by Jeff Abbott
‘You think Delford killed Corey?’
She cried, she shrugged. ‘Shit. I shouldn’t have said anything. Shit.’
Delford might be many things – political, pushy, too good-old-boy for a changing world, but Whit didn’t believe Delford was a cold-blooded killer. Especially a killer of children.
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone this?’
‘I did. Corey’s mama. I was afraid to talk to the police – afraid of Delford, I mean. I didn’t know what to think. So I told the senator, I phoned her, and she thanked me and nothing ever came of it. You know, I figured Corey would come home and she didn’t want him into trouble with Delford.’
Marian Duchamp got up with overdone precision, stumbled to the kitchen, and freshened her glass.
We build these little worlds for ourselves, Whit thought, remembering what Velvet had said, and then we never get to move out.
‘Do you remember two friends of Corey’s? From Houston. A boy named Eddie Gardner, another boy named Junior Deloache.’
‘Think so. They summered down here sometimes and fished in the fall on weekends. Junior always had lots of cash and dope to share.’ She remembered too late Whit was a judge and murmured, ‘Well, I don’t do anything illegal anymore, okay?’
‘What about Eddie?’
‘Just some lame-ass friend of Junior’s.’
And now he was a detective on the Port Leo police force. A very recent hire.
‘You seen either of them around lately?’
She shook her head. ‘Not in years, not since Corey took off.’
The door to the trailer opened, and a tall, fiftyish woman peeked her head inside. Her hair was pulled tight into a proper gray bun, and she wore a cleaning smock, festooned with a brightly colored, grinning cartoon chicken waving a spatula. She carried a grocery sack.
‘Oh, excuse me, hon. I didn’t know you were entertaining.’ The lady smiled with maternal grace at Whit, as though about to pat Whit’s head and offer him a sugar cookie.
‘Oh, come on in. Mama,’ Marian said. ‘This is Whit Mosley – he’s a judge.’
Whit helped Mama Duchamp tote grocery sacks. One bag clinked, full of bottles of wine: merlot, chardonnay, pinot noir, all of it the better stuff. He put the bags on the kitchen counter without comment, and Mama Duchamp murmured that she’d just brought some refreshments for her sweet baby girl and oh, she’d tend to getting those bottles put up.
‘Have some red. Mama,’ Marian called.
‘Perhaps later,’ Mama Duchamp said.
‘I was just going,’ Whit said. He thanked Marian for her time. She blinked, as if confused as to why she’d been crying, why he was here. With her mother in the room Marian seemed sunnier, as though reassured, like a puppy, that the milk dish brimmed full.
Mama Duchamp stepped outside with him, shutting the door on Marian’s hollered, slurred good-byes.
‘I know you’re a busy man, with a lot of doors to knock on,’ Mama Duchamp said. ‘Good luck in the election. I hope you win. I don’t trust people named Buddy. It’s like they want to be your friend before you even know them.’
‘Thanks. But I actually wasn’t here campaigning. I was asking Marian about Corey Hubble.’
He could smell the wry odor of throat lozenges on her breath. ‘Why?’
‘She says Corey was planning to commit a murder before he vanished.’
‘Oh, my lands. Marian doesn’t know what she says. She doesn’t think.’
‘It’s hard to think when you’re drinking all day.’
Mama Duchamp’s smile twitched. ‘She’s nervous. It soothes her.’
‘Do you do this all the time? Bring her what she needs to live?’
Her long, narrow hands smoothed the chicken apron. ‘Marian doesn’t fend well for herself. She messes up. It’s just easier if I… arrange things for her.’
‘My brothers and I used to do that for my father. He was a drunk.’
‘Don’t you presume to stand here and lecture me.’
‘For God’s sakes. Aren’t you tired of helping her along?’ Whit asked.
She brought a hand to her lipsticked mouth. ‘Tired of it? My God, Marian could be lying out in an alley, scrounging on a beach, selling herself for loose change. This way… I can keep an eye on her.’
In a cage nicely gilded by the glint from wine bottles. ‘I suppose it’s one way to be sure the kids stay in touch.’ He felt a sudden fury with this woman, letting her daughter drown by inches in scrubbed comfort, ‘I’ll bet her liver’s like wet tissue paper. Do you see the yellow tint in her eyes? That’s death creeping in. Jesus, Marian’s about my age. She won’t have long. Get her some help.’
