Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery)

by Chris Wiltz

  “You stupid bitch ...” Louie started, but she broke him off.

  “Wait a minute, Louie, that isn't all. She left after she saw I started packing. As soon as she got out the door practically, I called Stan and told him I wanted ten grand for getting out and not causing any trouble. I tell you, Louie, it floored me when he said no. I figured he didn't have it, but I played it right. I swear, I did. I told him he had to get it and I'd give him a day and that's when he said I better get out or he would blow. What was I supposed to do? I mean, with that crazy wife of his running around with guns and stuff. I thought I better get out and wait for you to handle it. That's the way it happened, Louie, I swear.” She took a deep breath.

  Louie thought that over for a while. “No,” he said finally, “no, that don't add.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Since when were you afraid of a little old lady?” he asked. “What do you think old Louie is? A half-wit? Is that what you think? You don't remember telling me about Garber sayin’ his wife was getting on to the money and thought he was makin’ it with you? You don't remember that, do you baby? That was a long time ago. She's gonna come around with a gun now?” He was yelling again.

  Lucy's hand jerked at the belt. “Uh-uh, Louie, you got it wrong,” she said cautiously. “Stan said she might start thinking that.”

  “Shit. She's gonna kill you because you're having an affair with him but she's gonna let you go ‘cause you're blackmailing him? Let me tell you what happened. Mrs. Garber never showed up. You decided that it was a good time to give old Louie the slip. So you moved out of the apartment and holed up somewhere else, maybe with him"—he motioned at me—"maybe with that son of a bitch André And then you went to work Monday morning and told Garber you wanted the money right now. You couldn't wait for me so we could do it like we planned. You were too stupid to wait. So when Garber wouldn't cough up, that nasty redhead temper of yours flared up like it always does when you don't get your way. So you had a fight with him and you killed him. All because you wanted to cut ole Louie out of the goddamn action.” He started advancing toward her. “Isn't that how it went, baby? All because you wanted to cut me out.” His breath was coming in short gasps. “Isn't that it?” He had temporarily forgotten I was there. I started to move cautiously as he continued yelling, louder and louder, “Tell me, isn't it?” at Lucy. I was easing up off the sofa as I saw her right hand slip down along the arm under the cushion. Louie's right hand with the gun cradled in it had moved up to use the piece as a club, but before I had a chance to make my move, Lucy's hand came up with a .22 gleaming in it. She shot once. Right into his heart.

  In a second Louie's sneer had crumbled into disbelief and he began to pitch straight at Lucy. She put her hands up to protect herself from his falling, but at the last instant he fell off to the side. I was already up. Lucy jumped up as soon as Louie hit the sofa, the .22 aimed at me. I figured I was gone, too, but she dropped it at her side and sagged into the chair with a slight moan.

  I moved and took the gun from her. There was no resistance. Her eyes were half closed and a little moan escaped at the end of each breath. I poured her a drink and waited for her to snap out of it.

  “You didn't count on him remembering this place, did you?”

  She shook her head. “We only came here once, before my aunt died—it was hers—and he was dead drunk. And stayed dead drunk. Spent most of his time at the bar down the road. I never figured he would find it. I've been trying to get rid of the loser for six months now. I didn't want it to happen this way.” She shuddered. “He was so crazy. He showed up here tonight and he knocked me out before I had a chance to explain anything.” She put a hand on her jaw. “When I came to all the lights were out and then someone—you—started banging on the window. I just wanted the whole nightmare to go away. Everything. I wished I'd never done what I did to Stan. He had been my friend.” She was drained and tired and the illusion of beauty André had spoken of was trying to peep from under the cosmetics. I wondered why she'd gone wrong, but there were too many other things to think about.

  “You mean the ten thousand dollars he gave you.”

  Her head jerked up. “How do you know?”

  “The check stub is still in the checkbook. The police know it's there, too.”

  She smiled. “Not much of a crook, am I? You know, I don't think Stan really minded giving me all that money. He said he was glad to give it to me since I'd brought up his and Jeannette's little girl. I guess he felt sorry for me, too. I had gone crying to him because I was destitute even though I'd been working for twenty years, and he gave me the job and any money I ever asked for without question.”

  “Why did you send him that blackmail note?”

  She looked puzzled. I explained. “Oh, that,” she said. “I'd forgotten. Louie was responsible for that. Is it a bore or can I ask you how you know about it?”

  “Garber's daughter showed it to me.”

  Her face paled even under the powder. “My God. I never meant to cause that kind of trouble. How horrible. Damn Louie, anyway.” She began to cry. “I'm glad I shot him.”

  “It was self-defense,” I said. “But what about Garber?”

  She shook her head vehemently. “Not Stan. I didn't do that. I've been feeling horrible since I heard. I started feeling bad about the money after I got here. I was going to give it back. The check's still in there.” She indicated a closed door. “I haven't had the heart to cash it.”

  “The police think you killed him”

  “I didn't, but what difference does it make now? I wish I were dead.” Total defeat sealed the words.

  For some reason, maybe the defeat, I believed her. For some reason I was sure that ballistics would show that the .22 I was holding had not been the murder weapon. “Is that story about Mrs. Garber showing up the truth?”

  “Most of it,” she said indifferently.

