Blue Lonesome

by Bill Pronzini

  “Spit what out? What could he know?”

  “He believes he’s responsible for Tess’s death.”

  “He … what?”

  “He’s not, I tried to convince him of that, but he’s too guilt-ridden to listen to the truth.”

  “For God’s sake, Jim, don’t dance with me. Just say it.”

  He told her. Exactly what Lonnie had told him.

  She took it stoically. But when he was done she sank onto one of the dinette chairs and slapped the table, hard, with the palm of her hand—a gesture of angry frustration. “That poor kid. Both those poor kids. If he’d just told me …”

  “He couldn’t,” Messenger said. “You’re too close; he was afraid you’d hate him.”

  “As if I could. All my hate’s for the lowlife son of a bitch Anna married. If she did blow his head off she had every right. I’d’ve done it myself if I’d known.”

  “She didn’t kill anybody. You don’t believe that anymore, after what happened to John T.?”

  “No, not anymore.”

  “Lonnie does. He’ll go right on believing it until the real murderer is exposed.”

  “Maybe if I talked to him …”

  “It’d do more harm than good. He can’t face you as long as he feels responsible.”

  “He ask you not to tell me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why did you?”

  “You have a right to know,” Messenger said. “Too many secrets in Beulah as it is.”

  “And it may have something to do with the killings and two heads are better than one. All right. But I don’t see how it could.”

  “Neither do I, right now. One thing I’m fairly sure of: Tess didn’t tell her mother, in spite of what Lonnie believes.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Anna kept a pocket watch that Dave’s father gave him when he was a boy; it’s among her effects in San Francisco. She wouldn’t have held on to a memento like that if she’d known he was molesting her daughter.”

  “Hell, no, she wouldn’t. Child abuse sickened her as much as it does me.”

  “Would she’ve let on to you if she’d known or suspected?”

  “Not right away, maybe. But sooner or later.”

  Messenger said, “I wonder—” but he didn’t finish the thought or the sentence. Outside Buster began a new round of barking; and a few seconds later Messenger heard the rattle and growl of an incoming car.

  Dacy was on her feet. She said, “If that’s another goddamn TV truck …” and hurried to the front door, scooping up her rifle as she opened it. He followed her onto the porch.

  Not the media this time; the car that pulled up in front was a state police cruiser with two occupants. The driver was a beefy individual dressed in a Western-style suit, Stetson hat, and string tie. His passenger was Ben Espinosa.

  Dacy leaned the Weatherby against the porch railing as the two men climbed out. “More bullshit,” she said to Messenger in an undertone. But her expression, now, was one of weary resignation.

  The beefy man was a state police investigator named Loes. Despite his outfit, he was strictly professional: direct, businesslike manner and the diction of a college graduate. Espinosa was deferential to him. As he would be to anyone in a position of authority, Messenger thought. The sheriff looked haggard, and relieved to have the investigation out of his hands. But his gaze, whenever it cut to Messenger, showed an antipathy that bordered on hatred.

  He blames me. The whole town does by now. Hypocrites. If I’m responsible for John T., they’re responsible for Anna. Blood on their hands long before there was any on mine.

  Loes questioned Dacy and him in greater detail than Espinosa had. His attitude was noncommittal: just a good, thorough cop doing his job without any bias. From the questions, Messenger determined that the authorities still had no idea why John T. had gone to his brother’s ranch at such a late hour, or whom he had met there. He put this into words, and Loes confirmed it.

  “Mr. Roebuck was last seen at the casino around ten o’clock,” he said. “He didn’t go home from there. No one seems to know where he went.”

  “Did his wife expect him?”

  “She says she didn’t. He kept irregular hours.”

  Dacy said, “It could’ve been a woman he met.”

  “What makes you say that, Mrs. Burgess?”

  “Nothing. It was just a suggestion.”

  “Was he involved with a woman, to your knowledge?”

