by George Wier
Night fell.
I followed deputy Ross half a dozen blocks to the fallout shelter, a small one-story tan brick building complete with crumbling eaves and incomprehensible spray-painted graffiti. Two other vehicles were already there, one which I had fully anticipated and the other which I couldn’t have predicted in a million years. Parked behind Agent Bruce’s black Crown Victoria was a purple Jeep Cherokee. Sitting inside it in the passenger seat was Denise, my flight instructor.
She smiled and waved when she saw me. She frowned when I didn’t return either the smile or the wave. I walked to her window.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked her.
“Bill, you have such a way with people. I came to make sure you made it back to Austin alright.”
“You’ve been in Trantor’s Crossing all along?” I asked.
“Ever since that woman shot Sheriff LeRoy this morning.”
“Is Mrs. LeRoy inside there?” I asked, pointing toward the building with its gaping steel door.
“Sure. With that federal agent guy.”
“Oh boy,” I said under my breath. “How did they know about Burt?” I asked her.
“It’s been all over the police radio. Every cop within a hundred miles is looking for Burt Sanderson and a wayward ambulance.”
“Okay,” I said.
Denise clutched at my arm before I could move away.
“What’s going on, Bill? I thought they had the killer when they arrested the woman who shot the Sheriff?”
“Denise, life is never that easy. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She let go of me and I turned. I took a few long strides, remembered my manners and turned back to her. “Thanks for coming back for me,” I said. “I’ll need that ride. Hopefully some time tonight.”
Denise shrugged.
“And roll up your window and lock your door,” I told her. “There’s a killer on the road.”
*****
“What the hell are you doing here?” Agent Bruce asked me.
He had turned abruptly when I stepped down into the basement level and onto a piece of strewn cardboard that crackled underfoot. Beside him was Samantha LeRoy.
“I should be asking that,” I said. “Are you collecting evidence or are you trying to figure out where he went?”
“Yes,” Agent Bruce said.
“Ah. Both, then. Mrs. LeRoy, how is your husband?”
“Recovering. He’ll be alright. He keeps asking to talk to you. Why haven’t you stopped by to see him?” She asked, her tone mildly accusative, as if I were somehow responsible for her husband. I felt the urge to be a little less than nice, but squelched it. I suppose that’s why some people seem to believe I’m a deep thinker—my pauses are usually not for the weighing of evidence but so that I can retain a scintilla of good will from others.
“I wanted to, but I’ve been a little busy,” I said, and let her ponder that.
“Mr. Travis,” Agent Bruce said, “this investigation is now out of the hands of the, uh, locals. I think it’s alright for you to go back home. Your pilot friend insisted you complete your lesson, which is the only reason she’s still here.”
“Well,” I said. “I appreciate that. My question is, why is this now a federal investigation?”
Agent Bruce frowned, then sighed and turned back to the box he was rifling when I first came in.
“Because,” he said over his shoulder, “serial killers are traditionally FBI jurisdiction.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Serial killer. As in series.
What amount does it take to make a series? Say you put a tree on a hill. What you’ve got is a lone tree on a hill. But put another one there. Is it a series? Possibly, if the trees are the same variety, planted at about the same time. The only way to know for sure is to cut the damned things down and count their rings, which would be the case of destroying the evidence in order to analyze it. They do that with dogs who bite people—dogs who have no papers evidencing rabies shots. So, are two of anything in a row a series? Maybe, but not usually. But then put a third tree there. Put the same separation between the second and the third as the first two, put them in a line, make them the same variety, about the same age, and what do you have? A series. An intentional series.
“Who else was beat to a pulp?” I asked the two backs in the low-ceilinged fallout shelter. A lone light bulb hung from a frayed cord in the center of the room. But for that one light source, the place would be pitch black.
Agent Bruce and Samantha LeRoy paused, exchanged slow, knowing looks, and turned to face me slowly.
“What are you talking about?” Agent Bruce asked me.
“It’s sort of interesting how you do that,” I said. “Answer a question with a question. A killer taking possibly two lives ten years apart does not a serial killer make. And you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have been so damned fast to get here after Edgar Bristow was killed with a tire iron. Unless—”
“Unless?” Agent Bruce said.
“Unless you had a dusty old red flag on a file somewhere. An open file. Open as in ‘unclosed’. I’m sure you’re very familiar with what I’m talking about. The kind of file that bothers you when you’re between emergencies and other ordinary business. You know the kind of cases I'm talking about: the ones that makes you go out late at night in search of a bottle of Mylanta.”
“Keep talking,” Agent Bruce said.
“How many?” I asked a question instead. Two can play that game.
He sighed. “Four. Four exactly.”
“Care to tell me about them?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said, and began to turn away from me again.
“You’re wondering about dark purple,” I said.
Agent Bruce froze. He shivered, visibly.
“That’s the same effect it had on me. The first purple room you’ve been in—was that ten years ago? Or earlier?”
“What is he talking about?” Mrs. LeRoy asked.
