`Finlay,’ she repeated. `You know what I can’t figure?’
`What?’ I said.
`There’s the two of them, right?’ she said. `Teale and Morrison. They run the town for Kliner. They run the police department. Between them, they run everything. Their chief of detectives is Gray. An old guy, a wise head, smart and stubborn. He’s been there for twenty-five years, since well before any of this shit started up. They inherited him and they can’t get rid of him. So sure enough, one day their smart and stubborn detective sniffs them out. He’s found out that something is going on. And they find out that he’s found out. So they put him out of the way. They murder him to keep it all safe. Then what do they do next?’
`Go on,’ I said.
`They hire in a replacement,’ she said. `Finlay,
down from Boston. A guy who is even smarter and even more stubborn than Gray was. Why the hell would they do that? If Gray was a danger to them, then Finlay would be twice as dangerous. So why did they do that? Why did they hire somebody even smarter than the last guy?’
‘That’s easy,’ I said. `They thought Finlay was really dumb.’
`Dumb?’ she said. `How the hell could they think that?’
So I told her the story Finlay had told me on Monday over doughnuts at the convenience store counter. About his divorce. About his mental state at the time. What had he said? He was a basket case. An idiot. Couldn’t string two words together.
`Chief Morrison and Mayor Teale interviewed him,’ I told her. `He thought it was the worst job application in history. He thought he had come across as an idiot. He was totally amazed they gave him the job. Now I understand why they did. They really were looking for an idiot.’
Roscoe laughed. That made me feel better.
`God,’ she said. `That’s ironic. They must have sat down and planned it out. Gray was a problem, they said. Better replace him with a fool, they said. Better pick the worst candidate who applies, they said.’
`Right,’ I said. `And they did. They picked a shell-shocked idiot from Boston. But by the time he turns up to start work, he’s calmed down and turned back into the cool and intelligent guy he always was.’
She smiled about that for two miles. Then we crested a slight rise and began the long sweep down into Margrave. We were tensed up. It was like entering the battle zone. We’d been out of it for a
while. Sweeping back into it didn’t feel good. I had expected to feel better when I had identified the opposing players. But it wasn’t what I had expected. It wasn’t me against them, played out against a neutral background. The background wasn’t neutral. The background was the opposition. The whole town was in it. The whole place was bought and paid for. Nobody would be neutral. We were barrelling down the rise at seventy miles an hour toward a dangerous mess. More dangerous than I had expected.
Roscoe slowed up at the town limit. The big Chevy glided onto Margrave’s glassy blacktop. The magnolia and dogwood scrub to the left and right was replaced by velvet lawns and ornamental cherries. Those trees with smooth shiny trunks. Like the bark was buffed by hand. In Margrave, it probably was. The Kliner Foundation was probably paying somebody a handsome salary to do it.
We passed the neat blocks of stores, all of them empty and complacent, floating on an unearned thousand a week. We jinked around the village green with the statue of Caspar Teale. Wafted past the turn down to Roscoe’s house with its smashed front door. Past the coffee shop. Past the benches under the smart awnings. Past the parkland where the bars and rooming houses had been, back when Margrave was honest. Then up to the station house. We pulled off into the lot and parked up. Charlie Hubble’s Bentley was still there where I’d left it.
Roscoe killed the motor and we sat for a minute. Didn’t want to get out. We squeezed hands, her right, my left. A brief good luck gesture. We got out of the car. Into battle.