by George Wier
*****
When I pulled up out front of the half-naked house, Denise and Mrs. LeRoy were sitting in the late afternoon sun on the front porch. Each had a cold beer in hand and they looked up at the cloud of dust I raised. Mrs. LeRoy leaned forward, frowned at me. Her husband should have been driving and I should have been in the passenger seat. She knew something was wrong.
I got out slowly, fumbling for how I was going to say it, but I didn’t have to.
“He’s been arrested,” she said, coming down from the porch, Denise in tow.
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Where? Downtown? His own jail?”
“No ma’am,” I said. “Austin. Questioning first, then he’s liable to be brought back here, charged, rushed before a magistrate, then taken back to Austin again.”
“Goddamned procedures,” she said. “I hate it.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said.
“Stop calling me ma’am, Mr. Travis. You’re older than I am.”
“Can’t help it,” I almost said ‘ma’am’ again, but caught it. “I was East Texas raised.”
“Whatever,” she said. “I’ve got to go to him.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I turned to Denise. “If you fly her there and take your car from the airport, you might arrive at the same time.”
“Good idea. Are you coming with us, Bill?”
I looked down at the gravel driveway. An image of Sheriff LeRoy’s face swam before me. I asked him if he had killed Edgar Bristow. ‘No,’ he had said, ‘but a tire iron likely bearing my fingerprints did’. And from that, I’d known I wouldn’t be going back to Austin just yet.
“No,” I said.
“You can spend the night here,” Mrs. LeRoy said. “We probably won’t be back until some time tomorrow, the slow way these things usually go.”
“That’s alright,” I said. “I’ll get a hotel room if I have to. I can’t sleep at someone’s house when they’re not home.”
“Okay,” Mrs. Leroy said, relegating the subject of where I might be laying my sleepy head into the proper category: unimportant.
She turned and went back into the house.
Denise stood there, waiting.
“Take care of her,” I said. “She reminds me of a poodle in the middle of a kennel of Dobermans.”
“You’re going to do something, aren’t you?” she asked.
I shifted from foot to foot. It was a question I didn’t really want to answer, either for her or for myself. But I already knew the answer, had known, in fact, since my phone conversation with Julie.
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“You’re the best student I ever had,” she said. She stepped down from the front porch steps, put her arms around me and kissed my cheek, then pulled back and looked up at me. “I like you, Bill Travis. Don’t get yourself killed.”
“I won’t,” I said, meaning it.
She turned quickly and went back into the house.
I stood there, the late afternoon sun beaming down on me, warming the chill inside me. After a brief time the two women emerged, each carrying a small overnight case.
“I’ll drive you to the airport,” I said.
“No way,” Mrs. LeRoy said. “My jeep is parked in back. I can’t stand that damned police car.”
“Fine,” I said. “Do you know where Lydia Stevens lives?”
She had turned to go around the house but she stopped abruptly, turned slowly to look back at me.
“Yes,” she said. “Why do you want to talk to that little whore?”
“It’s important,” I said.
She snapped off directions to Lydia Steven’s house and I did my best to remember it. If I couldn’t recall it later, I hoped that she was listed in the phone book. I didn’t relish the idea of using the police radio to try to get the information out of the dispatcher. There would be too many questions I’d have to answer.
I watched as a purple Jeep Cherokee pulled around the house billowing dust behind it. It paused briefly by the mailbox at the highway, then turned and was gone.
I turned around in a slow circle, taking in the countryside, the house, the highway, distant cattle lazing in the shade of stunted trees.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing here, Bill?” I asked.
And, of course, there was no answer for that.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was evening, the sun slanting down the western end of the sky and making for a play of light and shadow through the high, rain-destitute clouds.
A sporty little red Fiero two-seater that sat on the gravel and sand driveway beside the house was in desperate need of a good washing. The yard was as dry as bleached bone. The front door looked as though it hadn’t been opened since the place was built.
I knocked on the screen door at the side of the house. This was the true entrance, as evidenced by the well-worn path to the drive, ten feet away. The inner wood and glass door was wide open, but it was mostly shadow within with pale light through drawn shades on the other side of the house.
I waited, then knocked again a little more aggressively.
“Just a minute!” the young female voice said, clearly miffed at the intrusion. A thin shadow moved across the pale glow beyond and grew. Her footsteps were light and quick.
She paused at the screen, peering forward at me. She was near-sighted and she didn’t have her glasses on.
“Miss Stevens?”
“That’s right. Who are you and I don’t want any,” she said, making a question and a statement together at the same time.
“Bill Travis, ma’am,” I said. “I’m not selling anything.”
“What do you want?”
She was late twenties, blond, and she liked fragrant french soaps, the kind that aren’t made of whipped air, ash and chemicals. She smelled good. Maybe a little too good.
“I have permission from the local cops to talk to you about Molly Bristow.”
“I don’t have anything to say, especially not to a stranger.”
“I understand,” I said. “If my best friend were killed, I wouldn’t want to talk to a stranger about it any day of the week. The only problem is, the case never closed and her murderer is still likely walking around. And I need every bit of help I can get. I have a wife and kids at home and they would like to see their dad soon.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “The answer is no.”
