Obsidian

by Thomas King

  Time to get the show on the road.

  He went from room to room, turning off the lights, one by one. In the bedroom, he laid the pillows out on the far side of the bed, covered them with the blankets, and piled the other pillows against the headboard, so he could sit up and read. Then he turned off the overhead light, turned on the lamp by the bed, and opened his book.

  The plot dealt with a Basque woman who was found dead in a nursing home. Thumps knew right away that the death wasn’t natural causes, even before the autopsy report came back. It wasn’t a hard assumption.

  Why write a mystery if you weren’t going to kill someone?

  Just after twelve, Thumps turned off the lamp. As he waited in the dark, he went over what he knew, to see if it still made sense. He had gotten as far as Raymond Oakes when he heard the back door.

  “Come on in,” he said, not moving from the bed. “I’m not armed. Left the gun in the car.”

  The figure in the doorway was in shadows. All Thumps could see was a shape, but he knew who it was. Even so, his first reaction was disbelief when the man finally stepped into the light.

  “That wasn’t too smart.”

  Harry Shipman was looking remarkably healthy for a dead man.

  “I didn’t want to startle you.”

  “Considerate.” Shipman quickly looked around the room. “You want to wake your girlfriend? Might as well get acquainted.”

  “Pillows,” said Thumps.

  Shipman pointed the gun at the pile of covers next to Thumps. “Show me.”

  Thumps reached out slowly and pulled the covers back. “Not here,” he said.

  The smile slowly left Shipman’s face. “I’ve been watching the place. I’ve seen her and the baby. Her car’s still here.”

  “True.”

  Shipman gestured back to the kitchen. “Flowers? Champagne?”

  “Sparkling wine.”

  Shipman kept the gun trained on Thumps’s chest. “So she’s hiding. I’ll bet if I threatened to kill you, she’d come out.”

  “She’s gone.”

  Shipman’s face softened as though he were trying to remember a pleasant moment in his life. “The old man.”

  “Moses Blood.”

  “He came by earlier. In a pickup.” Thumps waited.

  “Drove to the edge of the coulee.” Shipman walked to the window and looked out. “Just sat there.”

  Thumps said nothing.

  “Now why would he do that?”

  “Moses is Moses.”

  “And then he got back in his truck, drove into the barn, and loaded hay bales . . .” Shipman turned back and smiled. “A diversion. The old man drove to the coulee to take my attention away from the house. And while I was watching him, the woman took the baby and sneaked out to the barn.”

  “Slipped,” said Thumps. “They slipped out to the barn.”

  “And when the old man drove off with the hay, they were hiding in the truck.” Shipman clapped his hands twice. “Bravo. So, it’s just the two of us. And this is what? A trap?”

  “More a ruse,” said Thumps. “Or a ploy.”

  “Am I to assume that that bumpkin of a sheriff and your old sidekick are on their way?”

  “Nope,” said Thumps. “You can see for miles out here. No way they could sneak up on you.”

  “If I see anybody coming, I will kill you.”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  “Yes,” said Shipman, “I am.”

  “So, how about I make coffee,” said Thumps, “and I’ll tell you how I figured it out.”

  “You’re just stalling for time.”

  “Probably.”

  Shipman nodded and laid the gun against his shoulder. “Brewed or instant?”

  THUMPS COULDN’T UNDERSTAND how anyone could drink instant coffee, but Shipman didn’t seem to mind. If Thumps moved in with Claire, they would have to come to an understanding about what constituted coffee. He brought sugar and milk to the table, along with an unopened box of baby cookies that he had found in a cupboard.

  “You know when babies can start eating cookies?”

  “No idea,” said Shipman.

  “You want milk or sugar?”

  “Lights,” said Shipman. “Camera. Action.”

  “That Gorka’s gun?”

  Shipman let the gun catch the light. “He tried to kill me.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “Yes,” said Shipman. “Imagine that. It was easy enough to get him out to the fairgrounds, but he was a bit quicker than I would have thought.”

