by Jude Hardin
“All right. Well, I’ll be happy to give you a statement. I’ll be happy to help you in any way I can.”
And that’s when it hit me. That’s why Sullivan wasn’t going to arrest me. It wouldn’t look good for one of his key witnesses to be facing criminal charges. I’d been the first person other than Robbie to see Alison’s dead body lying on the floor of the apartment. There was that, and now Sullivan knew that Robbie had tried to shoot me, which augmented a violent profile the district attorney would be eager to exploit. When the time came, the prosecution would need a fine upstanding citizen to take the stand. Not a jailbird.
The evidence against Robbie seemed pretty conclusive, but I still wondered about what he’d said after he crashed that Caprice. Jim Ballard is dead. I’m next. He’d said it right before he passed out. Maybe he’d been delirious from the trauma. Maybe that was all there was to it, but I still wondered.
“It’s getting late,” Sullivan said. “Why don’t you come on down first thing in the morning. I’ll be in my office at eight o’clock.”
“On a Saturday?”
“You think they give me weekends off around here? Get real.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“Your car’s in the impound lot. We can take care of that in the morning as well. And you said you might have some information for me. What’s that all about?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
We disconnected, and I headed down to the lounge to have a drink. Relieved that Sullivan seemed to be on my side, relieved to be off the hot seat for now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I sat at the bar and ordered an Old Fitz on the rocks. After the rotgut I’d procured from the panhandler the night before, it was like coming home to an old friend.
One more night in Key West, I told myself. One more night. I would stop and talk to Detective Craig P. Sullivan at eight o’clock in the morning, and from there hit the highway home. I’d come to Key West to find out who killed Phineas T. Carter, and I had a solid lead to give to the police now. My work was done. And, with Robbie Asbury in custody, it seemed The Zombie killings were solved as well. I was feeling pretty good about myself and the way things had turned out.
There were still some loose ends, like why Jim Ballard had tried to kill me. That was the big one. It had made sense back when I thought Jim was the one who’d killed Alison. If he’d been guilty of that crime, his motive for trying to get rid of me would have been a lot clearer. He might have thought I was getting too close to the truth. But Jim didn’t kill Alison. Robbie did. Sullivan was sure of it. As far as I knew, Jim hadn’t killed anyone, so I had no idea why he’d tried to kill me. I still hadn’t figured that one out, and with Jim dead now, it wasn’t likely I ever would.
It was happy hour, and there were quite a few people in the lounge. The bartender set a basket of peanuts in front of me. She had a great tan, a beautiful body, and perfect hair. The best money could buy. Her nametag said Josie.
“What time does the band start?” I said. There were amplifiers and microphone stands on the stage, and a drum kit draped with a sheet.
“Ten,” she said. “They’re really good. Can I get you another drink?”
“Sure. I’m celebrating.” I pointed to her nametag. “Are you the lead singer?”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You know, Josie and the Pussycats.”
“Who?”
I felt old again. “Never mind,” I said.
She smiled and shrugged cutely. She scooped some ice cubes into a glass, grabbed the Old Fitz bottle, inverted it, and gave me a generous pour.
“What are you celebrating?” she said.
“Just being alive.”
It probably sounded like a cliché to her. She had no idea how literal I was being. She gave me a thumbs-up and walked off to serve another customer.
I called Juliet and told her I would be home tomorrow night. She was very happy about that, and her excitement was contagious. I couldn’t wait to see her. We’d only been apart for a few days, but it never took long to start feeling as though an integral part of me was missing. I guess that’s what they call love.
A few minutes after Juliet and I said good-bye, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I thought maybe it was her calling me back, but the incoming number was unfamiliar. I answered the call.
“This is Nicholas Colt,” I said.
“Hey, Nicholas!”
It was Wesley West. Maybe the last person on the planet I wanted to talk to.
“Hey, Wes,” I said.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing much. I’m heading home in the morning.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, man. I’m outta here.”
“I’m glad I caught you then. I was going to see if you wanted to come over and jam a little tonight.”
That’s what I was afraid of.
“I would like to,” I said. “But I really can’t. I still have to pack and everything. Sorry.”
“Come on, man. You said you were going to show me the lead part to ‘Dead Ringer.’ You promised.”
“Maybe next time. Listen, I really need to—”
“And you owe me four hundred dollars.”
Damn. I’d forgotten about that. I still owed him four hundred on the pistol I’d bought from him. Fuck a duck.
“Can I mail you a check?” I said.
“You know better than that. I need the cash. I was trusting you to give it to me on Sunday, like you said you would.”
“All right. I’ll come over. But I can’t stay long.”
“Cool. I appreciate it, Nicholas. See you in a bit, then. I’ll get the guitars tuned up.”
I hung up. I didn’t want to drive over there, but I decided not to let it put a damper on my good mood. I was going home tomorrow. That was all that mattered.
When Josie came around and asked if I wanted another drink, I told her to close out my tab.
“I thought you were going to stick around to hear the band,” she said.
“I’ll be back in a little while. I just need to run an errand real quick.”
“You OK to drive?”
“I’m OK.”