“Miss Stevens,” I lowered my voice and held up a hand, as if motioning her into private conference. I don’t know where that gesture came from, but it felt appropriate as hell.
“What?”
“I’m sure you’re a good person. And you were her best friend. You tried to help her the best you could. Why not help her now?”
“Why do you think you know so much about me?” she asked.
The screen door between us was a physical thing, but the screen she held between herself and the rest of the world was another thing entirely.
“I just do,” I said.
“So tell me about me, Mr. Travis.”
“Um. On second thought, I’m sure you don’t want to know.”
“Hah! Try me,” she said, clearly interested.
I sighed. “Okay, then. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I studied the hazy face before me through the screen. What came then came from the gut, the tiniest of inferences, nuances. I started talking, unsure of what I was saying, but at the same time the rightness of what came forth was familiar to me, like the quiet presence of an old friend.
“You’ve got a boyfriend—he’s a lot older than you, but you don’t mind that so much—but the only problem is you’re afraid of commitment. He might break your heart and you just couldn’t handle that, especially right now. Maybe later, when you feel like you’re more mature. You smoke about half a pack of cigarettes a day, sometimes less, but never in your car and always outdoors, especially when it’s windy. It’s just that you have this dark fear that someone will smell it on you. Your teachers in sch
ool always told you how bright you were, and how much the world depended on you, but now you’re not so sure. You’re intelligent, though, very. And you know you are. But you won’t even allow yourself that much ego. And knowing it doesn’t seem to help the self-doubt.”
I paused. There was more there. Deeper things. Darker things better left unspoken. “How am I doing so far?”
During my brief discourse her demeanor went from self-satisfied grin to abrupt mild shock. Her lips parted very slightly.
“You can stop now,” she said.
“You sure?”
“Yes. Definitely. That’s not very nice. Are you some kind of psychic?”
“No. I just know people. Miss Stevens, I won’t do anything to hurt you, unless of course you get in my way, and even then it wouldn’t be my fault. So, will you talk to me now about Miss Bristow? I want to find out who killed her. And why.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Mr. Travis. Please, come inside.”
I nodded as the screen door opened for me and I slipped into another world entirely.
*****
Lydia Stevens home was dark and smelled of young woman, new paperback books and slick magazines.
She led me down the ill-lit hallway and into her kitchen, on the opposite side of the house. Outside her kitchen window the last vestige of day gave way to purplish twilight.
“Please sit down, Mr. Travis,” she said and motioned to a chair at her pristine kitchen table.
I took in a few dozen little perceptions all together in those scant seconds: a refrigerator with no magnets or pictures or esoteric signs or messages on it, the small dream-weaver hanging from a kitchen cabinet knob, a half-empty bottle of port wine on the counter, its cork chewed within an inch of its life, the light scent of cleanness, the growing dark lying itself down across the land outside and deepening the shadows within.
“I suppose you know,” she said, “the light hurts my eyes.”
“Okay,” I said.
She chuckled. “Thanks for not saying you knew that.”
“No problem,” I said. “I didn’t know it. I should have guessed it, though.”
She turned on the light on the stove.
“I’m seeing a light guy,” she said. “It’s a specialized field in neurology, you know.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I’m almost a ghoul. But dark is also quiet, and I like that.”
“I suppose it is, at that,” I said.
“You want something to drink? I’m having port.”
“Port would be perfect,” I said.
I waited with my elbows on her immaculate table as she pulled the cork with her teeth and poured the sweet wine into two coffee cups.
“I have to tell you, Mr. Travis—”
“Bill. Just plain Bill.”
“Fine, Just Plain Bill. I have to tell you, I don’t know why, but I think I might like you.”
“I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” I said.
“It’s so strange. It’s like... I know you, somehow.”
“So, do you want to take a turn at playing swami?” I asked her.
She sat down at my elbow, leaned her head on one hand and peered closely at me.
“Okay, here goes nothing,” she said. “You already told me you’re married with children. But I’d say it was a recent marriage. Last five years. Maybe more, maybe less.”
“Yeah. Go on.” I grinned at her like a fool.
“You love her, don’t you? You’ve never cheated on her. Actually, you never will. I’d say you don’t even look at other women in... um... that way.”
“I try not to. Maybe I do sometimes,” I said.
“I’d say you’re a dying breed, Bill Travis. Also, you’re not a cop, but somehow you help people out. You get pulled into things. Can’t help it, I’ll bet. Also, trouble follows you around, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” I admitted.
“Hey, you found me. That counts for something. How’m I doing so far?”
“So far, so good,” I said. “You see how easy it is, don’t you. Just impressions, and the implications from those impressions. At least that’s how I think I do it.”
“Yeah, yeah. I got all that,” Lydia Stevens waved a dismissive hand, far more interested in this new-found ability than in the mechanics behind it.
“But,” she continued, “there’s a hazy part of you. It’s a dark place. Not black. Not bad or anything like that... Just hazy. Indistinct. It’s a part of you people can’t see, or won’t see, or you won’t let them see.”
