by W. H. Clark
“You still in the room, amigo?”
Ward looked at Dave. “He look like a killer to you?”
“No, he don’t, hombre. He looks killed to me.”
Ward smiled and his eyes narrowed. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
11
“It’s half past eight, detective. Penny has her homework,” said the man who had answered the door halfway through Ward’s second knock.
“I promise this won’t take long, sir,” Ward said, chilling on the doorstep and removing his hat in an effort to show respect. “I just need to ask her a few questions. A man has died.”
“Yes, you said.”
“And Penny was one of the last people to see him alive.”
A tall young girl, all legs and arms, appeared in the hall, half out of a doorway. “I’m okay, Dad. I heard about Mr. O’Donnell. Was he murdered?”
“I just have a few questions Penny,” Ward said, ignoring Penny’s question. “Then you can finish your homework. Sir?”
Penny’s father stepped aside and let Ward into the house. As the heat hit him, his tensed muscles relaxed.
“The music room.” She smiled at Ward. “This way.”
Ward sat down on the piano stool while Penny settled herself onto a large cushion decorated in what looked to Ward like a Persian design. He’d seen lots of similar patterns before. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“Don’t worry about my dad. He’s overprotective sometimes. Still thinks I’m twelve.”
Ward smiled. “He’s okay.” He took out his notepad and pen. “I guess I have a few questions, but firstly I’d like you to tell me what happened the last time you met with Mr. O’Donnell.”
Penny tossed her hair out of her eyes.
“I go in to read to him.”
“Okay.”
“It’s community work. My dad encourages it. Wants me to be an upstanding citizen.”
“You enjoy it?”
“I guess so,” Penny said, her nose wrinkling a little. “Although it does smell of pee.”
Ward smiled. “What sorts of things do you read?”
“Sometimes a book. A magazine. Whatever.”
“Can you remember what you were reading on the day?”
“Yes, I can. It was the Westmoreland Echo.”
“Okay,” Ward said, writing in his notepad. “Did Mr. O’Donnell appear to you any different on that visit?”
“Only the fact that he scared the shit out of me.”
Ward instinctively looked around to see if her father had heard her curse, but he wasn’t in the room.
“How did he scare you? You say you were reading the newspaper to him.”
“Yes, that’s when he freaked out.”
“You were reading and he freaked out suddenly? He’d been quiet until then?”
Penny nodded.
“What was the story, you remember?”
“No, I don’t. Hang on. We might have a copy in the paper recycling.” She left Ward alone in the room. He turned and lifted the piano lid and pressed a key down. Then another. Then he wished he could play like Jerry Lee Lewis. He lowered the lid as Penny returned.
“You’re in luck.” She opened the newspaper and jabbed a page. “This was it. This woman without any dignity selling herself on a billboard. Looking for a boyfriend.” Her face showed disgust. “That story there.” She handed the newspaper to Ward. He read the first few lines of the story about a Westmoreland woman and her quest to find a suitor by advertising herself on a billboard. He flicked through the paper and skimmed over various headlines.
“Just two seconds.” He took out his cell and pressed a few digits. “Hey, it’s Ward. We need to get somebody down to Sunny Glade tonight to go through the dumpsters. We’re looking for a newspaper, the Westmoreland Echo. This is potential evidence.” He paused for the reply, smiling at Penny, who was positively beaming back at him. “Thanks.” He put the phone back in his pocket.
“Was he murdered? Am I a suspect?” she said, still smiling broadly.
Ward shook his head. “No, but you’re very important to this investigation.” Penny nearly burst at that.
“This is so fucking weird,” she said, and this time it was she who looked around to make sure her father hadn’t heard. She said the curse word as if testing a new mouth.
“Okay, you said he scared the… Mr. O’Donnell freaked out. What happened?”
“Only that he burst out shouting.”
“Shouting?” He held his pen ready to write.
“Well, he never said a word normally. Never said a word ever. Most of them, they just gawk at the wall like zombies.”
Ward sighed.
“But this day he said something all right. He asked for somebody called Doctor Brookline. He was kinda loud.”
Ward’s head snapped up. “Anything else?”
Penny made an effort to look like she was thinking hard. She hitched her dress up a little too far and started to scratch her knee. Ward saw her white panties and he glanced down at his notepad. Thought she was maybe enjoying the attention a little too much and becoming distracted. He carefully lifted the piano lid with his elbow and let it drop, the bang startling Penny back into the room. “Sorry, I must’ve caught it,” Ward said.
The young girl pulled her dress back over her knees and wrapped her arms around them again. “I can’t think of anything,” she said, and this time he could see that she really was making an effort to recall something.
“You’re sure of that?”
“Oh, hang on. He did say something else. Right after he’d asked for Doctor Brookline, he said something about…” She cast her head back. “Something about confessing. No, that wasn’t it. Hang on. He just said ‘confession.’ That’s what he said. That’s all he said. And the Doctor Brookline thing.”
“Can you think of anything else that happened that day? Anything, no matter how unimportant it may seem to you.”
“I can’t remember anything else. It was just the same as always. Apart from those two things I told you he said.”