“I could get you a cup of coffee.”
“I’m OK. Really.”
She printed out a ticket, and I paid with cash. I left her a good tip.
I walked out to the parking lot. The wind had picked up, and the temperature had dropped. I decided to go back to the room and get a jacket. While I was there, I brushed my teeth and slapped on some aftershave. I did it to cover up the smell of the whiskey. I wasn’t drunk, but I didn’t want to give a cop probable cause to fuck with me if I happened to get pulled over for something. For one thing, I still had the .45 in the glove compartment, and it was illegal as hell.
I stopped at an ATM and withdrew four hundred dollars. It was almost nine o’clock by the time I got to Wesley West’s apartment complex. I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes, thinking about everything that had happened over the past few days. It had all started when a young lady with a terminal illness decided to find her biological father. It amazed me sometimes, how one thing leads to another and how everything is interconnected. Kind of like Seinfeld. I wondered if the bartender at the hotel lounge would have gotten that reference. Probably not. I wondered if she would go home tonight and Google Josie and the Pussycats.
Might as well get this over with, I thought. I got out of my car, climbed the stairs to Wesley West’s door, and knocked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Come on in, Nicholas. Good to see you, buddy.”
He patted me on the back. He was acting as though we were old school chums who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. All I wanted to do was give him his money and get the hell out of there.
The same two acoustic guitars were on stands near the television. Same sectional sofa, same round coffee table, same framed poster on the wall. Wesley had even set out another snack tray, with more of the pâté
and crackers I’d enjoyed so much last time. Same fancy little knife. Same burgundy napkins. Déjà vu.
I pulled the cash out of my pocket and handed it to him. “Here you go,” I said.
“Thanks. Grab a guitar and have a seat. You want a beer?”
“I really can’t stay. Like I said, I still need to—”
“I’m making coffee, since that’s what you wanted last time. It’s almost done. Can I get you a cup?”
Wesley West was annoyingly persistent. I wanted to get out of there, but since he’d gone to all the trouble to start a pot of coffee, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to have one cup. Maybe two, if it was that Kona stuff again.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll take a cup of coffee.”
I picked up the Martin guitar and sat on the sofa. Wesley walked to the kitchen. I sat there and strummed a few chords, and then started trying to remember the lead solo to “Dead Ringer.” I hadn’t played it in years, and I was having some difficulty recalling exactly how it went.
“Hey, Wes,” I shouted. “You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of ‘Dead Ringer’ around here, would you?”
“Yeah, man. I have it on CD. I’ll go get it in a second.”
I set the guitar down, smeared some of the pâté on a cracker, and took a bite. It was very good. I loaded another cracker, stood and walked over to the Freak Willy tour poster hanging on the wall, just to kill some time while I waited for Wes.
It was the first time I’d taken a good look at the poster. There was a posed photograph of the band at the top, surrounded by a curlicue border. Wesley’s hair was longer in the picture, and he was thinner. Beneath the band photo was a list of locations.
Greenville, SC
Savannah, GA
Durham, NC
Wilmington, NC
Lynchburg, VA
Key West, FL
Jupiter, FL
Cape Fear, NC
The cracker in my hand fell to the floor. When the Titanic slammed into that big chunk of ice in the North Atlantic Ocean over a hundred years ago, the captain of the ship couldn’t have been any more stunned than I was at that moment. My ears got hot, and my pulse quickened. Acid rose in the back of my throat, a vile rendition of the eighty-proof Kentucky sour mash I’d consumed earlier.
The towns Wesley’s band had played in were the exact same towns The Zombie had killed in. Brunswick was the only one missing.
He came from the kitchen carrying a cup of the expensive Hawaiian coffee in one hand and the “Dead Ringer” CD in the other. He saw me standing there looking at the poster.
I turned, and our eyes met.
He saw the expression on my face.
He knew that I knew.
I bolted for the door, but he tossed the CD case and the coffee cup aside and tackled me from behind before I could get my hand on the knob. I fell facedown to the floor. Before I could turn over and defend myself, he chopped me across the back of the neck with the side of his hand. It felt as though I’d been hit with a baseball bat. A branch of lightning crackled through my spinal column, and for a moment I was completely paralyzed.
Before I could even shout for help, Wesley grabbed one of the cloth napkins by the snack tray and stuffed it into my mouth. As the numbness in my arms and legs turned to tingling, and the tingling turned to pain, he dragged me by my feet to his bedroom and squeezed something out of a tube onto the palms of my hands. Something cold and slimy. He positioned me on my back and pressed my palms against the hardwood floor, and then he stood on the tops of my hands. He stood there until I thought the bones were going to crumble under the pressure. I tried to resist, but I was too weak. The blow to the back of the neck had done a number on me. I could feel my extremities now, but they were practically useless.
Wesley stepped away. I winced, the pain in my fingers over the next few seconds even more severe than when he’d been standing on them. The pain in my left hand was especially excruciating, because of all the surgeries and the resultant hardware. It felt as though someone was actively driving screws into my bones.
I tried to move, but I could not. My palms were glued to the floor.