  “Not to my knowledge, no. But it’s two miles from the valley road up there—two miles of bad road, especially at night. Why go all that way unless you wanted to make sure you were alone with whoever you were meeting?”

  “A good point,” Loes said. “But I can make another just as good: There are hundreds of places around Beulah where a man and a woman could meet in complete privacy. Why would Mr. Roebuck pick his brother’s ranch, where his brother was murdered?”

  “I can’t answer that. Maybe on account of it’s close to his own property.”

  “An even better reason to pick a spot farther away.”

  “Yeah. See what you mean.”

  Messenger said, “You must’ve searched the area up there pretty thoroughly. Find anything at all?”

  “Nothing conclusive.”

  “Well, we did find the gun,” Espinosa said.

  Loes slanted a look at him. Then he shrugged and said, “Yes, we found the murder weapon. Thirty-eight-caliber Ruger Magnum loaded with hollow-points. Evidently it was thrown away into the scrub after the shooting.”

  “Hollow-point bullets? Any significance in that?”

  “Hell,” Espinosa said, “everybody out here uses ’em.”

  “Including you, Sheriff?”

  “Watch what you say to me, man. I got no patience left with you.”

  Loes said, “Hang on to your temper, Ben.” Then, to Messenger, “No significance. Not under the circumstances.”

  “How many times was he shot?”

  “Just once. A thirty-eight hollow-point fired at point-blank range does considerable damage.”

  “What about fingerprints on the gun?”

  “Smudged.”

  “I don’t suppose it was registered?”

  “Yes. To Mr. Roebuck. According to his wife he kept it in the glove compartment of his car.”

  “Then whoever shot him knew him well enough to know that.”

  “Or someone he didn’t know found the gun by accident,” Loes said. “Or took it away from him during an argument.”

  A few more questions, a tight-lipped warning from Espinosa—“I’ll be seeing you again, Messenger, so you stay where you can be found”—and the two men folded themselves back into the cruiser. Dacy watched it all the way to the gate, shading her eyes against splinters of sunlight that came off the rear window. When Loes made the turn onto the valley road, she turned to Messenger.

  “We may’ve just made a mistake, you know.”

  “Mistake?”

  “Not telling Loes about Billy Draper and Pete Teal.”

  “I thought about it,” he said. “But I didn’t want to say anything in front of Espinosa. He thinks I exaggerated what happened at Mackey’s and he’d claim I was trying to shift suspicion. Besides, we don’t have anything definite against them yet.”

  “Could be one of them shot John T.”

  “Possible, if he was the one who hired them. A falling-out over money or something like that. But I still think the same person killed both Roebucks, and maybe that person is the one who paid Draper and Teal. If I can get a name out of them, then I’ll have something definite to take to Loes.”

  “Still fixing to brace those two tonight?”

  “I have to, Dacy.”

  “Even if it turns out to be a bigger mistake.”

  “It won’t.”

  “Man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, right?”

  “Sometimes. If it means enough to him.”

  “Well, it’s your
ass,” she said, thin-lipped. “If you wind up in the hospital or in jail, don’t call me. I had all I can stand of that crap with my ex.”

  “I can take care of myself. Don’t worry.”

  “I won’t,” she said, and brushed past him and walked away to the stable.

  22

  DACY SAID FLATLY, “I’m going with you. No arguments.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. …”

  “I do. I’m tired of macho bullshit.”

  “Macho? That has nothing to do with—”

  “Doesn’t it? Male ego, pure and simple. You figure you’re man enough to handle any kind of trouble. Well, you’re dead wrong.”

  He said, “I thought you weren’t going to worry about me.”

  “Yeah, well, I changed my mind. I’d feel the same about a poor dumb animal that was about to blunder into a nest of scorpions.”

