I rummaged around in the pile of shit that I’d brought from the station. I didn’t trust anybody now, so I’d started carting everything home with me. I hadn’t looked at half the stuff, including the yearbooks ’cause I’d been too busy trying to chase after other clues.
Now maybe, just maybe…There was a bunch of ’em. She damn sure couldn’t keep a job. Fayettville High, I flipped through. She wasn’t even in this one. Probably hadn’t been there long enough. I cracked open a couple of others. Again, she wasn’t in either of ’em. Then I saw it, Hendersonville High, where had I seen that name before—Hendersonville. I opened the book and scooted through the pages.
I almost closed it, when I saw it. Her face staring out just as clear as day—Miss Laurel Davenport and her English class. Then I saw the other face. I could barely recognize it underneath all the hair, but I knew those eyes. My finger raced to the names at the bottom of the page. There it was—Clive January, high school senior. I smiled.
She was going back there. They always go back to where it started, twenty years as a cop, and I never saw it fail. They always go back. There was probably somebody still down there, some old friend, probably somebody she worked with that she figured she could hole up with for a few days ’til she decided where to go next. I pulled out my atlas. Hendersonville —about twenty miles from where I’d lost her.
I picked up the phone and dialed quickly. “Yeah, it’s Greene…fax a picture of Laurel Davenport to the cops in Hendersonville, Mississippi. Tell ’em she’s there and to pick her up and hold her. Also see if any teachers, or anybody that worked at Hendersonville High in 1969 is still there. If there is, have the cops bring ’em in for questioning. Tell ’em I’m on my way down on the next plane.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Laurel
Ralph Warner hadn’t stopped talking since I got there. And I hadn’t stopped thinking of Clive. It was as if his presence was hovering just beyond where I could find him, trapped in some dark pocket of eternity, fighting to get out and move beyond where he was now. For some reason I knew that I had the key to his freedom.
“Have some more roast beef.”
I jumped, almost knocking over my water glass. Ralph was holding out a plate layered with thick slabs of brown grey meat, dribbling with pale pink blood.
“Oh…thank you. It’s delicious.” I guiltily took a slice, wondering how he’d feel when he found out that he was hiding a fugitive. I couldn’t think about that now. He chatted on in between stuffing forkfuls of food in his mouth.
“You know I’ve just been running off at the mouth since you got here, and you haven’t been able to get a word in edgewise. I guess that since my wife died, I’m so used to being alone in this big place that when I get a visitor, I just don’t know what to do. But I’m gonna shut up now and let you tell me all the great things I know you’ve been doing since you left here.”
He helped himself to another generous spoonful of mashed potatoes. “One thing’s for sure though…you haven’t changed a bit. I mean not a bit, I would’ve known you anywhere.”
Something in the way he said that made me uncomfortable, just for a moment. As if I knew that he wanted me and had always wanted me and perhaps this was his chance at last. As if he’d read my thoughts, he asked, “So where were you planning on staying tonight?”
I smiled weakly, sipping my iced tea nervously. “I hadn’t planned to spend the night. I was just passing through for the day.”
A big grin broke across his face. “Well you know you can stay here and get an early start in the morning. The next bus isn’t out ’til tomorrow anyway.”
I thought of lying in a bed in Ralph Warner’s empty house, with his huge hands groping over me, roaming over my flesh hungrily, trying to satiate his loneliness. Then I thought of running through the woods chased by dogs and helicopters and policemen with loudspeakers, and bleeding and hungry and huddling in damp trailers covered by vermin infested blankets.
If I had to fight Ralph Warner off, it was better than all of that.
* * *
Detective Bob
“Hendersonville…”
The cab driver looked at me wordlessly and slowly started the car. I leaned up to the front. “About how long will it take to get there?”
He lit a cigarette and threw the match out the window. “Two hours, mebbe two and a half… ‘pending on the weather.”
I looked up in the sky, clouds were traveling quickly, and the last few rays of the setting sun were lighting up the road. “It looks fine to me.”
“Oh yeah, well, it’s supposed to rain, and this is hurricane season, so it’s like to blow up real bad once it gits started.”
Shit. It would just be my luck to have a fuckin hurricane blow in. I leaned back against the cracked leather seats. Shit. If the weather was going to fuck with me what could I do.
Different kind of country down here. I’d never traveled much out of New York, and I was starting to realize that there was a whole lot out there that I’d never seen or even wanted to see. Maybe when this was all over I could. But right now I had to focus on this case. I was getting down to the wire, but if I could just get Laurel, she either did it, or knew who did it. Either way she was the answer.
* * *
Laurel
“You can stay in here.” Ralph opened the door to a plain room, furnished in brown and blue plaids, a neat bed, a chair, and some poster art on the wall. He lingered in the doorway, as if waiting for me to officially invite him in. “The TV works, too.”
He went over to a small black and white television and turned it on. Someone singing about laundry detergent blared out. “I don’t know if you like to sit up in bed and watch TV. Sometimes I do. Keeps me company…The trouble is this darn thing doesn’t come in too clear sometimes…” He was fiddling with the TV, trying to get the grainy black and white to take some kind of coherent shape.
