“I did, but for what I own, the check won’t cover the gallon of gas someone used to burn the place up.”
“Well, you know, I do the initial investigations on fires like this, and I’m gonna say from what I can tell, it was intentionally set. The burn pattern shows use of an accelerant, with the point of origin the middle of the living room. You didn’t have nothing in the living room that could have started the fire, did you? Space heater, anything like that?”
“It’s August, Cyrus. It’s eight thirty in the morning, and the sweat from the crack of my ass is racing to meet what’s dripping off of my balls, so why in the hell would I have a space heater working?”
“These are questions I’ve gotta ask, Henry. No offense.”
I told Cyrus about Billy seeing the SUV drive off in the wake of the fire.
Cyrus shook his head. “You must have pissed someone off mighty big to make ’em burn up your house.”
“Everyone’s got to have a hobby, Cyrus. I suppose that’s mine.”
Woody stood near the porch edge, smoking a cigarette. Cyrus gave a nod in his direction. “This a friend of yours?”
“That’s Woody.”
Cyrus nodded again and glanced at the clipboard in his hands. “People talking about you all. Say you’re tough guys.”
“I’d say our reputation exceeds us, but roll with that if you want.”
“You guys, you ever put muscle on someone? Not in a bad way. Just someone who needs it.”
“That’s not really what we do,” I said.
Woody said, “What’s going on?”
I shot Woody a look that said he should focus on smoking and less on complicating my already complicated existence.
Cyrus said, “There’s a dude, one of the guys at the fire department, I loaned him some money, and he’s slow paying it back, so I thought maybe you guys could go over—” He gave a conspiratorial shrug. “Talk to him a little.”
“You want us to rough a guy up?”
“No, nothing like that,” Cyrus said in a shocked voice that confirmed he did indeed want the guy roughed up. “Just go tell him that he should pay the money back.”
“How much does he owe you?” This was Woody, who had started a fresh cigarette.
“Ninety bucks.”
“We’re not putting the squeeze on a guy because of ninety dollars, Cyrus,” I said. “I limit all acts of felony to at least a four-figure amount.”
Cyrus looked as though we had taken his baseball cap from him and left with it. “Thought I’d ask.” He tore a sheet of paper away from his clipboard. “I’ll go ahead and file my official with the insurance company. List the cause as arson. You’ve got someone who’ll say where you were when the fire started?”
“I do.”
“Good. And you change your mind on that thing, let me know. I’d appreciate it.” He pointed at me. “Like that T-shirt by the way.”
Cyrus headed toward a king-cab pickup truck, struggling to get in the same way a little kid works to get on an amusement park ride. I waved at him as he pulled out of the driveway.
Woody flipped his cigarette away. “He’s gonna make you miserable about this.”
“It was ninety bucks, Woody. A line’s got to be drawn somewhere.”
“I’ve done more for less.” He opened the front door. “At least he liked your T-shirt.”
36
Woody went back to his place to call up Rooster and see how the work on the cell phone progressed. Billy was meeting up with his group of retired railroaders for their weekly coffee klatch, so he left. That stuck me on the couch, watching two ladies get day-drunk on a talk show as they interviewed an actor I’d never heard about from a movie I didn’t want to see.
I was desperate enough to be grateful for the interruption when Jackie Hall called me and said I should come over to the state police outpost. He wouldn’t tell me why, and he hung the phone up before I could push the point. I spend a sizable chunk of my life with people hanging up on me.
The same trooper who’d been manning the front desk last week was there when I walked in. He said, “Lieutenant Hall’s waiting for you,” and buzzed the door open.
I knocked on Jackie’s office door and Jackie said, “Come on in, asshole.”
He leaned against a filing cabinet, flipping through its contents until he found what he was looking for, pulled a folder free, and set it on his desk. A Mr. Coffee rested on top of the filing cabinet, and he filled a pair of mugs from it and handed me one.
He sipped his coffee. “That’s an ugly goddamn shirt, and you look like shit.”
“Nice to get all of the pleasantries out of the way early.”
“What happened? They start beating you with an ugly stick and switch to a log instead?”
“I made new friends the other night.”
“They must think the same of you as your old friends.”
“I don’t have many old friends.”
“Which proves my previous point. These the same friends who burned your trailer down?”
“You heard about that already?”
“There’s three forms of communication in Parker County, Henry: telephone, tell a friend, or tell Cyrus Thompson. Man belongs in a Baptist sewing bee, he’s such a gossip. Said the whole thing looked hinky.”
“Hinky? He said ‘hinky’?”
“Might have even used that exact wording in the report.”
“Lieutenant Gerard would not approve.”
“In the words of Lieutenant Gerard, ‘I don’t care.’” Jackie took a seat behind his desk. “There’s days where I miss when you could drink.”
“I sense you might not understand completely how this whole ‘being an alcoholic’ thing works, Jackie.”
He sighed and leaned back, and the chair whined in exasperation. Jackie moved in broad brush strokes, for maximum efficacy, to minimize effort. “When we were young, we would pound down beers and put a hurting on the world, and nothing to worry about other than sobering up by our next shift. Life was simpler.”
