by Tony Masero
“No,” she whispered, her lips close to his ear. “You don´t understand, Jimmy. George an´ I were going to have to get married. I´m having a baby, you see. I got myself pregnant.”
Damn it! Jimmy Luke sighed inside. Hell of a time for that to happen.
“It’s okay,” he hugged her tighter. “We´ll work it out. Don´t you worry.”
Her hand strayed onto the front of his shirt and gripping the material fiercely she sagged against him tearfully.
“That’s so kind of you, Jimmy.”
It was becoming unbearable for Jimmy Luke. The warmth and smell of her and the dampness of her tears on his neck. He cupped her chin, more as a gesture of comfort than anything else, and kissed her softly on the lips. She tilted her chin up to him and answered the pressure fiercely with her own. It took but a second. Jimmy Luke was to look back and wonder with amazement at it over time. The shock and nearness of sudden death perhaps. The prospect of a new life. He never quite got a handle on it.
But before long they were kissing hotly, arms around each other, fumbling with clothing. It was like a fire had been set between them. A long suppressed fire that burst out of them both with passionate suddenness.
They made love there on the floor of the lounge. Sweating, hard, fast and tense love. Iris not even bothering to remove her nightgown, just pulling it up in a roll under her chin as Jimmy Luke covered her. Weeping and crying out, Iris pulled Jimmy Luke onto her, urging him to greater heights as she wrapped her thin body around him. It appeared momentarily to Jimmy Luke that she was in a state of dementia as her eyes rolled back and she sobbed loudly, her own loss forgotten in this wildly ecstatic ride. Guiltily at first but then with an urgent commitment, Jimmy Luke followed her lead and gave himself up to the moment.
They finished together in a blazing eruption that left Jimmy Luke gasping for air. Lying there on the carpet in a post coital haze, Jimmy Luke felt Iris snuggle up to him, her arm enclosing his waist. His glazed eyes cleared as he came fully around and realized what had just happened.
“Hey,” he whispered nervously. “I´m real sorry, Iris. I didn´t mean for that to happen.”
She hugged him in a tight squeeze. “Oh, Jimmy. I´m right glad it did.”
“But you being pregnant, and all. I didn´t hurt you, did I?”
“No,” she murmured. “That’s a long way off. You didn´ do nothing wrong at all.”
It felt good, the two of them just lying there in their tangled clothing. Surprised, Jimmy Luke realized that he was set to go again. Without any guilt this time he succumbed to the obvious pleasure she felt at being near him and he pulled her close again.
Chapter Twenty
Alex Summersby parked Leroy´s cruiser in the driveway of the Links household and knocked on the front door. The house was silent and seemed empty, he wondered if the Links were still in their beds. Then he heard a knocking sound. It came from around the side of the building; he looked back there and saw the sign.
Links Carpentry. Following the pointing arrow he made his way to the workshop out back.
Reason Links was bent over his workbench; chisel in hand as he chipped away at a block of wood held in a vice. To one side, sitting silently on an upturned can, was a sad faced, slightly built black woman.
Her eyes were red rimmed and she held a crumpled tissue clenched in her lap.
Reason Links looked up slowly as Summersby entered.
“Help you?” he asked.
“Yes, good morning. Mr. and Mrs. Links? My name´s Alex Summersby, I´ve been appointed by Chief Stoeffel to act as temporary deputy.” He flashed the badge Stoeffel had given him.
Tiredly, Reason laid his chisel down. “What can we do for you, Deputy?”
“Did you know last night your son escaped the holding cell down at the station?”
A glance of surprise crossed between husband and wife.
“He´s fled?” A frown creased Ruth´s already troubled face. “How could that happen?”
Summersby sighed inwardly. Their surprise appeared genuine and he was pretty sure these two knew nothing of Brian’s breakout. It was even more bad news he was bringing them.
“The deputy on duty was attacked and killed. Then your son was let out. We have no knowledge of his whereabouts; if you know anything, please let me know right now. It´ll make it a whole lot easier for him.”
