The Killing of Bobbi Lomax

by Cal Moriarty

  ‘Married?’ Something made him not want to lie to her. ‘No, Marion, I’m not married.’

  ‘You just like wedding jewelry?’ She half smiled, half frowned at him.

  ‘It’s easier here this way. I took it off, right after the divorce. Soon put it back on. People figure I’m more reliable with it, I guess. Somehow, it seems to make people more comfortable.’

  ‘Reassures them you’re one of them?’

  ‘I guess. No one would have cared back in LA. Probably the opposite.’ Here it made them talk and he was grateful for it. Stopped him having to.

  ‘You lived in LA? I love it there. It’s not the natural state here though, is it? Not encouraged.’

  ‘Unmarried? Divorced?’

  ‘Either. I’m glad I didn’t come here to open a singles bar. The Faith seems to have its own.’ She threw her head back. Watching her laugh made him forget to ask her what had brought her to a sleepy little city thousands of miles from New York. A sharp rap on the front door ended her laughter. She looked curiously at Marty.

  ‘Expecting someone?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I sent the boys to their father’s. Peter, the bombs . . .’

  He understood. He was glad she hadn’t asked him if he had children. It all might have come spilling out.

  She was at the door now, opening it. He heard Al’s voice. Moved toward the corridor.

  ‘Hey, Marty! We gotta go. Suspect package down at the Mission offices.’

  Marty moved fast towards the door. He gave her his card. Al was already halfway down the path.

  ‘Anything you think of, Marion, no matter if it seems irrelevant. Call. They can page me. We really got to stop this guy.’

  He could feel her green eyes trying to find his as she looked up over the card. But he didn’t look, didn’t speak.

  He was down the path now. Behind him he heard her call out, ‘Stay safe, Officer,’ before correcting herself, ‘Detective. Stay safe, Detective.’

  Al drove up alongside him, barely stopping the car long enough for him to get in. With the hack pack advancing on foot, they took off.

  As they slid into the first corner, Marty turned to him: ‘So, Al, how you feeling about Big Tex’s theory now?’

  10

  It hadn’t worked the first time – he was too awake, too aware, all keyed up and expectant – and so he’d slugged back some JD he kept stashed deep in the back of the third drawer of his file cabinet and sat back down at his desk. It didn’t work the second time either. The silence around him had been broken by a high-pitched faraway sound, Jack he thought, screaming blue murder at the top of the house.

  The third time, three grand slugs of JD later, somehow the voice on the tape, his own voice, began to seem further and further away and his brain began to see images, until he found himself sitting in a church pew behind young Clark, aged nine. He could see the white of the collar under his blue cardigan. He couldn’t see his legs but he knew the boy was wearing khaki shorts. He had jumped off a tree, snagged them on a branch on the way to the ground. It had ripped the base of the hem. So his mother, having sworn him to secrecy, had rolled them up and stitched a new hem so his father wouldn’t notice and then rolled up the other side and stitched that as well, so they matched.

  Next to young Clark sat his family, like three shiny pins. All stared, chins forward, listening intently to the Father and his weekly sermon. Except young Clark. His face was down, reading his prayer book.

  Clark could hear the Father now, a Faith Bible in hand, repeating the words of the Prophet who had declared their holy book ‘the only book on earth, for all man’ and said that man ‘would ascend to heaven if he adhered to the gospel the Prophet had transcribed’.

  Clark’s eyes wandered over to the flickering flame of a large altar-side candle. The service was over. Now he watched as young Clark and his family were out into the aisle, moving slowly with the other Faithful. Clark moved out from his seat, into the aisle behind them. They didn’t notice him. He shuffled along behind them, toward the light at the end of the aisle, blinding light pouring through the doorway of the Mission. Urgent movement, fast behind him, two young boys broken free from family reins storming through toward the sunlight. As they did so, they bumped into young Clark and he watched as the child’s hands reached out to grab the book, but it kept falling, falling, falling down onto the floor where its pages fluttered open. Young Clark froze, like he was cast in stone, or salt. His father, half blinded by the sunlight, bent to retrieve it, but when his hand brought the Bible back into view there were two books, not one. And one had pictures in. It was as if a cloud had put out the sun. Clark watched young Clark, knew that he wanted to run as fast as he could with those other boys, run outside to where he knew the sun shone. Out, out and away.

