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19
Wipperwill Motel
Oldenburg, Virginia
THURSDAY
Aldo wanted a beer and oblivion. His shoulder throbbed and burned. He hugged his slinged arm tight against himself, paced and cursed and wondered if the pills the doctor at the clinic had given him were really for pain or for a rash or something. Even with the pain, he knew he’d been lucky. He’d taken his mother to that Urgent Care on Pine Street when she’d sliced her thumb, so he knew the layout, knew it was open 24/7. So at four A.M., he’d put on sunglasses, pulled a ball cap low on his forehead, and slipped in through the back. It was eerily quiet, very little business yet. In the first small office he came to, a young doctor was sitting alone next to his computer, munching on a predawn sandwich and reading a book. He’d stuck the gun in the guy’s ear, told him to take care of the bullet wound, and keep his trap shut or he’d shoot his brains out and try someplace else. Then Aldo had tucked a hundred-dollar bill into his shirt pocket, to give him hope.
He’d held a gun on the skinny little white-coated dude the whole time he’d treated the wound in his shoulder. He’d refused any kind of pain med while the doctor cleaned it up, though he’d never felt pain that bad, even when a baseball bat slammed into his gut in the Red Onion Prison yard. He’d wanted to scream, but Aldo didn’t; he held it in, because he had to seem to be in control, had to keep the doctor cowed enough he wouldn’t try to run. He’d been tough, just like his father was, before a guard shot him dead during a bank robbery.
The doc had assured him in a nervous voice the bullet had gone through the outside of his shoulder, luckily not striking bone, only muscle. When the doc finally finished wrapping a bandage around his arm and shoulder and helped him into a sling, Aldo had thanked him, accepted a bottle of pain pills and antibiotics, knocked him unconscious, gagged him and tied him up, and stuffed him into a small closet that held medical supplies. On his way out the back door, he’d heard voices and turned to see a woman wearing a white coat leading a guy holding a bloody hand. She obviously didn’t see him because she didn’t call out. He didn’t see anyone else.
Aldo threw the bottle of pills the doc had given him on the bed and swallowed three aspirin. He moaned now as he paced his motel room, cursing that bitch Ewing for shooting him. The job was going to be so easy, he’d been sure of it when he cut the two wires in her cheap alarm system and quietly broke the window of her kitchen door. He reached in and slid the chain off the hook, flipped the lock. He moved quiet as a cat in his ancient sneakers, through the kitchen and small dining room to the small front hallway. Before he could start up the stairs, there she was already coming down, looking like a ghost in her long white nightgown, a gun in her hand. She’d shot him the same moment he shot her. At least he was the better shot. The bitch was dead and he wasn’t. That thought cheered him up for a couple of minutes before the pain in his arm got him to cursing a blue streak again.
How the bitch had heard him was the question Aldo couldn’t stop asking himself. He’d barely heard himself. Had she been awake, too afraid to sleep after hearing her boss was killed? It didn’t matter now. Ewing wouldn’t be telling anybody anything.
He turned on the TV and was surprised to see a sharp color picture on the flat-screen. They’d changed out the grainy crap TV he’d had to watch the last time he was here. He watched Barbara shout at Penny that if she didn’t stop sleeping with Barbara’s husband, Lance, she’d be very sorry. He grunted, flipped the channel to the local news, and a few minutes later, there it was—a report on Ewing’s murder. But the good-looking broad who delivered the news only reported an accountant, Corinne Ewing, was found dead at her home early that morning, the victim of a shooting. No other details. The cops must have put a lid on it really fast. Aldo thought of the young cop sitting in his mud-colored Kia in front of Ewing’s house and smiled. He’d embarrassed that little craphead. He’d stayed out of sight in the neighbor’s bushes, watched him get out of the car and stretch, and make his rounds around Ewing’s house. Aldo had ducked down and he’d shined his flashlight right over Aldo’s head. Aldo waited until he was back in his car, probably drinking cold coffee to keep awake.
But Aldo hadn’t counted on having to use his gun on Ewing; he’d wanted to strangle her in her bed. He’d had the gun out because he was always careful. The shots sounded like two cannons going off. He’d raced out of the side yard and run all out to his mama’s Chevy, hugging his arm hard against his side, feeling his blood snake down sticky and hot, hoping no blood soaked through his leather jacket and dripped to the ground because he knew all about DNA. And there was the chance his blood had fallen to the floor in the house for the crime-scene techs to find. He turned once to see the cop run into the house, his gun drawn. Given the distance and the sliver of a moon, there was no chance the cop could identify him or his mama’s car. At least he hadn’t botched the job. In a couple of days, when he felt better, he’d collect the rest of his money and head out of the country, maybe to Aruba, where he’d heard the white sand stretched forever. He’d lie on the beach under one of those striped umbrellas and think about the fine life that was his now. And he’d check out all those turtles he’d heard about. He’d loved turtles as a kid, always wondered if they ever got where they were going.
Why weren’t the freaking pain meds kicking in? He swallowed two more, snarled at the gorgeous broad on TV who was talking about a stupid dog who’d saved his old lady owner who’d tripped and broken her hip. Maybe they should have put her out of her misery and helped out the dog.
Aldo eased down on the bed, slid a skinny pillow under his arm. He looked at his watch—nearly seven o’clock in the evening. He closed his eyes and started counting to a hundred. When he whispered ninety-seven, he paused. Yes, at last the pain wasn’t so bad. Thankfully, he had lots of aspirin. He just had to hang on. He couldn’t wait to pick up his fifty thousand dollars and rock ’n’ roll to the Caribbean.
