The Skeleton's knee

31

I spent the rest of the night-what little there was of it-with Gail at the police station, in the darkened department gymnasium in the basement, stretched out on a couple of foam exercise mats. We were surrounded by barbells, a stationary bike, and a chrome-plated weight machine, all glowing dimly in the reflected red light from the exit sign.

We didn’t sleep much, nor did we talk a lot. We mostly just lay in each other’s arms and rested, our eyes tracing the half-seen maze of overhead heating and plumbing pipes that interlaced across the high ceiling. In the morning, she would be driven to the airport in a patrol car and I would be going after Shattuck again. This wasn’t time we wanted to lose by sleeping.

Toward dawn-that quietest of hours-we removed each other’s clothes and made love, risking discovery in exchange for an intimacy and a sense of peace we knew we wouldn’t be able to regain anytime soon.

The rest of the morning was considerably less engaging. I managed the flood of information that had been stimulated by last night’s search for Billie Lucas, kept tabs on the continuing investigations, and spent hours sifting through Billie’s personal history. At the back of my mind, I knew instinctively that success lay less in what we were doing and more in the hopes that somewhere in this or some bordering state, the woman we were searching for was reading the Brattleboro Reformer and weighing her options.

Six hours later, around lunchtime, the waiting came to an end. The special telephone that had been placed on Harriet’s desk began to ring. It was a direct line, bypassing our switchboard, and had a digital callback box attached to it to indicate the caller’s number as soon as the receiver was lifted and a button pushed.

I was out of my office by the second ring-and just as Harriet was about to call out my name. “Recorder on?”

She nodded. I picked up the receiver.

“Joe Gunther.”

“This is Billie Lucas.”

“Hi, Billie. Are you in a safe place?” I pushed the callback button. Harriet wrote the number down and passed it to Ron Klesczewski to trace. With any luck, a location would be pinpointed and a state police unit dispatched before the conversation came to an end.

“Yes.”

“Do you know Bob Shattuck?”

“Is he the one you were talking about in the paper?”

“Yes. He’s tracking you down. Shattuck worked over a guy last night, after the paper was being printed-broke both his arms and put him in the hospital just because he recognized you from the Hippie Hollow days. He’s getting desperate and getting close. I don’t know that we can stop him.”

“I’m not counting on you for that.”

“You have a plan for getting away?”

She didn’t answer.

“Billie, the fact that you called me shows you’re in doubt. Let’s meet at least and discuss it.”

“In jail?”

I decided not to tell her we’d found the M-16s. “No-your choice of setting. There may not be any jail in this. But you are in danger from a man who seems to have nothing left to lose.”

There was a long, thoughtful silence on the other end. “Can you tell me a bit about what happened-then maybe I can give you a better idea what I can offer.”

“The Witness Protection Program the paper mentioned?”

“Could be.”

“I doubt I’ve got enough to interest them.”

“Try me.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

I tried visualizing the woman on the phone. When I’d met her, she’d been in her home, in control, playing me like a violin. What I was hearing in her voice now didn’t fit that at all. It had none of its earlier confidence. She sounded timid, tentative, even slightly bewildered.

“Tell me about the money. Whose was it?”

“It belonged to supporters of the Chicago Eight.”

That startled me. “What?”

“The money was donated to pay for their legal fees. It wasn’t so much for them specifically, but for the cause they represented-antiwar, antiracism. People with money were persuaded to contribute for the common cause. The Eight were merely figureheads.”

“And the three of you stole it?”

A hint of anger crept into her voice. “Not like that, no.”

“I’m sorry. There’s a lot I don’t understand here.”

“Bob Shattuck had positioned himself to help channel that money, but he had no intention of it reaching anyone but himself. He wanted the money to create his own radical splinter group-a kind of Black Panthers for white radicals.”

“How did the three of you fit in?”

Her voice filled with sadness. “Sean and I didn’t know what David and Bob were up to. I mean, we knew about Bob’s plans for the group-the two of them talked about it all the time-but we didn’t know they were planning to steal the money.”

“Sean was Abraham Fuller?”

“Yes-his real name was Sean Brady.”

“Did David double-cross Shattuck?”

