The Killing of Bobbi Lomax

by Cal Moriarty

  ‘I think I’ll pass, if it’s all the same,’ she smiled that smile, ‘you don’t want me to nod off, do you?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Marion.’

  She made her way back down the corridor, past Al who was headed in Marty’s direction.

  Marty looked at the shelves. Five of them and a cupboard underneath to the floor. On the other side, in the same glossy mahogany, the alcove was covered up with a large fitted panel, intricate wooden beading all round the outside. In front of it sat a sculpted wooden plinth mounted with the statue of a golden angel. Marty would have counted that as material possessions – ethereal or not.

  ‘I heard from her. The sketch artist.’

  ‘Good. How’s it going?’

  ‘Do you want the bad news, or the randomly good news?’

  ‘Bad news. But wait a sec, does that look odd to you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This. One side shelving, the other side that panel?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t have anything to put on the shelves, except those magazines.’

  ‘Why build shelves you got nothing to put on them? Did you guys take anything off this shelf?’

  ‘Nothing much. A couple of client files, that’s all,’ said Al.

  Marty crouched down to the floor, opened the cupboard, peered inside.

  Al bent down towards him. ‘She paged, gave me a number over at the hospital, no incoming calls. So, I got through to Grady’s kid on the radio. There were complications in the surgery. Angel. Something to do with the anaesthetic. Bad reaction. He’s in the ICU. Room next to Houseman. Last night and overnight again, at least, according to the docs.’

  ‘He gonna make it?’ Nothing in the cupboard they hadn’t already checked. And, at the back, just the same coloured paint was on the walls. Marty tapped on the wall. Nothing hidden inside unless it had been bricked up and concreted over.

  Al nodded. ‘They think so.’

  Marty looked up at Al. ‘Well, that’s something. We really need a sketch of this guy.’

  ‘I told him to tell the artist girl to go home. No point her staying there, getting all tired. But to keep in touch with Grady and his shift replacement. You wanna hear the other news?’

  Marty stood up now. ‘Is it any worse?’

  ‘I spoke to Hobbs.’

  Marty tapped on the paneled-over alcove. ‘Doesn’t sound too hollow.’

  Al tapped it. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

  Marty tapped a few other parts of the panel. Same dull sound. ‘Might be something behind there.’

  ‘You might be right.’

  ‘What’s Hobbs doing at the hospital?’

  ‘Grady put him on the line. He’s the lead detective on the case.’

  ‘What case?’

  ‘The drugstore cowboys.’

  ‘They found them?’

  ‘They found us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll get to that. But they finally found her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The old lady whose car went boom yesterday.’

  ‘Mrs Miller. That’s good. What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing. She’s in the morgue.’

  ‘In the morgue?’

  ‘Yep. Getting buried tomorrow.’

  ‘Murdered?’

  ‘No. Apparently people die of other stuff.’

  ‘So I’d heard.’

  ‘This one had a stroke. She’s been in the hospital for ten days. Her son says the car was parked out front of her house, way out in the boondocks. She’d been housebound almost a year. When he went back to hers, after the ambulance got her to hospital, the car had gone.’

  ‘He didn’t report it stolen?’

  ‘No, he thought his son might have borrowed it. Dopehead. Didn’t want to get him arrested. Again.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘That’s where the drugstore cowboys come in. They called 911 this morning. Emergency ambulance. No police required, but Curtis from the traffic boys was nearer so they sent him first.’

  ‘Curtis, the paramedic?’

  ‘As was.’

  ‘Well, he goes to this hotel. Where they’re supposed to be staying, but they’re out back hid near the laundry room amongst a pile of bloodied bed linen. And the receptionist says they never checked in. One guy’s shredded real bad. He certainly didn’t get those injuries in any hotel room. Not any normal one, anyhow. His buddy has somehow managed to stitch him up. Trouble is, the wound keeps erupting. Curtis says the kid looks like Frankenstein’s monster.’

  ‘Sounds a mess.’