“It wasn’t simpler; we were dumber,” I said. “We were kids with barely the sense to get out of the fucking rain. This is where things work in reverse as you get older, and you come to realize how stupid you were back then by figuring out how much you don’t know now.”
“That sounds like bullshit. You watching Dr. Phil or something?”
“Never underestimate the entertainment value of watching families want to kill one another.”
He pivoted his head back like a fat PEZ dispenser. “The baby’s keeping me and Livvie up at night. Swear to Christ the kid is awake more than she’s asleep, which means we’re up, too, because I’m not sure what you know about babies—”
“Only that they’re small and that they don’t bounce much when dropped.”
Jackie brought his feet back down onto the floor. “If the baby’s awake, you’re awake. Also awake is the three-year-old, who’s decided he don’t like his little sister much but still wants to take this chance to watch Doc McStuffins on your iPad.”
“Doc McStuffins a real thing?”
“Like high cholesterol and heart attacks.”
“Both things I bet you’re well versed in.”
“I swear to fucking Christ, you’re the living, breathing embodiment of what crabs would be like if it could put on pants and collect a cripple check. You have no other purpose than to annoy me.”
“You called me here, Jackie. I was content to sulk on Billy’s couch.”
“I’d be happy to have you home and out of my hair, except I caught a dead body this morning, and when questions got asked, they led back to you.”
“Who died?”
“A chick named April Bevins.”
I set my coffee cup aside. “Goddammit.”
Jackie’s big head nodded. It was like a boulder shuddering on the edge of a cliff. “Jesus, but can you go outside without someone getting killed?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but let’
s move beyond the insult and tell me what happened.”
“It’s painted to be a B-and-E. At least, that’s its sad and desperate attempt.” He picked a pair of drugstore cheaters and a sheet of paper from his desktop. The frames were too small, and the earpieces struggled to fit around his head. “She was home alone. Parents and son gone to church. Found pry marks around the front door we’re guessing came from a crowbar. She was in the living room with the back of her head caved in. Signs of a struggle.” He let the paper drop. “She had a syringe in her arm and several baggies of heroin on the coffee table next to her.”
“Fuck.”
He removed the glasses. “Got called in by a charming gentleman the name of William Ray Steckler III. Said he was her boyfriend. Said a guy had come around the other day, talking to Bevins, asking about Meadow Charles. Said the guy was uglier than homemade sin, and he’d had to teach him a lesson, so he’d popped him around a bit. It goes without saying you were the first person who came to mind.” He set the glasses on the paper. “Billy Ray really smack you around?”
“He prefers to be called ‘Tre,’ and fuck no, he did not.”
“What did April Bevins have to do with Meadow Charles?”
I told him. Jackie said, “I’m feeling as if telling Katie Dolan to call you was a bad idea.”
“We’ve moved well the fuck past the point for hindsight. You holding Steckler?”
“You know the drill, Henry. He’s here until we transport him to the regional jail. Murder like this, you always check the boyfriend first. ME’s report says she’s littered with bruises at various stages of healing, so it’s apparent the dude’s got a temper and enjoys having an easy target.”
“He strike you as the type smart enough to fake a robbery and an attempt at an OD to cover a murder?”
“He doesn’t seem smart enough to wipe his ass every time without the paper roll there to remind him. And while we’re speaking truths, anyone who had thought of robbing that house would be besotted with disappointment. They still had a console TV, for Christ’s sake. You can’t donate console TVs to Goodwill no more.”
“It’s a tragic place this world is becoming. Can I talk to Tre?”
“I suspected you’d want to.”
“I’m sure it’s four or five different violations of the law or state police code and procedure.”
“At least. They’d hang my ample ass out to dry if they ever found out. So for the sake of ensuring I don’t lose my job and ever have a reason to beat you to death, you don’t talk shit to anyone.”
“You are forever persuasive, Jackie.”
“The fuck right I am.”
Even though the regional jail had long ago taken over storing folks, the outpost maintained old-school holding cells. Steckler sat in one with a quarter of his ass on the cot and the rest hanging off, and the bolts holding the cot straining out of the wall. There was something fascinating as fuck on the floor because he had a focus on it to shame a military sniper.
I leaned against the bars. “How you doing there, Tre?”
He didn’t move his head. “Blow me.”
“You really tell Lieutenant Hall you kicked my ass?”
“I said, blow me.”
“Yes, you said that, but I’ll tell you that if that’s your level of truthfulness, things could be looking bleak for you.”
He wiped the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t hurt April.”
“Those bruises the coroner found on her say otherwise.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I hit her. She was using again, and I never liked it. She kept telling me she’d quit, and she kept on, and I’d say to her, ‘For Christ’s sake, think about Reno.’ ’Cause now, I gotta help raise that little shit stain that ain’t even mine.”
“With an attitude like that, you and Reno will get along great. If you want to start telling Lieutenant Hall here the truth, you’ll get out of here pretty quick. Where were you last night?”
Steckler sunk his head lower between his shoulders.
I stepped away from the bars. “All right then. Have fun once you get to trial, Tre? It’s not been nice knowing you.”
I made it about halfway to the door when Steckler said, “I was with a friend. At their house.”
