was a long time ago.”
“It was. But I’m sure you heard—”
“How Mansfield went and got himself killed?” He tossed the rag onto the cement floor and stalked out of the bays, and Jazz backed up to give him the plenty of room he needed. His progress was as slow and as steady as a glacier, and it wasn’t until he was in the showroom that he bothered to look her way again. “Been wondering when one of you reporters would put two and two together and show up here.”
“No one has yet?” Jazz didn’t have to pretend to be surprised. “I was afraid you’d be tired of talking about it.”
“Can’t be tired of talking when there’s nothing to say.” There was a coffeemaker on the counter next to the cash register, the pot coated with what looked like years’ worth of coffee residue, and he grabbed the water container next to it and disappeared for a minute, then came back with water and busied himself making coffee. When the machine was done going through the motions, he grabbed a mug and poured a cup. “You want some?” he asked.
She didn’t but said yes anyway and accepted a green mug that looked like it had last been washed when Marcus and Dan Mansfield pulled their last job. As if she were actually going to drink it, she cupped the mug in her hands.
“What can you tell me about him?” she asked Gerchek.
He pursed his lips to push the cigar out of his mouth and set it on the counter. “You shoulda called before you came over here. I coulda saved you the trouble.”
“Because we could have talked on the phone?”
“Because there’s nothing to tell.”
“Except you did know him. A lot of years ago.”
“Knew a lot of people a lot of years ago.” He blew on his coffee, then sipped while he raked her with a glance that Jazz refused to acknowledge by looking uneasy. She’d never been a flashy dresser—well, except for the Friday before—but something told her Gerchek was not particular. Jeans, a Cleveland Indians sweatshirt. The way he ogled her, she might as well have been wearing her fabulous red dress. “Nobody like you.”
Gerchek continued to stare when he scraped a finger under his nose. He left a streak of grease. Jazz didn’t bother to point it out. “What bonehead sent you to write a story like this?”
“Why? Is it a story I shouldn’t know about?”
“There’s questions you shouldn’t ask.”
“You haven’t given me the opportunity to ask many.”
“All right, go ahead, ask me. Ask me what kinda person Dan was.”
“Something tells me that’s not the story.”
For a few minutes, he drank his coffee in silence and Jazz wondered if their conversation was over. If it was, she’d be only too happy to get away from the smell of oil and the unsettling spark in Gerchek’s dark eyes. If it wasn’t, she’d be damned if she was going to walk away from a man who might help her.
He finished the coffee, poured another cup.
“Did you see Mansfield after he got out of prison?” Jazz asked him.
His gaze shot to hers. His eyes were small and nearly lost in the bulges of his cheeks. “Who says I even knew he was out of prison?”
“If you read the stories about his murder, you must have known—”
“Doesn’t mean I knew he was out of prison. Not before I saw the story about how somebody whacked him.”
It didn’t.
“But if you did,” Jazz suggested. “You might have—”
“I didn’t.” He knocked his cup on the countertop, picked up the cigar, and stuck it back between his teeth. “All I know is what I heard on the news.”
Jazz swirled the coffee in her cup. “You got any theories?”
“About who killed him? You got a reason you care?”
“I’ll tell you what.” She put her coffee on the counter. “I could just tell you I’m doing my job, trying to find out as much as I can about Mansfield, but something tells me you’re a man who appreciates the truth.”
He didn’t confirm or deny and it was that more than anything that told her she had to be up-front with him. “I’m trying to find out what happened to Mansfield because I know someone who knew him.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Her name is Kim.”
Gerchek took the cigar out of his mouth and studied the spit-wet end of it. “Skinny Kim? No way. That was—”
“Maybe thirty-five years ago?” she suggested.
He blew out a puff of air that rippled his beard. “At least. Dang!” He thought about it. “That must have been when she was still hanging out over there.” The way he jutted out his chin made Jazz turn and look across the street to Sid’s.
Different neighborhood, different clientele, but otherwise, it might as well have been the Twilight Tavern where Mansfield had met Raab and both their lives had been changed. Inside Sid’s, someone started up the jukebox. She recognized the song, country, but not so much the hillbilly music Gerchek preferred as it was pop and rock. And very loud.
“Kim was a regular?”
“Back when there was still a Sid. Ol’ Sid, he’s been dead forever. Kim, that’s how she met Dan. And you say you know her?”
“She’s the mother of a friend.”
“Yeah.” Gerchek slipped his fingers along the length of his beard. “I remember when she told me she got knocked up. That’s about when she stopped coming around. Said she needed to be home more. You know, on account of the kid.”
