Deadliest of Sins

by Sallie Bissell

  “Do you know the number?”

  “No.”

  The woman’s fingers flew over the computer keyboard. “212” she said, a moment later. “Let me get my master key and I’ll take you up there.”

  She led him quickly through the lobby mostly, he thought, to get him and his gold badge out of view of the other guests who were trooping down for the free breakfast buffet. He followed her to the elevator, where they rode up to the second floor. Mary’s room was at the end of the hall. The manager opened the door, turned on the light, then stepped aside. Galloway walked in. The room had apparently not been disturbed since housekeeping had cleaned it the day before. The bed was made, there was unopened soap in the bathroom, and the hand towels had been neatly folded into little fan shapes. A zipped-up make-up bag lay beside the sink, while an open suitcase lay on the dresser beside the flat-screen TV. Galloway walked over and looked through Mary’s still packed clothes—underwear, two white blouses, a pair of jeans. He felt a lump under the jeans and lifted them to find a Glock 9 lying in an oiled shoulder holster, a box of ammo beside it.

  Damn, he thought. If she’d taken that, she might be here right now, asking me why in the hell I’m going through her underwear. He turned away from the suitcase, looked in the closet. A single linen jacket and a navy skirt were hanging on a hanger; beyond that, nothing. The room looked as if she’d just stepped out of it, would be back any minute. Barring a miracle, that wasn’t going to happen.

  He checked to see if she’d made any notes on the pad beside the phone, checked to see if any of those small sheets had fallen underneath the bed or behind the desk, but he saw nothing. He turned to the manager. “Could I talk to the housekeepers who cleaned her room yesterday?”

  “Certainly.” The woman picked up the phone, murmured something into it. In a few minutes two wide-eyed Latinas pushed their cleaning cart to the door.

  “Buenas dias,” he greeted them in Spanish. “¿Visto a la dama en la habitación desde ayer?”

  They both shook their heads. The younger one said, “No, señor. Nunca hemos visto en absoluto.”

  He asked when they’d last made up the bed.

  This time, the younger one held up two fingers. “Hace dos mañ-

  anas.”

  “Gracias.” He frowned. Neither housekeeper had seen Mary at all, but they’d made up her bed two mornings ago. He went back over to her suitcase, wondering if he’d gotten the right room, if she’d been here at all. He looked through her clothes for a cleaning ticket or a business card but found nothing. Closing the suitcase, he searched the side pockets for any identifying information. His finger curled around a piece of paper shoved into one. He pulled it out. It was an old plane ticket stub to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The passenger was one Mary Crow of Hartsville, North Carolina.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “She went back to Asheville the night before last, and had her 74 Special at that bar. She spent the night there at her home, then came back here yesterday morning.” Her abandoned car was the only clue as to her whereabouts after she’d left him at Angelo’s.

  He gave the manager his card, telling her to call him immediately should Mary return.

  The woman took his card hesitantly. “So should I assume this woman’s coming back? Consider this room occupied?”

  “Yes,” Galloway told her with a confidence he did not feel. “You can absolutely assume she’s coming back.”

  He drove back to her car. Pike was still there, watching as the forensic squad was pulling away.

  “They find anything?” asked Galloway, hopeful.

  Pike shook his head. “No bloodstains, no semen. They’ll run the prints this afternoon.”

  Disappointed, Galloway thought back to Mary’s conversation last night—she said she’d gone to see a man whose sister had been found murdered on 74; a man extremely hostile to the notion that his sister might be a lesbian. Was there some kind of connection here? Had the man been so upset that he’d killed the messenger to save his sister from the taint of homosexuality? It was possible—Mary said the guy kept slapping his palm with a tire iron. But what was his name? Williams? Watson? She’d told him, but he’d been watching her eyes, looking at her mouth like the lovesick fool he feared he was becoming.

  He turned back to Pike. “I need to use your box a minute.” He walked over to Pike’s cruiser and logged on to his computer. He keyed in homicides, 2010–2013. The name popped up immediately—Wallace, Tiffani, white female, age 19. Next of kin, Eddie Wallace, 320 County Road 218. He got out of Pike’s cruiser and headed toward his Mustang.

