by Jeff Abbott
Whit thought. No, Gooch, don’t do this, but he said nothing, still rubbing his aching throat.
‘I’m old, do your worst,’ Anson huffed. ‘I probably get a fucking colostomy bag next year. You think I’m afraid of you?’
‘I don’t believe you want to die one second before you have to, and I really don’t think you want to see Muscles die. Isn’t he Deloache’s nephew?’
In the dim light Anson’s stare narrowed. ‘Who are you?’
‘Why are you following Judge Mosley?’
‘Kiss my ass.’
Gooch brought the gun up. ‘How hard are the cops going to look for your killer, Anson? I think not very.’
‘He thinks I took Pete’s half million,’ Whit coughed. Feeling was slowly creeping its painful way back into his fingers and throat.
Gooch raised an eyebrow. ‘Anson?’
‘I don’t feel good. I need my medicine.’ Moments ago he had been all snarl; now he was all plead.
‘I got a permanent cure here if you don’t start talking,’ Gooch said.
Anson shrugged with a baleful look at Whit. ‘You’re like me, aren’t you?’ he asked Gooch. ‘Always cleaning up other people’s shit. We ain’t done anything wrong, we’re the wronged ones.’
‘Oh, I bet,’ Gooch said.
‘Junior gave Pete Hubble a half-mil cash of his dad’s money for some adult film series, because Pete promised Junior a percentage of the sales, the starring role, and all the bimbos he could screw. Well, that ain’t the movie that Pete was making. He was making some shit about his fucked-up brother. Junior found out and wanted his – our – money back and Pete balked, kept saying it’d be a much better investment than porn. But Junior hadn’t told his dad about this unapproved investment. We got to get that money back.’
‘And you couldn’t find it on the boat, so you figured the judge had it?’
‘We been keeping an eye on Pete’s boat, saw the judge leave it and head the fuck out of town like his ass is on fire. I figured he had it, or knew where it was.’
‘I don’t have your money,’ Whit said.
‘Don’t feel bad that it’s lost,’ Gooch said. ‘He bought it with the veins and noses of kids.’ Gooch pushed his gun into the old man’s face. ‘Did you shoot at Whit the other night? Threaten him about the Hubble inquest?’
Anson shook his head.
‘I don’t mean you personally, Anson,’ Gooch said. ‘I’m talking anyone you know.’
Anson shook his head again. ‘I… maybe Junior got a guy to come up from Corpus, some local muscle. Just a theory.’
‘How’d he know about Whit’s family?’ Gooch snarled, grabbing Anson’s throat.
Anson coughed. ‘Junior… drinks at the Shell Inn. The owner brags about her former stepsons. In excruciating detail. Again, just a theory.’
‘Ah. Thank you,’ Gooch said. He eased his grip.
‘I don’t suppose it had occurred to you that Pete might have spent the money,’ Whit said. He was surprised at how calm his voice was.
Anson huffed. ‘Not in a few days in Port Leo. It’s still our money. He lied to us and we want it back. I figured either you or that Velvet bitch had it.’
‘Where’s Junior?’ Whit asked, a sudden icicle forming in his heart.
‘He said he was going to Houston, explaining all this to his dad.’
‘Bull,’ Gooch said. ‘You know damn well where he is.’
Whit pulled out his cell phone and dialed Velvet’s motel room. No answer. He left another message with the motel clerk to have Velvet call him as soon as she could.
‘Maybe Junior’s trying to rough Velvet up the same way you roughed up me?’ Whit said.
‘Shit. He’s not gonna hurt her. He wants to be in her movies.’ Anson shook his head. ‘Fuck films. No values left anymore, the world is just going down the toilet. Why Hollywood don’t make a nice musical is beyond me.’
‘Lecture your Sunday school class about it,’ Gooch said.
Whit played a card. ‘You know, I just heard on the radio that they caught Jabez Jones and he’s talking. He had to get his dope from somewhere, and he might be implicating Junior.’
Anson kept his face stone still. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
Gooch laughed, very softly. ‘Whit, go back to your car. I’ll join you shortly.’