“Lord, no!” Ruth Reason broke into a tearful wail. “I can´t stand no more of this.” Reason went over to her and held her protectively in the crook of his arm.
“We don´ know nothing, sir,” he let loose a heave of despair. “An´ that’s the truth. Isn´t it enough we lost our daughter? You people took our son and now you say he´s up for killing a trooper too.”
Summersby shook his head, trying to alleviate their suffering.
“That isn´t the case. There´s no evidence suggesting Brian committed the murder of the deputy. It had to be someone else as he was locked away at the time, but he has run off. We have to get him back, there´s a lot of unanswered questions he has to answer.”
Reason looked angrily at Summersby as his wife sobbed quietly in his arms, her eyes lost in the floor at her feet. “You really think our boy could harm little Epsie? Man, you just didn´t know him. He cared for that child like she was his best friend. Nothing, an´ I mean nothing, would have caused him to hurt her.”
“You´re right, Mr. Links. I didn´t know your boy but you have to realize the police need to look at this from another angle. There are unaccounted for hours in Brian´s day, he lied to us about where he was during his lunch break. The toy lamb he gave her had traces of illegal narcotic on it and he never did buy the toy in Lodrun as he said he did. These things are bound to make the police highly suspicious.”
Ruth Links looked up fiercely. “There´ll be a good reason behind it all, Deputy. Mark my words; my boy will have justification for his actions. That one time he was caught with them drugs on him was the last. My husband saw to that.” She turned to Reason for affirmation. “Ain´t that right?”
Reason Links nodded vehemently. “Oh yes. I told him he would never set foot in this house again that ever happened one more time. I swore I would beat him within an inch of his life, Lord forgive me for such violent thoughts, but it was the only way.”
Summersby thought on his brother Bo and in retrospect wished his own father had taken something like the same strong action. He sagged visibly.
“You´re good folks, I can see that,” he said. “And I´m real sorry to bring this to your door. I understand how you feel....”
Reason cut him off sharply. “How in God´s name can you understand anything about it? You´re just a young white boy from some city out east who knows nothing of this town or the people in it. Oh, sure enough, you have all the education we don´ have, but we know ourselves here. We know how people work. Why don´ you just get on out an´ leave us alone!”
Summersby bit his lip and took the tirade silently, the anger swelling up in him. He turned to leave then paused and swung around at the doorway to face them again.
“I had a younger brother,” he began quietly. “Bo, my little brother, four years younger. Bright kid and I loved him. He did real well at school. Had a brain that was sharp as a needle. Got himself a college degree went on out to the west coast. Graduate student at MIT, the whole works.” (MIT is in Boston, MA, on the east coast, so made this change to clarify)
The two blacks watched him silently, their attention captured by Summersby´s intensity.
“Landed a nice job in Silicon Valley. Big bucks with a great company and the kind of chip technology work he enjoyed. The pressure, though, got to him. He started taking stuff to get him through the deadlines. Small to begin with. You know, an upper here and little grass there. Nothing you would say was harmful. Trouble was, all along he was getting in deeper. Meeting the wrong kind of people.”
Summersby looked away from them, his unfocused eyes staring out into the garden. The recall came tumbling from hi
s mind. “Then it all changed. It got heavier. He slipped sideways from his company, they couldn´t handle his mood swings and his work suffered. They let him go. Bo didn´t care though, he was into other things. He left everything behind him. His beautiful wife, Missy. Their two great kids. The swell house he had. Just up and left.”
Summersby felt his hand beginning to shake and he clutched the doorjamb to stop the tremor.
“My Pa called me. To get me to help. Said they couldn´t handle it any more. Bo kept begging for money, even stealing things from the house to sell. But I couldn´t do a thing. I was in the military, stationed overseas and my leave time just wasn´t enough. Besides when I did get to see Bo it was like being with a whole new person. Then he was dead. Chopped down dead. They found him in the street with cut marks on his body and a slash from ear to ear. It broke my folks. They died within a year of each other. I never seen two people so busted up.”