“Was Mansfield the baby’s father?”
Gerchek chuckled. “Bet Kim doesn’t even know the answer to that one! Hell, for all I know, I coulda been the kid’s father.”
Even to convince him he was funny, Jazz couldn’t manage to smile. Dan Mansfield was a murderer, and she didn’t like to think he was Nick’s father. But thinking Nick shared DNA with Marcus Gerchek?
She refused to give in to the sickness that flipped her stomach. She cleared her throat.
“You remember a lot about Kim and how she met Dan, so you must remember more about Dan. Can you tell me if he had any enemies?”
Gerchek’s laugh reminded her of the grind of a cement mixer. “How should I know? Haven’t seen the guy in years.”
“When did you see him last?”
He slanted her a look. “Son of a bitch ratted me out to the cops in … oh, I dunno … right after I heard about Kim and the baby. He figured they’d cut him a deal. Turns out he was right. That time, they let him off with a slap on the wrist and I ended up going down for that job.”
“That must have made you angry.”
He guzzled down the second cup of coffee. “When Mansfield got sent up for murder and ended up inside with me, well, that made me feel better. Besides, prison got me sober. Before that…” With his coffee cup, he motioned back to Sid’s. “Spent most of my time over there. And yeah, just like Kim, that’s where I met Mansfield. Can’t say that was a red-letter day. Man was nothing but trouble. But just so you know…” He swung his gaze her way. “That don’t mean I know anything about him dying.”
“Then what about Joshua Raab? What can you tell me about him?”
He shook his head. “Don’t know him.”
“He was the man Mansfield murdered. At the trial, the prosecution claimed he was Mansfield’s fence. If he fenced stolen goods for Mansfield, maybe he did the same for you.”
“Who says I ever stole anything?”
There was no use belaboring that particular point, so Jazz tried another approach. “If Raab was a fence, why would Mansfield want to kill him? Did they have some beef about something Mansfield stole? Or was it the other way around, did Mansfield think Raab cheated him out of the profits of some burglary?”
“Little girl…” Behind the counter, Gerchek shifted his bulk. He leaned forward, his ham hands flat against the glass. “I told you I didn’t know the man. I didn’t know Raab then and I sure don’t know anything about him now.”
“But Kim—”
“Tell Kim she should mind her own business. And while you’re at it, remind yourself, too.”
“Sure. Of course.” She backed away from the counter. “I just wondered … Mansfield was out of prison for ten days before he was killed. What do you suppose he could have been up to?”
Gerchek pushed out from behind the counter, and for a couple of heart-stopping seconds she thought he was going to come at her. When he turned back toward the bays, Jazz breathed a sigh of relief. “No way I would know, is there?”
“Then what about where he might have been staying? I mean, I know it’s been a while since you saw him, but can you think of anyone he had a long-term relationship with?”
He stopped and turned to her. “You mean other than Kim? He lived with her for a while, you know.”
“I know he wasn’t staying with Kim after he was paroled.”
“Bah!” Gerchek waved a meaty hand and stalked into the bays. “He said something, something about that minister. The one he went to high school with.”
She opened her mouth to ask him how Mansfield had said anything when Gerchek claimed not to have spoken to him in years, but she knew better than to push her luck.
She left the shop and hurried to her car just as a glossy red pickup pulled into Sid’s and a guy in a black leather jacket hopped out of the driver’s door and turned her way.
A guy who looked awfully familiar.
Their gazes met and it was on the tip of Jazz’s tongue to call out to Nick, but she knew better, even if he felt he needed to shoot a look across the street to warn her.
He was working.
And something was up at Sid’s Saloon.
With a silent prayer for Nick’s safety, she got in her car, started toward home. She wasn’t even at the freeway when her phone rang.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Hi, Nick.” Her casual reply was designed to make him realize he’d come off heavy-handed from the get-go.
It didn’t work.
“Do you have any idea who Marcus Gerchek is?” he demanded.
“Yeah.” She waited for the light to turn green before she swung onto the freeway entrance ramp and she waited again until she’d merged into traffic before she said anything more. “He used to work burglary jobs with Dan Mansfield. He’s the guy who said he hasn’t seen or spoken to Mansfield in years, but he just slipped. He said Mansfield ‘said something’ about who he’d been staying with. Doesn’t that sound like he talked to him?”
“Are you listening to me?” Nick’s words came from deep in his throat, and now that she thought about it, Jazz couldn’t hear the music from Sid’s. He was back in that truck. Talking to her where no one could overhear him. “Marcus Gerchek is not anyone you want to mess with.”