  “I’m going to check out a guy named Wallace,” he told Pike. “Get the wrecker out here and get this car into the police lot.”

  “Then we’re done out here?” asked Pike, his tone hopeful.

  “We are for now,” said Galloway.

  He drove fast, against the traffic, heading toward the South Carolina line. 320 County Road 218 was an old white doublewide trailer, set on blocks. A wrought-iron sculpture of a donkey sat in the front yard, next to a faded plastic candy cane from several Christmases ago. Galloway pulled around to the back of the place, where a skinny, barefoot man wearing cut-off jeans and a dirty T-shirt stood peering under the hood of an ancient Dodge Charger that had, in a former life, had the number 11 painted on its side. He looked up from the car and frowned as Galloway’s black Mustang nosed up the driveway.

  “Bway-nos dee-os, Pedro.” The man flicked a cigarette out of his mouth as Galloway got out of the car. “Kay passa?”

  “Muy bien, pipucho,” Galloway replied, the Spanish rolling off his tongue. He lifted a friendly hand towards the man as he moved toward him; then he drew close, grabbed the man by his hair, and slammed his face down into the head gasket of the car.

  “What the fuck?” the man cried. He squirmed, tried to get to his feet, but Galloway kicked the man’s leg apart and shoved his knee firmly against his balls. His legs were pale, splotched with red-looking flea bites.

  “This is what, dickhead.” Galloway switched to perfect English as pulled out his badge for the second time that morning. “I’m Detective Victor Galloway.” He dangled his badge in front of Wallace’s face. “I used to play soccer in Argentina and my goal-kicking knee is aimed right at your nuts, so cut the Speedy Gonzalez crap.”

  “Okay,” Wallace whimpered, breathing hard.

  Galloway lifted the guy’s head up and whopped his nose against the manifold, just for fun. “Are you Eddie Wallace?”

  Wallace nodded as blood seeped from his nose.

  “You speak Spanish. You know the word ayer?”

  “No.” Wallace sobbed, trying to breathe.

  “It means yesterday, pipucho.”

  “So?”

  Galloway tightened his grip on the man’s hair. “Do you remember yesterday? Or are you too fucked up?”

  Wallace nodded. “I remember,” he said, his voice coming out strangely muffled.

  “You remember a good-looking woman coming over here, asking about your little sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You remember spitting tobacco juice at her? Threatening her with a lug wrench?”

  “I didn’t threaten her.” Wallace gulped. “She pissed me off. She thought my sister was a dyke.”

  “Yeah, well that woman was a cop. She happened to go missing last night,” said Galloway, pressing his knee harder into Wallace’s scrotum.

  “I don’t know anything about that!” cried Wallace.

  “Sorry, pipucho. You gotta convince me better than that.”

  “She came over, asking all these questions about Tiffani. Who she hung with, if she had a boyfriend. When I said I didn’t know, she asked if I thought Tiffani was queer. She made me mad, saying those things about my sister. Plus she kept looking at me like I was a piece of shit. So I grabbed a tire iron. Big deal. I never hit her with it.”
<
br />   “You’re a real caballero. What happened next?”

  “Nothing! She was driving a black ’99 Miata. She got in it and left.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I worked on this car till dark. Then I went to work.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “Walmart, in Gastonia.”

  “Did you take Jackson Highway?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” replied Wallace.

  “You drive this heap?”

  Wallace shook his head. “No. I drove that truck over there.”

  Galloway looked across the weedy back yard, where a Dodge Ram was parked on a concrete slab, underneath an aluminum canopy. “You park it there all the time?”

  “Every night,” said Wallace.

  “Where are the keys?”

  “In my back pocket.”

  He loosened his grip on the man’s hair but pulled out his service weapon. “Go back it up.”

  Wallace stood up and wiped the blood from his nose. He stared at Galloway as if he were crazy. “Back it up where?”

