by George Wier
“I’d say it’s not standard county issue. You know your guns,” I said. I could see why it was a favored gun. Mirror-like steel finish, rosewood grips, six-inch barrel, for accurate long-range shooting.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know my guns, but I’ve known men who knew their guns.”
I looked at her in the dim trunk light. It was time to broach the subject.
“How long were you and Buster lovers?” I asked.
She put her hand lightly on my arm. I waited, but she didn’t say a word.
“How long?” I pressed, quietly.
“Five years,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. “We never got married. We were going to, though.”
“You don’t have to explain any further. Thank you,” I said, just as quietly.
“For what?”
“For the truth.”
I pulled the gun from the holster, thumbed the release to the chamber and it opened up, revealing a full load.
“They’re probably thirty-eight loads,” she said. “I don’t believe Buster could kill someone if he wanted to, but he once told me what a three fifty-seven round could do a man’s chest. He said anybody who would use one was just a murderer.”
“Buster was right about that,” I said. A thirty-eight could kill a man just as easily as a elephant rifle, but I had seen the holes that a magnum could leave in a man. Magnum rounds were man-killers.
“Let’s go,” Lydia said. “Talk about guns always makes me sad.”
“Fine,” I said, closed up the chamber, unloosened my belt and slipped the gun into place snugly at my side, the way I used to wear one in what seemed like a lifetime ago. I suppose it was, since it had been nearly twenty years.
Lydia was almost through the barbed wire before I caught up with her.
*****
It became apparent to me even in the dim, star-lit night that Lydia’s path was an even ridge running across the grassy, rolling hills.
“Do you know any of the history of this land?” I asked her.
“Maybe,” she said. “This side of the fence is Edgar’s land. There’s an old rock quarry over that way,” she pointed to our left into the darkness. “The story goes that this was an old railroad embankment, but they tore up the rails for iron during World War II.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The whole country was busy making bullets, tanks, battleships and bombers. They used every ounce of scrap iron there was. It doesn’t surprise me.”
“There’s more. The way I heard it, this spur line was put in so that some of the granite here could go towards constructing the state capitol.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” I said.
“Yeah. Also, that’s how they built the Courthouse here.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’ve got to get down there some time tomorrow. See the circus.”
“You really think there will be a lot of media coverage?” she asked.
I laughed. “When is there not? Small towns are leaky things. A prominent millionaire philanthropist is murdered and the County Sheriff is taken in for questioning by the F.B.I. There will be a media circus.”
“Maybe the town will make some money off it.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “That’s not the kind of money a town like this needs.”
There was a pause in the conversation as we walked along, picking our way around scrub mesquite and clumps of grasses that threatened to trip us up.
After another ten minutes, Lydia said it.
“Bill. I wish you weren’t married.”
“I don’t,” I said, before I could help myself.
“I know,” she said in a little girl voice that was both infuriating and terribly defenseless at the same time.
She stopped.
“What?” I asked.
“There,” Lydia said, and pointed. I looked off into the night and saw a large edifice on a rocky hill.
“That’s the Bristow ranch house?”
“Yeah. No lights either. The place has been deserted for a long time.”
“Before we go up there,” I said, “tell me about Molly. Who she was?”
“I have to say I don’t know. I was always trying to figure that out, myself. I think maybe it was the mystery of Molly that pulled me towards her.”
“I understand,” I said, and waited.
“We were in grade school together, but we never became very close until Junior High. She was a frumpy little girl, but very... uh... let me just say during High School she had desires her body couldn’t compensate for.”
“Sex, right?” I asked.
“Yeah. And that was the one thing we couldn’t talk about. I know guys think all girls talk about is sex, and vice-versa for that matter, but it was the one off-limits topic for us. I’m not sure why, it just worked out that way. Or didn’t, actually. I believe she may have had an affair with one of her teachers in High School. It was just so subtle, you know. That was Molly. Subtle.”
“What about drugs?” I asked.
“We smoked a lot of pot together. And then there was the coke. Her money, you know. Or really her father’s.”
“You don’t think her death was in any way drug-related?”
“No. Not a chance. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in small towns like this one.”
Don’t bet on it, I thought, but kept my mouth shut.
“Okay,” I said, quietly. “I knew that. What about you? Do you have any enemies?”
The question took her by surprise. Her head bobbed a little as she swallowed.
“Uh... Y-y-yeah.”
I waited.
“Buster’s wife, maybe.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“Sometimes the town is a little too small, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah. Let’s go on up there,” I said.
*****
We came to a dirt road, which Lydia explained was an extension of a private drive leading from the house to a distant landing strip. We stepped gingerly through the barbed wire there and turned up the lane toward the dark house on the hill.
