Penny’s Pass the Parcel - Part 7

Oliver Padget had been leaning against his mailbox when the black SUV came tearing up Main Street like it owed somebody money. He saw it mount the curb outside the station, rear door swinging wide before the vehicle had fully stopped. Something heavy tumbled out onto the pavement and lay there in a heap. The SUV fishtailed back into the road and was gone before Oliver had taken his hands out of his pockets.

He crossed the street at what he considered a brisk pace, which amounted to a determined shuffle. The heap in the gutter turned out to be a person. White hair, filthy cardigan, one shoe missing. A face he recognized, though it had acquired some new colors since he'd last seen it.

"Well now," Oliver said quietly. "There you are."

He went inside the station.

Sheriff Milton and Deputy Marindina were standing by the counter, mid-conversation about something that had made the deputy's jaw tight and the sheriff's eyes small. Oliver had seen that look before. It was the look Milton got when someone was about to make his life difficult and he was calculating whether to deal with it or pretend he hadn't noticed.

"Come quickly," Oliver said, not entirely sure why he was out of breath given that the walk had been thirty yards on flat ground. "A man's just been thrown from the back of an SUV. He's been abandoned and lying prostrate in the gutter."

He was pleased with the word prostrate. He'd been saving it.

The three of them went outside. Milton hung back near the doorway, adjusting his hat, which immediately fell off. Marindina was already crouching over the body by the time the sheriff had retrieved it from the sidewalk.

"It's Snodgrass," Marindina said.

Milton didn't move. His face had gone the color of the Styrofoam cups he was so fond of. "Is he dead?"

"He's breathing."

"Right." Milton put his hat back on. It fell off again. "Right. We should, uh. Call it in."

"I've already radioed for an ambulance." Marindina looked up at him. "You want to come take a look at your missing person, Chief?"

Milton approached the way a man approaches a dog he isn't sure about. Oliver watched from the station doorway, arms folded, taking it all in. He'd spent enough years on enough streets to know what a guilty man looked like from behind, and right now Sheriff Gideon Milton looked guilty from every angle available.

Snodgrass was in rough shape. His cardigan was torn at the shoulder, his pants stained dark at one knee, and his face carried the kind of bruising that takes a few days to properly bloom. But he was alive. His eyes were open — or one of them was, the other being swollen to a plum-colored slit — and he was trying to speak.

Marindina leaned in. "Mr Snodgrass? Can you hear me? You're outside the police station. You're safe."

Snodgrass's mouth worked. He made a sound like the last of a drink being sucked through a straw.

"The plates," he said. Then his good eye rolled back and he was out.

Milton, who had been standing three feet away with his thumbs hooked in his belt like a man posing for a photograph he hadn't been invited into, made a noise that could have been concern or could have been indigestion. With Milton it was hard to tell and usually didn't matter.

"What plates?" Marindina said, mostly to himself.

"Could be anything," Milton said quickly. "Man's delirious. Probably doesn't know what day it is. We should get him to the hospital, let the docs sort him out, then we'll do a proper interview when he's—"

"When he's what? Forgotten everything?"

Milton's neck flared red beneath the psoriasis. "Now you listen here, Deputy. I'm still the ranking officer in this jurisdiction and I will determine the appropriate—"

"He said plates." Marindina stood up slowly, and when he reached his full height he was a good five inches taller than his boss, which was something Milton usually managed to forget. "Printing plates. The kind you'd use to make currency. The kind that might connect to a suitcase full of counterfeit bills found by the river, and a convicted forger sitting in a federal prison, and his wife who drove out to a print works in Cherry Creek yesterday doing eighty in a forty zone."

Milton said nothing. His jaw moved sideways, the way it did when he was chewing on something that wasn't food.

Oliver, still leaning in the doorway, had heard every word. He had not changed his expression because Oliver Padget had long ago learned that the best thing a man could do in the company of law enforcement was look like he wasn't listening.

But he had heard the word plates, and it had sent a cold little current through his chest, because Oliver Padget knew exactly what plates Amos Snodgrass was talking about. He knew because he was the one who'd moved them.

The ambulance pulled up with more noise than the situation warranted. Two paramedics loaded Snodgrass onto a stretcher while Milton fussed about jurisdiction and Marindina radioed County to request backup. A small crowd had begun to gather — Mrs Kat Gable on her porch with her arms crossed, the Smithson twins eating candy and staring with the shameless fascination of the young.

Marindina pulled Oliver aside. "You saw the vehicle?"

"Black SUV. Tinted windows. Couldn't see who was driving."

"Get a plate number?"

"Diplomatic plates," Oliver said, because he had. "Israeli diplomatic plates."

Marindina stared at him. Oliver shrugged, the picture of a man who just happened to have excellent eyesight and nothing better to do with his time.

Inside the station, Milton had shut himself in his office. Through the glass partition Oliver could see him making a phone call, his free hand rubbing the back of his neck hard enough to send a snow of dead skin onto the collar of his uniform. He was speaking quickly, and even from this distance Oliver could read the shape of the conversation. It was the shape of a man calling in a favor from someone who didn't owe him one.

Marindina came back inside, moving with purpose. He stopped at Polanski's desk. "I need you to run Israeli diplomatic plates, black SUV, this morning, every traffic camera between here and the interstate."

Polanski nodded and started typing.

Marindina turned to Oliver. "Mr Padget. I'm going to need you to come in tomorrow and give a formal statement."

"Happy to help," Oliver said.

"And while we're at it, I'd like to ask you a few questions about your cousin's wife. Jenny Padget."

Oliver smiled the way people smile when they've been expecting a question for a long time and are almost relieved it's finally arrived. "Sure," he said. "I've been wondering when somebody would get around to asking."

He pushed off from the doorframe and walked back across the street to his mailbox, where he resumed his lean. From there he could see the station, the road out of town, and Jenny's house, where the driveway sat empty. The orange VW Beetle was gone.

Oliver noted this without surprise. Two days ago he had personally delivered a padded envelope to Gerry's Printing Services in Cherry Creek containing four aluminium plates wrapped in newspaper, each one capable of printing a fifty-dollar bill that was exactly — exactly — the right size.

Click below to find links to other instalments of Penny's Pass the Story.

https://www.abctales.com/blog/insertponceyfrenchnamehere/new-writing-challenge-alert-pennys-pass-story

Image Credit:
https://unsplash.com/photos/red-wooden-mailbox-near-green-leaf-plant-S-T...