“Well, thank you, Penny. That’s it.” Penny looked downcast. “But I might need to ask you more questions at a later date. And if you think of anything else please contact me at this number.”
He scribbled the number in his notepad, tore out the page and handed it to her, and at that she smiled again.
“Don’t detectives usually have business cards?”
“They haven’t come back from the printers yet,” Ward said, and he offered her a smile. “Do you mind if I keep this newspaper?”
“No, of course not.” She beamed.
12
The boy is wrapped in a bedsheet now, and is placed in the fetal position on the passenger seat of the truck. The man climbs into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. He speaks to the boy. Words of comfort. Words of concern to a boy who might have grazed his knee playing in the yard. It seems right and it seems natural. The truck pulls away and the man makes a small circular movement over where the boy’s head is, but his hand doesn’t touch the sheet. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispers.
13
Ward remembered Jesús. The poor little guy will be crossing his legs, he thought as he turned left at the end of Penny’s street, a few flecks of snow grazing against the windshield. He felt a heavy throb developing in his skull as he went over things in his head. An old man who Newton suspects of the murder of his grandson is a homicide victim himself. Are the two cases linked in any way apart from the biological connection? Did the old man know something about the person responsible for Ryan Novak’s death, if indeed O’Donnell wasn’t the murderer himself? Did the real killer come to finish off O’Donnell? But why now? Why wait twenty-five years to finally silence him? He’d said something about a confession to Penny, the girl who visited him.
But again, why now? What was his confession? Was it about the little boy, Ryan? But why wait all these years before confessing? Who else was threatene
d by the confession, if that’s what it was, enough to kill the man? And what was it about the newspaper story that the girl had read to him that had made him suddenly panic and start calling for a doctor called Brookline? Had William O’Donnell simply gone senile? Who was Doctor Brookline? And those fingerprints on the windowsill—who did they belong to? And why had someone repeatedly entered the old man’s room through the window? Was that person the murderer?
As Ward pulled into his parking spot the questions bounced around his mind.
His motel room had a pink door like all the others. A row of national flags of countries from all four corners of the world danced energetically on the wind in a line on the roof, just visible above the motel.
Jesús, the little black mongrel with flecks of gray, more pronounced around the eyes, announced himself as soon as Ward stepped into the room at the Montana Sky Motel. His claws tapped an urgent dance on the hardwood floor over to Ward, and his eyes spoke of anguish. Time and arthritis had stiffened his limbs, which gave the impression that he was walking on chair legs.
“I am so sorry, Jesús.” He pronounced it “Hayzoos.” Jesús had come to be in Ward’s permanent company following the death of a San Antonio gang member called Jesús Hernandez at the hands, or, more specifically, machetes of a rival gang. Jesús, the dog, not the guy — that would have been some resurrection for a man who had had all four limbs hacked off — had been found wandering Hernandez’s apartment at the crime scene, seemingly in shock, and Ward had impulsively decided that he should go home with him rather than to the pound. Jesús still bore the tag with his real name, which Ward couldn’t fluently pronounce.
Ward grabbed the mutt’s leash which was hung up on a hook on the inside of the door and attached it to his collar.
14
At the Honey Pie Diner, Ward took the same seat as yesterday. The woman with the red hair, who hadn’t been here yesterday, came over to Ward’s table. The diner was empty save for a couple over by the far side, tucked into the corner furthest away from prying eyes and in light dimmer than the rest of the room.
“What can I get you?” Cherry asked. She wore a name badge.
Ward removed his hat, placed it on the table. “I’ll have a coffee, please, ma’am. Black, I guess.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket and straightened his narrow black tie.
“And something for your friend here?”
“Jesús will have the same,” Ward said. Jesús looked up hopefully and then avoided eye contact when Cherry tried to make it.
“I think this little guy would love some water, don’t you?” Her voice went gooey over the last two words.
“I’m sorry, he doesn’t speak English. He’s Latino.”
“Ah,” Cherry said, and she tipped Ward an exaggerated wink. She slipped her notepad back into the pocket on the front of her apron without writing anything in it and walked away. Ward checked her out as she ambled behind the counter, an extra emphasis on her hip sway, Ward thought. Jesús sighed.
“You need to pee again?” Ward asked.
“No, mi padre,” he answered himself. “Puedo esperar.”
“Muy bien,” Ward said, and his shoulders sagged as relaxation poured into him at last.
When Cherry returned with the coffee she spoke quietly. “You’re a cop, right?”
“Right,” Ward said. He looked down expecting to see his badge on his belt. It wasn’t there. “The gun?” His holstered weapon was visible under his jacket.
“Jeez, this is Montana. Everybody carries a gun ’round here. You’re sitting in the cop seat.”
“I am?”
“Sure you are. By the window, good view of the room and of the entrance door. Good view of people coming in and out. You checked out that couple over there when you came in, suspecting an illicit liaison.” She put an extra emphasis on the word liaison. “And you checked me out too after I’d taken your order. I saw your reflection in that mirror behind the counter there.”
