by Ed Gorman
"Maybe," I said. "A celebrity like Tandy, there could be a lot of people after her for a lot of different reasons."
"You're probably right. We don't get many celebrities out here."
"Consider yourself lucky."
She sat on the edge of the double bed across from me. She looked beautiful and sweet in the light from the lamp. The soft light dulled the redness of her scar and made it less noticeable.
The phone rang. She picked it up, said hello, listened. Then held the phone out to me. "For you."
"Me?" I stood up to take the call.
She nodded. "The Chicago Police Department."
Brady. "What's going on? A cop answered your room phone."
"I'll explain later." I smiled at Susan. She didn't smile back.
"Turns out I had to check a license number myself. Some bastard sideswiped my daughter in a supermarket parking lot. Broad daylight. Guy's drunk out of his mind. Luckily, Cindy got his license number. So I checked out your guy while I was at it."
"And?"
"Private investigator name of DeWayne Kibbe."
"How was his record?"
"Was?"
"He's why a cop answered my room phone."
"He's dead?"
"Unless he's awful good at faking, he is."
"You have all the fun, Robert. His record was clean."
"He part of an agency?"
"Freelancer. But most of those boys hire out to the big agencies all the time. The agencies like the setup because they don't have to pay any bennies."
"You got a phone number for the guy?"
He dragged out his yellow pages. Gave me the phone number. "You have an address?"
"You don't want much, do you, Robert?"
"His address'll tell me something about how well his business was doing."
"You should be a detective. It's a lot of fun. We've got a secret handshake and everything."
He gave me the address. It wasn't exactly what you'd call tony.
"How about one more favor?"
"I won't mow your lawn."
"See if he's listed in the residences."
"You should be mowing my lawn." There was a pause while he looked it up. "Sorry this is taking so long."
Susan Charles said, "He was a private investigator?"
"Right."
"Here you go, Robert." He gave me the address and phone number. "I've got to haul ass out of here. I've got Cub Scouts with my youngest kid tonight."
After hanging up, I said, "He was a long way from Chicago."
"He certainly was."
This time, I didn't sit down. "I didn't kill him."
"You probably didn't."
"There's a ringing endorsement."
"I can't rule it out."
"No, I suppose you can't."
She stood up. "I'd better get back to your room and see what's going on. The SBI boys will be wondering where I am. They like to write nasty things about local police chiefs whenever possible."
"Sounds like a love affair."
"They're helpful but arrogant."
"That's what city cops used to say about the bureau."
She smiled. "And it was probably true."
"It probably was."
She walked to the window. Peeked out between the curtains.
"It's starting to look like the county fair out there." She turned back to me. "This is the second homicide since Rick Hennessy killed Sandy. Before that, we didn't have a homicide for six years."
"I suppose you'll want me to stick around for a day or two?"
She seemed surprised. "I thought you were working with your good friends the witches."
Her tone irritated me. "If you mean Tandy, she's a very serious person. She actually has psychic gifts. I can't explain them and she can't either. But I've seen them work so I believe in them."
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you had a crush on her."
I thought of how infatuated I'd been with Susan this afternoon. There was a divide between us now, and it seemed to widen by the minute.
"No crush," I said. "I just wanted to keep the facts straight."
"I hope you'll defend me like that sometime. I like that kind of loyalty, Robert. I really do." Then, "Sorry if I was nasty."
"It's all right."
"And I'm sorry we didn't get to go bowling."
"Me, too." I liked her again. Just like that. She looked oddly lonely just then, and I wanted to put my hand on her shoulder.
She walked over to the door and looked out. "They're out there."
"Who?"
"Tandy and her sister and the big hunk."
"Chandler?"
She looked back at me. "I remember his cop show on the tube. It was terrible and so was he. There's something about him I don't trust."
"Me, either."
Then she was gone.
I went outside. Scent of burning leaves and diesel fuel from passing trucks. An orange half moon and ranks of cars in the motel lot. Giggles and gawking from the little kids; somber adult eyes peering out from beneath the bills of John Deere caps, men and women alike. Teenage boys found this a fine brave time to put protective and possessive arms around the shoulders of their girls, keeping them safe from the savage randomness of death, while being every bit as dry-mouthed and shaken and baffled as the girls themselves.
Tandy and Laura and Chandler stood off to the right, leaning against the front of a van, watching it all.
I walked over to them. The crowd was six or seven yards to my left. Cars kept pulling into the lot, radios blasting. Rap music sounded strange out here in the boonies, especially on the radios of white farm boys. They wore green John Deere caps just like their fathers, except they wore them backwards in the style of city kids.
"So much for the myth of the small town," Chandler said. He sounded drunk. His words weren't quite enunciated. "I thought it was supposed to be safe out here."
"They said a man was murdered," Laura said.
"Yeah. And they found him in my room."
"What?" Tandy said.
"I was the one who found him. He was pushed back in the closet. I didn't even see him at first."
"Who was it?" said Laura.
"A Chicago PI named Kibbe."
"A private detective?" Tandy said.
