by Jude Hardin
She got up and walked to the restroom.
I sat there feeling bad about what I’d said. The way I’d said it. Good old Nicholas Colt. Subtle as a jackhammer.
But there really wasn’t a nice way to discuss something so gruesome. Alison Palmer’s head had been opened like a can, her brain scooped out like pickled cabbage. How could you sugarcoat that? You couldn’t. There was no way.
Or maybe there was a way, and the brutalities I’d faced in my own life had desensitized me too much to find it. At any rate, I felt bad, and when Darcy came back to the table I told her so.
“It’s OK,” she said. “It’s just not fair. Alison was such a beautiful person, inside and out. A lot of people are going to miss her. I’m going to miss her.”
“I appreciate you meeting me here and talking to me,” I said.
She looked at her watch. “I have to go. But to answer your question, yes, I think Jim Ballard was capable of doing that to Alison. I’ve never met the guy, but when Alison was in the process of moving up to St. Augustine, she told me some things. Jim won a big settlement in a lawsuit a few years ago, and he hasn’t worked a day since. All he does is drink, all day every day. Jim drinks a lot, and sometimes he has total blackouts. According to Alison, he never remembered physically abusing her.”
“So…”
“So maybe he doesn’t remember killing her.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
After Darcy left, I ended up ordering a stack of pancakes and some bacon and eggs. I sent back the little tubs of whipped spread Molly brought and asked for some genuine butter. When she said they didn’t have any, I told her margarine produces a chemical reaction in my bloodstream that counteracts and nullifies the therapeutic effects of my antipsychotic medications. Her jaw dropped. She hurried off and brought back half a stick of Breakstone’s from the kitchen.
I thought about what Darcy had said. I didn’t think it was possible for someone to forget about opening another person’s skull and packing off with its contents.
But maybe it was possible.
In my younger days, there were nights when I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten home, and mornings when I couldn’t remember the name of the person lying beside me. Sometimes there were stains on my shirts from greasy late-night food I couldn’t remember eating.
And just yesterday I’d managed to convince Wesley West that he had invited me to his apartment to play guitars.
So maybe it was possible for someone to get drunk enough to forget committing the act of murder. Thinking about it forced me to consider my own drinking habits. Maybe it was time to cut down. After this case, I told myself. Life was just a little too stressful right now to be worrying about it.
I finished breakfast, and on the way out I asked the cashier if she knew how to get to Jake’s Key West Saloon. She gave me directions. I would have asked my waitress, but Molly had developed an acute case of shyness after the butter incident. I guess it made her nervous thinking about what I might do with a fork.
There were only two cars in Jake’s parking lot. A black Cadillac Escalade and a silver Porsche Carrera. The tags on the Porsche said 2FAST4U. The joint either had rich clientele or rich owners. Or both. I walked up to the door. It was 9:56, and the sign said they didn’t open until eleven. I cupped my hand against the glass and peeked inside. Nobody had turned the lights on yet, but a couple of neon beer signs allowed me to see the long wooden bar and the tables and chairs and the dance floor and the stage.
I walked around back, peeked over the privacy fence, saw picnic tables and tiki torches and a hut with steel shutters. There was a gate that granted access to the area, but it was locked.
I walked back to the front door and knocked, but nobody answered. I wondered if the cars in the parking lot belonged to drunks who had taken taxis home last night.
I drove two blocks to a convenience store, bought a bottle of water and a newspaper, and filled my gas tank. I went back to Jake’s, found a shady spot, sipped my water and read my paper. The headline ZOMBIE STRIKES AGAIN was on the front page, above the fold. I read the story. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
At 11:05 no other cars had pulled in. It was still just me and the Escalade and the Porsche. I got out and tried the front door again. It was still locked. I went back to my Jimmy and waited. It was getting hot, even in the shade. There wasn’t much of a breeze.
At 11:16 a blond woman wearing a white visor and huge sunglasses steered a Mustang convertible into the lot and parked it beside the Porsche. The man sitting beside her gave her a short kiss and got out. He climbed into the Porsche, and both cars drove away.
It was getting hot, and I was getting pissed. The sign on the front door of Jake’s Key West Saloon said they opened at eleven, so they should open at eleven. But then Key West was a pretty laid-back place. I reminded myself that opening and closing times were merely estimates at a lot of the local establishments.
I tried the front door again. Still locked. I banged on it hard. This time someone came. A skinny dark-haired man with a mustache. He twisted the knob to unlock the deadbolt.
He looked at his watch. “The girl who was supposed to open for me this morning hasn’t shown up yet,” he said. “I called someone else, and she’s on the way, but it might be an hour before we can start serving food and drinks. Sorry.”
“I knocked earlier, but—”
“I was busy back in the office.”
“Are you Jake?”
“Yes. Jake Malone.”
We shook hands.
“Nicholas Colt,” I said. “Could I come in and talk to you for a minute?”
“About?”
“Robbie Asbury. He plays drums in the band here. I just have a few—”
“You motherfuckers don’t waste any time, do you?”
“Pardon me?” I said.
“You’re from the press, right? Another reporter called me on the phone earlier. What the hell? Robbie Asbury plays in the band at my bar. It doesn’t mean I know his life history.”
