Cold Rain

by Craig Smith

  ‘What happened?’ She pointed at my eye, and I realized Buddy’s punch had connected. I smiled at her.

  ‘You should see the other guy.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking for the gun that killed Johnna Masterson.’

  ‘You think it’s here?’

  ‘Buddy didn’t have it.’

  ‘You looked?’

  ‘With his permission, sure.’

  ‘Need some help?’

  ‘If you take the house, I’ll take the barn, the shed, and the cellar. If we stay at it, I’d say we can probably be done by sun-up.’

  Molly looked around my den in frustration. ‘It could be anywhere.’

  ‘If we check room-by-room and nook-by-cranny we’ll find it if it’s here. There wouldn’t be much point in hiding it too well. The point is for us not to notice it and for the cops to find it on their first pass.’

  We spent the rest of the night and early morning looking for the .38 Buddy had pulled on me outside The Slipper. From attic to basement, hayloft to grain barrels, we checked every conceivable recess, every dark hole, every shelf, every jar.

  Exhausted we made ourselves a country breakfast of sausage and eggs and I finally told Molly what had transpired with Buddy.

  Molly allowed herself half-a-smile. ‘You hog-tied Buddy?’

  ‘Only while I couldn’t watch him.’

  ‘So you think Roger has it?’

  I shook my head. I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t at Buddy’s house. That was all I knew. ‘I thought he might be careless with it, but he’s hidden it somewhere safe.’

  ‘You going to check the Beery residence?’

  I shook my head. I had lost the element of surprise.

  Chapter 27

  WE GOT MORE THAN OUR usual share of obscene threats with the phone calls that morning. The newspaper account had stirred a lot of bile.

  At around two o’clock I walked down the hill to get the mail and found our mail carefully set between the flag and the box. The door was open and I could see someone had left a pile of reasonably fresh dog shit inside. I cleaned the thing out roughly with some advertisements, then climbed the hill and went to the barn and got some soap and water. Finished with that, I went up to Lucy’s apartment and told Molly it was time for a beer. ‘A little early, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘We might not have too many more afternoons together.’

  She dropped her tools without comment and told me she needed a few minutes. I told her where I wanted to go and she laughed, brushing the sawdust from her shoulders. ‘In that case, I’m ready.’

  I pulled my truck into Billy Wade’s driveway a couple of minutes later and walked up to the giant’s front door. ‘Hey, Dave!’

  ‘You take care of the horses for us this evening?’ I asked.

  ‘Glad to do it.’ I passed him a ten dollar bill. ‘You ever see that Mercury around here again?’

  ‘I’ve been looking! I see him, I’ll come over and tell you.’ I thanked him and wandered back to the truck.

  We drove to a little village most maps didn’t bother naming and settled into a booth as far from the regulars as we could get. An old waitress came across the floor, smiling at Molly and me, ‘How are you folks this afternoon?’

  We were fine. She commented on my eye, which really didn’t look too bad, and I told her my stepdaughter’s mare had popped me. When she asked what we wanted, I told her, ‘Longnecks,’ sounding, I expect, like Walt himself, ‘and keep them coming.’

  ‘We got plenty of those!’

  ‘That’s good,’ I told her, ‘because we’re thirsty.’

  ‘You okay?’ Molly asked.

  I shook my head, watching the old waitress at her business. ‘Tired.’

  ‘You didn’t get any sleep last night.’

  That wasn’t it, and we both knew it. Our beers came, and after a toast to catastrophe that was half fun and half tradition, Molly said, ‘You know what attracted me to you the first time we met?’

  I swore. Then I laughed. ‘I always figured it was the beer you had before I got there.’

  ‘You weren’t afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Of anything. What people thought, what they could do to you, the future, the past: you were doing what you wanted and you intended to keep on doing it.’

  I considered telling her that graduate school is a peculiar time in a person’s life. You’re always broke, you’re always chasing after something you can’t quite catch, and you’re young. You’re not howling-at-the-moon-young. You’re one step from respectability, and in that last mad dance of irresponsibility you are what you will never be again. Instead, I told her, ‘It was a long time ago, those first nights, Molly.’

