Fall Guy by Archer Mayor

Author:Archer Mayor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

* * *

“How’s Emma doing?” Joe asked.

“Pretty good, I think,” Willy replied. “Kids are a mystery to me. She acts happy, she’s doing well in preschool, not torturing animals or setting the house on fire—even with me as a father—but what do I know? Thank God she’s got her mother and Louise to keep her on track.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Joe counseled. “I’ve seen you with her. You’re doing fine.”

“For a borderline psycho, you mean.”

Joe barely shook his head. The man was his own worst enemy, he thought.

“Here we go,” he said, changing the topic and turning his attention to what was occurring across the darkened street. They both watched Cheri Pratt step out onto her porch, lock the door, and slowly make her way to her car in the driveway. The weather had now opted for a drizzle that landed on the windshield like melted snowflakes—neither fish nor fowl, but still wet and cold.

“You know she could just be going for milk,” Willy cautioned.

“Let’s hope not,” Joe responded, slipping the car into gear.

She wasn’t going to the store. Turning south, away from downtown, she led them past Brattleboro’s high school on Fairground Road, then onto Route 5 toward the neighboring town of Guilford.

“Chess club?” Willy asked. “Reading group? Monthly Mensa meeting? What d’ya think?”

“Could be.” Joe laughed, genuinely curious about Cheri’s true destination. He might have arranged this stakeout immediately following his interview with the woman, but he hadn’t truly believed she would then act on his question about Don’s local storage facility by rendering it a visit. That was just too easy.

But sometimes, it turned out to be true. On the outskirts of the cluster of buildings that constitutes Guilford’s town center, Cheri’s car veered right, left the pavement, bumped up onto a muddy parking lot, and aimed for the farthest left-hand unit in a neat row of rental boxes, each the size of a large dumpster.

Joe killed his lights and pulled over nearby, discreetly shielded by some brush lining the breakdown lane.

“Feel like a short walk?” he asked his partner.

Closing their doors softly, they approached the rutted parking lot through the misty blanket of falling slush, watching as Cheri left her car, fumbled with a set of keys, and approached the unit’s padlocked door, using her headlights to see by. Eventually standing next to her car, their presence washed out by the glare reflecting off the snowdrops, Joe and Willy waited patiently as she opened first one door of the unit, then its mate, fully exposing its contents.

There wasn’t that much—perhaps one-third of the Seabrook container. That might have been the reason Don had been heading in this direction with his carload of stolen goods—if he had been.

It was hard deciphering a man’s intentions when he was discovered in the trunk of that very same car.

Joe waited until Cheri had entered the unit and was about to open a box, a small flashlight in hand.

“Need some help?” he offered, stepping into view.

Cheri dropped the flashlight. “Fuck!” she yelled at them.

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