  The Faithful halted in their tracks to stare as his father held the book aloft for all to see. Clark could see his father’s lips move, but couldn’t hear him. Saw him turn to his mother, as spittle flew from someplace beneath his moustache – his angry mouth twisted and turned, his eyes flared. Clark remembered how it had hurt, his father’s hand pressed down, gripping his shoulder as if he knew he would run.

  And then the sound came back.

  ‘There’s no such thing as dinosaurs, son. NO. SUCH. THING. This filth is worse than fiction. It’s blasphemy, that’s what this is. BLASPHEMY.’

  And now Clark watched as his father dragged young Clark over to the candle, picked up the anointing oil from the altar and poured it over the book.

  He saw young Clark reach out helplessly as his father touched the book on top of the candle and held it aloft. Flames began to lick up the dinosaur’s tail, consuming Stegosaurus and his friends in penitential fire.

  It was February 23, 1964. He didn’t know precisely what time, but about the moment the second hand was encroaching upon the 3. That moment, as he watched his burning book arc through the air and land outside on the Mission’s concrete path, was the precise moment he had begun to truly hate his daddy and his Faith.

  Numismatic.

  Clark began to come out of the trance, drawn out by that man’s voice. His voice. As he did, through the earphones and the now static hum coming from the tape deck he could hear some other noise invading his eardrums.

  Hammering.

  It was Edie, bang, bang, banging on the door with what sounded like a jackhammer. He heard her shoulder make contact with the door. What was she trying to do, she was five foot nothing and barely a hundred pounds.

  ‘Clark, Clark, are you alright? Answer me or I’m gonna call 911. Clark!’

  Finding his way slowly out of 1964 he couldn’t remember if he’d locked the basement door properly or not. He moved fast as he could up the wooden steps. She must have heard him. She went silent, probably expecting him to open the door. He didn’t.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Research,’ he said.

  ‘What kind of research? It’s late.’

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he was looking at the white-painted door panels around the top bolt, smeared with dried blood. His blood. When he’d dragged the bolt shut earlier his hand must have bled on it. And then he realized it was him that was the problem. His baggage. His blood. That’s why his hypnotic state was stuck in limbo in his childhood.

  Her knock. Soft now.

  ‘Go to bed, Edie.’

  ‘But . . .’ He heard her sigh, wait for a moment, and then without saying anything else he heard her move back along the corridor towards the staircase.

  Back in the trance state he’d been both himself and his younger self, divided not by place, but by time. Alice had been sucked down into the rabbit hole and found Wonderland, another world where she had been tall and short and then herself again. Clark had fallen into the centre of the vortex and fallen back into hell, but just like Alice he was stuck there as various distortions of himself. Perhaps to escape himself and his past and create a new self, first he had to become someone else? Breathe as them, think a
s them, even just for a few moments. Fake yourself to find yourself.

  He was stood at his workbench now, where the Poe volume he’d gotten from Vegas awaited his attention. Earlier, he’d been crafting a protective cover for it, before adding it to the growing collection of first editions he kept stashed away in a locked cabinet, not too dissimilar to Dougie Wild’s. But Clark’s cabinet had two locks, not one. Clark picked up the book with his bandaged hand and carefully, with his good hand, thumbed through it.

  What if it were possible in the trance state to become someone else, someone that wasn’t the younger, fatter or taller you, and by becoming that person, even for a minute, you could be them? Just like Mesmer’s jockeys and ballroom dancers. Clark’s mind filled with the possibilities of that. Put unspoken words in the mouths of the famous, the infamous, write their signatures, their letters, their words. Become them. Perhaps even create their words in their style. Surely that was impossible. Or was it? If you could counterfeit coins, then why couldn’t you counterfeit people?