“No…” Her reaction was sharp and abrupt but almost instantly withered. “Well, yes-finally; I guess so. I don’t think he planned it that way, but that’s how it turned out. We were supposed to courier the money from one place to another…”

“You, David, and Sean?”

“Yes. Sean and I were along almost as a lark. We were never heavily into all the politics-I tagged along because of David, and I guess Sean did because of me.”

“When did you return to Chicago? I thought you’d run away to Alaska.”

“I had-that’s where I met Sean. David had asked me to come back.”

“Were you and David close?” I asked dubiously.

“No, but he thought we should be together after our parents died. David and I were all that was left of the family, really…” After a telling pause, she added. “David was pretty hard to turn down when he wanted something.”

“What about Sean?”

“He liked David, at least at first… They started out as friends-until after the robbery.”

“He went with David to Marquette?”

She sounded surprised. “Yes-to show Sean where we’d been brought up. I refused to go.”

“Was David in tight with Bob when you and Sean moved to Chicago?”

“Yes. They spent all their free time discussing politics, collecting weapons, reading radical literature. They used to practice martial arts together and analyze how to blend with the local population. They learned how to make weapons and bombs out of everyday items. It became a spiritual thing with them. They completely believed in themselves and what they were doing. All they needed was money.”

I picked up her earlier narrative. “The night of the robbery, you and Sean were with David.”

“Yes-he wanted us along for protection; it was a lot of money-almost a million and a half dollars. We had guns, but Sean and I still looked at it almost as a game. I was twenty-three at the time, and Sean was twenty-two, but we were more like teenagers. Dumb as dirt.

“We drove in a closed van to the stockyard district, picked up the money at the drop-off point, and were about to leave when these guys came out of nowhere and tried to hold us up. David went crazy. He had one of the guns-an M-16-and started firing before anyone knew what was happening. He killed one guy; Sean killed another in self-defense; and the other two took off.”

“Was that when David got hit in the knee?”

“Yes. The man he killed shot him.”

“Did you know who they were?”

“Not then. David told us later.”

“What happened?”

“David was badly hurt. The knee was almost gone and he was in agony. Sean had fallen apart. He was crying hysterically. We got David into the van and to the nearest hospital we could think of. That’s where he found this doctor who agreed to fix him up fast and not tell the police.”

I interrupted her to keep up the pressure-a calculated risk. “I talked with that same doctor last week-just before Shattuck tortured him to death.”

She stopped dead, and I worried I’d overdone it. “So David paid off the doctor with some of the cash?”

Her voice was slightly hesitant again. “Yes. We had two bagfuls. David kept a handful with him, just in case. He was ice-cold through it all. Once he’d paid off the doctor, he told us to disappear until he came to fetch us. We weren’t to call anyone, see anyone, or go anywhere where people might recognize us. We left town, found a motel, and called him at the hospital so he’d know where to find us.”

“Did you know what he was up to yet?”

“No. He told us after he escaped from the hospital. That’s when he explained who those people were, and by then, he said, both Bob and the Chicago Eight people thought we’d stolen the money. If we came clean, either the Outfit or Bob would take us out. We didn’t have a choice anymore, according to David. We had to keep running…”

“How did the mob find out about the money in the first place? Did he know?”

“David figured either Bob had crossed him or the Outfit had heard about the transfer some other way and had decided to kill two birds with one stone-cripple the radical left and get a bunch of money in the bargain. But we never knew for sure.”

I had a feeling I did know. Shattuck’s reaction to the Outfit’s involvement-assuming he hadn’t been setting me up-indicated that Tommy Salierno, always hungry for the independent score, had somehow caught wind of the money coming in and had acted on his own. “So you came to Vermont,” I resumed.

“Eventually.”

“Billie, why did you stick together? Your brother had lied to you, betrayed your ideals, gotten you involved in murder and theft.”

She came to a full stop, refusing to answer. It was clear I had entered an emotional mine field. I decided my best route now was the most direct one. “How did David die, Billie?”

“I’ve got to go.”

I gave it up. “All right-never mind about David. You’re the important one here, Billie. Let’s get you under protection. I don’t want you hurt.”

There was some background noise from her end of the line, as if she were moving around. When she came back on, her voice was hard and bitter. “You bastard.”

The phone went dead in my hand.