Joe’s natural expression falls somewhere between grim and gloomy. To see him look troubled, then, is to see the kind of look that belongs only on the face of a man in a foxhole who is running out of ammunition and has an entire enemy battalion headed his way. It doesn’t bolster your confidence, is what I’m saying.
“Thor,” he said, hunched forward at his desk, flexing a thin metal ruler in his hands as if he were testing its strength, expecting to need it as a weapon at any moment.
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t pay him to kill Jefferson, did you?”
“Um, no.”
“Shit,” he said again, and he pushed the ends of the ruler closer together, straining the metal’s flexibility, and stared at me with that look of impending doom.
“I think we’ve agreed on that point,” I said.
He dropped the ruler on the desk. “This development is more than a little disturbing, LP. This isn’t a small town. The odds of Thor being brought in as a total coincidence are not good.”
“You mean Targent is looking for ways to make you sweat and decided to push that button?”
“It’s possible.”
“Hell of a good guess on the right button, then. If he looks hard enough, he might find that his theoretical connection between you and Thor is a very real one. And that’s going to raise some problems.”
“If it’s not a bluff, then what the hell was Thor doing in Jefferson’s car?”
That question made Joe’s frown deepen, and he reached for the ruler again, went back to bending it. “Any chance the guy who grabbed you off Chatfield the other night was Russian?”
I shook my head. “His speech was pure Midwest.”
“Maybe it’s simple. Jefferson defended Thor in court, something like that.”
“Targent said they’d been unable to find any connection between Thor and Jefferson until they found me. If it was something as obvious as Jefferson handling work for Belov’s crew, they would have turned that up right away.”
Joe didn’t say anything. I sat with my feet up on the desk and stared out the window. Someone had parked beneath us and left the stereo running, rap music thumping loud enough to make our windowpane tremble slightly.
“I suppose I could look Thor up.”
Joe looked at me as if I were pushing on a pull door. “Brilliant, LP. The cops are looking to pin a murder on you based in part upon your association with that lunatic, an association that you denied, and now you think you should go look him up?”
I shrugged. “He could answer some questions, maybe.”
“Or slit your throat, maybe.”
The last time I’d seen Thor, he’d stabbed a hunting knife into another man’s thigh. Perhaps Joe raised a valid point.
“So we push on as if we didn’t even know this little detail?”
Joe scowled. “I don’t like it, either, but I have to say that seems like the brightest option. You’ve got to remember that you’re a suspect, LP. That’s going to have to change some things about the way you operate.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, the rap music still booming beneath us, Joe still flexing that metal ruler.
“If I found Thor, got just five minutes with him for some questions,” I began, but Joe cut me off with a groan.
“There are other things we can do, too. We still haven’t checked out those phone calls.”
“Joe, come on. With Thor involved, I think it’s gone beyond worrying about phone records.”
“Why? An hour ago you insisted those calls were significant. Now, because Thor’s name is mentioned, you’re wild to grab a gun and go after him? Do some detective work. That’s how you get answers. Did you accomplish anything while I was gone other than getting your ass chewed by Targent?”
“I was waiting for your great wisdom.”
“Good, because I’m ready to parcel some of it out. First thought is that you need to stay away from the Russian angle. Far away from it. You start nosing around with those boys, and Targent will catch wind of it. Second thought is that those calls in the middle of the night mattered. Don’t give up on them just because Targent threw you a curve.”
I nodded and retrieved the list of numbers. Seven total, from calls spaced over a five-year period. I gave the three most recent numbers to Joe, kept the three earlier numbers for myself. The seventh didn’t matter—I already knew it was Matt Jefferson’s cell phone.
It took us less than twenty minutes to break all the numbers. Some were easy, using a basic reverse lookup, and two others—pay phones—required our more sophisticated search databases.
“Both of the recent calls were made from pay phones,” Joe said. “Not surprising, if those were the calls that freaked Jefferson out, this guy stepping back into his life. What do you have?”
“Two of the calls he received came from Fairview Park Hospital. They’re four years old, though, and my guy last night made some reference to five years ago. I’m more interested in a number Jefferson called.”
I explained the sequence to Joe: At nearly two in the morning, Matt Jefferson had called his father, who then immediately made another call.
“And you got a match on the number he called?”
“Yeah. It returns to one Paul Brooks, of Geneva-on-the-Lake.”