  Thumps wrapped his hands around the cup and took in the warmth. “You kill people. I don’t know why, and frankly, I don’t care.”

  “But you do care whom I kill.”

  “Yes,” said Thumps. “I do.”

  “This is about your old girlfriend?” said Shipman. “The one on the coast? How many years has that been?”

  “The killings aren’t the important thing for you,” Thumps continued. “It’s a game. The thrill is in the planning. In the intricacies of the logistics.”

  “You’re guessing,” said Shipman, letting his voice rise and fall in a singsong fashion.

  “Up until Eureka, you had been picture perfect. You organized your killing ground, chose your victims, threw in some odd element to throw the police off.”

  “Pieces of obsidian?”

  “Yes,” said Thumps. “What about the other killings?”

  “Oh,” said Shipman, “marks with lipstick, a prick on the middle finger with a penknife. Stuff like that. In Missouri, I left an orange lollipop at each scene. Drove the cops crazy. Should have heard what the talking heads on TV had to say about the lollipop.”

  “And then there was the fall guy,” said Thumps. “There was always a fall guy to take the blame. That was clever.”

  “I did think that part was creative.”

  “In Eureka, it was supposed to be a Simon Gordon.”

  Shipman made a low whistling sound. “Excellent.”

  “An out-of-work actor and, unfortunately for you, an alcoholic.”

  Shipman turned serious. “Ah, yes, Mr. Gordon. Everything was going so well, and then he got himself thrown in jail. Drunk and disorderly.”

  “At the same time you were killing people on Clam Beach.” Thumps took a sip of the coffee. If anything, it was worse than the stuff that the sheriff used to brew in his old percolator. “So he couldn’t be your fall guy, because he was indisposed at the time of the murders.”

  “What to do?” said Shipman. “What to do?”

  “That’s how Nina Maslow cut your trail.”

  “Cut my trail?” Shipman raised his eyebrows. “Is that one of your quaint western expressions?”

  “I’m guessing you had only planned to kill for two nights. A third night would have put you at risk. But with Gordon in jail, you were stuck. So you stayed, waited while the cops began working the earlier crime scenes, and then you killed again. But that third time, you had specific victims in mind.”

  “Did I?”

  “You needed a couple. A couple with a child was even better.”

  “Can we back up,” said Shipman, “and deal with this . . . trail cutting?”

  “Another guess,” said Thumps. “I think Maslow checked the motel records and found someone who had checked out and then, later the same day, had checked back in.”

  “She didn’t know how close she got,” said Shipman. “Do you know Maslow actually called me? If she hadn’t gotten herself killed . . .”

  “So now what?”

  “Please,” said Shipman. “Let’s not rush things. Finish your story. It’s fascinating. You have a real gift for narrative.”

  Thumps glanced out the window. Hours away to first light and the start of a new day. He wondered how Lorraine and Big Fish were doing, if they were getting any sleep, or if Hack was keeping them working in shifts.

  “You expecting rescue?” said Shipman.

  “Absolutely,” sai
d Thumps.

  “I don’t think the cavalry’s coming,” said Shipman. “I think you want to do this yourself. I think you want to be the hero.”

  “So, that third night,” Thumps continued, “you went back to the beach.”

  “The cops were there,” said Shipman. “I had to be careful. It was quite exciting.”

  “And you found Anna Tripp and her daughter, Callie.”

  “I did.”

  “And Raymond Oakes.” Thumps waited to see if Shipman wanted to add anything. “An evening picnic. You killed them and tried to make it look as though Oakes was responsible for their deaths. I’m guessing you hoped the cops might like him for the other killings as well.”

  “One has to improvise.”

  “What you didn’t know was that Oakes had been in prison, and that no one would make the connection between him and Anna.” Thumps could feel his body tense. “What did you do? Bury Oakes’s body where no one would find it? Get the police to chase a ghost?”

  “Something like that.”

  Thumps sat back. “What I don’t understand is why you came here. To Chinook? You were free and clear.”