He was on the edge of blessed sleep when the motel room door burst open. Aldo lurched up to see a load of SWAT cops in their body armor and headgear pour in through the door, every gun trained on him. For an instant he froze, then nearly screamed with pain when he tried to lurch for his Beretta on the table beside the bed. How? There was no way they could have found him. He’d been careful. He was always careful after a job.
One SWAT cop shoved him back down, stuck his gun in his face. “Lieutenant, here’s your guy, exactly where his mother told you he’d be.”
Aldo’s breath caught. He didn’t understand. His mama had told the police?
“Hello, Aldo,” a man said, looking down at him. “I’m Lieutenant Jeter Thorpe and I’d like to congratulate you on having such a law-abiding mother who loves her cherry-red Chevy Camaro so much. When I paid her a visit, she told us you hadn’t visited her in weeks and her car was in the garage. Guess what, Aldo, that gorgeous Camaro was in the garage all right. You did try to clean up the blood on the front seat, but since it was dark, I guess you didn’t see the smears you left. You hoped your mother wouldn’t notice? She was very unhappy with you, called you a few names, said you were worse than her now-dead sleaze of a husband. She was happy enough to tell us that whenever she kicked you out of the house before you were finally shipped off to Red Onion, you usually came here to the Wipperwill Motel in Oldenburg.”
His mama had told them. Because he’d borrowed her freaking Camaro and smeared a little blood on the front seat? He had tried to clean it all off, but he was in so much pain he could barely see. He whispered, “No, you made her tell you, you threatened her. She’s my mother.”
“Life is hard, Aldo. When we told her what you’d done, that you’d probably left your own piece of crap car down the street and snuck in to take the Camaro and involve her in killing someone, she gave you up without a whimper. Really cool car, by the way.”
His own flesh turning on him, betraying him. What else could a man bear? Aldo looked up numbly at the plainclothes cop. The look in his eyes was as mean as Jessup the Bull’s at Red Onion. The cop’s voice turned flat and hard. “I’m sure you remember the police officer at Corinne Ewing’s house last night, Aldo. He took a picture of your car as you drove away from Corinne Ewing’s house. Amazing how well those cameras do now in low light. When we magnified the photos, we even got your license plate. The icing on the cake? You left some of your blood in Ewing’s hallway and on the road, too. I’m sure we’ll get a match.” Jeter smiled down at him, crossed his arms. “Here’s what’s going to happen, Aldo. You’ll go back to Red Onion without the chance of parole this time unless”—Jeter paused, stretched it out, waiting for Aldo to meet his eyes—“unless you tell us who hired you to kill Corinne Ewing.”
Jeter was looking down at him as if he was bored, as if he’d just as soon kick him under a car and run over him. Tough bastard. Aldo pictured putting a red dot in the middle of his forehead, but the SWAT cops already had his Beretta. But maybe he still held some of the cards. Aldo looked up at Jeter, a sneer on his mouth, and said easily, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jeter leaned close. “As I said, my name’s Lieutenant Jeter Thorpe of the Porte Franklyn PD, so you can believe me when I tell you I can persuade the commonwealth attorney to offer you a possibility of parole if you tell the court who paid you to kill Corinne Ewing.”
Aldo’s sneer grew bigger. He kept his mouth shut. Did this Thorpe think he’d just fold without a written guarantee?
Jeter said easily to this idiot who thought he could outfox a fox, “If you refuse to cooperate, Aldo, if you think staying silent will keep you safe in prison, you’ve got it exactly wrong. Once you’re back at Red Onion, you’ll be a threat to Oliveras. You won’t last longer than the first spitting contest. Another inmate will shove a bar of soap down your throat in the shower or maybe stick a shiv in your gut in the yard, and everyone will stand around and watch you bleed out. They’ll set up a pool to bet how long you’ll stay breathing. Maybe it’ll be only days, maybe weeks. Then it’ll happen that fast, Aldo.” Jeter snapped his fingers in Aldo’s face.
For a second Aldo’s rage took his pain away. He remembered his ranger knife, but it was snug in his boot, at the foot of his bed. A second later his shoulder was on fire again. It made him want to scream, but he didn’t, not with all the cops standing over him, watching him. He said, his voice firm, as hard as the cop’s eyes staring down at him, “You gotta make me a real sweet deal.”
Jeter’s eyebrow went up and he smiled, a vicious smile, one promising endless mean. “You think? Well, I’ll see what I can do. Just to whet my appetite, Aldo, to show good faith, tell me how much Oliveras paid you to kill Ewing.”
“You get nothing until I see an offer, signatures on the dotted line.”
Jeter thought of Hailstock. He knew he’d make whatever deal with Aldo Springer he had to. Jeter didn’t doubt it for a moment. At least they’d get Oliveras. But knowing how Hailstock would fold for a man who’d committed murder for hire burned him. Aldo must have seen him thinking that because his sneer was back in full bloom. Jeter couldn’t help himself, he leaned down and whispered in Aldo’s ear, “Then again, maybe Oliveras will have you killed in city lockup before I can get a deal for you.” Jeter slipped, pressed his palm against his wounded shoulder to regain his balance. Aldo screamed.
“Sorry about that, Aldo. Shoulder hurting you? Okay, let’s get your carcass to the hospital, get you fixed up while I speak to the DA, see what they say your future holds.”
Aldo thought of Oliveras, a man with a blacker soul than even this cop imagined. “I want a guard!”
Jeter laughed at him. “And I want the money Oliveras was going to pay you.”
Aldo cursed, stared the cop in the eye. “I wish I could put out your lights.”
Jeter gave him a full-on smile. “Yeah, Aldo, if that thought gives you pleasure, you go with it.” Jeter stepped aside as two of the SWAT team hauled Aldo Springer to his feet.
Aldo shouted when they got him to the door, “Get me a deal!”