‘Get off our property. I’m certainly not going to vote for you now, and I doubt that any member of the Garden Club will either once I make a few phone calls.’
‘I don’t want your vote, Mrs Duchamp,’ Whit said. Her face crimsoned, and she fled to the trailer. She shut the door quietly.
Whit roared out of the trailer park. His hands shook.
Get up, I’il bit, make me some bourb’coffee. Now. Move your ass. Babe’s voice, slurring from the past. And Whit crawled from bed, being extra quiet, and made the coffee, poured in the extra big dollop of whiskey to ease Daddy’s morning nerves. He was eight.
Whit pulled in at the next gas station and filled his tank.
Delford. Corey. What else to that story was there? Say Corey did come after Delford with a shotgun. If Delford killed Corey in self-defense, there was no reason to keep it secret. Marian’s testimony about Corey’s plans would have made a self-defense plea simple. If Delford or any of the authorities had heard of Corey’s threats, Corey would have promptly been arrested, charged, and dealt with in the judicial system. That was Delford’s way. He would never play judge and executioner. He had too much at stake to risk it over a punk kid like Corey Hubble.
But if Delford had killed Corey, then Delford could eliminate every iota of bothersome evidence. This theoretical killing might be impossible to prove.
He tried to imagine Corey stalking Delford, a grungy doper rich kid following around a respected officer. Corey would follow Delford, learn his routine, attempt to strike when Delford was most vulnerable – so when was that? What had the boy seen? What had he known? Why was he headed north?
He wondered where Delford was that fateful weekend.
Whit got out of his car, filled his tank, bought a fried apple pie and Dr Pepper at the convenience store, and ate a second lunch, all the while considering what would light the fuse of a pissy, self-centered fifteen-year-old.
He didn’t think of it until he thought about his own childhood, his own missing parent and what actions lit his own slow rage.
Jealousy. Resentment. The hungry need for a parent, even one who shows no interest.
Whit got on his cell phone and called Georgie.
31
Thursday evening, as the sun began its dip below the horizon, Claudia drove down Highway 35, searching for Heather Farrell. No one at Little Mischief Beach had seen Heather, and Claudia suspected that she might have moved on. Whit’s constable, Lloyd, had not been able to serve Heather the subpoena to appear in court tomorrow. Lloyd was cruising around the other local parks, hoping to spot her, and was concentrating on the northern half of the county. Claudia decided that Heather might have migrated south.
At least her need to find Heather had taken her away from David’s gloating.
‘Claudia, we just made our careers. Both of us,’ he had exulted. The Jabez Jones case was the biggest of his rather staid term in the sheriff’s department, and he could hardly contain his excitement.
‘You need to find Jabez first,’ she cautioned. ‘I wouldn’t be counting any promotions until then.’
‘What do you think I should wear for Entertainment Tonight, if they want an interview?’ David wondered. ‘They cover wrestling stories, right?’
‘Your uniform.’ Claudia knew any answer was easier than an argument for sanity. ‘But pr
essed, okay?’
She turned off the main highway, at an intersection marked by crumpled, wood-grayed county piers, a reminder of the last big hurricane three years ago. The money to repair them had gone instead to new piers in Port Leo and Laurel Point. The piers were abandoned now except for a flock of pelicans, preening on the rotting posts. She remembered walking along the short piers with David, hand in hand, breathing the smell of buttery popcorn, of salt, of dead mullet, of bait souring in the air, of spilled chocolate ice cream melting between the boards. Her wedding ring had felt newly heavy, a sudden anchor with a chip of diamond.
There was a small park on the south side of St Leo Bay, and she drove slowly past it. A family of three was strolling along the beach. An elderly woman sketched in the fading light, perched atop a picnic table, squinting at the wind-whipped bay. Claudia stopped and gave a description of Heather to the family and the woman. No one had seen her.
Claudia got back in her unmarked Taurus and headed farther south, the road curving down toward the hamlets of Encina Pass and Copano. She saw a white BMW speeding toward her, the driver intent on a phone. The car bulleted past, and Claudia saw Faith Hubble at the wheel.
