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  “Let’s say I believe you didn’t kill Pete Stahl. You’ve gotta have an idea who did.”

  “You asking me as the town genius or as someone involved in the industry?”

  “I didn’t realize you were a genius.”

  “Not everyone does. Usually I call those people idiots. I’m guessing you went to a state school of some kind.”

  “I’m asking if you heard anything in your position as a local drug dealer.”

  “You trying to insult me? It sounds like you’re talking down to me. Frankly, you’re not smart enough to talk down to me. No one is. I don’t appreciate that sort of attitude in my business.”

  That was one sentence too many from this little prick. “Do you appreciate this?” I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him close to me. “My brother is in deep shit for something he didn’t do. I think you have information that can help me clear him. And you’re gonna start talking. Right. Fucking. Now.”

  As soon as I released him, Alton took a step away and reached behind his back. Before I had time to act, he was holding a small semiautomatic pistol. Worse, he still had a smirk on his face as if he was absolutely brilliant for walking around with a gun.

  I didn’t hesitate. That’s the key in a situation like this. I used my right hand to slap him hard across the face and at the same time grabbed the gun with my left hand. I twisted Alton’s arm, pulling him close to me as I put the gun to his head. We shuffled toward the rear door. I looked at Blade the bartender and said, “Be cool and this will all work out. I don’t think you want to blow your meal ticket just yet.” As soon as we were outside, I pushed him forward into a brick wall that hid the dumpster.

  I said, “I’m out of patience with you. You’re gonna start talking or I’m gonna smack you around so hard no one in this town will ever respect you again. They’ll have to take you by the emergency room to get this gun removed from your ass.”

  “You think because you’re a big guy and were in the Navy that you know what tough is. Try being the smartest kid in Cincinnati who’s only five foot seven. There’s nothing you can do to me that will make me talk.”

  I didn’t understand how a guy was so smart and still didn’t understand the physics of a pistol. I shoved him up hard against the wall with my left hand under his chin, lifting him onto his tiptoes. Then I screwed the nozzle of the gun into his nostril.

  He gave me a hard stare like he didn’t think I had the nerve to pull the trigger.

  I extended my thumb up and pulled back the hammer of the pistol, so he would hear the cocking sound and see the movement. That did it.

  “Okay, okay, hang on one second.”

  I didn’t move. I growled, “Talk.”

  And he talked quickly.

  “Pete and I stumbled onto a new recipe for meth. One of the chemical engineering students from Columbia I used to buy shit from made it. We interrupted his deal with some Canadians and got lucky.”

  “How lucky did you get?”

  Alton said, “Six hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “How much is the recipe worth?”

  “We’ve been offered a million bucks for it. The Canadian mob is all over this. The Canucks love prescription pills and meth. And this recipe has them drooling.”

  “Why? What’s so special about it?”

  “You can make it with ingredients that aren’t too hard to find. Not quite as potent, but it can be made on a big scale.”

  “Who has it?” The whole time he’d been talking I had been releasing my grip slightly, at least to the point where his feet were flat on the ground. Now I stepped back with the pistol still pointed at his face.

  Alton was out of breath and sweating as he said, “Pete and I stashed the money and the recipe with the help of another partner. We wanted to make it so not one of us could get to the cash without the other two. It’s in a bank up in Poughkeepsie and you need two keys to get into the box, and a code to get into the safety-deposit-box room without any questions.”

  “What do you have?”

  Alton stuck his left hand into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a flat metal key with a number 68 on it. He said, “Pete had the other key, but I suspect whoever shot him took it.”

  I stared at the key.

  Sensing my interest, Alton closed his fist around it and held it by his side.

  I said, “You think I won’t take it?”

  “You’ll have to kill me first. I earned this.”

  I decided to let it go for the moment. I said, “So who has the code?”

  “Forget that. What you need to do is find out who has Pete’s key. Whoever has the key probably killed Pete and has the answers to get your brother out of jail.”

  “I need some direction. You were my best lead.”

  “A cop picked up Pete on some cheap, narco charge. Pete told me—”

  But that’s when I heard the first gunshot.

  Chapter 20

  I DUCKED AT the first sound of the gunfire, then rolled to my right when I felt pieces of brick start to fly from the ricochets. I had Alton’s little popgun in my hand and brought it up to fire a couple of times.

  Alton was on the ground, so I grabbed him by the back of the shirt to pull him out of the line of fire and to cover. As soon as I grabbed his belt, his whole body went limp. As I brought him closer to me, I saw the bullet wound that went in through his cheek and exited the back of his head. His open eyes were already glassy.

  Something shiny on the ground caught my attention. The key! I reached forward, trying to stay behind cover. A bullet pinged off the dumpster next to my extended hand. I lurched back. I stuck Alton’s pistol around the dumpster and fired once to get the shooter’s head down. Then I snatched the key and jammed it in my pocket as I tumbled back behind cover.

  I caught a glimpse of someone in a dark coat running between cars in the parking lot. I left Alton where he was and started to give chase. I could tell it was a male who was pretty big and, most important, still had the pistol in his hand. As he came out on the street, he turned to see if anyone was following him, and I dove onto the asphalt parking lot.

