Deadline on Arrival by Greg Stone

Author:Greg Stone [Stone, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-26T07:00:00+00:00

19

More Routine, then the Master

Our next stop on the suspect parade was a car wash in nearby Waltham where Jacob Paros was working. He had been convicted for selling drugs and threatened a local reporter who was covering his trial. Paros was on parole after serving four years. When Ollie and I drove up to the entrance to the car wash, Jacob came to the driver’s side window.

“Regular, Supershine, or Ultimate, sir?” he asked.

“The one that comes with information,” I said.

“You look like a cop, but she don’t,” Jacob said. “You want a wash or not?”

“Give me the basic.” I handed over a twenty. “Keep the change, Jacob. Five minutes of your time is all I want.”

“I’ll take a break after your car comes through,” he said. “But it has to be quick. Not everyone’s on the public’s dime, know what I mean?”

While my car was drying in the sun, Jacob, Ollie, and I sat at an aluminum picnic table in the shade. He was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and drinking coffee from a thermos that looked like it was 20 years old.

“Because I allegedly said some, uh, things to some scumbag reporter years ago, you think I had something to do with the murders?” Jacob asked.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Why would I hold a grudge against the whole fucking business?”

“Don’t know. But we do know you’ve been reading the Headline Hunter stories again and again.”

“Wow, that’s enough to make a guy paranoid,” Jacob said. “So you put two and two together and got seven? I read about the crimes, and that means I do them?”

“With your record, that’s a reasonable assumption,” I said.

“Lemme tell ya’, when I first got out, I went to my local bar where a couple of guys I knew asked me if I wanted to make a quick ten grand,” Jacob said. “All I had to do was drive a car down to the Cape. Just drop it off at a house on the beach.”

I had heard stories like this before. Temptations for easy money were always present for ex-cons. No doubt a drug deal, or maybe a gun sale.

“And?” I asked.

“I just laughed and finished my beer. I like sleeping in my own bed, instead of some mangy bunk with a worn-out mattress full of bedbugs in jail. Why the hell would I risk everything to kill some fucking people who just happen to show up in the paper?”

Back in the car, Ollie and I compared notes.

“I’m beginning to think that tracking the clickers is getting us precisely nowhere,” Ollie said.

“Copy that,” I said. “As you can see, investigation isn’t exactly glamorous.”

“Yeah, just like being a reporter.”

“Speaking of that, do you know anyone else who would have a grudge against the paper right now?”

She didn’t answer right away. “Not sure …”

• • •

Next came a meeting with Dr. Jack Grimes, the FBI’s serial killer expert, who had decided to spend more time in Boston. Grimes was staying at his brother’s home on Belmont’s

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