Laura said, "And he was from Chicago. I wonder what that's all about?"
"What's the big deal about Chicago?" Tandy said.
"We're from Chicago," Chandler said.
"I still don't get it."
"Think about it," Laura said. "The coincidence. What's the likelihood of a Chicago private investigator being here while we're here?"
"You mean he's here because of us?" Tandy said.
"Was here," Chandler said, not sounding as drunk as he had at first.
Tandy looked at me and said, "Do you think he was here because of us, Robert?"
"Too soon to tell. We need to know a lot more."
"I think it's damned strange," Laura said.
"Me, too," Chandler agreed.
"He could have been here because of me," I said.
"Why you?" Chandler said. He sounded almost disappointed that he might have to give up the spotlight. Kibbe's presence here would be ever so much more interesting if it had to do with Chandler.
I told them about my path crossing with Kibbe's today.
"But why would he be following you?" Tandy said.
"I have no idea."
"Is there any way we can check on this guy?" Chandler said.
"I have his home phone number. Hopefully, he had a wife and she'll be able to help me. But I need to wait till she's been officially notified by the authorities. That'll be an hour or so yet." I paused. "He could have been following the girl, too."
"What girl?" Chandler said.
"Emily Cunningham. I had the feeling he ran across me by accident when he pulled up at the lawyer's office. I think he might have been following the girl."
"Maybe he was a rapist." Chandler
said. "We did this plot on the show once about this small-town guy who went to the city to commit his rapes. Why not the other way around?"
"Wouldn't it be a lot riskier in a small town?" Tandy said. "Easier to get caught?"
"I need to pee," Laura said.
"As a matter of fact," Noah Chandler said, "so do I."
"You think we can get into our rooms?" Tandy said.
The cops had cut off a wide area with yellow crime scene tape. The area included the rooms of the sisters and Chandler. "I'm sure they'll let you in," I said.
"They'd better," Laura said. "Or I'm going to tinkle behind that car over there."
"She'd actually do that, too," Tandy said.
"See you later." Noah Chandler said. Then he paused and said, "You should find out if he had a rifle with him. He may have been the one who shot at you folks this morning."
"The first thing I'll check," I said, pointing down to the shoes that had left the clear impressions in the woods this morning, "are his shoes."
I drifted over to the crowd. The ranks had increased with the arrival of media from Cedar Rapids. There were two trucks with satellite dishes on them and at least two station wagons with reporters.
"Mr. Payne?"
She was a tall, elegant black woman in a starched pink blouse that looked even pinker against her dark skin. Short hair that fit like a helmet. Her jeans were loose and sloppy, the style of late. She had the graceful, enigmatic features of ancient African womanhood I'd seen on a TV show about African art down the centuries, a kind of stoical, maternal eroticism.
She gave me a long, slender hand, dry and strong to the touch. "I'm Iris Rutledge. Emily Cunningham said you were looking for me this afternoon."
"Oh, right. I wanted to talk to you about Rick Hennessy." She laughed softly. "You and everybody else."
"I'd invite you into my room but the cops have it closed off."
"Well, if you're up for an adventure," she said, "I can give you a ride down to Wendy's, which is about two blocks away."
She had an old-fashioned ten-speed Schwinn. It had a light and a horn and a big red alien-eye reflector on the back of the seat. I'd had a bike just like it in college.
I hadn't been on a bike in a long time. I'd forgotten how bumpy the ride was. But it was enjoyable. A few dozen childhood memories came back, the scents, sights, and sounds available only to bike riders. I sat on the handlebars. She didn't seem to have much trouble steering with me aboard.
Wendy's was empty. Everybody was up at the crime scene. We had coffee and tuna pitas.
"It's a good thing I have the right kind of metabolism," she said.
"This isn't too bad, the tuna. Not much fat or calories."
"No, but when I get home tonight and turn on Letterman, I'll have popcorn and part of a candy bar or something like that."
"You look good to me."
"Thanks. It's pure luck, believe me." Then, "He's innocent." This around a delicate bite of her pita.
"You and Dr. Williams."
"Aaron's a good man."
"Seems to be."
"And he knows what he's doing. You don't get to run a hospital like his without having the right credentials. When he says that the drugs Rick was doing induced a psychotic state, I believe him. I just hope I can convince the jury of that."
"A psychotic state in which he couldn't tell reality from fantasy, right?"
"Exactly. He truly believes that he killed Sandy. But he didn't."
"How do you know?"
Another delicate bite. The face, even in the light of Wendy's, more and more exotically commanding. "You have much faith in hypnotism?"
"Depends on who's doing it."
"Aaron has worked with Rick under deep-hypnosis conditions several times. He's also given him whatever the latest spin on Pentothal is. Rick didn't do it."
"Maybe he's repressed it to the point that he's convinced himself that he didn't do it."
"Pentothal is pretty potent stuff."
"So he didn't do it?"
"He didn't do it."
"Then who did?"
"I've got suspicions, nothing else."