  ‘Curtis thinks it looks like he went through a windshield and figures these two might be the guys Hobbs is looking for.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘So Curtis IDs the kids. They claim they don’t have any. While the paramedics are working on the younger kid, he searches the older kid. Bingo. ID. Last name?’

  ‘I give up.’

  ‘Miller, same name as the old lady.’

  ‘So where’d they get this other car? The one they put through the pharmacy?’

  ‘Stole it, of course.’

  ‘What happened to their Nissan?’

  ‘Somebody stole it.’

  Marty laughed. ‘That’s their story and they’re sticking to it.’

  ‘From what Hobbs could find out, they’ve never even been out of Dalewood County before.’

  ‘Wow, some adventure, huh? Abraham City wouldn’t have been my rebel destination.’

  ‘Now or then?’

  ‘Now or never.’

  ‘Billy-Ray, that’s the cousin, fifteen, he went through the windshield and then got dragged away by Dopehead before the whole place ignited . . . he’ll have a pocketful of memories, that’s for sure.’

  ‘And the scars so he doesn’t forget. So, our bomber’s also a car thief. That’s interesting. They leave the keys in the ignition?’

  ‘No. They weren’t carjacked neither. Curtis found the car key to Grandma’s Nissan in the older one’s pocket.’

  ‘So our bomber knows how to hot-wire a car.’

  ‘That’s if it was him. Could be someone sold it to him?’

  ‘Then we need to find that guy. How long the cowboys been in town?’

  ‘Almost a week. They ran out of money fast, could only afford one night in some hotel the other side of town. That night the car got stolen.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Night before the first bombing. Twenty-ninth. With no money and no shelter, they broke into an empty hotel room and put the Do Not Disturb sign on before the chambermaid yesterday called security. So they stole the Pontiac, to sleep in. Hit some black ice and skidded off the road.’

  ‘Right into the pharmacy?’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘They weren’t trying to ram the place, and get some drugs, hey?’

  ‘Of course not: that would be a felony.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it now,’ said Marty. ‘Damn it, how in the hell do I get inside this thing?’

  ‘Maybe you don’t. Stand aside, Shorty.’

  ‘Go ahead. We can’t all be children of the Amazon.’ Al stood on tiptoe, reached up to the top of the panel, ran his hands along behind it. Nothing but dust. ‘Hang on, Al. If Gudsen was the bomber – maybe this is where he hid his bombing paraphernalia?’

  ‘Oh, man. Tilts, timers, what’s this one: booby-trapped?’

  ‘Could be. But maybe this is just where he stashed the ledger?’

  ‘Sorry it took me so long. Betty didn’t have any.’ Marion was in the doorway now. She dropped her voice. ‘I should have guessed. They’re not allowed anything frivolous.’ She held up a copy of Harper’s Bazaar. ‘I dashed home.’

  ‘Got something, Mart. Now might be a good time for you both to step back.’ Marty and Marion took a pointless step backwards. ‘Gotcha, you awkward son of a . . .’ Al jerked something upwards and the alcove panel, rigged as a door, popped open a little. Al peered curiously around the partiall
y opened door. Marty and Marion stepped forward. Al stepped back towards them, drawing the door open with him. Inside, on the back of the door, were rack after rack of brightly colored hardbacks, cellophane covers around each one. On the exposed shelving inside the covered alcove were beautiful leather-bound Bibles with word after word in gold engraving and at the center of it all a small green cast-iron safe. Marion was by Marty’s side now, her arm brushed against his.

  Marty took down one of the books, opened it. Looked up at the others. ‘Well, if this isn’t a collection, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘So this is what he meant. The one he wanted the Old Testament for.’

  ‘Not that he’d have anywhere to put it, Marion. Not even a miniature.’

  ‘Not enough room for another sheet of paper. Unless it’s in the safe,’ said Al.

  ‘We need to get that safe open. Maybe that’s where the ledger is.’

  ‘Who’s good with tumblers?’ said Al.

  ‘Bank robbers. And explosives experts. Call Tex, see if he can get a small charge in there. Before that, you better go fetch Whittaker. Discreetly. Get this safe dusted. And the door. I want to know who’s been in and out of here.’