“Mr. Brooks would seem to be our best option, then. Nobody at the hospital is going to talk to us about a four-year-old phone call, and the last time I interviewed a pay phone it didn’t go well.”
“You really are dispensing wisdom today, aren’t you?”
“Geneva-on-the-Lake is a long drive. Let’s hope the guy’s around. If not, we can wait on him.”
“You want to drive out there? Don’t think we should call first?”
He shook his head. “Harder to blow us off in person.”
He got to his feet and picked up his car keys. They belonged to a new Ford Taurus. His old Taurus had suffered a little body damage back in the summer. A little body damage of the sort a car can suffer when an assault rifle is unloaded into it. True to form, Joe simply purchased a newer version of the exact same car, in the exact same color. Word from Ford was that the Taurus would soon be reaching the end of its line. I didn’t want to break that news to Joe, though. He’s a strong man, but news like that . . . no sure thing that he could handle it.
“You driving?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Wouldn’t it make sense to let the guy with two good arms drive?”
“Not when the guy is you. Besides, I need to put some miles on the car, break it in. Still haven’t hit a thousand.”
“You’ve had the car for two months, Joe. How have you not hit a thousand miles?”
“Haven’t had to go anywhere. It’s been two months since you got yourself into trouble.”
“A new record,” I said, and then I followed him out the door.
An hour later, Joe pulled onto 534 north as it became the lake road and led into the village of Geneva-on-the-Lake. In the summer, the place would have been buzzing, filled with families and tourists, but here in late October things were quiet. We drove through the village and onto a winding country road, glimpses of Lake Erie showing through the pines occasionally.
“We should be coming up on it,” he said. “I hope the damn place has a mailbox with numbers. Drives me nuts when the mailboxes don’t have numbers.”
Turned out he didn’t have to worry—the numbers were two feet high, painted on a huge wooden sign that proclaimed Paul Brooks’s residence as BROOKS’S NORTHSHORE WINERY. Joe turned the Taurus into the drive and pulled into a long parking lot filled with cars. Behind the parking lot was a large log building, and behind that was the lake, looking hard and gray.
“Thought you said the number was residential,” Joe said.
“That’s what the computer told me.”
“Well, let’s go in and ask.”
We got out of the car and walked into the building. Racks of wine lined one side of the room, with coolers of chilled wine on the opposite side and bins full of fancy cheeses and other gourmet items in the middle. In one corner, about a dozen people were gathered together, glasses in their hands, listening intently as a woman with red hair explained the “full-bodied richness” of what they were about to sample. A young, attractive girl in a black skirt and blouse approached us then, smiling.
“Do you gentlemen need any help?”
“It seems we’re a bit confused,” Joe said. “We thought this place was a private home. We’re looking for Paul Brooks?”
She nodded. “Mr. Brooks owns the winery. And there is a private home—you just needed to go right when you came through the gate instead of left. It’s tough to see with all the pine trees.”
We thanked her, walked back out to the car, and followed her instructions. The house was maybe two hundred yards down the drive, a good distance from the winery, and the girl was right: The pines screened it from the parking lot completely. The construction matched the winery, though; it was a big log home with a green-shingled roof, looking every bit the perfect lakeside retreat. We walked up to the front porch, past a black BMW that was parked in the drive, and knocked on the door. About ten seconds later, a good-looking young guy opened it. He couldn’t have been much past thirty, wearing a white dress shirt untucked over blue jeans and leather moccasins. Between the outfit and the perfect face and the thick brown hair that hung down almost to his collar, he looked like he should be a model for one of those “outfitter” catalogs that pretend they’re marketing clothing for outdoorsmen but really sell only to men who live behind computers.
“Can I help you?”
Joe and I passed him our licenses. He didn’t show either the distrust or the childish excitement that most people give you when they see the PI license, just nodded.
“Are you Paul Brooks?” I asked.
“Yes. What do you need to talk to me about?” He had noted the damage to my face but immediately looked away. Manners.
“A five-year-old phone call,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“We’re looking into the background of a man who was recently murdered. Five years ago, he called this house at two in the morning on—”
“The Fourth of July,” Brooks said. “That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? It would be five years now.”
Joe and I exchanged a glance while I nodded.
“That’s it. The call was on the fifth, but it was basically the night of the fourth.”
Paul Brooks sighed and pushed the door open wider. “I think we ought to sit down for this one.”