“You know his wife was murdered yesterday, right?”
“Yeah, and I know the police have a warrant for his arrest. They think he’s the one who killed her. It’s all they’re talking about on CNN right now. How could anybody not know?”
I hadn’t watched any television all morning. I hadn’t even turned on the radio. So the possibility that Robbie Asbury had charges pending against him was news to me. Not that it came as a big surprise. Statistics don’t lie. If you die under suspicious circumstances, odds are your wife or husband or someone else close to you did it. I hadn’t heard the news about Robbie, but I didn’t tell Jake that. If he wanted to think I was a reporter, then I was perfectly willing to let him think it.
“I understand you’re busy,” I said. “But if I could just have a few minutes of your time. I promise it won’t take long.”
“What news agency are you with?” he said.
“I’m a freelancer. I’m not with an agency.”
“Damn. If a freelancer’s here already, I guess it’s only a matter of time until the vans with the satellite antennas start showing up. I don’t have time for this shit, you know?”
“It’s a hard time for a lot of people,” I said.
“Yeah, well, forget it. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told the chick on the phone awhile ago. No comment.”
He slammed the door in my face.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I bought two Pabst tall boys at a gas station and then parked by Starbucks so I could pick up their Wi-Fi signal. I opened my netbook, went to one of the database services I subscribe to, researched the license plate of the Porsche I saw leaving Jake’s parking lot. 2FAST4U. The tags said Monroe County, so I knew the car belonged to someone local. Someone with money. Someone who for one reason or another didn’t drive himself home last night.
It was a long shot, but sometimes long shots pay off. This one did not. I was hoping the car belonged to Jim Ballard. Darcy s
aid he frequented the club, and a Porsche 911 Carrera seemed like just the kind of car a lottery winner or the recipient in a major lawsuit might splurge on. The car didn’t belong to Jim Ballard. It belonged to a man named Cale Meade. I jotted his number on the back of Detective Craig P. Sullivan’s business card. I called Meade, thinking he might at least know Jim Ballard or Robbie Asbury. I think I woke him up, and he wasn’t especially pleasant about telling me that he didn’t know either one of them. In fact, he told me, in no uncertain terms, to go straight to hell.
I sat there in front of Starbucks and drank my lunch from a brown paper bag. It had been awhile since I’d had a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I couldn’t even remember when. Probably the last time I went fishing with my friend Winston Fell. I call him Papa. He’s a retired police officer, and he fishes with a bamboo fly rod he made himself. He’s Twenty-some years older than me and can still cast into an area the size of a bicycle tire. The PBR made me think about him. It’s all he ever drinks. It made me think we should get together and go fishing soon.
I sipped on the beer and wondered what sort of evidence the police had compiled against Robbie Asbury. Whatever it was, they had put it together fast. They must have had something on file already, something from another case.
Or cases.
Was Robbie Asbury The Zombie? I didn’t think so. I really didn’t even think he killed his wife. The police always suspect the spouse first, and many times those suspicions turn out to be spot-on, but I’d seen Robbie come out of the apartment and puke over the second-floor railing. He had been in severe emotional distress. I would have bet my life on it. He could have been faking the tears and the tremors, but not the vomiting. I didn’t think so. He could have stuck his finger down his throat like a bulimic, but there would have been no point to it. I was the only one there, and he wouldn’t have bothered giving me such a performance. The Zombie’s identity was still a mystery, in my opinion, and it was only a matter of time before he killed again.
Of course, I wasn’t being paid to find The Zombie, but I still couldn’t help thinking that Phineas Carter’s murder and Alison’s murder were somehow connected. Two of the most brutal crimes I’d ever heard of had occurred in the same apartment.
Different methods, but still.
The Zombie had killed Alison. I was pretty sure of that. Maybe The Zombie had killed Phineas T. Carter too. Maybe something went wrong, forcing The Zombie to deviate from his normal routine. It had happened plenty of times before, in other serial murder cases. All but one of Ted Bundy’s victims had been bashed in the head with a crowbar and then strangled. Nobody knows why he changed things up that one time. It was a twelve-year-old girl named Kimberly Leach. The cause of death was never conclusive, but Bundy fried in the electric chair just the same.
If the two murders in the same condo weren’t connected, it was like lightning striking twice in the same place. The odds against it were astronomical.
I thought there was probably a connection. And if there was, it ruled Robbie Asbury out. Robbie had been living in St. Augustine when Phineas Carter was killed. He was nowhere near that condominium complex. He probably didn’t even know it existed at the time.
Robbie was a fugitive at the moment, but I doubted he would stay hidden for long. I had a feeling he would turn himself in soon. I needed to talk to him before that happened. Maybe he could give me some sort of insight into who killed Alison—and, if the murders were connected, some sort of insight into who killed Phin.
I telephoned Wanda Taylor, my client, and updated her on everything that had happened over the past couple of days.
“I’ve been watching the news,” she said. “How utterly terrible. First my biological father was murdered in that apartment, and now the woman who was his landlady. It’s just mind-blowingly fucked-up.”
Mind-blowingly fucked-up indeed.