Sounds were coming out, but the picture kept jumping around. I wasn’t really paying much attention to him. My mind kept racing ahead to the next step. What after this? Where would I go? I just didn’t know.
“There, I think I got it now.” The picture was light, but I could make out a local newscast. “And now the latest…this woman…”
Suddenly, my face was plastered over the screen. I wanted to melt away into the wall, but I couldn’t. I barely remember anything except the woman’s voice.
“…is being sought by the New York City Police Department in connection with a murder. Anyone having information as to her whereabouts is asked to contact this station immediately.”
Ralph hadn’t said anything. He was just staring at me, and then at the television. Still without saying anything, he turned the television off. His back to me, saying softly. “So you’re running?”
“I…yes…”
“Why?”
“I don’t know anymore…”
“Who is he?”
I couldn’t make myself say his name. I tried but I couldn’t.
“Damn it, Laurel. I could go to jail for having you here. I think you owe me some kinda explanation.”
“You knew him.”
He turned around sharply. Looking at me for the first time. “Who?”
“Clive January.”
He looked at me blankly for a moment, then a wave of recognition and disbelief came over his face. “That kid?! The one that you…and then he left and you left…” He sat down heavily on the bed. “You just couldn’t leave him alone, could you?”
He sounded almost bitter, as if he had wanted to be in Clive’s place, but knew he never would. He kept shaking his head. “You had everything…everything.”
Neither of us spoke for a minute.
“I oughta call that station right now…shouldn’t I?”
A sharp pain descended from my temples to the tips of my fingers, but no sounds would come out.
“Did you do it Laurel? Did you kill him?”
Before I could say anything, before I could shout
out the truth, he pressed his fingers against my lips. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to think of you except, how I always have…Laurel Davenport, the prettiest teacher at the school. The one everybody wanted and you threw it all away for a kid.”
He got up from the bed and stood so close to me that I could feel his breath against my skin. “What did he have that would make you love him that hard all these years?” I knew that he wanted to hold me, touch me and grab me in his arms, but he didn’t. Instead, he stepped back a few steps.
Walking up to him slowly, I unbuttoned his shirt. Little droplets of sweat were beading up on his chest. He didn’t move. I unbuttoned it all the way.
Stepping back, he said gruffly. “You don’t have to bribe me…I won’t say anything.”
“I’m not trying to bribe you…I just want…to be held.”
“That’s all you want?”
I nodded yes. I felt raw inside, all the running and the tears, the agony of the past few months. I had nothing more inside of me. What had been there had been eaten up by the unforgiving months of time and sadness.
He stroked my face with his rough hands. But I didn’t recoil. It was a touch, that was all, a touch that was filled with good intention and love.
He lightly brushed his lips over mine. “Tell me if you want me to stop…’cause I will, I don’t force myself on anybody.”
I didn’t tell him to stop. And as he pushed me gently onto the bed, peeling off my clothes, I shut my eyes, letting him run his body over mine. Inside my head, it wasn’t dark. There was a flash of light, and his touch, which had been rough and clumsy, suddenly felt familiar…Like someone who knew every ridge of my body, every core of my being. I knew that it was Clive. I opened my eyes, and Ralph was still there, but superimposed on him was Clive.
His eyes filled with agony as he said, “I love you, Laurel. I love you. Tell me you love me…Tell me!”
“Clive, I do. I always have.”
“Say it. I need you to say it, or they won’t let me go. You have to say it!”
“I love you, Clive. I love you.”
“I wasn’t going to marry you…Laurel. I was going to leave without you. I wasn’t strong enough to take you with me. I was still afraid. I lied to you, Laurel. I lied to you. I wasn’t going to marry you…Now do you still love me?”
Anger surged forward in me. How could he have lied to me again? All I could feel was anger, bitter anger. Suddenly, I could sense Clive pulling back from me, and I realized that my anger was pushing him away. I tried to bury the feelings of hurt and betrayal…Love…I must think Love…only Love…soaking my mind in the love that I had for him, I could feel his presence gaining strength, wrapping itself around me again.
Knowing now why he’d led me here, I let myself love him, releasing everything that I’d held back in anger or hurt. Realizing so clearly that he could only come to me when there was love, and through someone who loved me. That’s why he’d led me to Ralph. His feelings for me were a channel for Clive to come in. I had to keep loving Clive, my anger and not forgiving pushed him away…back to that place that he was trying to run from.
My unconditional love for him, for what he was and what he had become was what Clive needed from me. It was the only thing that could free his soul from the pit that had sucked him in. Everything I’d ever felt for him and everything that he’d ever been to me rose up in me, and I made peace with the past and let all the hurts fade away.
“I love you, Clive. I love you. It’s okay…It’s okay…I forgive you, and I love you. I’ll always love you…always!” For the first time since we’d been together, I felt no fear. It was gone. Dissolved finally and I understood. That the fear I’d had first of losing myself to him and then of losing him altogether had been that invisible barrier between us, always tweaking at the edges, always making me run, making him run, until finally there was no place to go.