  ‘And days. Remember the rainy afternoons? I never had such…’

  ‘What?’

  Molly blushed and laughed. ‘Such orgasms.’

  I howled, and every head and the bar turned to watch us. While I had everyone’s attention, I called out to the bartender, ‘You want to set everyone up with a fresh drink? He nodded and went to work. A couple of old codgers tipped their glasses at us, letting me know it was okay with them if I wanted to howl now and then.

  ‘You know he’s going to come for you now?’ she said.

  I lost my smile and nodded. I knew.

  WE GOT HOME AFTER DARK, still reasonably coherent. We had thirteen messages, and I ran through them quickly. The seventh was Kip Dalton. I called his cell phone number.

  ‘I’d like to ask you a favour,’ Dalton said after I identified myself.

  ‘I missed seeing you the other day, Detective.’

  ‘Something came up.’

  ‘I’m shooting straight with you, Detective. I expect the same in return.’

  After a moment of uncomfortable silence Dalton told me, ‘The sheriff wanted to try a different approach.’

  It wasn’t exactly an apology, but I let it pass. ‘What’s your favour?’

  ‘We want to search your farm. I’d like to do it without asking for a search warrant.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  Kip Dalton chuckled pleasantly. ‘For one thing because Newsome and Jacobs said you won’t go for it.’

  ‘I’ll make you a deal. You bring everybody and their Aunt Mabel on out tomorrow. You can look anywhere you want as long as those two stay off the property.’

  Kip Dalton laughed. ‘Fair enough, but I think you ought to know their feelings are going to be hurt!’

  What he meant by that was they would be the ones who arrested me when the time came.

  Molly asked me about getting a lawyer once I told her what Kip wanted. I shook my head. ‘They have enough evidence to get a search warrant. There’s nothing a lawyer can do at this point.’

  ‘And if they find something?’

  ‘There’s nothing here to find.’

  Molly wasn’t so confident. ‘You’re sure?’ she asked.

  I hesitated, then I smiled. ‘I will be after tomorrow.’

  They came early the next day and kicked around in our stuff using twenty officers and two dogs. They took a variety of items for testing with my permission, naturally, including my hair and blood and Molly’s .22 Magnum, but they took nothing we did not recognize. When they were gone I think we both felt exhausted, though we had done practically nothing all day. I suggested a horseback ride, the fresh air would do us good, but Molly wanted to fix herself a drink and call Lucy. I kicked around in the office until she was off the phone. On something of a whim I called the university’s lawyer, hoping I could stir something up. He played hard-to-get, and we didn’t actually speak to each other until five o’clock, nearly two hours after my first attempt to call him. ‘The reason I called,’ I said, ‘I’m interested in negotiating a severance package.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I need three years’ salary and benefits. In exchange
for that, I’ll agree not to bring suit against the university.’

  The university lawyer didn’t sound especially impressed, but he told me he would pass the offer on to the president.

  I had been told to go to hell quite a few times in my life but never quite with such dispassionate sweetness. ‘While you’re passing things on to him,’ I said, ‘you might want to let him know Denise Conway is going to tell the court that her ex-boyfriend stole her diary and handed a copy of it over to the university as evidence without her permission.’

  The lawyer’s silence hadn’t a bit of condescension about it.

  ‘That’s the bad news,’ I said. ‘The really bad news is she’s prepared to declare under oath her diary was nothing more than a fantasy and that she never said it was anything else.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Could be,’ I said. ‘Then again, you haven’t asked her, have you? Seems to me you might want to interview Ms Conway yourself before you commit yourself to a litigation that could cost you a hell of a lot more than three years’ salary.’

  The lawyer told me he would get back with me.

  ROGER BEERY SHOWED up the following evening.