“Alright,” I said. It was time to start frying the bigger fish. “Lydia. Like I said, I’m here about Molly. How old were you two when she died?”
“You don’t like talking about you,” she said.
“I think,” I said, “we’ve both of us maxed out on the whole seeing auras thing, or whatever the hell it is.”
Lydia leaned back in her chair and took a sip of her wine.
“We were both seventeen,” she said. “That was—oh God, that was ten years ago.” She glanced up to a small calendar on the wall, squinted hard and leaned toward it. “Ten years and two weeks.”
“Were you there when she died?” I asked.
“No. If I had been there, I’d be dead now too. Even though I may know that subjectively, I still blame myself for not being there. It’s like... maybe I could have saved her.”
“How did she die?”
“He beat her to a pulp. I never got to see the body. They wouldn’t let me. They said I’d have nightmares if I saw. Believe me, Bill, my nightmares can conjure the worst things, just from some hint from my imagination.”
“I believe you,” I said, and sipped my port. “You know who did it?”
“I think it was her boyfriend. He was older.”
I waited.
“I don’t know his name, or who he was. I never knew. She was so secretive about him. I had to follow her to find out he even existed.”
“Tell me about when you followed her,” I said.
“Well, it was during the summer, between Junior and Senior Year of High School. Molly and I used to sleep over at each other’s place a lot. This one time she changed her plans about an hour before I was supposed to go over to her place at the ranch—”
“The Bristow Ranch,” I said.
“That’s right. But she wouldn’t say where she was going. Only that she had to go out. I thought maybe it was a father-daughter thing. Maybe a fund-raiser or one of those fancy dinners they used to go to. But it was the way she hemmed and hawed about it that made me suspicious.”
“So you followed her.”
“Yeah. There’s the back way from her place into town, just a little lane we used to walk down. If you’re going by car it’s faster to take the highway. But on foot, you take the lane. Her dad wasn’t going to let her drive until she was eighteen, no matter what. And me, my mother didn’t even own a car. So both of us were seventeen and on foot. That night it was dark. No moon. No nothing. Me, I’ve got a pair of really good night eyes. I guess it goes with the condition. Maybe in my past life I was a lemur or something. So I waited there in the shadows near the road where I knew she might happen by, and sure enough at about the moment I’m going to give up and walk back home, here comes Molly plodding along. That girl didn’t walk anywhere—she plodded. To this day I see rich girls and think ‘a plodder.’ I followed her. She went to this rent house her old man owns. And there she met her boyfriend.”
“What did you see?” I prompted her.
“All I got to see was his silhouette against a dim porch light. But she was seventeen and she was seeing an older man. Someone in his thirties or so. Molly was always secretive about such things. And she certainly wouldn’t have wanted her dad to know. He would have taken after him with a shotgun.”
“You got that he was in his thirties or forties from a silhouette?”
“Yeah. Like you got that I smoke half a pack a day through my screen door.”
“
Oh,” I said. “Okay. Lydia, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Edgar Bristow is dead.”
“What? When?”
“Early hours, this morning. That’s what the coroner says, anyway. Beat to a pulp with a tire iron. Were you two friends?”
“No. Not anymore. I suppose we should be—should have been—after what he did for my Mom. But really, Bill, I could never stand the son of a bitch. Even when I was a kid, I always felt like he was staring at my behind.”
“Maybe he was,” I said.
“Yeah. Maybe he was. My mom had polio when she was a kid. Bristow built a hospital for her. That’s how the story goes, anyway.”
“Heard that one,” I said.
“It’s partially true. What you don’t hear is how she died there not long after I graduated High School. She got a staph infection and died. If my arm somehow got cut off in an accident, I wouldn’t go to that place.”
“Oh. Okay. I didn’t know.”
“But I’m sorry he’s dead,” she said. It was a banal statement, with significance equal to an unchanged weather forecast. “Look, you needed something on Molly’s killer, and I think that you think the two deaths are related—and who knows, they may be—but I don’t think I have anything more that I could tell you that could help.”
“Where did you see him?” I asked. “The silhouette in the dim porchlight?”
“Oh. Across town. Some house. Maybe I could find it again. That was so long ago.”
“You can find it,” I said. “Hey, it’s dark outside. The perfect cover for investigation work, and perfect for your light-sensitive eyes. You want to go for a ride with me?”
She grinned a wide, toothy grin, and I enjoyed it.
“Sure,” she said.
“I’ll even let you smoke.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Full dark had descended by the time I emerged from Lydia Stevens’ home.
We walked across the street to where I had parked the Sheriff’s cruiser. Lydia stopped and gawked at it.
“This is Sheriff LeRoy’s cruiser. Why are you driving it?” Lydia asked.
“Because Sheriff LeRoy is likely trying to make bail right now,” I told her, as if it were the most natural reply in the world. “Then again, it’s sort of interesting that you can pick Buster’s cruiser out of the crowd of the four or five that likely belong to this county.”