Claudia lacked both a radar gun and jurisdiction. She headed down toward Encina Pass, and three minutes later she spotted Whit Mosley, getting into his Ford Explorer, the campaign sign magnets peeled off the sides. In the parking lot of a little puck of a motel, a twenty-dollar-a-night joint that catered to poor hipsters, tourists on bony budgets, and cheating husbands from Corpus Christi.
It didn’t cater to justices of the peace and senators’ chiefs of staff.
She pulled in beside Whit just as he started his car. She saw him force the smile, the faked-pleased look that suggested gosh, I’m glad to see you when it really meant oh, shit to the nth degree.
And a deep-inside part of her, never touched by David, twisted.
Claudia got out of her car. Whit powered his window down.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘What are you doing all the way down here in the bumfuck part of the county?’
He didn’t answer right away. ‘Talking with a friend.’
‘Faith Hubble, maybe?’
He didn’t say anything. ‘I saw her speeding down the road not three minutes ago. I couldn’t imagine why she was gracing a remote part of the county with her divine presence. So what’s going on. Honorable?’
‘I wanted to ask her,’ he said mildly, ‘about a shotgun.’
‘Shotgun?’
‘Corey Hubble owned a shotgun. I asked what happened to it after he vanished.’
‘And you had to discuss this with her in a backwater motel?’ She remembered their faces when she’d arrived at Whit’s door – the way they both focused on her, the way they didn’t look at each other with her standing there, the wineglasses set close together on the coffee table.
Whit clicked off his engine. ‘I can’t discuss it.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘Doesn’t matter. Either way I’m not talking about it.’
Claudia swallowed, aware suddenly of a sheen of sweat on her palms, the back of her legs, her shoulders. ‘If you’re involved with her… you should recuse yourself from the inquest.’
‘I disagree, Claudia. But I can’t discuss this with you. You’re going to have to trust me.’
‘Whit, please…’
‘I have to go now. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ And he powered up the window and drove out of the lot. She stood in the oily smear of his parking place, watching him go.
She got back in her Taurus, and looked for Heather Farrell for another hour without success before she headed home.
*
Whit lay on his back in his bed, watching the ceiling fan rotate above him.
Did you think you were James Bond? A romp in the hay would loosen her tongue – she’d talk about whatever she knew about the day Corey vanished? The meeting had been rushed, the lovemaking awkward. Her kisses wore on his lips like sandpaper, and she had pulled away, frowning, saying. We doing this or not? And so he had, but the sex felt more duty than pleasure, and her finishing gasps when she arched against him sounded forced. Perhaps Velvet should have taped them with all the sincerity they had shown.
Faith claimed to know nothing about Corey’s disappearance, a shotgun, or a grudge against Delford Spires. The more he talked, the more hastily she rinsed and dressed, and when she left all she said was, ‘Give me a lead time of a couple of minutes, okay? And you drive back via Old Bay Road, not the highway.’ Then the door shut, with not a single kiss good-bye.
And Claudia. He wanted to tell her, confide in her, but if he did, she and his family were at enormous risk. What if the man in the dark had been Delford or Eddie Gardner? What if his brothers were being watched right now, as threatened? The risk was too much. He would go on with his plan, conduct the inquest tomorrow, rule, and then worry less about the peace in his job title and more about the justice.
Finally he slept, and he dreamed of himself and Claudia’s brother Jimmy, boys gigging for frogs in the murky backwash creeks, Claudia tagging along, the serious pest.
32
At twenty till one Friday afternoon the Blade debated whether or not he should take a seat for the inquest. The hearing would start shortly, but he did not wish to be conspicuous by his presence. It was pleasant to sit in the cramped confines of the VW Beetle and watch the few television reporters strutting on the county courthouse lawn. All three of them, from the local Corpus affiliates, primped their doughnut-glaze hair. Again the sudden urge to simply get out of the car, walk over to them, and say. Do I have a story for you – but you must call me the Blade, washed over him, and he pumped up his Beach Boys tape, listening to them implore Rhonda for help, and the desire ebbed. To the Boys, Rhonda was a patron saint of love; perhaps he could find a Darling with the same name one day. Encina County was a Rhonda-rich environment. And perhaps one day he would walk up to a reporter and let his infamy begin. But not today.