"Is that why Emily Cunningham wanted to see you this afternoon?" She looked irritated that I'd know something like that. "She asked me to give you a message. Said she was willing to talk to you now. About Sandy."
"She actually said that?"
"Yup."
She laughed. "I'll have to tell her about discretion." Then, "I think Sandy's father might have murdered her."
"Her father?"
"He's an amateur photographer. He started taking photos of Sandy when she was very little. Apparently, the wife was upset but wouldn't or couldn't—or thought she couldn't—do anything about it. He kept on taking the photos until Sandy herself threatened to turn him in to the authorities."
"How'd you find this out?"
"Sandy. I went to her high school to speak on Law Day and she came up afterwards and asked me if she could come to my office and talk to me. Three days later, she was dead."
"You ever talk to the father?"
"I drove out there once—they live on an acreage—but he wouldn't let me in. He was pretty nasty. He gave me a little speech about how he wouldn't trust a white lawyer, let alone a black one. Except he said nigger." She smiled. "Unfortunately, that isn't proof he's a killer. The terrible thing is, a lot of people are very nice folks as long as you don't get them on the subject of race."
"Any idea what he did with the pictures he took of her?"
She shrugged. "Not really. But I'd like to get in that house sometime when nobody was home."
"Why?"
"See if he's got any other child porn around the house."
"You think he ever molested her?"
"Not from what she said. He was satisfied with just the pictures, I guess. And then she got too old for him. She said he stopped taking photos of her when she turned eleven. Probably about the time she started having noticeable breasts."
"You never went to the county attorney?"
"No point. Sandy said that if I did, she'd just deny everything. Her mother died of heart disease five years ago. He's all she has—had." We had three cups of coffee. She said, "How'd you get involved with all this?"
I told her about Tandy and the show.
"Oh." Her disappointment was easy to see.
"She's not a fake." I sketched out the two cases I'd worked on. "I just don't believe in that kind of thing, I guess."
"Then how did she locate the bodies?"
"That's the funny thing. I know stuff like that happens. But I can't believe it. My husband buys it, though. He's a psychologist. He thinks that someday we'll all be in touch with our full mental powers." Then, "He's white, by the way."
I smiled. "Good for him."
"I just meant it's a novelty. You still don't see a lot of black women with white guys. I think that's why people here are so nice to us. If it was the other way around—if it was a black man with a white woman—I think we'd get a lot more grief."
"You're probably right."
We finished up our pitas and started on our last cups of coffee. "So you going to see him?"
"Who?" I said.
"Sandy's dad."
"I'll try."
"If you learn anything, will you tell me about it?"
"Sure."
"He really is innocent."
"Between you and Dr. Williams, I'm beginning to believe it."
"Really?"
"Well, maybe a little bit, anyway."
A police cruiser swung into the parking lot. I could see Susan in the windshield. She looked serious, serious but beautiful. You couldn't see the scar from this distance.
She got out of the cruiser and strode inside. She came directly to our table.
She nodded to Iris Rutledge. "Hi, Iris. Don't buy anything from this guy."
"Don't worry, Susan. I already had him checked out with the Better Business Bureau. They said buyer beware."
"Ev
erything going all right?" I said.
"I just had a few follow-up questions."
"Well, that works out fine," Iris said. "I need to get back home, anyway."
She stood up. Extended her hand. Then reached in the back of her jeans and took out a thin leather wallet. "Here's my card."
"Thanks."
"Call me."
"I will."
"'Bye, Susan."
"'Bye, Iris."
"You want some coffee?" I said to Susan.
"She's a sweetie."
"She sure seems to be."
"Just black'll do. I've got a long night ahead of me."
I got a refill and a cup for her. The place was starting to fill up. The novelty had worn off the crime scene. Yellow crime scene tape is bedazzling for only so long.
When I got back, she was gone. She reappeared a few minutes later. "Pit stop."
"I could use one of those myself."
The two urinals were busy. Two teenage boys peed and talked about the murder.
"Drug deal," one of them said.
"That what the cops said?"
"No. But I'll bet your ass that's what it was."
"They said he was old. Maybe he was a Mob guy or something."
"If he was, somebody else is gonna die."
"How come?"
"They don't let you run around and kill Mob guys like that."
"Who doesn't?"
"The Mob, you dumb ass. The Mob don't let you."
"He was a mobster," I said, when I got back to my table.
"Who was?"
"The dead guy in my motel room."
"Mafia, you mean?"
I laughed and told her what I'd heard in the john.
"Oh, that'll go on for weeks. Everybody in town'll have his own theory about who did it, and why." Then, "He was a little more interesting than just your run-of-the-mill private eye."
"Oh?"
"I've got a few friends in Chicago, too. I had them run his name through the crime computer."
"Anything interesting?"
"He was arrested for letting his gun permit expire and he was arrested for drunk driving. Found guilty on both counts and both were enough to get his license lifted both times. He had to reapply to get reinstated. Technically, he was out of work for twelve months following each arrest."
"He doesn't exactly sound like a death row kind of guy."
She sipped her coffee. "It's actually cold in here. I've got goose bumps. Look."