  “Off that concrete slab, asshole.” He took the safety off his weapon. “Go an inch in any other direction and I’ll consider you avoiding arrest.”

  Wallace gulped, then walked over to the truck, his bare feet making little slaps on the ground. Galloway watched as he started the car, then backed it just out of its concrete parking space. When he’d cleared the canopy, Galloway told him to turn the motor off.

  “Toss the keys out the window,” he said, still holding his gun on Wallace. “And get out of the truck.”

  Wallace did as he was told, still wiping blood from his nose.

  “Okay. Go over and lie face down in the driveway. Make one move and you will have changed your last spark plug.”

  Wallace glared at him, but he went over and lay face down in the drive. When Galloway saw that the stupid bastard was well away from anything he could use as a weapon, he walked over to the concrete slab where the truck had been parked. He bent down and studied the middle of the slab, where all the drips and oozings from an engine would splatter. Though Eddie Wallace’s worth as a sensitive human being might be up for grabs, he was a damn good mechanic. Not a drop of oil stained the pavement where his truck had been parked—certainly not the big glob of stuff that gleamed from the pavement next to Mary’s abandoned car. Whoever had been there last night hadn’t been driving Eddie Wallace’s truck.

  “Okay.” Galloway rose to his feet. “You can get up.”

  Wallace hauled himself up. His already-swelling nose looked like a turnip stuck in the middle of his face.

  “Well?” he said. “What are the charges?”

  “No charges,” said Galloway, heading for his car.

  “No charges? You come up here and break my nose just to get me to move my truck?”

  “You got it, pipucho. But let me give you a piece of advice. Next time a cop asks questions about your dead sister, don’t spit tobacco juice at them, and don’t go near a tire iron. And if you want to be extra nice, don’t call any Latino cops Pedro. It just makes us grumpy as hell.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Chase dropped the cell phone and hurried back out to Gudger. He lay sprawled beside the front door, his knee a bloody red mess, his lower leg bent at an impossible angle to his thigh. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was sipping shallow little gasps of air, like a goldfish in a bowl of scummy water.

  Chase grasped the doorjamb, dizzied by the odors of blood and urine. “Please be okay,” he whispered, for the first time in his life praying for Gudger to live instead of die. As he stared at the wounded man, he fought back the urge to vomit. What should he do now? Stay here and wait for the ambulance? The cops would come, too. Should he tell them that Gudger knew where Sam was? That Gudger was planning to sell him to some people as boy meat? The cops already thought he was crazy; they would never believe that Gudger would do such terrible things. To them, ol’ Gudge was a stand-up guy.

  Run, some inner voice told him as he stared at Gudger’s yellow-

  stained underwear. Get out now while you can still save Sam.

  Leaving Gudger sipping air, he turned and headed for the kitchen door. He ran out into the back yard, figuring he’d slip under the fence and follow the creek down to the highway. He’d just passed the marigold patch when he heard a siren coming down Kedron Road. The sound grew louder, was soon joined by other sirens, wailing like coon dogs in full cry.

  “Oh man!” he cried, tears coming to his eyes. “How did they get here so fast?”

  Gudger’s one of their own, the voice whispered again. They’re going to come fast, and come hard.

  He looked around. He didn’t have time to get to the creek now—he would have to hide. But where? The cops would search the house and shed immediately. He turned around, desperate for a refuge, when his gaze fell on the maple tree in the side yard. For months he’d tried to climb it to hide from Gudger, but he’d always been too short to reach the branches. Was he tall enough to climb it now? He didn’t know, but he had to try.