By my watch it was just after 10:30 at night. Back home my dog Franklin would be whining and scratching at the back door to be let out to do his business, little Jennifer would be sleeping, Jessica would be in her room, her headphones on and her head banging up and down to a strange beat. Julie would be either missing me, or cursing me, or both, and reading Isabel Allende or watching some chick flick and feeling the baby kicking inside her; another one on the way, another precious mouth to feed, and in the future scraped knees and broken hearts that only a father could help mend.
The disused roadway wound its way past rocky hillocks until it turned abruptly into a closed, wrought-iron gate, standing silent sentinel to a dark house.
The gate was unlocked.
We strolled up the long driveway under starlight with no moon and only the deep dark, the stillness, and the overarching swath of the Milky Way for company.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Color. Invisibility. Effect.
Black threads in profusion, the silk of some human spider.
These were my thoughts during the brief walk up to the Bristow house.
Lydia was certain that Molly Bristow had been murdered by her anonymous boyfriend ten years before. I felt reasonably certain that the same killer had taken the life of her father that morning.
There is a difference between killing and murder, as subtle and yet as fine a line as a mighty river seen etched across the surface of the planet from outer space. A killing can be almost any act that results in the taking of a life and covers such eventualities as stupid inattention, self-defense, or the heat of battle. Murder is, as recognized in all cultures, an entirely different animal: a beast as black and light-absorbing as a panther in the night. It is a calculated thing, a cold and heartless equation drawn up by an insectile circuitry one supposes should otherwise resemble a human mind.
Two such minds living and breathing and carr
ying out a life that by all outward appearances was utterly normal within the same small Texas town—well, the odds weren’t completely against it. Two such, however, ten years apart, coldly taking the lives of first daughter and then father—it made for too lopsided an equation. And I had it figured that most mathematicians worth their salt would show enough reverence to those brief, twin and parallel horizontal lines we know of as the ‘equal sign’ to agree with me. Me, I like things simple and I appreciate the quantifiable, finite things, whether real or conceptual, for their utter capability to hold us firmly and properly down to the ground.
But then again, I reminded myself as we swung around a broad curve and into direct line of sight with the main house above us, equal signs rarely apply where matters of the human heart are concerned.
“So no one lives here anymore. Bristow lived in his hangar?” I asked Lydia.
“That’s how the story goes,” she said. “You know, talk in a small town. I haven’t been back here since—”
“Ten years?”
“Yeah. Before, it was Mr. Edgar in the main house with a ranch hand that doubled as a butler, with Molly in the pool house. It was her nod toward having some kind of privacy. Also, I believe it was so she could... um... ‘entertain’ in the late hours.”
“Her lover, then,” I said.
Lydia didn’t say, but her silence worked out as an assent. If it was my best friend, I’d be just as reticent to offer any word in defamation.
“You must have been suspicious,” I said. “Both then and now.”
“Always. Especially since her murder. I look at the men I see. When I was working dispatch—people like me with light-sensitive eyes are suited for staying up all night talking on a police radio—I would look at the men who came in and out going on and off duty and wonder ‘is this the guy who killed Molly?’”
“Dispatcher, huh? You worked for Buster. Was that how you two got started together?”
“No. We met, got together, then he hired me. He wanted me where he knew he could find me. I don’t think he ever really trusted me.”
Should he have? I thought, but didn’t dare ask.
“At the moment I’ll bet Samantha is just loving every minute of all the attention,” she said.
“Alright. Any one person stand out in your mind? I mean, as suspects?”
“There were a couple of weird ones. There’s always those. They come and go. But not that weird.”
The house before us grew.
“I don’t know,” I said. “People can be downright strange behind closed doors. You’re a big girl. You know how rotten people can get. I’m sure you’ve heard it before: the neighbor is being interviewed after someone kills their entire family and they say: ‘He was such a quiet fellow, always courteous.’”
“That gives me the willies, Bill,” she said. “Sometimes you fool me. One minute I think you’re in the Glee Club, the next minute I’m wondering whether you’re a member of the Hemlock Society.”
“Sorry.”
We were twenty feet from the front porch when we both nearly jumped out of our skins. A bright sodium-arc light came on abruptly, temporarily blinding us. Our vision had adjusted to the near complete darkness of the long road up. I had to wince sharply and look away.
“Security light,” I said. “In circuit with a motion detector.”
“Dammit. I nearly wet my pants again. Is stuff like this going to keep happening?”
“You can bet on it,” I said.
“Thank you, Mr. Optimist.”
*****
“You want to go in the main house?” Lydia asked. “We’d have to break in. And the way the lights work around here, the place probably has an alarm system.”
“Is it open around back?” I asked. “I’d prefer to see the pool house where Molly lived.”
“It should be easy to get to, unless someone built a new fence or a wall around it.”
