Free The Butcher's Boy by Thomas Perry

empty gray eyes.

    "Did Mr. Veasy say anything that you remember?"

    "Al? Sure," he said, beginning to smile as he remembered. "He was a great talker all right. He was complaining about the quarterly statement from our biggest investment. Said we weren't getting anything back for our money, that we were speculating instead of saving, and that we were gonna lose it."

    "Do you agree?"

    "No," he said. "Not at all. A union has to do something or inflation will eat up the pension funds before anybody has a chance to use them. You have to put money into things that'll produce profits in the long run, even if nothing much happens the first year or two."

    "What investment bothered him?"

    "Well," said O'Connell, "we have a lot tied up in an investment corporation called Fieldston Growth Enterprises."

    "Mutual funds?" Elizabeth wrote down the name.

    "No. Land, mostly. Resorts, golf courses, retirement places. Al didn't like it one bit. Said he'd tried to find out about them and couldn't. There weren't any resorts or anything that they owned, so he panicked. They're new, so they haven't done any of that yet. But I've seen brochures with the designs and layouts, and it'll be big. I'm sorry Al couldn't live to see it."

    "What else happened that night? Did he argue with anybody?"

    "No, not really. He and I went round a little about the pension fund, but it wasn't personal."

    "Did anything else seem to be on his mind? Was he depressed lately or nervous?"

    "Al Veasy didn't commit suicide," said O'Connell. "His truck blew up is all.
    Must have been a leak in the fuel system. Could happen to anybody the way they make 'em now. If I was his wife I'd sue General Motors."

    "So it looked to you like just a tragic accident?"

    "What else? Murder? What for?"

    "I just have to cover all the possibilities, Mr. O'Connell." Elizabeth thanked 36

    him and walked back to the waiting police car. Both doors were open and the officer was leaning against the trunk gazing off down the road through his mirrorlens sunglasses. He was probably nice looking, she thought, but you'd have to get him out of uniform to tell. They always seemed to be covered with bits of metal. "Where to?" he said.

    " Twenty-seven twenty-four Grove Avenue ."

    "Veasy's house?"

    "That's right," said Elizabeth . All the stops were routine, she thought—no way to break out of it, nobody new to ask.

    The rest of Elizabeth's morning was just as unproductive. What she got from Mrs. Veasy was inarticulate grief. At least the investigating officers had managed to find out a little about the dead man's habits. But they did this kind of thing every day, and were probably pretty good at it—ignoring what people were trying to say—their theories, opinions about people and life and death—and listening for what they had to throw in to make it comprehensible to an outsider—specific information about the victim's habits, behavior, friends, and enemies.

    Elizabeth was suddenly tired. She glanced at her watch and saw that it was almost noon . "Let's go back to the station," she said. The policeman drove with a special kind of authority, a tiny bit faster than anyone else on the straight, level highway, so the other cars would move aside to let them cruise by. She looked out on the rows of low suburban houses as they slid past, now and then surprised by a squat date palm or a row of towering eucalyptus trees. If it weren't for the plants this could be Indiana . Or Virginia, anyway. Just about anything seemed to grow here. But not on Grove Avenue . The houses were built so close together there wasn't even room for a decent lawn.

    When they reached the station she asked to use the desk sergeant's telephone and called Padgett in Washington . "Hi, Elizabeth," he said. There was something odd about his voice, but she couldn't identify it. Amusement? Spite?

    "Hi, Roger," she said. "What have you got for me?"

    "Precision Tooling isn't going to help much. They're purer than Caesar's wife.