Free Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery by Steve Ulfelder Page B

far as I’ve ever been able to figure.”
    He slammed the door and trotted up the steps. I watched him. In Vietnam, he probably had the same build as most men. Here, he was a hell of a skinny dude.
    I wondered how much truth he was telling.
    *   *   *
     
    As I drove strip-mall roads looking for a Home Depot, my cell rang. It was a New Hampshire number I didn’t recognize. I picked up but said nothing.
    “H-hello?”
    The voice was familiar, but I wasn’t sure where from. Said nothing.
    “Mister Sax?”
    I realized it was Josh from Motorenwerk. “Go ahead,” I said.
    “You said to call you if—”
    “Go ahead.”
    “Something’s going on at the shop. I made a coffee run. When I came back, a bunch of guys were climbing out of two Escalades.”
    “What guys?”
    “I recognized Ollie’s Montreal guy. He usually shows up with a huge driver who’s probably a bodyguard, too. But today there were three more guys in another Escalade.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I parked a few blocks over. When I saw all those guys, I decided to stay away from the garage and call you.”
    “Good.”
    “Should I call the cops?”
    I thought about Ollie fighting his guts out even with his arms pinned and his nose smashed. He was a warrior.
    Presented with something like this, the Rourke PD wouldn’t know whether to shit or go blind. They’d slough the mess off to the staties as fast as they could. The staties would figure out the gist. They might not prove anything, but they could sure put Ollie out of the drug-running business.
    I didn’t want that.
    Yet.
    “Don’t call the cops,” I said. “Cruise past the garage every ten minutes, and call me again when the Escalades are gone.”
    “Are you sure?”
    I clicked off. “No,” I said to an empty Dodge. “I’m not sure at all.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    An hour later, done at Home Depot, I sat parked in the state police lot and waited for Josh to call back. Trey bounced down the steps and hopped in. “The tail of my poor rental car is riding low,” he said.
    “Eighty pounds of drywall screws and a hundred pounds of joint compound’ll do that.”
    We hit 93 South. I said we might detour through Rourke. Trey said that was okay by him. I asked what the detectives had talked about.
    He said, “Not much—forms, releases, where should the body go. Like that.”
    I said, “Huh.”
    He turned to face me. “Okay, that’s the second time.”
    I said, “Second time what?”
    “The second time you’ve acted like you don’t believe my father killed himself.”
    “You got all that from a ‘Huh’?”
    “Don’t play dumb.”
    He was right. I hate when people play dumb. Might as well treat Trey Phigg the way I’d want to be treated myself. “The statie who showed up when I found your dad was a sharp guy,” I said. “He didn’t like the way your dad’s necktie was knotted. Said it looked awkward as hell, hanging yourself that way.”
    “And?”
    “Like I said, he was a sharp cop. And your dad didn’t strike me as a suicide, and you said he didn’t strike you that way either.”
    “So you think I killed him? Flew halfway around the world with my wife and my boy, hopped off the airplane, drove to New Hampshire, and fucking hanged a man I hadn’t seen in four years?”
    “It wouldn’t be the dumbest way I ever saw a man kill.”
    “What about the other police, the detectives I just spoke with? Nothing but sympathy and filling out forms and arrangements to transport the body. Are they all idiots?”
    Their sympathy might have been a play to get Trey talking, but I didn’t tell him that. At the very least, they had to be doing the same as Randall—working up a timetable to see if he could have cleared JFK customs and driven to Rourke before I found Phigg’s body. “Cop work is about clearing cases,” I said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, the obvious answer’s the right answer. Look at your dad through a detective’s eyes. He’s an alcoholic. Sober a