“I’m going to try to find Robbie Asbury,” I said. “I don’t have a clue where to start, other than maybe with Jim Ballard. The real-estate agent said Jim and Robbie had become friends. As unlikely as that seems.”
“Are you all right on money?” Wanda said.
I wondered if she had forgotten about our arrangement. Some sort of memory loss related to her illness, maybe.
“I’m fine for now,” I said. “I’m billing you for eight hours a day, even though I’m probably working more like nine or ten. Just so you know. It’ll start adding up. But like we agreed before—”
“Don’t worry about any of that,” she said. “I just want you to work as fast as you can. Money is no object.”
“If I can’t find Robbie Asbury, or if I find him and nothing comes of it, I’m going to ride up to Fort Lauderdale and stake out the place where Phineas Carter’s widow is staying. That’s really the only other lead I have. If she’s into drugs or some other illegal activity, it’s a pretty safe bet Phin was too. If she’s dealing with some bad people, they would be on the top of my list of suspects. If that’s the case, then lightning really did strike twice, and my hunch about the two murders being connected is wrong.”
“This is really turning into quite the mystery,” she said. “Just keep me updated.”
“I will.”
“Thank you, Nicholas.”
There were three James Ballards in the Key West white pages. I figured the Jim Ballard I was looking for would have an unlisted number, and I was right. None of them was him. I could have spent a few hours ferreting through search engines and databases trying to find his social security number, and from there I could have looked him up in the Monroe County Department of Motor Vehicles. But a lot of times the addresses on the DMV site aren’t current, and a lot of times people get away with listing a PO box instead of a real address.
I hated to waste a bunch of time and then come up with a blank. My only other alternative was to go to the guy’s hangout, sit at the bar and drink all day, and hope that he showed up.
It was a tough way to make a living, but somebody had to do it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I drove back to Jake’s Key West Saloon. There were several cars in the parking lot now, but still no news vans. The Escalade was gone, which meant Jake was gone. I walked in and sat at the bar.
My shirttails hid the .38 holstered on my belt.
A beautiful young woman wearing short shorts and a tank top slapped a napkin in front of me and said, “What can I get for you?” She had long brown hair and brown eyes and gold hoops in her ears.
“What kind of beer do you have?” I said.
“Bottle or draft?”
“Bottle.”
She named about ten different varieties, and I chose a Pabst. It was what I’d started with, and the cans from the gas station had tasted pretty good. Rule #34 in Nicholas Colt’s Philosophy of Life: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Especially when it comes to liquid refreshments.
The bartender set the bottle of beer in front of me along with a frosty mug. I poured the beer into the mug, allowing it to grow a respectable head of foam. I took a sip.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“Kris. Can I get you something to eat?”
“Not right now. Thanks.”
I pulled out a twenty and set it on the bar.
“Be right back with your change,” Kris said.
“You can keep it if you’ll do me a favor,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“You know a guy named Jim Ballard who comes in here a lot?”
“Yeah. I know Jim.”
“I’m going to go sit at that table over there and watch television for a while. If Jim comes in, would you send him my way?”
“Not a problem,” she said.
She took the twenty.
Some of the tables against the wall had their own little thirteen-inch television screens, which allowed couples to sit down for a meal together without feeling the obligation to have an actual conversation. Watching TV in an eating establishment is bad enough, but the new breeds of cellular telep
hones everyone uses these days are like a license to be rude. I refuse to own one. I have a good old flip-top that I make calls with. I don’t use it for anything else. In my office at home I have a black rotary-dial phone from the 1960s. I bought it at a thrift store for five bucks. It never drops a call, and it will last forever.
I sat at one of the tables, tuned the television to CNN. Alison’s murder was the big story of the day, along with the hunt for Robbie. Of course they discussed the possibility of Robbie being The Zombie, although the police hadn’t released any information to substantiate those speculations.
I sat there and sipped my beer and watched the news, amazed that I had somehow managed to get involved in all this. I thought about calling it quits. I hadn’t gotten into any real trouble yet, and I hadn’t spent much of Wanda’s ten thousand dollars. It would have been easy to pack everything up and head back to North Florida that evening. But I didn’t. Wanda wanted to find out who killed her father. She wanted to find out before she caught the bus herself, and apparently that grim day wasn’t going to be too far in the future. I’d agreed to help her, so I needed to stick it out. I decided to stay in at a hundred percent until the end. It was the only attitude that was going to work. If I failed to solve Phineas Carter’s murder before Wanda died, then I failed. But I had to at least try.
My cell phone trilled. I turned the volume down on the TV and answered it.
“Nicholas Colt,” I said.
“Hey, it’s Wesley West. Just making sure we’re still on for tomorrow night.”
I’d forgotten all about it. “Sure,” I said. “What time?”
“Is seven OK?”
“Better make it eight.”
“Cool. I think I forgot to tell you my apartment number.”
He told me the number.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
A few minutes after I disconnected with Wesley West, a tall slender man with bushy sun-bleached hair walked over and said, “You looking for me?”
He wore a red polo, and jeans that might have been used to wipe up an oil spill. Three-day beard, sunburned nose. He could have used a few squirts of Visine.