‘What are you going to do with them?’ Whit asked.
‘Just go.’ Gooch’s voice sounded soft, lazy, as though nothing was on the agenda more compelling than a tall glass of lemonade.
‘No. I’m calling the police.’
‘We’re not doing that,’ Gooch said.
‘I’m a magistrate, for God’s sakes. I’m having them arrested. At the least for assaulting a public servant.’
Gooch glanced back at Anson. ‘What if the next schmuck they come after doesn’t have the luxury of me to save their ass, Whit?’
‘If they’re in jail they can’t go after anyone.’
‘I can’t testify in court, Whit,’ Gooch said mildly. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘You’re not going to kill them.’
‘May I suggest,’ Anson said quietly, ‘a compromise?’
‘No,’ Gooch said. ‘Shut up.’
‘Do you think this is how I wanted to spend my fucking retirement?’ Anson said to Whit. ‘Picking up after drunken, little-dicked morons who think they’re tough?’
‘Better than retiring behind bars and being sold for cigarettes,’ Whit said. ‘You lose those dentures, you’re gonna be real popular. What can you give us on Junior Deloache?’
Anson smiled and shook his head. ‘I ain’t giving you shit on Junior, Judge.’
‘Fine. Then I won’t call the police. This isn’t my jurisdiction anyway.’ He knew he’d miscalculated in pulling the moral high ground attitude with Gooch. Anson saw Whit’s worry as weakness. He walked away and thought: Please, Gooch, don’t kill them.
‘Wait a second,’ Anson called, but Whit kept walking. There was only the silence of his footsteps; no sounds of shots, no sounds of screams, no sounds of life ending. The highway gave off a distant rumble of its uninterested traffic. He sat inside his Explorer and closed the door.
Whit waited. And waited. Thirty minutes later, Gooch sauntered from behind the diner with a slight smile on his face. He climbed in next to Whit.
‘I’m afraid to ask,’ Whit said.
‘They’re fine. They’re in custody.’
‘Whose custody and under what charges?’
‘Assault.’ Gooch shrugged. ‘That kid and Eddie beat me up. Anson helped him, you know.’ He paused. ‘I think the Feds might be interested in them. Drug trafficking, money laundering, all that kind of stuff. Sheer nastiness.’
‘I see. Thank you, Gooch. You want to tell me why you followed me to Beaumont?’
‘Saving your ass isn’t a good enough reason?’
‘Please tell me you didn’t kill those men.’
‘They’re in custody, I told you. Go outside and see if you want.’
Whit walked to the back of the diner. The van with its four flats was gone. He walked back to his car.
‘That diner any good?’ Gooch asked. ‘I’m starved.’
35
After leaving the nursing home, Claudia returned to the station. There was a message from David: Jabez Jones remained at large. Of course, no one was looking for Marcy, what with a high-profile quarry like Jabez. Claudia started the tedium of phone work. Buddy Beere was home with a bad cold, but he did confirm the transfers that Roselle Cross had mentioned. He sounded horrible, stuffy and wheezing, and said that he did personally supervise a few of the transfers, when family couldn’t be bothered. He couldn’t remember ever having hired anyone from Deshay, Louisiana, or having heard of the nursing home there.
‘I do remember having made personal trips to fetch clients over the past couple of years,’ Buddy said. He stopped for three thunderous sneezes. ‘But other Placid Harbor folks handled transfers, and I
can check my files on Monday if you want to know who exactly did what. Or sooner, if this is an emergency.’
‘That’s okay. I hope you’re feeling better soon.’
‘I’m mainlining NyQuil. I hope that’s not illegal,’ he laughed.
‘I won’t report you,’ she said.
‘Detective? I know you’re buddies with Whit Mosley, but if I win the election, I just want you to know I’ll work hard. And I’ll look forward to working with you.’
‘Thanks, Buddy,’ she said, feeling awkward. ‘I appreciate that. I’m sure we’d work together just fine.’
‘Okay. Let me know if I can be of further help.’ She thanked him again and hung up.