Lights were in my head, flashing again, more brightly than ever. I was feeling Clive stronger than before, and I knew that this was the last time that we’d be like this. Pushing myself into him, not wanting him to leave, I whispered, “I love you…I love you,”… feeling him covering me, making the feelings all right, making everything all right for the first time since we’d met that day so long ago.
Our life together flashed before me…Hendersonville…New York, the beginning, the end…but for the first time, it didn’t hurt, nothing hurt anymore. I just felt joy and this tremendous peace as if finally we were truly together, and that we would be together again. He whispered in my ear, and I knew what I had to do.
* * *
Detective Bob
“This is as far as I can go, Mister. I can’t see a damn thing. I’m pulling over.”
“Can’t you go a little further? We can’t be that far from there now!”
“We’re not, but I don’t plan on getting there in a body bag neither.”
The driver pulled over to the side of the road. The heavy rain rocked the car back and forth. I couldn’t believe it. We couldn’t have been more than five miles from the airport when the rains started coming down like liquid bricks.
“What you in such a hurry for anyway?”
“I’m trying to get a murder suspect.”
I pulled out a photo of Laurel and showed it to him.
“Ever seen her before?”
“Nope.”
I put the photo back in my pocket. It was worth a try. He leaned back in the seat, saying lazily, “One thing’s for sure, there’s no way she’ll get away in this weather. Wherever she is, she’s stuck there now.”
I’d heard that before, and I was still out here chasing her down. I closed my eyes, thinking what else could I do and tried and catch some Z’s, ’cause we sure as hell weren’t going anywhere.
I woke up with a start. My neck had a mean crick in it, and I didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered, in a cab somewhere outside Hendersonville, Mississippi, in the middle of a hurricane. The cab driver was slumped over the wheel snoring loudly. It was still raining, but lightly, not like before. I shook the cab driver. “Hey…wake up. We need to get going.”
He jolted up, waiving his hands wildly. “Who…what the hell? Hey don’t wake me up like that no mo’. Next time I might reach for my gun.”
“Yeah, well I got one, too.” I pulled out my .45. “So let’s go. The rain’s let up.”
He glared at me as he started the car, maneuvering it around deep puddles of water and red brown mud. As we turned down the main street of Hendersonville, my gut told me that I’d missed her again. I don’t know why, but I knew that she’d been here and was gone. I almost didn’t even feel like going into the police station. It felt like a useless exercise in disappointment, but I had to. Captain would really have my ass in a sling if I flew all the way down here on the department’s dime and didn’t even check in with the local cops. I paid the cab driver and walked up to the station.
One of the cops reported, “Katlin O’Neil, the chemistry teacher, Ralph Warner, the principal, and Zebediah Franks, the football coach, those are the three who were working at Hendersonville High in ’69 and are still there. We got a tip that she’d been seen with Ralph Warner, but when we got there, he said that he’d had dinner with her and that she’d left right after that, just before the storm started, said he didn’t know where she was going.
“Said they’d just talked about old times. Said he didn’t know nothin’ about her being a murder suspect. Nobody saw her after that. Right now, all our extra manpower is on emergency call ’cause of the hurricane, evacuating folks from places that flooded out. No we don’t have nobody extra that could look for her. No…don’t know when we will. Sorry, just one of them things I guess. There’s nothin’ you can do when the weather gets bad down here.”
The cop’s words were clanging in my head as I climbed onto the plane back to New York. I’d gone over and talked to Warner myself, figured I couldn’t trust the cops down there to really grill
him. But he stuck to his story, signed a statement to that effect.
The other two who’d been at Hendersonville High in ’69 claimed they hadn’t seen her since she left back then. My gut had been right, she’d come back here to where it started, had stayed with somebody she knew, and then like all the other times, slipped away before I could get her. Another fuck up. This time the damn weather. How was I gonna explain this one to the captain?
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Detective Bob
The phones ringing around me were fucking with my head. I gulped down some coffee and turned back to my notes. For once, nobody had said anything to me when I got in the station. No rude stares, no snide remarks, they just ignored me. I’d gone by the file room looking for Margie, but she was gone for the day. She hadn’t returned any of my messages. So I guessed it was pretty safe to assume that she was pissed off at me, too.
The hot coffee scorched the sides of my mouth. I wanted like hell to cool it down with some Jack, but I figured that now was probably not the time to pull my stash out. I’d decided that I had to let up off Laurel for a minute and concentrate on Haven and that crowd. It was my only real lead at this point.
I was starting to write down my list: (1) Samurai Club, find out owners, (2) Do a check on who might really be behind them, (3) Do a check on Jack Simmons…I dug my pen down into the paper. Shit ,all things I should’ve done days ago, but no…I wasted time trying to find Laurel Davenport. Now Haven and Simmons probably had more than enough time to cover any tracks they might have left earlier. My stomach was starting to churn again, the prospect of another failed lead was more than I could take.
“Greene, Captain wants to see you in his office.”
I rolled my eyes. Shit, probably wants to lay on my ass about what happened with Laurel Davenport. I closed my notebook and went into his office. I was not looking forward to this.
A Dead Man Speaks Page 28