I walked back to the cell. “Friend happen to be female?”
“Yeah.”
“You fucking the female friend?”
“Yeah.”
“She be willing to say you and she were busy doing the horizontal mambo while your girlfriend was being murdered?”
There was a pause longer than my dick—yes, that fucking long—before Steckler said, “She’s married.”
“Would seem you’re fucked then, Tre. And I don’t mean in a good way. I mean in a ‘guess you’re going to be a prison bitch now’ way. They’ll love your big ol’ mushy ass up in Mount Olive. But I got a friend up there, he can help you figure out who you should be a girlfriend for.”
He swung his big head in my direction. “You talked to April about Meadow Charles, didn’t you?”
I folded my arms across my chest, tried to maintain a facade of blasé. “What about it?”
“Day you came over—”
“When I kicked your ass.”
“Yeah, you ain’t so tough right now in a Twilight shirt, faggot. Besides, someone handed you yours, way your face looks like bad pavement.”
Jackie nudged me on the shoulder. “Tre’s got your number, Henry.”
I kept on looking blasé. “Keep talking, Tre.”
“Anyway, she went up in the attic, dug around in boxes of shit. I asked her what she was looking for, and she said she had ‘the key to getting out of this shithole.’ Finally came down with a cell phone. Old piece of shit in the ugliest goddamn case I’d ever seen in my life.”
“Look like a Kardashian sister threw up on it?”
“That’s what she said. Sparkles and glitter and every-goddamn-thing else. She peacocked around with it, and I asked her what made it so great.” He swallowed hard. It was audible and uncomfortable. He returned to staring at his shoes. “She said it’d get her and Reno far the fuck away from me and Parker County.”
“You hit her?”
Steckler said nothing, folded his hands together, all which answered the question.
“What happened next?” I said.
“She was gone all day the next day. She put on a real nice black dress and did her hair. Her mom thought she might try to get a job. I knew better. I asked her where she was going, and she said once she was done that day, she’d leave me in her rearview mirror.” His hands tightened into fists. “Ungrateful little bitch. Everything I did, and she—”
“You’re not selling us on you not killing her, Tre.”
The tough-guy posture relaxed, and in its place, Steckler seemed human for a moment. And scared. His face flushed red.
“Nothing happened. I left before she did. Ask her mom. I got beers at Mickey’s Place over in Sutton Town, and then, well, you can guess. Her husband, he works natural gas pipelines, and he was out of town, so—”
“You gone all night?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you find out about April?”
“Came home, and there were police cars all up and down the street.”
“Ever been in trouble with the cops, Tre?”
“A little. When I was a kid.” He stood up and walked over to the bars. “I didn’t do this, buddy. I know what I did to her, it wasn’t right, but this wasn’t me.”
I tapped Jackie on the shoulder and we headed to the exit. From behind me, Steckler said, “What are you, anyway? Are you even a cop?”
I followed Jackie through the exit. I wanted to keep up a veil of mystery. Also, fuck William Ray Steckler III.
“Let him go,” I said to Jackie once we were back in his office and he was behind his desk, making his chair make weird noises.
Jackie furrowed his brow into rows of pale white flesh. “Are you telling me what to d
o with a person of interest in a homicide investigation?”
“He’s many things, but he didn’t kill her, so you’ve got no reason to have him sitting in a cell. I’m sure there’s an all-you-can-eat buffet somewhere missing him.”
“I hope to Christ you get fat someday. I’ll ride your ass like I bought you dinner first.”
“Comments like that are what keep me thin. You think he did it?”
“Honest? No. Though he’s a textbook case of the asshole who kills his girlfriend. He’s also the type of asshole I like putting in prison.”
“But he’s too stupid to be faking this.”
“I’ve brought in way too many fuckers like him, same kind of situation, with a dead wife or girlfriend, and they almost always get cocky, like they’re too smart to get caught.”
“William Ray Steckler III will never be accused of being too smart.”
Jackie propped his elbows on his desk. “What’s this got to do with the cell phone?”
“Being a highly trained investigator, you don’t find it suspicious that a cell phone April Bevins had found its way into Mitchell Gillespie’s office?”
“I do. I also think you and your faithful Indian companion breaking into Gillespie’s office is a felony, as is you stealing that cell phone. Gillespie’s fleet of lawyers would make mincemeat of this entire argument and still land your crippled ass in jail.”
“What about Woody?”
“Him too. Are you worried you’ll be the only one with prison time?”
“I get lonely, Jackie. It’s a terrible problem to have.”
Jackie took a pencil from a cup on his desk and twirled it between his fingers. “Being the highly trained investigator that I am, I lean into the idea that Gillespie may have been involved in April’s murder, and I’m also curious what’s on that cell phone. It’s all theoretical, though, because I can’t use any of this.”
“None of it?”
“Squat. Because you’re admitting to a felony while alleging there’s another group of felonies being committed, and your knowledge of it is off of evidence you got through said felony. It’s all fruit of a poisoned tree, Henry.”
I refilled my coffee cup. “All of this shit is connected. What I need is a way to prove it.”
She Talks to Angels Page 17