  Once I recognized Walt’s Volvo, I went to the den where I kept the shotguns in a locked case. Grabbing the twelve-gauge and slipping half-a-dozen shells into it as I went, I headed out the backdoor with Molly right behind me.

  We got to the driveway just as Roger was getting out of his father’s car. I put my shotgun to my shoulder and pointed it at him.

  ‘What’s that for, Dave?’

  ‘Get off our property before I shoot you,’ I shouted.

  ‘Jeez, that’s real friendly.’

  I fired into his windshield, and Roger jumped away from his car in stark terror.

  ‘Next one’s for you, fat boy,’ I said, keeping the gun trained on him. ‘Now get out. I’m not going to ask you again.’

  ‘I’ve got something you might want to look at. I just want to give it to you and then I’ll take off.’

  ‘Try the mail.’

  Roger was holding a DVD in his gloved hand and stooped down gingerly to leave it on the ground for us. ‘How about I put it here. You’re going to want to see this.’ He looked at Molly. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘What is it?’ Molly asked.

  ‘Just look at it. I’ll call you tomorrow about what it’s going to cost you to keep it off the internet.’

  With that he backed away and got in his car. I kept my gun trained on him as he circled us and drove away.

  Molly went for the DVD case, swearing hotly as she picked it up. ‘What do you think it is?’ she asked.

  ‘Let’s go find out.’

  Inside the house, we took our coats off and headed for the living room. Neither of us spoke. I still had the shotgun in my hand, but I wasn’t looking for Buddy Elder when he stepped out of the den.

  Buddy jacked a shell into the chamber of my four-ten and brought it to his shoulder. I had the better weapon, but Buddy was pointing his at Molly’s head.

  His eyes blackened, his nose broken, Buddy hardly looked like the congenial grad student I had met at Caleb’s eight months earlier. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to put the gun down, Dave.’

  I set the gun on the floor gently, hoping Buddy would point his weapon in my direction. In fact, he stepped closer to Molly just in case I wanted to try him.

  Once I had let go of the gun and stood up again, he relaxed slightly, though he didn’t take the gun off Molly. ‘Hope you all don’t mind,’ he told us with his southern drawl, ‘but I let myself in by the side door with a key.’

  Molly started toward him. A single step. Buddy brought the four-ten around until it was aimed at my crotch. ‘You want to see Dave without his balls?’

  ‘Buddy, please!’

  ‘Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to get hurt as long as you both cooperate.’ He nodded toward the DVD

  case Molly still held and gave her a smile. ‘You figure out what you’ve got there, hon?’

  The blood left her face.

  ‘Dave, you’re going to love this,‘ he told me.

  I didn’t answer. At the moment, I couldn’t.

  ‘What I want you to do, Molly, is go into the living room there and turn the lights on and then off three times.’ When she had done this he told her, ‘Now turn the lights on and let’s watch a movie.’

  Molly turned the television on and inserted the disk into the DVD player. Meanwhile, Buddy gestured with the shotgun for me to have a seat. He had Molly sit in the chair beside mine, and then he hit the remote.

  For a moment we waited in silence. Then Buddy told us, ‘You know, I could just shoot myself for not bringing the popcorn.’

  THERE WAS NO SOUND ON THE recording. The scene began with Buddy’s face pulling back from the camera lens. He turned and walked away from the camera and sat down on a couch in a darkened living room, the same one I had wrecked a couple nights before. A single lamp illuminated him. For nearly a minute nothing happened. Then Molly appeared. She was absolutely naked and carried two drinks.

  Molly swore. Buddy tipped his weapon into my crotch. ‘You don’t move,’ Buddy told her. ‘You come out of that chair and Dave here is going to hurt.’

  On the video Molly handed Buddy his drink and set her own on the coffee table. Then she slid down between his legs and began pulling at his belt, laughing and telling him something.

  I heard Roger’s Volvo coming up the hill again.

  In the video Buddy made no effort to help Molly undress him. He actually seemed to enjoy watching her struggle with his jeans. When she had freed his erection, Buddy said to me, ‘This here is my favourite part, Dave.’

