Cover Of Night

By the time he returned to Chicago, not even the FBI could have proven he was anyone other than who he said he was.

Finding out who had been behind a murder over five years old hadn’t been easy. No one had fingered Yuell. Finding out his father had been a hired killer had been yet another shock to a psyche already battered beyond recovery, but it gave him a direction. From there, he was able to find out that his father had worked for a man named Faulkner, and it had seemed to Goss that maybe the best way to find out what his father had been involved in would be from the inside of Faulkner’s organization.

He’d managed to bring himself to Faulkner’s attention, because he was too streetwise to just walk in and ask for a job. Let Faulkner approach him.

Once on the inside, Goss had done his job and taken care not to screw up. Over time he had earned trust, not just from Faulkner but from the other men who worked for him. It was Hugh Toxtel, who had worked for Faulkner the longest, who had given him the piece of information he wanted. It had been more in the way of some friendly advice: Don’t let a target get to you. Get in, do the job, get out. Don’t listen to some sob story. One guy, Ferris, had let someone soft-soap him and hadn’t done the job, and Faulkner took him out because he’d let his emotions get the best of him and, by letting the target live, established a trail that led. back to Faulkner’s company. Not only that, not doing the job was bad for business.

So Ferris had been disposed of, and Faulkner himself had finished the job Ferris had muffed.

Yuell Faulkner had killed Goss’s father. He could even see that it had been a good business decision, which in no way changed Goss’s mind about anything.

Faulkner was going to die, but Goss was looking for the perfect opportunity. He could have walked into the office and fired a nine millimeter into Faulkner’s brain a hundred times, but he didn’t want it to be that clean, that fast. He wanted it messy, wanted Faulkner to suffer, wanted him to squirm.

This situation with Salazar Bandini might be just what he’d waited for all these years. Bandini’s viciousness was exceeded only by his vindictiveness. If Goss could somehow turn Bandini on Faulkner…

He’d have to think about the possibilities, how he could manage it without getting caught in the riptide of Bandini’s vengeance. Maybe something would occur to him during this trip to Nowhere, Idaho, looking for a runaway accountant who might or might not already be dead.

"Do we leave today?" Goss asked.

Chapter 6

Cate completely stripped the bed in number 3. Removing even the blankets and mattress cover. She intended to wash everything. Mr. Layton might not be dead, but she suspected he was, and she thought it would be slightly ghoulish to remake the bed without washing all the bed linens, top to bottom. The next guest wouldn’t know, but she would.

Her mother had taken the boys on a picnic, so the house was quiet for once. They were just a quarter of a mile away, at the picnic table Neenah Dase had installed under a big tree in her backyard, but to the boys they were on a grand adventure, Cate had watched from the window as they walked off down Trail Stop’s one real road, her mother carrying a small basket loaded with peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and lemonade, with the boys circling around her in a frenzy of excitement. For every step she took, they each took at least five, hopping and skipping and darting away to examine a bug, a rock, a leaf, then returning to their grandmother like satellites to a planet. Cate hoped they’d be nice and tired when they returned; since her mother’s arrival they’d been in high gear, and she suspected her mother was as ready for a little quiet time as she herself was.

The phone call she’d received from National Car Rental made her feel both vaguely uneasy and vaguely depressed. The depression was because the call only verified that Mr. Layton was missing and now she felt bad that she’d been so annoyed when he didn’t return on schedule. The uneasiness… she couldn’t pinpoint the cause of that. Maybe it was just this entire situation; she’d never before had a guest go missing, and she had a growing sense that whatever had happened to Mr. Layton, it wasn’t good.

Because she felt as if she should, she called the sheriff’s department again to report the call she’d received. She was put in touch with the same investigator, Seth Marburg. For all she knew, he was the county’s only investigator.

"I know I’m being a bother," she said apologetically, and explained about the phone call. "He not only didn’t come back yesterday, he didn’t return his rental car. The rental agency called here asking to speak to him, since he didn’t turn the car in. Have you found anything?"

"Nothing. He hasn’t been reported in any accidents, and there aren’t any unidentified victims. He hasn’t been reported missing by any friends or family, either. You said he left his clothes behind? What else?"

"It’s actually just one change of clothes. Some underwear and socks, disposable razor, some toiletries. And a plastic bag from Wal-Mart. I don’t know what’s in it."

"It sounds as if he didn’t leave anything important."

"No, nothing looks important."

"Mrs. Nightingale, I know you’re worried, but no crime has been committed and there’s no evidence that Mr. Layton’s had an accident. Sometimes people just walk away, for no good reason. You have his credit card number, so he didn’t run out on his bill, right?"

"That’s right."

"He left under his own steam. He didn’t bother to check out, and he left some unimportant things behind. We’ll keep checking for an accident site along the most likely routes, but in all likelihood he just – left."

She couldn’t see Marbury, but Cate knew he’d shrugged. "But what about his rental car?"

"That’s between him and the rental agency. The car hasn’t been reported stolen, so there’s nothing we can do about that, either."