“I wasn’t messing. I was talking. And besides, Gerchek is clean and sober now. Not exactly the con who did burglaries with Mansfield back in the day.”
“Yeah. Clean and sober.” The words had never been said with more contempt. “He’s also the leader of one of the most notorious gangs in the prison system.”
The words hit Jazz in the pit of the stomach. “Except he’s not in prison anymore.”
“No, now he’s on the outside. But he’s still in charge. Where are you?”
“On the freeway. On my way home. I’m—”
“He didn’t follow you, did he? He left here on his bike right after you drove away.”
Automatically, she glanced in her rearview mirror.
There was a motorcycle driving three car lengths behind her. But hey, it was a nice evening and plenty of people rode bikes. It didn’t mean …
She shifted her gaze back to the road. “Of course he didn’t follow me,” she told Nick and herself.
“Gerchek and Mansfield did some overlapping time at Allen-Oakwood,” Nick said. “They already hated each other, so it’s no surprise they got into it. Gerchek ended up in the infirmary for four weeks.”
She remembered how big Gerchek was. And wondered how Mansfield had ever gotten the jump on him.
“Then maybe I should ask Gerchek about—”
“No. You shouldn’t.” He pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. “Look, I get it. I know you’re trying to help Kim and I appreciate it. But this is not someone you want to mess with. You don’t want him to know anything about you.”
Jazz thought back to her conversation with Gerchek. “I never told him my name or where I was from or anything. I just said I wanted information and—”
She might have finished the sentence if she could hear herself think.
The way it was, the driver of that motorcycle that had been behind her revved his engine and the decibels vibrated in Jazz’s breastbone. She waited until the bike passed; then she waited some more.
But then, she was pretty busy making her excuses for getting off the phone so Nick wouldn’t catch on to the sudden fear that shot ice water through her veins. That and staring at the long mane of white hair that blew in the breeze from the back of the driver’s helmet and the way he stuck up one finger to let her know exactly what he thought of her before he dropped back and rode her tail all the way to her exit.
She hated herself for being a weenie, but Jazz didn’t go right home. After she exited the freeway, she drove in the opposite direction of her house, went around two blocks that were totally out of the way, and finally stopped in a library parking lot just to watch the street and see who drove by, who might have been waiting for her to leave.
Finally satisfied Gerchek had followed her only so far, she went home, and the first thing she did when she got there was give Wally a hug.
“I guess I’m a chicken,” she confessed. His absolution consisted of a sloppy kiss on her cheek. “I just don’t like the thought of some guy out there…” Automatically, her gaze skewed to the front windows, but as usual at that time on a Tuesday evening, her street was quiet. There were kids playing catch in the parking lot of the school across the street and Mrs. Mueller from two houses away was doing her evening parade up and down the sidewalk, tallying what she didn’t like about her neighbors’ properties so she could report it to the block club.
But no motorcycles.
No Marcus Gerchek.
“Good thing I’ve got a big, brave dog to take care of me.” Just to show him how much she appreciated it, she went to the treat jar and got Wally a cookie he wasn’t expecting, not before dinner.
“We’ve got some work to do, bud,” she told him, and after she’d taken him for a walk and fed him she got down to it.
Again the internet was her savior. It’s amazing how many high school yearbooks are online, and by doing a little math (how old Mansfield was, when he must have graduated) and a little more digging into his background to find what neighborhood he lived in and which schools served it, she came up with the answer.
A few minutes later, a picture of fresh-faced high school senior Dan Mansfield looked back at her from her computer screen.
Could he have been Nick’s father?
On the yes side, Nick had the same light hair and eyes.
On the no side … Nick could be plenty tough. He had to be. But even when he was working, there was never a hardness to his eyes, never the kind of unshakable anger that simmered even in young Dan Mansfield’s expression.
She wondered what his growing-up years had been like, what had put him on a path that ended up with him dead in Kim’s yard.
But that—she gave her shoulders a shake and reached for the lemonade she’d poured to get the sour taste of her encounter with Gerchek out of her mouth—that wasn’t what she was looking for. The senior class pictures were arranged in the yearbook alphabetically and she started with A and scanned the paragraphs of type beneath each one, looking for a student who may have listed that he hoped to become a minister.
She didn’t have to look far.
There he was in the Cs, and she could forgive Marcus Gerchek for saying the man was a minister. After all, that was what most denominations called their reverends.
Except the Catholics.
Catholics called them priests or fathers.