  11

  Downtown, Abraham City

  By the time they reached the Mission offices Big Tex was rolling out the cable that connected a control box to his robot, or Baby as he called it. It looked like a cumbersome oversized skateboard with an unwieldy Meccano arm precariously balanced on it. Marty bit down into one of the fresh bacon ’n’ cheese burgers Al had liberated, courtesy of a cop-loving waitress, from the diner behind them, right after he’d shooed its customers, necks craning, out of their comfy booths and back up the street away from what could be the center of an imminent blast. Being cleared out of range of flying glass and shrapnel, but out of view of the drama, didn’t seem to make any of them happy. Less than thirty minutes had passed since they got the call but every building in the half-block, including the Faith’s sprawling HQ, had been evacuated.

  Now Al was crouched back down beside him and they watched as Big Tex switched on the screen that monitored Baby on her ops. The picture was fuzzy with lines running up and down on it like you’d see on your TV if you didn’t have cable, right before the aerial completely lost its signal and ruined the end of your favorite show. Marty thought it looked pretty hopeless. But he figured it was better than sticking your face into a bomb which might be about to explode, better for the Meccano to take the hit.

  The call had come in from a limo driver. He’d had a busy morning shuttling people from the airport downtown and back, for some convention or other. He’d stopped for a coffee when a woman approached him. He shouldn’t have taken the ride off the grid, but felt he was having too good a morning to resist. He’d already made a hundred bucks in tips, double the usual, forty of it from a young Korean kid. He didn’t feel bad that the kid couldn’t understand the currency, mistaking twenties for tens. He’d thanked him for the tip and bowed like some of his Japanese customers bowed. He wasn’t sure if they did that in Korea or not. The fact the woman in need of a ride to the other side of town was hot might have swayed his decision to agree to take her far from his airport route, way over the other side of the canyon. But his fantasy as to what might lie ahead for him in lieu of payment and/or tips when they’d got to the canyon was dampened before it had even got to the good bit. As she got in, with him holding the door open for her, she’d noticed a white gift box with a red ribbon tied around it wedged right behind the driver’s seat. When he’d reached in to retrieve it he suddenly remembered the descriptions of the bomb packages he’d heard over the dispatch radio. Next he’s shouting to the woman to get out, there’s a bomb, and they’re out running down the sidewalk yelling and warning everyone else. From the payphone up the street the driver had called it in. The woman had hopped in a cab and he’d lost the fare and who knows what else, and now it looked as if his fantasies and his limo would both turn to dust.

  ‘OK, Baby. Do your thing,’ cooed Big Tex in Baby’s direction.

  Marty, Al and what looked like most of the precinct were crouched down behind a slew of squad cars which had slammed to a halt across the street, blocking it off. Marty peeked around the exhaust of one of the cars as Tex toggled what looked like the gear stick of an old racing car, pushing and pulling it in the direction he wanted Baby to go. After a hesitant start, Baby was now racing at a speed of about five miles an hour toward the open rear driver’s-side door, where, in the footwell, Marty could see a white shoe box and cascading red ribbons, exactly like the bomber’s other packages. Baby slowed down about twenty yards from the cab and began to inch forward. Marty guessed that was to do with not causing too much ground vibration that might set the bomb off before Baby and Tex got a closer look.

  Marty looked around at Al. He was crouched down, back to the cruiser, chin tucked into chest and his hands over his ears, expecting the worst. Marty tugged Al’s hand away from his ear.

  ‘What did she say, the widow Gudsen?’

  ‘You want to know now?’

  Marty smiled at him. ‘Talking will make you less tense.’

  ‘She said a bunch of stuff. Not sure if any of it will be any use. But basically, she didn’t know much about her husband’s business. She was in college, met Peter the husband through friends in the Faith. He was a senior, tipped for the Faith’s top job even back then.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought so. Although that widens our suspects to jealous colleagues from the Faith.’