  “You’ve done a good job of guessing so far,” said Shipman. “Give it a shot.”

  “You couldn’t be sure just what Maslow had figured out, what she might have told me. What I might figure out.”

  “Good guess.”

  “And you wanted the game.” Thumps helped himself to a cookie. “So, you created a film company to make a movie of the murders you committed, and you resurrected the idea that Raymond Oakes was the Obsidian killer. The story of tracking him to Idaho. Sending me his watch.”

  Shipman nodded. “I am curious just how did you figure out that Oakes was dead.”

  “The beer.”

  “Beer?”

  “Anna didn’t drink.”

  “So there had to be someone else at the picnic,” said Shipman. “You know, you should have been a cop.”

  “Killing Gerson was unnecessary.”

  Shipman shrugged. “Maybe, but there was a certain symmetry to killing her and getting the car guy to stand in for me.”

  Thumps tried the coffee again. It was cold now. He wasn’t going to make another cup. “Which brings us to the present. What was your plan? Kill me and Claire and the baby? Make it look as though I was responsible for Gerson and Gorka as well? Hope that no one noticed that the man in the morgue wasn’t you?”

  “Something like that. A little more elegant, but that was the general idea.”

  “Obsidian?”

  Shipman took three black stones from a pocket and put them on the table.

  “None of this is going to stand up.” Thumps shook his head. “They’ll run DNA and fingerprints. They’ll know it was you.”

  “They will,” said Shipman. “But by then, I will have disappeared.”

  “Maybe,” said Thumps.

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me where they are.”

  “No.”

  “They’re at the old man’s house, aren’t they?” Shipman finished the rest of his coffee. “Why don’t we drop by and pay him a visit.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, that’s the trap?” said Shipman. “I take you there and what? A reception committee is waiting for me?”

  “Nope,” said Thumps.

  “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I just kill you now and then kill your girlfriend and the kid later. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in a month.”

  Thumps shook his head. “No artistry in that. Any sociopath can kill someone. You care how it’s done.”

  “You’re right, of course. I do,” said Shipman. “So, let’s go over to the old Indian’s place and take a look. From a safe distance. See what you might have in store for me.”

  “And I suppose you want me to drive you there.”

  Shipman placed a set of flex cuffs on the table. “No, I’ll drive. I’m thinking that you’re the kind of hero who would drive the car off a cliff in a final, defiant gesture.”

  Thumps slowly slipped the cuffs on his wrists.

  “No,” said Shipman. “Behind your back. We don’t want to give you any hope, do we?”

  “Who did you kill first?” said Thumps. “Did you kill Anna and make her daughter watch, or did you kill Callie first?”

  Shipman reached around and jerked the cuffs tight. “Which do you suppose has the more emotional impact? The woman or the girl? In case I actually make the movie.”

  “In the movie,” said Thumps, “how do you imagine your death?”

  “Art noir,” said Shipman. “The villain escapes. The hero dies.”

  “Sounds as though the script needs a rewrite.”

  Shipman opened the door and pushed Thumps into the night. “All this film needs is a strong ending.”

  Forty-Two

  The moon was out. So it had been hiding. It wasn’t a full moon, but it was more than half, and it turned the river a dark quicksilver. Shipman walked Thumps toward his car, keeping a safe distance.

  “We’ll use your car,” said Shipman.

  “No keys. I threw them away.”

  Shipman slammed Thumps against the side of the car. “Move, and I will shoot you.”

  “I didn’t want to give you an easy way out.”

  Shipman checked Thumps’s pockets. “Okay, smart guy. Where’d you throw them?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  Shipman cocked the pistol. “Then this is the end of the trail.”

  “James Earle Fraser.”

  The voice was sudden and startling. Shipman spun around and brought the gun to bear on the figure standing in the moonlight.

  Moses Blood.

  “Hands!” shouted Shipman. “Show me your hands!”

  Cooley’s rifle was slung over Moses’s shoulder. “Fraser made the sculpture for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.”

  “Now!”