  I was up again and running after a few seconds. I needed this guy. He could answer a lot of questions.

  Now I was moving across the sidewalk in an all-out sprint. There was a little ice, but at this point I didn’t care. There was no one who could outrun me when I was determined.

  I took a corner hard, sliding out onto the road and narrowly missing a woman holding two kids by the hand. The woman gave a short shriek of surprise.

  The little boy, in a dark-blue tattered parka, pointed down the street.

  I gave him a nod of thanks and kept running. As soon as I came to the next block, I glimpsed the man at the edge of an industrial park. He turned and fired two more shots at me.

  At this distance they both went wide, so I stayed in pursuit. When I was a little closer, I raised Alton’s tiny pistol and popped off a round to keep the guy off balance.

  Then I tried to do what the running man wouldn’t expect. Instead of going right to where he was the last time I saw him, I cut into the industrial park and started to circle the building in between us. It was a little trickier here because there were workers coming and going in vans, carrying everything from windowsills to sprinkler pipes.

  As I darted around the building, I saw what I needed to see. The guy with the gun was crouched behind a parked van, waiting to ambush me from the other direction. Perfect.

  I eased into a line of cars so it wouldn’t be easy for him to notice me. I wanted to say something clever like “Looking for me, asshole?” But I knew the most important thing was to get the pistol away from him.

  When I was still a decent distance away, the man glanced over his shoulder. All I could tell from that angle was that he was a white man. I couldn’t identify him specifically. Right now, that didn’t matter. He turned and aimed his gun at me as I ducked behind a parked Honda Civic.

  The two shots
shattered the rear window of the car and made me crawl back farther away from the trunk. Then I heard a police siren.

  I had to catch this guy now and get some answers before he was taken into custody.

  I squeezed between some parked cars and crawled under one of them until I was close to the place where the man had taken the shots at me. I sprang out with the pistol up in front of me. There was no one there.

  I could see the blue lights of the cruiser and I knew it was time to get the hell out of there.

  Chapter 21

  I DROVE TO a McDonald’s on the outskirts of Newburgh’s downtown. If you ever want good insight into a city, look through the wide windows of a Mickey D’s. You see everything. The locals, workers from businesses, and the homeless. This intersection can provide a glimpse into the city’s soul. Is it prosperous? Is it a college town? Or is it struggling, ready to chew you up and spit you out?

  As I sat in the hard plastic booth, throwing down a hamburger and staring at the key I’d taken from Alton, my mom called. I worked hard to keep my voice calm as I told her there wasn’t really anything new on the case. When I was in the Navy and going through the SEAL course, I always tried to paint the best picture. My mom worried about me. At least now, my job was to make her life as easy as possible.

  About an hour after my chase through the streets of Newburgh, I decided it was safe to make my next move.

  I walked through the front doors of the Newburgh Police Department, leaned in close to the little circle cut into the thick, bulletproof glass, and asked the receptionist if I could speak to Sergeant Bill Jeffries.

  I followed him through the bowels of the police station. He kept quiet. Seemed he was worried about people eavesdropping.

  Once in his cramped office, I spun him my somewhat vague story about Alton Beatty and his relationship to Pete Stahl. I didn’t give too many details because I still wasn’t sure I could trust him.

  Finally, he said, “The Alton Beatty you’re talking about is the guy who was just shot at the Budstop about an hour ago, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you wouldn’t know anything about a shoot-out between two men that lasted for several blocks?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Unfortunately, the only description of the two men shooting is that they were white males. Not a lot to go on.”

  I kept my expression blank.

  Jeffries said, “Look, Mitchum, I know you had nothing to do with either death. I even know your brother didn’t kill Pete Stahl. But there’s a lot of weird shit going on. I don’t get the sense that you’re telling me everything.”

  “Maybe that’s more for your own good than mine.”

  Jeffries nodded. He turned and typed on a keyboard. He studied the screen, frowning as he scrolled through a few pages.

  He said, “As the administrative sergeant, I can get into any part of our network. It looks like your friend Pete Stahl was arrested about a month ago but never booked. When I peeked into the narcotics squad’s notes, I saw that Stahl was brought in on some kind of a possession charge. It doesn’t look like he got a chance to call his attorney. That could mean he was cooperating.”

  I said, “I think I’m following you. One of your narcotics guys grabbed him, then let him go for no documented reason. Sounds like he might’ve made a deal, all right.” I couldn’t help but reach in my pocket and feel the safety-deposit key I had taken from Alton. There were too many leaks in the Newburgh Police Department to let anyone know I had it.

  Jeffries was taking a few notes from the computer screen and looked troubled by what he saw.

  “Who’s the cop that arrested Pete?”

  “He was on a temporary duty assignment. I was looking to see if maybe he screwed up some paperwork and that’s why they had to release your friend.”

  “Who was the cop?”

  “Mike Tharpe.”