“Nothing you need to know about,” he told her. “How did you know about the purple rooms?”
“Because of the one in Edgar Bristow’s rent house. A bedroom in the same house where Molly Bristow visited her secret lover just before she was murdered. Also, there’s the one that used to be Molly Bristow’s bedroom in the poolhouse on the Bristow estate.”
“You have been busy,” he said.
“Yeah. But there’s only been two murders of which I’m aware, which doesn’t account for purple room number three.”
“Another one?”
“Yeah. The one that used to be Lydia Stevens’ bedroom. It wasn’t like that yesterday. It is today. The paint wasn’t one hundred percent dry yet. And I just left Lydia Stevens’ presence. Let me tell you, she’s a little shook up, but she was breathing fine.”
“You just got more than you bargained for, Mr. Travis,” Agent Bruce said.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, not liking the musing timbre in his voice. A timbre I’d never heard before. And suddenly I really didn’t want to know what he meant after all.
“You’re officially on the case.”
“Uh. You can’t afford me.”
“Your client is now the United States Government. I’m sure we can afford you. Also I’m sure you can’t afford not to take us on as a client.”
“And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked. Damn. Bad question.
“You don’t want to know.”
“How about a little hint?” I asked.
“Alright. In for a penny—the Treasury Department is a very short walk from the Justice Department. It’s more like a stroll.”
“My books are squeaky clean,” I said.
“What about your clients?” he asked. “What about their books?”
“You,” I said, “are a low man. If you want my help, why don’t you just ask? I might be amenable.”
He smiled. Lewis Carroll would have loved that toothy, broad grin.
; “Mr. Travis? Would you help me?”
“Sure,” I said.
*****
I found the spool-o in Burt's fallout shelter home. Cases of the stuff were there in the rear of the place, stacked neatly against a wall. Each wax-lined cardboard box contained a hundred and twenty spools. Counting eight full cases at fifty feet per spool, there was enough there to purple and hang every bedroom in Trantor’s Crossing.
What I wanted to know was why. But, of course Burt Sanderson wasn’t around to answer at the moment.
“Remember the string?” I called back across the room. Mrs. LeRoy had gone back outside to wait for us with Denise. I wondered what they were chatting about. Probably me.
“What string?” Felix Bruce called back.
“Ceiling. Purple room.”
A pause. “Yeah. Medical thread.”
“I know,” I said. “F-1 thread.”
The rustling noises in the far corner ceased. Heavy footsteps came my way. He regarded the boxes.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Anyone ever figure out why?” I asked. “You know, it would take awhile to hang a few thousand little pieces of thread.”
He shook his head.
We stood there in silence for a moment. Agent Bruce interrupted it. “There are about twenty gallons of paint over there behind an old printing machine.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Dark purple?”
“Close enough.
“Let me see that paint.”
I followed Felix Bruce back to the far corner. He had a little penlight flashlight and he shined it behind the ancient, dusty AB Dick printing machine.
“No dust,” I said.
“What?”
“There’s no dust. Also, they didn’t start using latex paint regularly until the 1970s. Before that—hell, I don’t even remember what they used. I seem to recall it was lead-based, though. All this stuff is new.”
Felix laughed.
“What?”
“It’s the same with every painter I’ve ever known. Always painting someone else’s house, never enough time to paint their own.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But then again, I believe this painter leaves a corpse as a calling card. In order to paint this place, he’d have to kill himself.”
“Reminds me of some ethnic jokes I’ve heard,” Felix said.
“Who is he, I wonder?” I asked.
“Who is who?”
“Burt. Our friendly neighborhood emergency medical technician. I mean, who is he, really?”
“I don’t know. Yet. We’ve got people working on it. Give me another twenty minutes and I’ll have everything there is to have.”
“Good. Look, Agent Bruce—”
“We’re working together,” he said. “Call me Felix.”
I chuckled. “Fine. Look, Felix, I think we better go talk to Sheriff LeRoy. He’s been asking for me. It must be important.”
“That’s one of our stops,” he said.
“What do you have lined up in front of that?”
“The very first murder scene,” he said. “From 1969.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
According to Felix, Bristow Lumber Company had been closed for over thirty-five years but the building and the yard still existed. I rode with Felix Bruce while Deputy Ross followed us. Mrs. LeRoy and Denise went to the hospital with my promise to them that I'd be there soon.
Ladd Ross followed us in one of the Chalmers County sheriff cruisers, just in case we would need any back-up. The funny part of it was, I had turned in my pistol to Reg and so was weaponless, but Felix and I were to go in first when we stopped by the old Bristow Lumber Company.
We meandered through town and to one of the main highways. We were in the fast food district and my stomach clamored for attention. I rolled my window down and took in a breath through my nose, letting the scents wander through my head.
“Bill, roll up the damned window,” Felix said.
“Not a chance. You smell that?”
“What?”
“Food. Let’s stop. I’m damned hungry, Felix. What about you?”