  She’d been waiting when he emerged from the trailer at a few minutes past five. Like him, she had spent the afternoon doing chores, though not as compulsively: He’d gone on a nonstop four-hour binge of sawing boards and hammering nails and putting the new pane in the kitchen window, killing time with physical labor. And like him, she’d washed up and changed clothes. She wore an old chambray shirt, one that had probably belonged to her ex-husband, its tails hanging loose over faded jeans. Her hair had been wet-combed and the stubborn curl plastered down. There was little of the strain and fatigue in her eyes that dulled his own, but he sensed the tension in her just the same. He wore his like a badge; hers was all hidden inside.

  He said, “There won’t be any trouble. Draper and Teal won’t make a scene in a public place like the casino.”

  She laughed, a sound like a coyote bark. “You really are a babe in the desert, you know that? As much shit happens in public places as in private ones in this county. You come on tough to those two boys, you’re liable to wind up a big stain on the floor. And they’d make it look like you’re the one at fault.”

  “I wasn’t planning to get tough with them.”

  “Sweet-talk ’em into telling you the truth? Appeal to their reasonable sides, man to man?”

  “Don’t talk down to me, Dacy.”

  “I’m not. Just trying to make you understand that this is my turf and I know it a hell of a lot better than you ever could. I know how to handle men like Draper and Teal. You don’t.”

  “Handle them how?”

  “That’s my lookout.”

  “You want to do all the talking, is that it?”

  “What I want,” she said slowly and distinctly, as if she were talking to a younger version of her son, “is for you to let me call the shots. And to keep quiet except to follow my lead. Think you can do that?”

  “If it means getting answers.”

  “It does. Okay, then? Settled?”

  “What about Lonnie? Don’t you want to be here when he decides to come home?”

  “What for? We can’t talk about what’s bothering him—you made that clear enough. You’re the one who needs me tonight, not Lonnie.”

  Not just tonight and in more ways than one.

  “Well?” she said.

  He’d already given in. He wouldn’t be much good at this sort of tricky improvisation and she would; wiser for him to play sideman and let her handle the solo. He said, “All right. We’ll do it your way.”

  They took the Jeep and rode most of the distance across the valley in silence. Messenger broke it as they neared the Y fork by asking, “Dacy, does it surprise you that Dave Roebuck was the kind of man who’d molest his own daughter?”

  Quick sidelong glance. “Back to that subject, are we?”

  “Not talking about it won’t make it any less painful.”

  “I haven’t been avoiding it. Just brooding on it.”

  “And?”

  “It surprises me some, yeah. No woman was safe around that bastard, but I never knew him to go after one that wasn’t of legal age.”

  “A recent aberration, then. Degenerates can always find a new low to sink to.”

  “I reckon. Lonnie was sure it hadn’t gone as far as actual sex? Just fondling?”

  “That’s what Tess told him.”

  “At least she didn’t have to endure rape before she died. Damn little consolation, but at least that.”

  “Did she have any adult friends?”

  “You mean somebody she’d confide in?”

  “Besides you and Lonnie.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Not many people went out there to visit. If she couldn’t bring herself to tell Anna or me, and Lonnie had to practically drag it out of her … no, she didn’t tell anybody else.”

  “Roebuck liked to brag. Maybe he told someone.”

  “About a thing like that? He’d have been lynched.”

  “Let something slip, then. When he was drunk.”

  “Not likely. Not in the bars he drank in. One thing that boy didn’t have was a death wish, drunk or sober.”

  Drunk or sober. The bars he drank in …

  “The Hardrock Tavern,” he said. He sat up straighter. “The fight at the Hardrock Tavern!”

  “Fight he had with Joe Hanratty? What about it?”

  “We’re not going straight to the casino. I want to make another stop first.”

  “Where?”

  “Lynette Carey’s house.”

  “What for? What’ve you got in your head now?”

  “She has a child a year older than Tess was,” Messenger said. “I can’t recall her or anybody else saying if it’s a boy or girl. Girl?”

  “That’s right. Karen.”

  “Lynette broke up with Roebuck suddenly, remember? For no clear reason. And just as suddenly her brother attacked him at the Hardrock. And neither Lynette nor Hanratty will talk about why.” Some things you don’t talk about. Not even to friends, let alone strangers. Lynette’s words to him in the Saddle Bar.