If that scum-bucket judge did his job and ruled for suicide, then Velvet would have no reason to stay. Her time in Port Leo would end, and her sojourn with him could begin. He would treasure each second with her, each second an eternity to play again in his mind for the rest of his life. His mouth dried with want. Then it would end, as always, and he would be sad for a while, until the next craving rose like a lick of fire.
So don’t do this. Don’t do this anymore.
The voice in his ear was not Mama’s, but a boy’s voice perhaps like his own from long ago. I’m sorry for what I do but it has to be done. I need it to be done.
He pulled his bowie knife out of its sheath and slid it beneath the driver’s seat. He had cleaned and sharpened it again after its last use.
The Blade saw Velvet hop out of her rental car and hurry inside the courthouse. She was modestly dressed, in black jeans, a thin, dark sweater, a baseball cap, and the reporters took little notice of her, which pleased him. He switched the Boys off. He could wait for her here. He smiled. Soon his Darling would breathe his same air, know his wanting, share the beginning of a brief forever.
Whit’s clerk was a chain-smoking widow named Edith Gregory. She was on the outer edge of her fifties, with a thin, sparrow’s body, dieted by years of smoking. She stood in Whit’s office as he pulled his judicial robe over an unusually somber blue button-down and khaki combo and eyed him critically.
‘Them pants need pressing,’ she said. ‘You think that little Russian gal could learn an iron.’ Edith was friends with Georgie. ‘Those Communists probably all wore grocery bags.’
‘I’m responsible for my own laundry, Edith.’
Edith worked her empty fingers as if she had a cigarette. ‘We need to get responsible for keeping you in office. I got to work for Buddy Beere, they gonna have to give me a raise.’
Whit straightened his robe and gathered the papers of the inquest record. ‘Okay, let’s go.’
Edith stopped him and he glanced at her. An unexpe
cted softness touched her blue eyes, and he thought: If my mom was alive and here she’d be about your age.
‘You just got this hangdog look on your face that’s got me worried,’ Edith said. ‘Just remember, you’re a judge. Act like one. Make me proud.’
Six months and she doesn’t give me a pep talk until now. ‘Thanks.’
They walked out of his office and down the hall. He followed her into the small courtroom. Lloyd, the constable, bellowed, ‘All rise!’ and the packed courtroom stood in near unison. The Hubble contingent occupied the front row: Faith, Lucinda, a tired-looking Sam, the rest of the Democratic power base for Encina County; to their left, Claudia Salazar, watching him as though he were a leper trying to blow kisses, and Delford Spires and Eddie Gardner, a couple of patrol officers; his father and Irina. In the back sat a large bevy of the curious, Velvet squeezed among them, replete in cap and dark glasses. In the back corner, to his surprise, Junior Deloache lounged, wearing a Houston Astros baseball cap and a Houston Rockets T-shirt. Deloache stared at him, and he wondered if he ruled for homicide if Junior would just go outside, flip open a cell phone, and call in the death orders.
‘The Honorable Whitman Mosley presiding!’ Lloyd blared. Whit sat and the crowd settled into their seats, wood creaking as butts eased down. He opened his inquest file, carefully prepared by his clerk. He glanced at the court reporter, borrowed from the county court. He wanted a written transcript of the proceedings to file in the inquest report.
Take step one and don’t get killed.
‘Good morning, everyone. This is a tragic event, this loss of life, and it has received a lot of local publicity. But this is a courtroom, and outbursts will not be tolerated. Anyone who creates a disturbance will be held in contempt and removed from the courtroom by the constable. Is that understood?’
Silence from the gathered. Lucinda Hubble looked pained. Velvet looked tense. Junior Deloache pushed his Astros cap back farther on his head and scratched his forehead with a beefy finger.
‘Let me explain, quickly, the point of a death inquest hearing. It is to determine whether or not anyone is responsible for the death of another,’ Whit said. ‘I will question the witnesses. There is no jury in this case, and no one stands presently accused of a crime.’ He glanced at Lloyd. ‘Constable Brundrett, please call the first witness.’