Ruth Reason gasped sympathetically and Summersby looked back at the two of them as if suddenly aware he was not alone.
“When I got out of the service I did some checking. Followed his trail as it were. Found out he had gone from user to dealer, working for some bigshot racketeer in Boston. Bo had the style, you see, smarts. He could go in amongst the city types and be one of them. He talked the same language. So the big man saw potential in him, this wasn´t some street corner dime bag dealer we´re talking about. Bo was up there supplying property developers and stock traders. But as always happens when the employee is smarter than the boss, the big man has to eradicate the competition before he loses everything.”
Reason Links watched Summersby with a calculating eye. “And you been chasing that man ever since?”
Summersby nodded. “Bo wasn´t into it for the money, I´m convinced of that. Although heaven knows he must have made a small fortune. He was just too clever for his own good, that’s all. The drug taking twisted his ambitions I think, instead of using his brains in a constructive way he thought about some sort of empire building instead. A corruptive kind of control thing to begin with and then Lord knows what else.”
“An´ then he reaped the whirlwind,” whispered Ruth Links. “I´m sorry to hear about that, mister. Real sorry.”
“I tracked the son of a bitch who killed my brother to this state. Then luck brought me to Lodrun when I wrecked my bike. The guy is here, I feel it. I don´t know his name just his trademark.”
The couple looked up at him expectantly. Summersby eyes glittered like hard steel in the shadows of the workshop.
“Modus operandi, the police call it. The way he does it. He uses a long knife, folks. Just like the one used on your little girl.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Jason Legrand surveyed the house in the dawn light.
A giant old-style hunting lodge built mostly with modern materials. It almost made it. Looking like an antique remnant left over from earlier centuries with its fake log facings and plankwood porch flooring. The angled tiled roof spread down over a railinged and raised porch that stretched the entire length of the building. Decorative peaked gables rose from the roof and cross cut folksy patterns littered the woodwork.
Satellite dishes and an array of communication aerials betrayed that frontier ambience though. Picture windows filled the walls beside the big front door. The curtains were drawn and Jason could see the slick open plan lounge and elegant furniture inside. He found the unprotected windows to be a little strange if the owners were away. Usually these kinds of places were sealed up like a vault when the big money was not in town.
He waited, getting a feel for the place and paying attention to the sense that something was not quite right. His part-Cherokee partner had told him to pay attention to those feelings, had taught him patience and attention to detail. Legrand blanked his mind of intrusive concepts and let his eye roam slowly over the structure and grounds. There was no sign of life. No parked vehicles or anything mundane like washing hung out to dry or recent ash in the barbecue.
But there was a sense of foreboding present. The house stood alone in a clearing that edged the forest and the front looked out to the nearby trees, the rear facing the mountains. A pebbled driveway stood to one side and a flagged pathway up to the front door led over a manicured lawn.
For no reason other than suspicion, Legrand hoisted his shotgun from the rack next to the dash and exited his car. He walked up the flagged walkway, noting that the stones were some sort of acrylic copies and not the natural rough stone they appeared to be. A fake house in a dream setting. It spoke volumes of the movie executive who had built it.
He checked in the picture windows under the shade of the porch, cupping his eyes against the reflections. A smooth modern interior all in perfect order, without a stray cup or glass on any of the low coffee tables standing centered around the huge slate fireplace big enough to roast an ox in. The place appeared to be deserted.
Quietly, Legrand left the planked porch and moved around the side of the building. A hedged lawn greeted him, equally well preserved. Flower beds. A curtain of willow hung over the center with a few log wood frontier chairs tastefully placed around a circular table set with colorful tiles. A pair of thrushes pecked at the ground undisturbed by Jason´s silent presence. And at the end of the pebble stone driveway stood a large out-of-place cement block garage with lifting double doors.
