Heads You Lose - Lisa Lutz [61]
“Doctor Egan?”
“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Lacey replied. “What can I do for you?”
“I’ve been expecting you to drop by.”
“To get my stitches out?”
“No. You still have another two days. There’s a delivery you’re supposed to make.”
“What kind of delivery?”
“Um, don’t you remember?”
“Nope.”
“You have something that I would like to purchase.”
“You mean the weed?” Lacey asked.
“I mean the thing we talked about the other day.”
“We’re not being recorded, Doc. I can promise you that. Sorry. I forgot about that. I’ll be right over with the marijuana. Make sure you have cash. Bye.”
The whine of a table saw emanated from Doc Egan’s garage.
When Egan spotted her, he shut down the saw and lifted his plastic goggles. Lacey held out a paper bag.
“I have your drugs!” Lacey shouted at full volume.
Doc Egan rolled his eyes. He handed her a wad of bills.
“As we discussed,” he said.
“Thank you.”
The doctor was building bookshelves, which didn’t look half bad. She was impressed that the doctor had a garage full of tools that he seemed to know how to use.
“So, you like to build things?” Lacey asked.
“Evidently,” Egan replied.
“What’s the most complicated thing you’ve ever built?”
“When I was in high school, my dad and I built a cabin near Lake Tahoe.”
“Huh.”
“Why do you ask?”
“If I were to show you a building that collapsed, would you be able to tell whether it collapsed accidentally or if there was some tampering going on?”
“Like a fire tower, for example?”
“You know about it?”
“I live here now. I hear things,” Egan replied. “Aren’t the police investigating?”
“They’re waiting for a specialist. He won’t come into town until next week. Do you want to see it?” Lacey asked.
“Yeah. I think I do.”
On the drive out of town, Egan and Lacey passed the airstrip. Some of the debris from the explosion still lingered on the landscape.
“Did they ever find out what happened with the plane crash?” Egan asked.
“Nope,” Lacey replied.
“A plane crashes and nobody knows who it was or why?”
“As far as I know, it’s still a mystery.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
“Yes, it is,” Lacey replied. “It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense.”
Their conversation ended there because nothing else could be said. Lacey pulled the car off the main road and she and Egan hiked down to the site of the old fire tower.
“This looks like a game of Jenga gone bad,” he said, after slipping under the police tape and taking in the site of Terry Jakes’s almost-demise.
“I saw it happen,” Lacey said. “It crumbled in like five seconds. There was almost no warning. Just a squeaking sound. The tower tilted and that was it.”
Egan trudged through the wreckage, studying the planks of oak on the ground. Lacey stood back and waited. There was a moment when she could have sworn she saw Terry’s bright red long johns beneath the rubble. After about forty minutes, Egan had collected five pieces of oak, which he separated from the rest of the scraps. He approached Lacey and dropped the lumber to the ground. Then he joined two pieces that fit together like a puzzle and showed them to her.
“This plank? Was sawed down to about one inch,” Egan said. “You can see where it snapped.”
A distinct saw mark led to a splintered edge. Egan found another matching set with the same pattern.
“See—another one sawed down and then snapped.”
“What are you saying?” Lacey asked.
“This was definitely not an accident.”
Lacey and Egan hauled the evidence back to her car and returned to the main road. When the cell towers kicked in again, the message light blinked on Lacey’s phone. There was only one call:
“Lacey, this is Yolanda at Mapleshade. It appears that Sook has taken ill. If you want to see him, I suggest you get over here as soon as possible.”
Matthew noticed the shift in Lacey’s expression as she listened to the message.
“You okay?” he asked, when she put down the phone.
“Do you mind if we take a detour? I need to check on Sook.”
“Where is he?” Lacey asked.
“In his room,” Yolanda said, avoiding eye contact.
“Why didn’t you call