  Chapter 22

  THE ORANGE COUNTY jail, where anyone held on charges from Newburgh ended up, was an unimpressive, sprawling structure surrounded by a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence. It was also in the village of Goshen, about thirty-five miles west of Newburgh. That’s where my brother had been cooling his heels after his initial bond hearing failed to win his release.

  The jailers were clearly breaking my balls by making me wait in one room after another while they said they were getting my brother ready for our visit. I stopped one of them, a tall muscle-head with the name Norton on a tag, and said, “Do you know how frustrating it is to wait this long for a simple visit?”

  Norton shrugged and said, “Probably feels just as frustrating as it does for the cops when some smart-ass tries to take over a homicide investigation.”

  That answered my question for sure.

  I glanced through a couple of Time magazines that were all more than three years old and got to know the layout of the facility by studying a map on the wall.

  Finally, two jailers led me to a narrow room, about twice the size of a confessional, with a Plexiglas partition. Natty sat on the other side in a simple orange jumpsuit. We had to speak over a closed-circuit telephone. Natty gestured with his hands to let me know that the call could be monitored. That was important information. Especially considering all the shit that had happened to me the last couple of days.

  The first thing Natty said was, “How’s Katie holding up?”

  “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “I’m fine. Could be better. I know a couple of the guys in my dorm. Since I’m in here on a homicide charge, everyone’s keeping their distance.”

  I said, “I need some answers, Natty.” I didn’t like how tired he looked. Eyes bloodshot and his usually neat hair hanging down in an oily curl.

  Natty showed no emotion as he said, “Go for it.”

  “Do you know any more details on the big score Pete and Alton made about six weeks ago? Like where the proceeds are or how to get them?” I was hoping the answer was no. That meant he was never involved.

  He shrugged. “You’ve met Alton. He’s the first one to tell you how smart he is. He was always bragging about one thing or another, but he’d never tell me anything important.” Then he added, “I was sorry to hear he was killed.”

  “Word travels fast, even in jail.”

  My brother shook his head and said, “We have TVs in here. It was on the news.”

  I just shrugged. “Was anything unusual going on with Pete or Alton?”

  “Pete was acting a little funny. He’s the one that was all excited about something they did, but he didn’t give me any details. I have no idea about Alton. We were never close.”

  “Did Pete have another partner?”

  “We all work alone. Most of the time we’re competition. Pete just focused on meth, so he and I got along well. Even though I knew him as a kid, he would have never told me the specifics about his business. Not a smart thing to do in our field.”

  I said, “He talk to anyone a lot the past few weeks?”

  “The only person he started to talk to on a regular basis in the last few weeks was a cop.”

  “A cop? Which cop?”

  “The guy who arrested me, Mike Tharpe.”

  Chapter 23

  MY GUT WAS telling me that Mike Tharpe had something to do with the murder of Pete Stahl. Whether he had pulled the trigger himself or if there were others involved was still a mystery. I found a coffee shop, not a Starbucks but a mom-and-pop place. I always supported family businesses, because I hated the muted taste of anything that came out of a corporate restaurant. But what I really wanted was a Wi-Fi connection to make my phone that much faster as I signed into my LexisNexis account. My teenage cousin, Bailey Mae, had talked me into getting one so that my private investigation business could run a little smoother. That’s how I had found Mrs. Ledbetter’s daughter near Philadelphia so easily.

  After a few minutes on my smartphone, I found the house where Mike Tharpe lived. Or at least the address where he paid the electric bills
. The house was in an area called Little Britain, southwest of the Stewart Airport, a few miles from downtown Newburgh, but far enough away from the chaos to make a cop feel secure when he got home.

  It didn’t take long to find the comfortable two story on Station Street. It looked like the kind of place where people dreamed about setting up a life. Quiet, safe, and convenient to a bigger city like Newburgh.

  The house was dark and I was out of time. I was also running short on common sense and good judgment. Somehow, the idea of breaking into a cop’s house didn’t even rank as the dumbest thing I had done all week. I’d chased an armed man for the sake of this case, after all.

  I took a minute to survey the house from where I had parked up the street. It was completely dark and the next-door neighbors only had a porch light on. If I was going to do something this stupid, now would be the time. I walked casually up the sidewalk, trying to look as natural as possible. People in neighborhoods like this were generally not too suspicious. At least not of a clean-cut guy.

  When I turned toward Tharpe’s house, I saw the sticker for an alarm system. Often on my paper route, I helped my customers with other problems around their homes. Just quick little jobs to save them from having to pay a professional. One of the most frequent requests was help with alarm systems that the elderly didn’t understand well. When I saw Tharpe’s sticker for Malloy Security, I knew he’d bought a second-rate system. Malloy was a shitty company that would slap a sensor on your front and back door. Often customers were lucky if they had hooked it up to a power supply at all.

  I scooted around to the back door and saw a keypad. This was going to be easier than I expected. I used a trick an electrician showed me when we were working on one of my customers’ houses. I pulled my commemorative Navy knife from my pocket, slipped the blade between the house and the keypad, and ripped the plastic contraption right off the wall. Then I crossed the two wires in the back of the box and heard the beep on the inside of the house saying the alarm was no longer active. It never paid to be cheap where security was involved.