Jason hiked himself up to the small window set in the garage wall. There were antique cars inside. Dustsheet covered but the mudguards and high, spoke wheels of a 30´s model T were clearly visible under one of the sheets. Legrand doubted they were the real thing, going by the rest of the place, they were probably lookalikes created for some movie or other.
A large wire strapped crate, the size of a cabinet freezer unit, stood to one side, the number A/Z001 stenciled in black on the side. His eye flowed on past, then returned. It seemed to be out of place in such a neat setting. It sat there against a wall raising questions in his mind. A hammer and plastic bag of nails sat on the top. The wood of the crate looked brand new with a sprinkling of polystyrene packing chips lying on the floor at its base. Legrand lowered himself to the ground again.
He felt he should get in there and take a look inside that box. That was not his brief though, he remembered. However all the electric was down and he could hear no generator thrumming. In all probability there was no alarm system functioning.
It was tempting.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Stoeffel went straight back to the station after seeing Bubba Rose. He felt he should be available when things started to happen and he had been forced to leave the office locked with everybody else out on one mission or the other. He hoped Ayleen would make it to Minerstown ASAP and not dawdle on the way, the sooner they had some help here the better.
Something flickered in the breeze at the glass doors of the station. Dangling lodged in the crack between door and jamb. It was a bulky white envelope. Stoeffel pulled it out and unlocked the door. Inside he read the front. A typed address in Oregon was scored out with a marker pen and the words `Chief Stoeffel´ scrawled across. Stoeffel took out his pocketknife and slit the end, tipping out the contents onto the front desk.
A folded wad of paper fell out. With the tip of his knife, Stoeffel unfolded the five-stapled sheets. It was a carriage inventory with the Rose Moving and Storage heading printed on top. Pages of typed columns listed household goods ranging from chairs and tables to framed oil paintings. On the third page Stoeffel found an item marked with the same marker pen. Heavily underlined and starred.
It read, GAMING EQUIPMENT- One Unit. The item code number beside was A/Z001.
The address and title of the shipping destination was a Mr. Loville at Boden Place Farm.
Stoeffel snapped out his two-way, the only source of communication still working in the town. Its range was limited but it should reach out as far the Loville place.
“Jason. Come in, Jason. Its Chief Stoeffel.”
The radio hissed briefly and Stoe
ffel called again, this time with luck.
“I´m here, Chief.”
“You’re at the Loville place, right?”
“That’s affirmative, Chief. Just looking as we speak.”
“Somebody has dropped off a sheet here at the station. It’s an inventory for that delivery of household goods up there.”
“Got you, Chief,” Legrand responded.
“Strange thing is there´s an item marked for our attention. Gaming Equipment with a reference number alpha-slash-zebra-zero-zero-one-alpha. You find anything like that, you tell me.”
“Already did, Chief. It’s a crate locked in the garage.”
“Anybody else around up there?”
“Negative. Not a soul visible.”
“Okay, here´s what you do. Get inside and crack that crate, I need to know what’s inside. But watch yourself, y´hear?”
“I hear you, Chief. That all?”
“That’s it. Call me when you know.”
“Will do. Out.”
Stoeffel was beat. He slumped down in the office chair and toyed with the inventory sheets with his knife tip. Who would have dropped off this tasty morsel of information? It could only be Joline. She had the pack of post in her hand while he was over at Bubba´s. But why hadn´t she given it to him then? He remembered Bubba´s caution at checking the envelopes. Was it that she did not trust Bubba? And what was her motive in being so forthcoming?
He needed coffee. It was the only thing to get his addled brain in gear. He went over to the maker and filled it up, adding coffee grounds as his mind roved.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Joline did not know why she had done it.
It had just been a tease to start off with. The sort of thing she had done a hundred times before. She liked the way men came on to her. Their attention was flattering, reassuring. But with Brian! She never would have believed it. What had started out as just another one of those casual fun flings had changed into something else.