“My wife doesn’t want me eating fast food,” he said.
“Same here. What’s your point? Our wives aren’t here.”
“Sometimes, Bill,” he said, “you’re alright.”
We pulled into drive-in burger stand and Deputy Ross pulled up next to us, looked my way and rolled his eyes. We all ordered. Burgers, fries, chili dogs, cokes. I’m no longer a kid with a cast-iron stomach, but sometimes, in order to live, you have to live. Besides, I once knew a guy who was in his mid-forties—a champion long-distance runner and overall health nut. He was out for an easy jog one fine day and dropped dead of a massive coronary. On the other hand my great-grandmother ate whatever she was hungry for whenever she was hungry and lived to be a hundred and two. So go figure. That was my justification, anyway, for the sins I was about to commit against my body.
While we were sitting there waiting for our order and smelling the food scents on the night air and watching high school girls delivering trays of fast food, a dumpy, late-middle aged giant of a man wearing a horizontal green and blue striped pullover shirt and a Chicago Cubs baseball cap appeared out of the late evening twilight on foot and took a seat at one of the outdoor tables. There was something not right about him. One of the young, lithe high school girls on roller skates came over, greeted him with a look of bored intensity, rolled her eyes and asked him if he wanted a coke. He let out a bellow that the blond pixie took for a ‘yes’. The guy was either mentally challenged to some degree or had a hell of a speech impediment. Regardless, I could tell that he was a regular there.
Felix Bruce looked over at me. I shrugged.
“Okay, Bill,” he said. “History Lesson number one.”
“Alright. You’ve got my attention.”
“Edgar Bristow. He was born on February 17, 1926.”
“Aquarius,” I said.
“What? Oh. Yeah. Joined the Army in ‘42—”
“So I’ve heard. Can you give me the Cliff’s Notes version?”
“That’s what I’m doing. He fights a personal war against Hitler, emerges a hero, comes to Texas and takes over the lumber yard after his uncle gets killed. Marries three different women. Six kids from those various unions.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “There are going to be a bunch of them drifting into town for the funeral.”
“You said it. But only two. Two with mainly their spouses and kids. All told we—that is, the Bureau—think about seventeen people. Bristow was worth about three hundred million. They will all want their larger-than-anyone-else’s slice of that pie.”
“Yeah. That’s how it normally works. Probably won’t wait until his body is the temperature of the burial plot before they start in with the scheming.”
“Exactly. We want to have all of this resolved before they even know we are involved.”
“Makes sense, I guess, but why would the Bureau care?”
“Some of that money is ours.”
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“All those government contracts that made him rich.”
“Did Bristow welsh on you somehow?” I asked, chuckling.
“Bristow, according to our files, was the original welsher. If he had been here during the late 1800s, he would have sold whiskey and guns to the Indians, then sold rifles to the settlers to combat them when they started burning and pillaging. And he would have financed it all on credit, never repaid.”
“The guy was supposed to be a war hero,” I said. “Larger than life.”
“War heroes are people too,” Felix said. “Along about 1950, J. Edgar Hoover gave Bristow a very lucrative contract to supply the lumber and concrete for a Civil Defense initiative.”
“Fallout shelters,” I said.
“Right. Fallout shelters in every city, town and hamlet in the United States. The one we just left was one of the first ever constructed. A protot
ype, if you will.”
“What business would the FBI have in Civil Defense? That sounds like it should have been the individual states, cities and whatnot.”
“Remember, there was no Federal Emergency Management system. No Homeland Security. No nothing. And Hoover was the most powerful man in the United States.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
“The Cliff’s Notes version,” Felix said. “Business as usual until 1969 with Bristow, age 43, not finishing anything he started and Hoover and many others were pressing large sums of money into his hands.”
“The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing,” I said. “Got it. So, 1969?”
“In 1969 Edgar Bristow’s second-born, a blond-haired beauty of sixteen, was beat to death in the offices of the Bristow Lumber Company.”
“My God.”
“Bristow went nuts—he stayed nuts, too.”
“Any man would,” I said.
“Right. He called in Hoover, who sent his best men down here to solve the case. Bristow was out for blood and he was going to move heaven and earth until he got the killer.”
“But he never did.”
“Right.”
During this conversation, I watched the odd man with the bulging belly gulp down the entire contents of a forty ounce soft drink. He looked over at me and stared for the space of several minutes. Then he scratched himself in a most incommodious manner, got up and stalked off into the darkness again, leaving the empty styrofoam cup there to be blown over by the wind.
“What was her name?” I asked.
“Lydia. Lydia Bristow.”
“That, my friend, is creepy,” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
“You said there was another one. Four, exactly, you said.”
“Right. The next one was in 1975.”
“Another Bristow kid?”
“Yeah.”
“A girl, right? I’ll bet all the survivors—the remaining offspring—are men.”
“That’s right.”
“Who was she?”
“Her name was Barbara.”
“From the first wife, or the second?”