So no connection there between Deshay and Port Leo. She rubbed her temple with her pencil’s eraser. But what if there were similar cases to Marcy’s? Her disappearance might be part of a wider blanket. Maybe.
So she phoned the Department of Public Safety in Austin, where the state’s ‘missing persons clearinghouse’ database was located, and she gave them a set of parameters to check – young women, last seen at places of work.
There did not seem to be a spate of women abducted from nursing homes. DPS faxed her a list of disappearances, and she studied the dates. Odd. She flipped back to her notes from Roselle Cross. A week after the transfer of a client from Port Leo to Laredo last November, a young woman, Angela Marie Norris, had gone missing from a Laredo Taco Bell restaurant after her shift ended. In May, three weeks after a patient moved from Placid Harbor to another facility in Brownsville, another young woman, Laura Janelle Palinski, disappeared from a pizzeria she worked at.
Claudia called DPS back, and they faxed her details, descriptions, and photos of both young women, and she sat studying the pictures. Both bore a passing resemblance to Marcy Ballew with dark hair, round faces, naive smiles, but then they were all of a common type. Nice girls working in low-wage jobs, saving for college maybe, or just trying to live from paycheck to paycheck.
The times when Buddy – or whoever had handled the transfer – had been in the two towns were close, but not the same. And Buddy had not been alone on the transfers, there had been a nurse-practitioner accompanying him. But then, the women hadn’t vanished when Buddy had been in town. And Buddy had never supervised a transfer from Deshay, Louisiana.
It was just odd.
She called the police departments in Laredo and Brownsville, got the names of the detectives in charge of the missing-women’s cases, and left messages for them to call her back.
She then called Roselle Cross’s office.
‘I’d like to know if Buddy was at work on these days: November 10 of last year, May 3 and September 30 this year.’ Those were the days Morris, Palinski, and Ballew had all dropped out of sight.
‘Why?’
‘I’m just trying to piece together a chronology of where he’s been.’
‘My word. Do you suspect him of something?’ The woman sounded appalled.
‘No. It’s a way to simply get a clearer picture. I just talked with him, he’s being entirely cooperative.’
‘Well,’ Roselle Cross said, ‘I’ll have to check Monday morning.’
‘Mrs Cross,’ Claudia said, ‘it’s getting late, it’s Friday night, I’m sure you want to get home. So do I. You can go check this on a computer in about five seconds. I just need to know if he took vacation or sick time then.’
‘One… moment!’ Roselle Cross said with clear peevishness and put Claudia on hold.
A pang of hunger gnawed at Claudia’s stomach. She dug down in her purse for a candy bar she usually had stashed away in the depths and her fingers found paper instead. She pulled out an envelope marked OPEN IN PRIVATE. God, probably a love letter from David he’d stashed in her purse. She tore it open. Out slipped a copy of a newspaper photo. A teenage Junior, Corey, Eddie Gardner, and a girl holding fat fish. Whit had attached a note: Not sure if this means a single thing, but thought you should know. Also: I think junior gave Pete a half million. Maybe Gardner got it back for his old fishing buddy, the tough way. And maybe Gardner ruined those evidence bags as a favor to Junior. Thought you should know. Watch your back. Will call you soon. Be careful. Whit.
She could have strangled Whit.
Mrs Cross huffed back on the line. ‘Buddy was here those days. No vacation time.’
‘Thank you,’ Claudia said. ‘I appreciate your help.’
Mrs Cross hung up without further comment.
Claudia dialed Whit’s cell phone and got a message saying the phone was out of the calling area. She left him voice mail. ‘You better call me back as soon as humanly possible,’ she said, leaving her home and office numbers. She tried Velvet again at her motel; still no answer. The woman might have decided to leave town once the inquest went against her, but according to the clerk she hadn’t checked out of the room yet.
Claudia went to Delford’s office. He sat at his desk, his service revolver unholstered, sitting next to an untidy hill of papers. He glanced up at her with a sharp look; she was clearly unwelcome.
‘Late night?’ she asked, trying to sound casual. The hard look in his eyes made her throat feel thick.
‘I just got a complaining phone call about you from some woman over at the nursing home.’