  Molly took his sex into her mouth, and Buddy pushed her hair away so the camera caught her face in profile.

  We watched this for a minute or so before Buddy broke the silence. ‘It’s just like I’ve always said, Dave.

  You can take the girl off the street, but you just can’t get the street off the girl.’

  Our front hallway clicked open and closed quietly.

  Roger Beery appeared and immediately went for the twelve-gauge on the floor in the hallway. ‘Hey! You started without me!’

  Buddy grinned. ‘Dave couldn’t wait.’

  Roger walked behind Buddy and stepped up in front of Molly. ‘You like that, don’t you? You like giving head?’

  Molly swore at him, but Roger grinned and put the tip of his gun in front of Molly’s mouth, ‘I want you to kiss this and make it wet for me.’

  Molly spat on the gun, then she spat at Roger.

  Buddy walked behind her chair, positioning himself carefully between Molly and me. He was facing Roger.

  ‘We need to set some ground rules here, Molly,’ he said. ‘First off, this is just payback for the other night.

  Nobody needs to get killed. All we’re going to do is give Dave here a little sex show. Nothing you haven’t done before. If you don’t want to cooperate,’ Buddy pushed the gun toward my ear, ‘then we go to plan B.

  Up to you really.’

  At just that moment someone knocked at the back door.

  Buddy swore. Roger looked frightened.

  ‘I’ll see who it is,’ Buddy said, and walked out of our living room. Then he stopped. ‘And if either of them starts to move, shoot Dave’s nuts off.’

  Roger smiled. ‘It’ll be a pleasure.’

  I said softly so that Molly could hear, ‘Wade.’

  That was when she cried.

  I SAW MY OLD MAN work some amazing deals, but the only time he ever worked pure magic was one night at the fairgrounds.

  We’d taken the cars down to this field with all the other dealers, and people had a chance to look at everything all in the same place. We’d been working the thing for three days, and I’d taken a Z in trade from a girl named Debbie, Connie Q. in Jinx. The Q. was for Quick. Debbie was my first, which made me one of a large fraternity.

  In a small town like DeKa
lb it doesn’t take much to get a reputation, of course, but Deb was way past that. Deb was a legend. There wasn’t a man in the greater metro area under forty, maybe a straight man breathing, who didn’t know her car on sight. It had been a nice car once, but like Deb it was beginning to show some wear.

  I had a little trouble closing her on a new Mustang because she was buying with cash and she didn’t have enough. It looked like I was going to lose the deal when Milt took the T.O. I’m not sure, but I think Milt might be the only manager in history of the cars to pull a customer out of the closing booth and insist on a second demo drive when the only issue was price.

  They came back a couple of hours later, the purchase order signed, and Milt gave me a full commission, instead of splitting it. He slapped me on the back and told me that was the kind of guy he was. When his people needed help, he was there for them.

  The next day I saw some kid looking at that Z, and walked over and started talking to him. The way he was looking at that car you would have thought it was Deb herself. Milt had jacked the price up a couple thousand above the recommended retail on a mint condition piece, because, he said, it was the most famous car in DeKalb. Truth was he needed to get back everything he’d given away on the Mustang. We’d had lookers all day, but when they heard the price they started looking elsewhere. I figured this kid was there like the rest of them, a bit of nostalgia and then he would move on. But he was just a little different. I noticed it the minute he looked up at me with a gullible smile and said, ‘I got my first blow job in a car like this!’

  ‘You sure it wasn’t this exact same car?’ I asked him.

  For a moment, the kid stared at me in disbelief, then he looked at the car again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  We talked a little more, and I found out he was planning on getting married. The fiancée was looking at a used sport utility vehicle at another dealership, but the car was for him, and he wanted a sports car.

  I worked him without much enthusiasm, and he bounced in and out three different times. He wanted that car about as much as he wanted one more summer evening with Deb, but when his fiancée came by for a look it was all over. She wasn’t letting him buy that car on a dare!