“Are you sure you’re not the cop?” Ward asked, warming to Cherry, whose red hair negated the necessity of the name badge that Ward had fixed his eyes on. He gazed at it a few moments.
“There you go again, Texas Ranger, checking me out. My name badge this time.” She winked again and Ward grinned.
“You got me there.”
“Do we need introductions? You going to stay around long enough to make that necessary?”
“Ward. And this here is Jesús.” Hayzoos.
“Yes, we’ve met.” Jesús tried out a glance at her and then looked down at the floor again.
“He’s got social phobia. A little.”
“Ward, is that a first name or a last one?”
“Well, now. Just call me Ward. It’s the only name anybody ever uses anyhow.”
“Very pleased to meet you both,” Cherry said, and she turned and walked away. She glanced over her shoulder at Ward, who was still checking her out, then threw back her head and laughed raucously, drawing the nervous attention of the furtive couple in the corner.
“You need freshening up? Just to let you know I’m going to be closing in fifteen minutes.” Cherry tipped her head in the direction of the couple. “Should I leave them the keys, you think?”
Ward smiled.
“Hey, you haven’t even touched your coffee.”
“I don’t drink coffee, ma’am.”
“Then why in heaven’s name did you go and order one? I mean, I heard of folks quit smoking who carry around an emergency cigarette which they don’t smoke, but I never heard of a person orders a coffee and doesn’t drink it.”
“I only came in for some water for the dog. Sorry about the wastage.”
Cherry eyed him suspiciously. “Well, I guess I’ll see you both tomorrow.” She hung around. “You never said why a Texan cowboy ends up in the back of beyond. Don’t get many southerners up here in Montana. They tend to feel the cold.”
“Cold is a nice change.” He grabbed his Stetson and sat it on his head. “Catch you around.”
“Sure as shit will. It’s a small town.”
“Well, ma’am, goodnight,” Ward said, and he let a gaze trace Cherry’s well-made figure before he left.
15
He wondered why he could hear the sea whooshing in his ears. He stood in the kitchen and there was his wife Maggie and his daughter Jen and son-in-law Percy Mallory. Mallory was still in uniform. The three of them seemed to be having a conversation but Newton didn’t hear them. And then he realized it was the blood whooshing in his ears and not the sea. Maggie was standing close to him and her lips were moving but he didn’t hear her at first. It was only when she came right up to him and crouched below, looking up into his downward stare, that he heard.
“Are you listening?”
Newton said, “Yes,” but he hadn’t heard and Maggie knew that.
“I said that it’s one of theirs. The chicken. The roast chicken.” She was smiling when she said it but the smile changed to concern. “Are you sure you’re listening? Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
She studied him for a few moments. She touched his face gently and he tried a smile. “She necked it this morning.”
“She did?” Newton said, late to the conversation and trying to show an interest to make up for it.
“That I did. Plucked it as well,” Jen said.
“Doesn’t Percy do the necking?” Maggie said, and Jen laughed loudly and rocked back as she did.
Newton thought he should get the joke but he mimed a silent laugh.
“He’s too squeamish! He couldn’t wring a wet pair of drawers.”
Mallory glowed red. “Hey,” he said, joining in with the teasing, but there was no humor in his voice.
“Well, I’m not sure I could wring a bird’s neck. I’m sure your father couldn’t neither.” Maggie looked at Newton and he smiled robotically. “Well, let’s set the table. Jen.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“I’ll help,” Mallory said.
Jen
opened a drawer, took out cutlery and walked over to the table. Mallory followed her. He looked over his shoulder, where he could see Newton staring through the wall and Maggie busying herself with what she called “’companiments.” Mallory grabbed Jen by her arm. She made like to yelp but Mallory’s glare glued her mouth shut.
“Don’t never make fun of me in front of your folks,” he said through his teeth, and Jen looked around at her mom and dad, neither of whom appeared to be watching. “That’s it. Just…” And he jabbed a finger toward her.
Jen dropped a knife, and Mallory let go of her before Newton or Maggie saw anything.
“That needs washing,” Maggie said. “Get another.”
Maggie said, “Has everybody got everything?”
“Sit down,” Newton said. “Stop fussing and sit down.”
“I agree,” Mallory said. “Sit down, Mom. We’ve all got everything.”
Maggie liked the fact that Mallory called her Mom. She smiled every time he did.
“Okay, I’m sitting.” She sat and she glimpsed her husband with hands clasped together. “You look like you’re about to say grace.” And she shook her head. Newton untied his fingers and the blood ran back into them.
“I’ll say grace, Mom,” Mallory said, and Jen was about to say something but stopped herself.
“I was only kidding,” Maggie said, and Mallory had a quick look at Jen.
“Say, what’s this new detective like?” Maggie said. Mallory had started to eat and he kept his head down over his plate with one arm wrapped around it in a perimeter guard.
Newton said, “It’s work. We have a rule about no work talk around the table.”
Then Mallory did look up, but he still didn’t say anything.
“Just look at this bird. It’s like Thanksgiving all over again,” Maggie said, but everybody else was already eating and none of them spoke.
16