He pulled my shoes and socks off next, and then he glued the lateral sides of my feet to the floor in the same manner. Now I was splayed out like some sort of specimen in a biology class.
“You’re just a little too clever for your own good, Nicholas. I’m sorry it had to go down like this. I truly am. I like you. I like you a lot. But now you’ll have to join the others. Such a shame, just when I thought our friendship was starting to gel. And damn it, I really did want to learn those licks on ‘Dead Ringer.’ Oh, well. Not meant to be, I guess.”
He knelt down and opened his bottom dresser drawer. The drawer above it was the one with all the Vietnam stuff in it.
Damn, I thought. If I could only get my hands on that drawer.
But there was no use thinking about it. I was stuck to the floor like a fly on flypaper. I wasn’t going anywhere.
There was an electric guitar on a stand in the corner, a Fender Telecaster. I noticed it because the pick guard was signed by an old friend of mine. Small world, I thought. I wondered how Eric had ever come in contact with the likes of Wesley West.
“Let’s see now,” Wesley said. “Ah. Here it is. I can’t very well leave you glued to the floor when I’m finished, now can I?”
He pulled a quart-sized metal can of Sunnyside acetone out of the drawer. I’d used the same brand to clean some lawn mower parts one time. Juliet buys the stuff in an itty-bitty bottle with an itty-bitty paintbrush on the cap. She’s not allowed to wear polish on her fingernails at the hospital, but she uses the acetone to remove the lacquer from her toes sometimes. It’s a very useful solvent. Apparently Wesley West planned on using it to get me unstuck from the floor after performing his macabre surgical procedure on me.
“I bet you’re wondering what I do with the brains,” he said. “Everyone wonders that. I’m sure the FBI profilers think I keep them as trophies. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? I could stuff each of them into a Mason jar full of formaldehyde, and then line the jars up on a shelf somewhere. Display them, like people do with big fish and moose heads. Of course, the carnival hawkers that call themselves news reporters have speculated since the beginning that I eat them. That’s why those boneheads dubbed me The Zombie in the first place. Well, for once, the talking heads were right. You know that meaty paste on the snack tray that’s so good on the little crackers?”
I turned my head to the side and started retching. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. Not with that cloth napkin stuffed so deeply into my mouth. I would have aspirated and drowned.
Of all the insane motherfuckers I’d come up against in my career as a private investigator, this one took the cake. He not only made pâté with his victims’ brains, he served the ghastly preparation to guests.
He had served the ghastly preparation to me.
What Wesley West had done was beyond despicable. I no longer considered him a human being. He was a monster, pure and simple.
“I rarely get the chance to talk about these things to anybody,” he said. “So when I do get the chance, it’s kind of nice. Therapeutic, in a way. People are social animals. We need to talk to each other sometimes. Discuss things. Bat things around. Take Jim Ballard, for instance. He was a good talker.”
Wesley kept rooting through the dresser drawer as he rambled on.
“Jim told me a lot of things,” he continued. “Of course, I encouraged him a bit with a cigarette lighter and a pair of pliers. Jim killed a man. Did you know about that? Actually, he killed two men. The first was a guy named Phineas Carter, who had subleased Alison Palmer’s condominium. Jim claimed it was an accident, but I’m not so sure. I guess we’ll never know now. Look, I even have the gun he did it with.”
He reached into the drawer and produced what appeared to be a .38-caliber revolver. It was rusty and caked with sand.
“I haven’t had a chance to clean it up yet. Nic
e gun, though. I had to yank three of Jim’s fingernails out before he told me where it was buried. Phineas Carter never did anything to Jim, nothing that I could discern. Such a waste. Carter was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s really an intriguing story of jealousy and obsession. I’ll have to tell you all about it sometime.”
Wesley stopped ferreting. He stood abruptly and slammed the drawer shut with his foot.
“I must have left my little saw in the car,” he said. “I could have sworn I put it back in the drawer. Anyway, it’s been nice chatting with you. I wish there was a way you could participate in the conversation, but I’m afraid you’ll be a bad boy and scream for help if I allow that to happen. This is the first time I’ve had to do this in my own house, so naturally I’m a little nervous about it. I hope you understand.”
I grunted frantically.
“What’s that?” Wesley said. “You promise not to shout if I take the rag out of your mouth? I don’t know. I’m not sure I should trust you.”
He opened the drawer again, reached in and pulled out a utility knife. He pushed the slide forward with his thumb, and the razor-sharp blade emerged with a click.
“I’m going to pull that napkin out now, and if you call for help I’m going to cut your tongue out. Do we have an understanding? Is it a deal?”
I nodded. He reached down and yanked the cotton cloth out of my mouth and tossed it aside.
I sucked in a wheezy, deep breath, and then coughed it out violently. “You’re a sick motherfucker,” I said.
“You better watch your tongue, Nicholas. If you want to keep it.”
“I’m going to die anyway. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is in how slow and how painful. Anyway, I don’t know what I’m so worried about. It’s not likely anyone is going to hear you, even if you do scream. The insulation is pretty good here, and the apartment below us has been vacant for some time now.”
