Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [75]
Savich was on his cell phone in the next ten seconds, nodded and hung up in three more minutes. “Done. We’ll have a list of possibles in about five minutes.”
Tommy the Pipe knocked lightly on the front door and came in. “We got a guy buying Exxon supreme at a gas station eight miles west of Riptide. The attendant, a young boy about eighteen, said when the guy paid for his gas, he saw dirt and blood on the cuff of his shirt. He wouldn’t have thought a thing about it except Rollo was canvassing all the gas stations, asking questions about strangers. It’s him.”
“Oh, yeah.” Adam jumped to his feet. “Please say it, Tommy. Please tell us this kid remembers what the guy looks like, that he remembers the kind of car he was driving.”
“The guy had on a green hunting hat with flaps, something like mine but with no style. He also wore very dark glasses. He doesn’t know if the guy was young or old, sorry, Adam. Anyone over twenty-five would be old to that kid. But he does remember clearly that the guy spoke well, a real educated voice, all smooth and deep. The car—he thought it was a BMW, dark blue or black. Sorry, no idea about the plate. But you know what? The windows were dark-tinted. How about that?”
“Surely he wouldn’t have driven the same car up here that he used to kill Dick McCallum in Albany,” Sherlock said.
“Why not?” Savich said. “If it isn’t dented, if there isn’t blood all over it, then why not?”
Savich’s cell phone rang. He stood and walked over to the doorway. They heard him talking, saw him nodding as he listened. He hung up and said, “No go. He stole the license plates. No surprise there. He’d have been an idiot to leave on the original plates. However, those heavily tinted windows, I have everyone checking on New York cars stolen within the past two weeks with those sorts of windows.”
Savich’s cell phone rang again in eight minutes. He listened and wrote rapidly. When he hung up the phone, he said, “This is something. Like Hatch said, few private cars—domestic or foreign—are built with dark-tinted windows. Three have been stolen. The people are all over the state, two men and one woman.”
Becca said with no hesitation, “It’s the woman. He stole her car.”
Sherlock said. “Let’s find out right now.”
She called information for Ithaca, New York, and got the phone number for Mrs. Irene Bailey, 112 Huntley Avenue. The phone rang once, twice, three times, then, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Bailey? Mrs. Irene Bailey?”
Silence.
“Are you there? Mrs. Bailey?”
“That’s my mother,” a woman said. “I’m sorry, but it took me by surprise.”
“May I please speak to your mother?”
“You don’t know? No, I guess not. My mother was killed two weeks ago.”
Sherlock didn’t drop the phone, but she felt a great roiling pain through her stomach, up to her throat, and she swallowed convulsively. “Can you give me any details, please?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Gladys Martin with the Social Security Administration in Washington.”
“I know my husband called Social Security. What do you want?”
“We’re required to fill out papers, ma’am. Are you her daughter?”
“Yes, I am. What kind of papers?”
“Statistics, nothing more. Is there someone else I can speak to about this? I don’t want to upset you.”
There was a moment of silence, then, “No, it’s all right. Ask the questions. We don’t want the government to go away mad.”
“Thank you, ma’am. You said your mother was killed? Was this an auto accident?”
“No, someone hit her on the head when she was getting out to her car at the shopping mall. He stole her car.”
“Oh, dear, I’m so very sorry. Please tell me that the man who did this has been caught?”
The woman’s voice hardened up immediately. “No, he wasn’t. The cops put out a description of her car, but no one has reported back with anything as yet. They think he painted the car a different color and changed the license plates. He’s gone. Even the New York City cops don’t know where he is. She was an old woman, too, so who cares?” The