  ‘Correct. Ideally, we’d be narrowing the search, not increasing it ten-fold. What else?’

  ‘She really had no idea, or she should win an Oscar, about their finances, business transactions. None of it. Said she was totally shocked when she heard on the news yesterday that the business was going to fold. Gudsen had never mentioned it was in any trouble, although she did say he’d been very stressed about something for the past couple of months.’

  ‘But didn’t know what?’

  ‘This, I’d imagine.’

  ‘Maybe this. Maybe that. Could be anything. What about another woman? Or Mrs Houseman?’

  ‘Nothing. She said he wasn’t that kind of man. Very devout. They were both virgins when they married.’

  ‘Maybe he was a slow starter.’

  Al smiled. ‘She doesn’t know any Mrs Houseman, or Mr Houseman. When I asked her if Gudsen went out a lot, unexplained places, maybe even at night, she said he’d had even more meetings at the Faith’s offices in the past few months, mostly in the evenings, than ever before. She figured that was a good thing.’

  ‘Well, at least, that’s what he wanted her to think. The Faith, not unfaithful.’

  Marty smiled at his own joke. Al continued. ‘She didn’t know of any offshore accounts or unusual transactions. But, as she said, Gudsen dealt with all that, even the household expenses, gave her housekeeping.’

  ‘Cash?’

  ‘No. Check. Monthly. Into a dedicated account for the house. Four hundred bucks, for shopping, small emergencies, that kind of thing. Wrote a check direct to the cleaner himself once a month.’

  ‘They sound duller than ditchwater.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Somebody didn’t think so, or they wouldn’t have blown him to smithereens.’

  ‘I asked the widow where he kept the check-books, it’d be good to get a look at the ledger, you know, in the back, see if he kept it up to date, see where any monies might be getting siphoned off. She thought just domestic ones, maybe, not business he would keep in the house. But . . .’

  ‘She didn’t really know.’

  ‘Right. In his desk drawer, maybe. It was locked. All the other drawers were open, but no sign of the key. When she was looking I thought I saw a couple of safe keys, tied together with a little scrap of ribbon, in amongst a pen set in one of the other drawers. I don’t think she even saw it and if she did, it didn’t register.’

  ‘Doesn’t know what it is?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘She a suspect?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Well, I guess we narrowed the suspect li
st, huh?’

  ‘By one.’

  ‘It’s a start. We’ll get a search warrant. For the house,’ said Marty.

  ‘What, on a victim’s place? This guy was going places, with the Faith.’

  ‘Maybe this financial stuff put paid to that.’

  ‘And maybe it was the cause of him getting killed.’

  Marty thought that was definitely a possibility. And maybe so did the Faith. They were known to invest heavily in projects brought to them by the Faithful. The higher up the Faith tree, the more likely it was they had some kind of financial hold on you by way of investment. From what Marty had seen at the Gudsen house there was certainly a Faith presence, over and above a simple show of support for a fallen Brother’s widow. He’d seen the Faithful loitering by the phone, and he’d spotted one guy sat in a car parked opposite the house, clocking the comings and goings at the entrance. They were easy to spot. They didn’t mingle, they observed. Mingling was not their thing.

  Marty stuck his head around the edge of the car again. As he did, he could see in the monitor Big Tex’s Meccano hand reaching down to a corner of the ribbon, pushing towards it as if it was going to tease it open. Marty nudged Al to cover his ears back up, and covered his own. As he did so, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a young Korean guy, clad in the uniform of the Faithful, pushing through the police line outside the conference centre, an equally young cop trying to hold him back. Marty took his hands from his ears, looking to the guy and the box, just as the Meccano snagged the ribbon, lifting it up, the ribbon not strong enough to hold the dangling box together. It fell open and the vase inside crashed to the floor and smashed into tiny pieces.

  ‘What fool left that fucking vase there!?’ yelled Tex to no one in particular as he took off fast towards Baby.