I followed her into the darkness to the side of the house. A path was there, hard-packed dirt bordered by grass the consistency of powdered snow.
No lights were on out back. The pool was there in the starlight, but it was partially covered over by an old, weather-beaten tarp that had been rent and torn by who-knew-what. Something leapt from the edge of the pool and there was a splash that was more like the plop of someone dropping a marble into their chili. A rank, haywater smell hung about the air.
“Gross,” Lydia whispered. “I had no idea the place had gone to hell. One of the rumors is that Edgar kept a cot in his hangar at the airport. That he lived there and practically never came home. I believe it now.”
The pool house was a smudge of blackness against a background of stars. Beside it drooped the long fronds of tall willow tree.
“Spooky,” Lydia whispered.
“What?”
“I just got the shivers. It’s like—you ever get the feeling you were haunted by a ghost?”
It took her saying that for me to recognize the feeling that had been with me ever since I pulled up in front of her house. Haunted? Possibly, but not likely. But followed? I hoped not. I patted the gun at my side for reassurance.
“Yeah,” I said, choosing not to alarm her.
Then I felt it.
He was there in the darkness, not far away. I could feel him the way one feels a head cold coming on a day in advance.
“Phantoms,” she whispered to herself.
I held the flashlight at arms length toward the landscape that rolled down from the hill and clicked it on, expecting to catch a surprised interloper. No such luck. I panned it about, then across the pool and the back of the house and down the hill along the opposite side. Nothing.
“What are you doing?”
“Just making sure,” I said.
I turned the light toward the door of the pool house, reached out a hand and grasped the worn knob there. It turned easily and the door creaked open. Dust drifted down from overhead.
“No one’s been in here for a long time,” Lydia said.
Over time the pool house had become a storage shed for old lawn equipment, garden tools, and all the bric-a-brac too valuable to discard and either too dirty or too large to keep in the main house.
“Yuck,” Lydia said. “This place used to be spotless. I remember...”
“Yeah?”
I pushed the door all the way back and stepped inside.
“I remember she had turned it into her own house, with curtains and bookshelves, tables and rugs. Anything she wanted, the old man would get it for her. She even had a real zebra-skin rug.”
There was little room for walking, but a clear trail led through the place.
“Careful, okay?” I said. “Unless you’ve had your tetanus booster lately.”
She chuckled.
We wended our way carefully through the front room and down a short hallway.
“Molly’s bedroom is on the left.”
The doorknob looked a little too new. I felt that damned chill again.
“Not again,” Lydia whispered.
“Hush,” I said.
The cold knob turned under my hand and, as I knew it would, opened onto a carbon-copy of the black room in Edgar Bristow’s rent house.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“No,” Lydia whispered. “This isn’t right. No!” her voice grew in pitch.
“It’s okay,” I said. “No one’s here.”
The front door creaked. Out of reflex I threw the flashlight beam back down the hall toward the door.
“It’s just the wind,” I added.
“I–I–I want to go home, Bill.”
“You’re not going home,” I said. “Not tonight. Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen.”
“This is too much.”
The room was the same dark purple, the floor held not a mote of dust. I didn’t bother sweeping a hand overhead. I aimed the flashlight directly overhead and could make out the forest of black thread there.
“I know,” I said. “Alrigh
t. She died in this room?”
“Yes. In her bed. It’s all gone now.” Lydia’s voice broke.
I reached out for her, slid my arm behind her back and she pressed her face into my shoulder which quickly grew damp with her tears and warm with her breath.
“We’re going, Lydia,” I said. “Now.”
She nodded against me.
I pushed her ever so gently, stepped around her, took her hand, and led her back outside where the warm breeze gently blew.
*****
Reg Morissey was standing there in the bright security light when we came around to the front of the house. With him was Burt, the ambulance driver, except now he wore a Sheriff’s uniform, belt and sidearm.
“What gives?” I asked.
“He deputized all of us,” Burt said, jerking his thumb in Reg’s direction.
“Oh. Okay. What’s happening downtown?” I asked Reg.
“We’ve got traffic routed past the square and the streets blocked off. There will be no press blocking my streets.”
“Whoa there,” I said. “Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”
“No. I got calls from all the major networks. They’re coming.”
“Probably already here,” I said. “I wonder who leaked the news.”
“Who knows. When I find out who, though, they’ll be sorry. Did you find anything here?”
I thought about the black room. If I told this character about it, he’d have some kind of hemorrhage. There would be no telling which way he would jump.
“No,” I said. “Nothing.”
He looked from me to Lydia, appraising us, then back to me again.
“I called the Rangers. They told me to use my own discretion about you.”
“What does your discretion say, Reg?” Lydia asked.
“My discretion keeps its own counsel, Miss Stevens.”
“That’s the way it should be,” I said. “Reg, can you do me a huge favor?”