  Al nodded silently, moved back over to the door. Marion turned to Marty. He could feel her breath on his face. ‘I didn’t like to say, it was such a kind gift, but what would Edgar Allan Poe be doing with a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew?’

  ‘What?’

  She moved her head back a little. He hadn’t meant to raise his voice. He checked himself. ‘What did you say, Mrs Rose?’

  ‘Marion.’

  ‘Marion.’

  She repeated her question, but there was no need. He’d heard. It was the same second time around. ‘What would Edgar Allan Poe be doing with a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew?’

  What indeed.

  Although the bigger question might be what Poe was doing with two copies.

  Marty looked down at his watch. Patricia Kent should be here soon. She had promised to get the story on top of the local news. Not that he’d told her what the story was yet.

  36

  July 8th 1983

  His blood had dripped into the makeshift pot he’d improvised from a miniature jam jar he’d lifted the previous week from the campus hotel breakfast bar. He’d already spent two hours practising the signature in pig’s blood on similar density paper. He’d thought of Robert Bright, thought of his life, how puffed up and sinfully proud he must have felt after almost two decades of gathering a flock which numbered in the thousands. The Faith’s increasing popularity and its Followers’ lives, lived on the flip-side of society’s rules, had provoked Bright’s frequent clashes with authority and made him a marked man.

  Focused on Bright’s rage against authority, Clark had dipped his quill into his freshly drawn blood-ink and scratched Robert Bright’s angry oversized signature onto the page. Clark would say this was Bright’s own blood – it wasn’t as if they had anything to compare the blood to, just so long as it was human it would pass cursory tests. Clark stared at his creation. It was perfect. Just like Bright, Clark loved to seek perfection in artifice and, in so doing, make myth reality. Like Bright before him, Clark found it flattering when his creations spun him gold from air.

  Clark studied Arnold Lomax’s face, brow furrowed, mouth opened as if trying to drink it all in as he looked at Clark’s Polaroids, the red blood signature just visible on the brown paper in the badly lit shot. Polaroids Clark had brought with him, ostensibly straight from the wealthy dealer’s house in Fort Lauderdale where, he gleefully told Lomax, he had spent the Fourth of July weekend in a house on the intracoastal waterway, opposite where the Bee Gees and a legion of other stars lived and where the weather was warm and the people smiley. He hoped Lomax wouldn’t ask why he hadn’t taken a photo of the house or the eighty-foot yacht moored at the bottom of the garden and facing out to sea. Or, for that matter, a pictorial memento of his tête-à-tête with his most generous host.

  The Polaroids also included a handful of the three aged, worn letters that Clark would use to form part of the package he was preparing in order to verify the provenance of the pièce de résistance, the Letter of Accession – as it had been called by the Faith for over 150 years. The Letter that no one had ever seen, or seemed to have owned, but which everyone in the Faith was absolutely certain had existed. In the Faith’s telling of the story, Robert Bright had written this letter to Jeremiah, his son by Rebecca, passing the Prophet’s mantle to him. But Clark had other plans.

  He had spent weeks researching back in his old haunt of Colorado State Library at Boulder and running up a five-hundred-dollar hotel phone bill calling every major university library around the world, until he was convinced that nowhere in the American or European archives was there was a document that would one day rear up its head and claim to be the original Letter of Accession written by the Faith’s prophet and signed in his blood, not Clark’s. In its absence, Clark’s version would become the version.

  ‘But I don’t know the first damn thing about ancient stuff, manuscripts and all that. How can I tell what it’s worth?’ Lomax said, brow still furrowed.

  Antique, not ancient, Clark wanted to say. Instead, he turned on the megawatt smile, ‘Well, that’s what I’m for, Mr Lomax.’ I’m your path to a quick buck and you’re the $500K I need to pay Dougie before his and Sanford’s deadline runs out and they pick another guy as co-investor for the Hollywood store and close me right out of the deal. Sometimes Clark tired of all the bullshit people told one another, instead of just coming straight out with the truth. But it was all a game, he guessed. People preferred games to truth. They always seemed so suspicious of the truth. Or frightened of it. ‘That’s just three of the letters. He wouldn’t let me take pictures of the entire collection.’ Clark knew there was no need to have created all eleven letters, not just yet. Not until his appointment with the Faith. They would most likely ask for details of them all and even to see the originals. Either way, Clark was already getting prepared.