‘You have bigger problems than me,’ she said. She placed the photo and Whit’s Post-it note on his desk.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Delford finally said. Claudia sat across from him.
‘I don’t understand,’ he finally said. ‘You’re saying that’s Eddie Gardner?’
‘I think it is.’
‘He knows Deloache,’ Delford said.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you talked to him about this?’
‘No. He took off hours ago.’ She paused. ‘Did you get a copy of his service record from Houston?’
‘Of course. Eddie was as clean as a whistle. References, the whole shebang.’ Delford pointed at the picture. ‘Shit, maybe this is just coincidence. Kids go fishing on the jetties, meet each other during a day, then never see each other again.’
‘Eddie and Junior are both from Houston.’
‘Them and four million other people. Lots of kids from Houston fish here. Not a crime.’
‘No, that’s not. Dealing drugs and covering up a murder sure are.’
‘You’re just full of serious accusations, aren’t you, missy?’ Delford squinted at her. ‘I mean, what’s with you lately? You question how I do things around here, you check out files you don’t got any business worrying over, you screw up evidence bags and blame a colleague…’
‘I don’t even know you anymore,’ Claudia said softly. ‘Why the hell are you having these meltdowns? Tell me, Delford. I can help you
…’
Delford’s phone rang and he scooped it up. He listened and muttered ‘Holy Jesus’ three times. Then he hung up.
‘We got us a dead one. Floater in the bay. A girl.’ Delford gulped, clicked his service revolver back in his holster. ‘She’s not… whole. Some sick son of a bitch carved her up.’
Velvet came awake suddenly. She had finally managed to doze after a while – time was impossible to measure – after he had finished his assault. Now she felt a wet rag move along her skin, cleaning her legs and privates, cleaning where she had soiled the sheets, removing them and curling towels under her hips. A voice humming ‘Surfin’ Safari,’ ignoring her shivers of rage and fear.
‘Soup, darling?’ Corey asked. She nodded, barely.
He spooned lukewarm chicken broth into her mouth. She swallowed it and made herself not cry. Some goddamned last meal. She heard the spoon click against an empty cup. He dabbed her mouth, replaced the gag, and refastened the lock with a dainty click.
‘Sleep now,’ he said, and she heard him leave the room. The door shut and then there were five or six snicks – with terror she realized they were dead bolts being thrown. She was locked in times six.
Tears would not come. She strained and pulled
against the cords, but they were intractable.
Jesus Christ, I’ve been raped, she thought in disbelief, and her father’s unbending Methodist voice, the pride of an Omaha pulpit, crowded into her head: Are you surprised what you do it’s an abomination and a shame and you get what you deserve…
No. She shook her head against the imagined voice. Her father never said those words to her. He’d never lived to see her sink. She shuddered and the tears came in a hot flood. She cried silently, the tears sopping into the blindfold, a pool of snot forming at her nose that she blew out to clear her airways. She wished for a cloth so… he
… it… would not see she had cried.
Screw a handkerchief. Wish for a gun, so you can blow the son of a bitch straight to hell.
She must not crumple. Someone would realize she was missing and gone, Whit and Claudia would look for her. Wouldn’t they? Shit, maybe she wasn’t even in Port Leo anymore. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious.
Think. Think.
He had said he was Corey Hubble.
Oh, God, Pete and that movie. Pete had been too tight-lipped about his research. Pete had found Corey but Corey didn’t want to be found. Corey might be a complete freaking nut, a drug runner, a smuggler. Clearly he didn’t balk at kidnapping or rape. Maybe he hadn’t balked at fratricide.
She had to get out. She could not simply lie here and wait to be killed.
First she needed to see where she was. She needed to slip free of the blindfold. The restraints on her legs gave way enough that she could push with her heels and bring up her knees slightly. She did so, pressing her head down against the sheets. She felt a knot in the blindfold’s side where the fabric gathered, and she pulled herself down, mashing the pillow against the fabric. Then she raised herself up again, pushed back, and tried to drag the blindfold off. Again. Again. Slowly the knot yielded its position, rolling up her scalp.