  Moses slowly raised his arms. “Everyone thinks that the Indian is tired,” he said, “but in fact, the warrior and his horse are just resting.”

  “And now carefully,” said Shipman, his voice a hiss, “very carefully, slide your rifle off your shoulder.”

  “It’s not my rifle,” said Moses. “It’s my grandson’s.”

  Shipman took two steps toward Moses. Then a large shadow rose out of the ground and fell on him like a tree.

  Moses kept his hands up. “You can see the original plaster at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. The original bronze replica is in Waupun, Wisconsin.”

  “Jesus, Moses.” Thumps hurried to the old man’s side. “You were supposed to stay out of sight.”

  “I thought another diversion might be in order.” Moses looked down at Shipman. Or what you could see of the man pinned under Cooley Small Elk’s bulk.

  “Get this elephant off me!”

  “This the guy who killed your friend and her kid?” Cooley put a huge hand on the back of Shipman’s head and pushed him into the earth. “I could break his neck by mistake.”

  Moses cut the cuffs. Thumps picked up Shipman’s gun and emptied the wheel. Then he walked to the car and got the gun the sheriff had given him.

  “Let him up.”

  Shipman was none the worse for wear. “I think your big ape broke my ribs.”

  “Ape. Elephant.” Cooley gave Shipman a shake. “Make up your mind.”

  “Okay, okay, you got me,” said Shipman. “Hell of a trap. The old man drives into the barn, but he doesn’t pick up the woman, does he?”

  Thumps kept his finger along the trigger guard. “If this were a film, how would you have played it?”

  Shipman glared at Cooley. “This guy is in the back of the truck. Under a tarp? They load the hay onto the truck where I can’t see them. The old man gives your girlfriend his hat and coat and she drives off with the baby.”

  “Close enough,” said Cooley.

  “While the old man and King Kong here stay behind.”
<
br />   “The original movie was pretty good,” said Cooley, “but the remakes were just special effects.”

  “Not bad,” said Shipman. “Not bad. But let me ask you. How’d you figure out that I’d come here?”

  “You sent me Oakes’s watch,” said Thumps. “The Obsidian car. You wanted me. Some crazy symmetry that plays out in your head.”

  “You weren’t with your girlfriend and her daughter in Eureka,” said Shipman. “Does that haunt you?”

  “What do you want me to do with him?” Cooley moved to Shipman’s side.

  “Nothing,” said Thumps. “Why don’t you take Moses home. You guys have helped enough.”

  “I’d rather stay and watch,” said Cooley.

  Moses slid the rifle off his shoulder and handed it to Cooley. “Come on, grandson,” he said. “If we hurry, we’ll be able to catch one of those forensic shows.”

  “Most of them are reruns.”

  “Sure,” said Moses, “but we may have missed some of the clues the first time through.”

  “Take my car,” said Thumps. “The keys are on top of the left front tire.”

  THUMPS WATCHED THE tail lights disappear into the prairies. The sun would be up in another couple of hours. Another day. Pretty much like the last.

  “So now what?” said Shipman. “You arrest me, haul me off to jail, and charge me . . . for being annoying?”

  “Doubt I could ever prove you killed all those people on the coast,” said Thumps. “Or anywhere else for that matter.”

  “And you think you can prove I killed Gerson and the car guy.”

  “No,” said Thumps. “Oh, it’s suspicious, you running off like that, but I’m guessing you’d argue that when you heard that Gerson and Gorka were dead, you felt in fear for your life, that someone was coming after you next. So you went into hiding.”

  “I was wrong about your being a cop,” said Shipman. “You should be a lawyer.”

  “I doubt I’d even be able to prove that you threatened me and Claire and the baby.”

  “That’s the way I read it.”

  “The movie company is real.”

  “It is.”

  “And I’m guessing that Harold Shipman will hold up.”

  “As long as needed,” said Shipman.

  “So, about the most I can do,” said Thumps, “is hold you on suspicion. But I’m guessing that you’ve got money.”