Ride the lightning

VII

Nudger drove to his office to wait for midnight. He checked his phone-answering machine again. Another call from Eileen, who demanded in her no- nonsense voice that he call her back as soon as possible. He reached for the phone, almost lifted the receiver, then slowly drew his hand back and settled down in his swivel chair, which gave a soft little squeal, as if assuring him he'd been wise not to call. He didn't feel like talking to Eileen right now. Ever again, actually.

In the yellowish glow from his desk lamp, he leafed once more through his file on Curtis Colt, hoping he'd notice something he'd missed. But there was nothing pointing toward Colt's possible innocence. Probably because Colt was guilty.

After half an hour, Nudger closed the file folder and abruptly shoved it away from him on the desk. There was frustration and quiet despair in the gesture. He wished Danny's Donuts was open downstairs; he could use someone to talk to. The Cardinals were still playing phenomenal baseball and had won five games in a row now; Danny, who was an avid fan, would be happy to discuss baseball for the next few hours.

Or it might not hurt to talk with Danny about Curtis Colt. Danny was a good sounding board and sometimes provided insight. He tended to think in terms of stereotypes, but once he saw someone like Colt as an individual, his soft heart took over. Danny was all for capital punishment, but if Jack the Ripper had been someone he knew, Danny would have figured those girls did something to provoke him.

Curtis Colt was no mad-dog killer, nothing exceptional as criminals went; he was a garden-variety holdup man who had panicked and pulled the trigger when the job went sour. Or was he only that? There were disturbing reverberations around the shots he'd fired. Nudger decided he'd better learn more about Colt.

The phone jangled, startling Nudger. The swivel chair cried out as he sat up straight. Eileen? For a moment his hand hesitated, then he lifted the receiver and held it tight to his ear, as if there were someone in the quiet office he didn't want to overhear the conversation.

It wasn't Eileen on the line; it was Harold Benedict, of the law firm of Benedict and Schill, for whom Nudger sometimes did work. He said he'd been trying to contact Nudger all day.

"Why didn't you leave a message, Harold?" Nudger asked.

"You never answer your messages, Nudger. I don't know why you even have a recorder."

"I listen sometimes, I just don't call back. People who leave a message for you to call them back usually mean trouble. Besides, I don't like getting instructions from machines. But I'd have called you back because sometimes you pay me money."

"You're a throwback to the primeval days before microchips."

Nudger had no reply for that. Pointless to deny. Lawyers.

Benedict told him a guy named Cal Smith had an insurance disability claim in for a back injury sustained on his job as a warehouse worker. The insurance company was a Benedict and Schill client, and Benedict didn't think Smith's back was really injured or that his client should pay the claim. A hard man was Benedict. And a devious one. He wanted Nudger to do some camera work.

Nudger had done this sort of thing before for Benedict and Schill. He wrote Smith's address on his desk pad, then hung up the phone.

Smith, he thought, sitting back in his chair. Maybe the most common name of all, the butt of low-comedy motel jokes. Nothing like the improbable Biff Archway. Nudger swallowed a bitter taste on the edges of his tongue. His stomach stirred like a cranky, disturbed beast. Was there really someone named Biff Archway?

But he knew there was, and that the person so named wore ties that found their way into Claudia's bedroom.

Nudger wondered what was the full given name of someone called Biff. He'd have to ask Claudia. And what would a Biff look like? Nudger had a good idea of that: a medium-height, chesty guy, with a firm jaw, clear eyes, and all-American charm. That was a Biff, all right. A regular guy John Wayne would have liked instantly. Anger-no, not anger, jealousy-flared for a moment, but he pushed it away to a far corner of his mind where it could fester quietly while he went about his business. Claudia was right, he knew. She and Nudger weren't married or engaged, so maybe this was to be expected. She'd been a bird with a broken wing when he met her. He'd helped to heal the wing, and now she could fly. And maybe she wanted to soar for a while. Maybe it was as simple as that: the blood talking. Or the hormones.

Nudger peeled back the silver foil on a roll of antacid tablets and thumbed two of the chalky white disks onto his tongue. He chomped down on them hard, chewing loudly in the quiet, dimly lit office. The occasional whisper of traffic from the street below was the only reminder of an outside world.

It occurred to Nudger that perhaps Dr. Oliver, Claudia's analyst, who had helped her to get over the scars of her marriage to Ralph, had advised her to see other men. Part of her therapy. Oliver would do that, and the hell with Nudger if he thought it would help Claudia.

Or maybe this Biff Archway really was just a fellow teacher who'd been in the neighborhood and felt he should drop by to see a co-worker. Possibly he was a scrawny little wimp who loved only his mother. Little acne-pitted guy with an Oedipus complex. Could be. What the heck, give him crooked teeth and bad breath.

Nudger realized he was squeezing the edge of the desk so hard that his hands ached. His nails were dead-white out near the very tips of his fingers.

He loosened his grip and laughed out loud at himself. It was too loud and didn't sound like genuine laughter, but he told himself it should be genuine. He was acting like a paranoid adolescent jilted on the night of the prom.

The hell with this, he thought. He would phone Claudia and apologize to her for his fit of juvenile jealousy. They would talk for a while, come to an understanding, and he'd feel better.

He picked up the receiver again and tapped out her number.

Claudia's phone rang ten times. She wasn't home.

Nudger hung up. "Bullshit!" he said, loud enough to startle himself. He swallowed the jagged chunks of antacid tablet. They hurt his throat.

"You shouldn't oughta curse."

The squat, ugly little man who was standing a few feet inside the door wasn't joking. Simple sincerity oozed from him. He must have moved with supernatural quiet; Nudger looked closely to make sure his visitor cast a shadow. He seemed simply to have appeared there like a genie from a too-small lamp that had kept him cramped and mashed down for centuries.

He had a pushed-in, amiable face that was too large for his head but not large enough for his short, thick neck. The red Strohs Beer T-shirt he wore was stretched tight over bulging muscles and a bulging stomach paunch. If he'd been taller he'd have resembled one of those muscular, gone-to-fat pro wrestlers, but he was only about five feet four and merely looked pudgy and mildly dangerous; the Pillsbury Doughboy after weight training.

Nudger tilted the shade on the desk lamp so he could see the man more clearly. There was something vaguely familar in the dark hair and eyes, the confident, defiant set of the jaw. And something disturbingly vacant about the cast of the thickened features.

"I'm Lester Colt," the man said with a flat, southwest Missouri twang. "Curtis Colt's my little brother."