  “My God, you don’t think—”

  “I do think,” he said. “Roebuck had been molesting Tess; isn’t it just as likely he’d try to molest somebody else’s daughter, too?”

  Small, built of cinder blocks overlain with cheap, sand-scoured aluminum siding, Lynette Carey’s house squatted on a hillside south of City Hall. A scraggly cactus garden composed the front yard. Half a dozen child’s toys and a forgotten sweater strewn among the plants gave the yard an afflicted look, like the aftermath of a windstorm or flash flood on a small section of desert topography.

  Dacy said as they pulled up in front, “You’d better let me do most of the talking here, too.”

  “Do you and Lynette get along?”

  “Well as any two people in this town.”

  Lynette opened the door to Messenger’s knock. She had exchanged her uniform for a pair of crotch-tight shorts and a halter top that revealed swelling white flesh spattered with freckles. Cool air from a noisy air conditioner flowed out around her. The other loud noise from within was the blather of a television cartoon show.

  A scowl pulled Lynette’s round face out of shape. “Well, well, look who’s here. Bonnie and Clyde.”

  Dacy said, “Now what does that mean?”

  “Half the town thinks you two murdered John T. last night. They don’t see how it could’ve been anybody else. You should hear some of the reasons they’re throwing around.”

  “That half include you?”

  “Nope. I think he got what he deserved, whoever shot his face off. So what brings you around? Looking for a hideout?”

  “Some things that need talking about.”

  “Such as?”

  “In private, Lynette. All right if we come in?”

  The big woman hesitated, then shrugged and stood aside for them. The interior was cool from the rattling air conditioner and as chaotic as the front yard. Through a doorway off the hall, Messenger could see the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote assaulting each other on a snow-flecked TV screen. Lying on the carpet in front of the set, chin in cupped hands, was a plum
p, dark-haired girl of nine or ten, dressed in T-shirt and shorts. She might have been in a hypnotic trance for all she moved; as far as she was concerned, she was alone in the house with the beep-beeping bird and the witless predator.

  “That’s Karen,” Lynette said to him, “my daughter. She’s a TV junkie—likely to grow up deaf and blind. Come on in the kitchen where it’s quiet.” And when she’d shut the three of them inside the cramped, yellow-walled kitchen, “How about a beer? Some cold Bud in the fridge.”

  Dacy said, “No, nothing,” and Messenger shook his head.

  Lynette opened a bottle for herself, sat with it at a Formica-topped table. But when neither of them moved to join her, she sighed and stood up again.

  Messenger asked her, “Why do you think John T. got what he deserved?”

  “Why? He was an arrogant bastard, that’s why. All the Roebucks were and good riddance to the last of the breed.”

  “That sounds as though you knew him as well as you knew his brother.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “Me and John T.? You’re nuts, if that’s what you think. He never interested me. I wouldn’t’ve spread my legs for that chingado if he’d had the last dick in Nevada.”

  “But another woman besides his wife might have.”

  “You saying some woman he was laying killed him?”

  “It’s one possible explanation.”

  “That why you came? You got an idea I blew John T. away?”

  Dacy said, “No, that’s not why we’re here.”

  “Well, I didn’t. I wouldn’t’ve met him in the middle of town at high noon to spit in his face. I don’t have any damn reason to want him dead or to burn up what was left of Anna’s ranch.”

  “But you did have a reason to want Dave dead.”

  “Dave? Why bring him up?”

  “He’s what brought us here, Lynette.”

  “Oh, so that’s it. Well, you’re dead wrong there, too. I never had a reason to want him dead.”

  “We figure you did. Same one that made you bust up with him. Same one that set Joe on him at the Hardrock.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. …”

  “Karen, he was messing with Karen. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  She reacted as if Dacy had slapped her. “No,” she said. Then, more forcefully, “No!”