  His heart thudding, he raced toward the tree. As the sirens split the stillness of the morning air, he ran to the tree, then leaped with all his strength. His fingers scraped along the bark, then caught. Tightening his hold, he swung himself forward. His legs wrapped around the next branch and he began to shimmy up into the thick green leaves. Branch after branch he climbed, twenty, then thirty feet into the air. He glanced down once, dizzyingly, to see the red lights of the ambulance turning into the driveway, followed by three sets of flashing blue lights. Then he kept his eyes on the tree, climbing until he reached a deep crotch that held him like a cradle. Ten feet higher and the limbs would be too slender to hold him, but here, it was perfect. Though it made him dizzy, he could stretch the length of one branch and get a clear view of the house, yet remain hidden by the foliage. Wrapping himself tight around the branches, he settled in and turned his attention to the house. Already the paramedics were heading inside, red backpacks in hand. Three cop cars had pulled up behind them, their radios blaring. While one cop hurried to the back of the house with his gun drawn, the others rushed the front porch and pounded on the door. When they got no answer, one of the beefier cops put his shoulder to the thing. It opened slowly. He heard one cop call, “Heads up! Somebody’s lying against the front door!”

  The others pulled their guns and crept inside. Chase started to tremble, his arms and legs quivering so badly he feared he might fall out of the tree. For a long time nothing happened, then the paramedics came out and retrieved a gurney from the back of their truck. They took it inside. Chase waited, his stomach prickling with fear. If they brought Gudger out in a black body bag, he would be arrested, convicted of murder, and would spend the rest of his life in a prison cell. Better to just let go of these branches and break his neck right now. He waited, hardly daring to breathe, when finally, the door opened again. A paramedic came out, slowly pulling the gurney. On it was not a black bag, but Gudger, wrapped in a red blanket, an oxygen mask over his nose. As the second paramedic eased the gurney off the porch, a cop walked beside them, holding an IV bag over Gudger’s arm.

  Chase felt weak with relief. Gudger wasn’t dead. He wasn’t guilty of murder—at least not yet. He watched as they loaded Gudger into the ambulance, then drove off, sirens blaring and lights flashing all over again. He figured the cops would soon follow—their precious Gudger had been taken care of. But that didn’t happen. They all stayed—two searching the house, another doing a sweep of Gudger’s property, his eyes on the ground, looking for clues.

  Chase wanted to cry, wanted to wish himself as far away from here as he could. But all he could do was cling to the tree branches, being as still as he could, praying that nobody would think to look in the maple tree.

  The cops seemed to stay for hours, wandering in and out of the house. One cop brought out Cous
in Petey’s gun. “Look at this,” he cried. “Little fucker nailed him with one shot from this old Army Colt. Five bullets left in a six-bullet barrel.”

  “I’m surprised he had the strength to hold it up,” said another cop Chase recognized from Gudger’s bowling team. “Kid doesn’t weigh eighty pounds, soaking wet.”

  “He weighs a little bit less than that now,” the third cop announced as he came out of the house, tossing something in his hand. “I found his front tooth under the sofa.”

  With his tongue, Chase felt the empty space where his left front tooth had been. It was now just a jagged edge of bone, close to his gum. He hadn’t even realized it was gone.

  “Guess the recoil must have knocked it out of his mouth.” The cop put the tooth in his pocket and shook his head. “We’re done here, guys. The kid’s taken off. We’ve got a good description—somebody will pick him up from the APB.”

  “Chief will be pissed,” warned the bowling team cop. “He wanted that kid, bad.”

  “Then he’ll just have to be satisfied with his front tooth,” said the one who was apparently in charge. “The little bastard ain’t anywhere around here.”

  “Goddamn!” The third one put his hands on his hips. “We got here seven minutes after the 911. How could a little kid vanish in seven minutes? On foot, too.”

  “Maybe he hitched a ride,” said the bowling cop. “Crump was telling some crazy ass tale about how he’d thumbed up to Asheville on a peach truck.”

  Their radios started to crackle. Two leaned closer to hear the dispatch, but the third cop turned in a slow circle. Chase watched him look down the driveway, across the front yard, up the side yard, then he stopped and stared directly at the tree.

  Chase gulped. His arms and legs turned to stone as the cop’s gaze seemed to penetrate every leaf on the tree.

  “Anybody check that big maple tree?” he finally asked.

  The others turned to follow his gaze. “I didn’t,” said the bald-headed cop. “I was searching the shed.”