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fat where his thick neck met his skull.
 Hi, Lance, she said.  Remember me?
40
Z
he hadn t planned on interrogating Lance Pecor in his stink-
Sing trailer but you had to roll with the punches. She sat
him down in the only good chair and held the .38 on him while
Pete stuck him to it with duct tape. When she was done, he
looked like a fat, silver mummy each leg and arm secured to
the chair s corresponding anatomy, and a mile of tape wound
around his middle for good measure.
Lance swore at them, until Pete punched him again and told
him not to talk that way in front of a lady. Never once did their
prisoner say anything about them getting in trouble with the
cops for their little home invasion, which told Ginny that Lance
had plenty to hide.
 What the hell do you want? he demanded.
Ginny pulled out the hunting knife, still in its plastic bag.  I
thought I d return this, she said.
Lance looked at the knife with puppy eyes; the thing clearly
meant a lot to him.  Really?
 No, she said.  Not really. How stupid are you? He glared
at her but didn t offer an answer.  Talk to me about Danny
Markowicz.
 Who?
 The kid you beat to death.
He turned to Pete, like any guy was better than some crazy
lady even a guy who was standing in his living room holding a
hunting rifle.  She s nuts, he said.
Pete aimed the rifle in his direction.  Just answer her.
 But I don t even know the question. The sentence came out
in a plaintive whine; Lance Pecor sounded like a big baby.
T he M or ti ci an s D aughter 237
 Fine, Ginny said.  Let s begin at the beginning. Paula
Libanski.
That name, at least, meant something to him.  Who Steve
used to bang when we was kids? What about her?
 Maybe you used to bang her, too.
He shook his head, and a few seconds later his several chins
followed.  Did not, he said.
 Sure you did. You knocked her up, and she wanted you to
run off with her, but you didn t feel like being anybody s daddy.
So you killed her and buried her in the woods by the Fish Pond.
 Did not, he said again, and twice as loud.
 Don t lie to me.
 I ain t, he said.  Paula wouldn t give me a go. She said I
weren t her type.
Pete and Ginny looked at each other, and they were both
thinking, That s a new one.
Ginny walked over to Lance and yanked a handful of greasy
hairs from his head; he yelped and called her a crazy bitch. It
hadn t been a necessary action, but she liked it for the shock value.
 I m going to send this out for a DNA test, she said.  And
it s going to prove you fathered her kid. And that s sure as hell
going to prove you were screwing her.
 So send it, he shouted.  I m tellin you, I never nailed the
slut.
Ginny took a good look at him, all clammy sweat and righ-
teous indignation. She was pretty sure he was telling the truth.
 Then you ve got to be covering for your brother, she said.
 Maybe he s not as much of an invalid as he pretends to be.
Lance turned back to Pete, eyes pleading and chin wet with
spit.  Will you tell this crazy chick she s way off base?
Ginny jammed the gun back in her waistband and grabbed
the front of Lance s dirty shirt. He tried to look away, but she
shook him until he met her eyes.  You put a knife to my throat,
238 E li zabeth B loom
she said.  You telling me you just did it for sport? She held the
blade an inch from his face.  You used to work in an auto shop.
If I test this against the cut on my brake line, you wanna bet it s
not gonna come back positive?
She was bluffing, or at least grandstanding. She had no idea
if it would even be possible to match up the severed hose with
the knife that had cut it but Lance didn t know that.
She let the silence expand; like a shrink, a good detective
knows that silence can be her ally. Most people can t handle it,
and what they rush to fill it with occasionally turns out to be the
truth. Lance glared at her, his two-digit I.Q. struggling to calcu-
late just exactly how much trouble he was in.
 Big deal, he said finally.  You didn t get hurt too bad.
Ginny let go of his shirtfront, and the countervailing force
made his head snap back.  It s called attempted murder, you
moron.
She quenched a desire to sock Lance again, right in his florid
face. The man was utterly disgusting, a bully who lived in
squalor, sleeping among piles of dirty dishes and mud-encrusted
clothes.
 Ginny? It was Pete, who d been rooting around in Lance s
putrid possessions for something incriminating.  I think you
better take a look at this.
He handed her a piece of paper, white and pristine, proba-
bly the cleanest thing in the entire trailer. At the top was the logo
for the local Tunnel City Savings Bank. Ginny read it; it was
dated two days earlier.
Dear Mr. Pecor,
Per our recent phone conversation, enclosed please find certifica-
tion that your outstanding mortgage has been paid in full and the
foreclosure voided. We regret the error that led to the seizure of your
property and are investigating to determine if its source was elec-
T he M or ti ci an s D aughter 239
tronic or clerical. Again, please accept our sincerest apologies for any
inconvenience.
Yours very truly,
Mary Ellen Montgomery
Loan Officer
So that s what all those packing boxes were for: Pecor had
gotten his house back. And not only was it out of foreclosure,
the mortgage had been paid off.
Christ, she d been such an idiot. Lance wasn t after her be-
cause he d been involved with Paula; he was just muscle for hire.
The fact that his brother had been dating Paula was a coinci-
dence and not a particularly big one, since she d been sleeping
with half the town.
She turned back to him, holding the letter three inches from
his snout. For the first time, Lance Pecor looked afraid.
 Who are you working for?
He didn t answer. Even under the rolls of lard, she could see
there was a grim set to his jaw. She asked the question a second
time, with no more success than the first.
Pete seemed to take his silence as a personal affront. He
got right in Lance s face and shook him, twice as hard as Ginny
had done before, the legs of the old wooden chair beating a
rhythm against the trailer floor. But Lance still wouldn t say
anything.
 Attempted murder, Ginny said.  Attempted kidnapping.
Not to mention first-degree murder in the death of Geoffrey
Dobson.
 What?
 No jury on the planet s gonna believe you didn t run him
down on purpose.
 I got no idea what you re talking about.
 Geoffrey Dobson. The drug dealer who knew too much [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]