  ‘So, let’s get to the nitty gritty, son. Nitty gritty I can do: you need five hundred K?’

  ‘That’s correct, sir, ideally the money would be in a lump sum.’

  Clark needed the money paid into his account for two different reasons. The first, to pay Dougie for his share of the Hollywood store; the second, so that should the Faith get curious and task any of their spies with checking on Clark’s financial health, with Lomax’s money he could show he’d held and then paid the requisite deposit of $500K for the document, transferred to the account of Dougie Wild. The Faith wouldn’t know who the hell Dougie Wild was from Adam. But if they chose to find out, he would be listed all over as a documents dealer.

  ‘And my cut’s twenty per cent?’

  ‘Of net profit. I think it’s going to be quite a healthy net. I might be able to push the sale price to the Faith north of two mil.’

  ‘Two mil?’ Lomax whistled. ‘Well, how about this: I pay over a month or so?’

  ‘As long as at least one hundred K is the first part of the payment.’

  Ideally, Clark wanted all the money upfront, so he could pay Dougie and, also, go to the Faith quicker. Now he’d have to wait a month. But a hundred thou should keep Dougie and Sanford quiet a while.

  ‘Twenty is no good to me. I want twenty-five percent.’

  ‘Twenty-two point five.’

  ‘You cut a hard bargain,’ said Clark. And you’re a greedy bastard.

  ‘When you gonna pay my cut?’

  ‘The faster I get the whole five hundred K, the faster I can get your money back to you. But you’ll get your original investment back thirty days after cleared payment for the sale, to the Faith or whomsoever. I’ll pay out your profit thirty days after that date.’

  ‘Why don’t I get it all the day the deal is done?’

  ‘There’s always a delay, gives the buyers – us and our eventual purchaser – a chance to pull out if they find any
thing amiss with the document.’

  ‘What do you mean, amiss?’

  ‘Sometimes things don’t always work out. Legally, people have to be able to change their mind.’

  ‘You been down there yourself, though, haven’t you? Fort Lauderdale, checked it out? Because I could go back down with you this week. Show them we’re serious and we’re not going to stand for any bull.’

  ‘I checked it out. I brought an independent assessor along with me.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Sure. Clifford Hartman. He’s particularly skilled in Robert Bright’s era.’

  ‘And this Hartman guy was happy?’

  ‘Very. This is his letter of authentication. And that of the dealer.’ Clark took two separate letters out of his attaché case.

  ‘You should have brought him today.’

  ‘Believe me, I wish I could. But he’s a very busy guy and he charges by the hour. Three hundred bucks. Five thou for the weekend in Florida, plus airfares.’

  ‘Damn, I’m glad you didn’t bring him. Don’t want to cut into the net.’

  ‘That’s what I figured.’

  ‘Five thou. Crazy. Who knew bits of paper could be worth so much. I followed my daddy into the property business. But if this pans out, I might switch to the paper business.’

  ‘Well, if you’re serious about that, we can do another deal after this one.’

  ‘What’s with the interest, the delay on that?’

  ‘That ensures your discretion.’

  ‘No flies on you, hey son?’

  ‘The stakes are high.’

  ‘Sure are. I should be able to get you the cash by Monday. I just got to find my shovel first.’ He laughed. ‘I got problems with my wife, we’re divorcing. She knows I got some money stashed away someplace, damn shame she doesn’t know where, but it’s not for the want of looking.’ He leaned back, laughing in his chair. He scanned the Polaroids, picked up one of the three letters Clark had created between Bright’s first and second wives. Clark had stapled transcripts of the letters to the shots. Lomax silently read one. ‘Three wives. And all at the same time? Bright must have been crazy.’

  ‘Either that or he was on to something.’