  “All except that you were already packed and left with her?”

  She nodded, her eyes transfixed and dreamy. “Louie was right about that much—I was trying to get away from him, but not to cut him out of the money, but because he'd gotten so violent.”

  “But you didn't leave town until the next day.” She looked at me questioningly. “You might as well come clean now, Lucy. You'll be cleared if you didn't kill him. That check was dated Monday.”

  “Okay, so I was afraid Mrs. Garber would kill me. She looked like she meant business. I went to a motel that night and showed up early at the store. Stan was already there. I told him that she had visited me and that I was leaving town and asked him for the money. He wrote out the check and then the guy told me he wished me nothing but good luck. Can you believe it?”

  “Did you tell him that his wife said she knew about his other daughter?”

  “No, I didn't have the heart. You see, I wasn't so sure I believed her myself. I just couldn't bring it up.” Her eyes filled with tears. She tried to blink them away. “I was afraid she hadn't known before. I couldn't tell him I'd told her about Jeannette and everything just because she'd frightened it out of me. He'd been so much in love with Jeannette. But I guess if her daughter had that note, she must have known about it, too.”

  “No, I don't think so. I'm sure her daughter never showed her that note.”

  She didn't acknowledge the statement. It just didn't have the same meaning for her that it did for me.

  “What kind of gun was Mrs. Garber carrying, Lucy?”

  “Small, like that,” she said pointing at the gun I was holding, “with a pearl handle.”

  I looked down at the .22. “Why didn't you believe Mrs. Garber knew about Lise André?”

  “Brother, you sure know some stuff,” she said. “I thought something in her face changed when I told her that I was blackmailing Stan. I could have been wrong. I was afraid of her so I went into a lot of explanation about how it all had come about. She didn't seem to be really listening after I mentioned my friendship with Jeannette, and that I had been
with Lise for all those years. She seemed to get, I don't know, nervous, like I'd struck a bad chord. I thought if she did know something, she didn't know the extent to which things had gone.” She stopped. Then, “You know all about those years, too, don't you? How did you get involved?”

  There was no reason to tell her and I didn't want to go into it, anyway.

  “Did Mrs. Garber hire you?” she pressed.

  A knock at the door saved me from having to lie.

  “Open up, Miss McDermott. It's the sheriff.” I recognized the voice.

  I went to the door, opened it and handed him the gun. Slade's eyes almost popped out of his head. Shark stood behind him, but the only expression his face knew was a contemptuous sneer.

  “So sorry, Deputy,” I said. “It looks like you boys are a little late for the action.”

  34

  * * *

  How to Take a Life

  It took a while to get everything iced down. Slade was so annoyed that I'd been in on the kill without him that he refused to let me talk to Lucy anymore that night. That was okay. What wasn't okay was the way he shoved me in a room with Shark while I gave my statement twice. Then Earl himself came in and I gave it again. And then one more time for the machine. He tried hard to pin something on me, but two hours later he decided that it was too much work, gave me my gun and told me to hit the road. He expressed hope that he wouldn't have to lay eyes on my mug twice in a lifetime. I shared the same hope.

  Before facing the drive back to New Orleans I pumped myself up with a lot of coffee that never did do much to keep me awake but seemed to ease some pain.

  I hit the city and drove straight to the hospital. The medicinal smells seemed especially strong and sickening as I walked through the corridors. The nurses’ heads raised and their eyes flashed disapproval as I pushed through the swinging doors and walked to their station situated in the center of the circle of tiny rooms. The monitors were all lit and beeping, busily sketching the lines that gave a visual representation of the heartbeats within the rooms. I had a thought about how they couldn't show the heartaches that accompained the beats, which was a pretty good indication of the shape I was in that morning.

  A nurse who had almost the same color hair as Lucy McDermott came up to find out who I was and tell me that I had half an hour to wait before visiting hours. Her features kept getting displaced by Lucy's as she talked to me in hushed tones. I blinked a few times before I started on the importance of the visit, only I was having trouble convincing even myself. She seemed definitely unmoved. I was drawing in a breath to try another convincing aspect of my plight when a second nurse drew up to enter the conversation.

  “Are you Mr. Rafferty?” she asked. I said I was. She glanced at the first nurse. “I think it will be alright,” she said. “Mrs. Garber asked for you all day yesterday. She seemed quite agitated. Her daughter has been trying to locate you.” I muttered that I had been out of town and she pointed at the door to Mrs. Garber's room.

  I tiptoed in, leaving the door open a quarter. Mrs. Garber lay well tucked into the sheets in the narrow space between the bed rails. She was so thin that her body was indiscernible except for the rise of her feet in the bedding. Her head was sunken in a hollow of the pillow, making her face small and vulnerable. Her eyes were closed and their lids were white, with a transparent quality, like the rest of the skin on her face. She looked more dead than alive, but the monitor sent out an almost steady beep and drew thin, irregularly spaced lines while an apparatus at her nose blew oxygen into her lungs. I stood with my hands on the rail listening to the beeping and the bubbling of the oxygen. Her thin white hands with their bright blue lines lay open on the sheet. I shifted my gaze back to her face and almost immediately her eyes opened, their icy blue burning in her otherwise still face.

  There were to be no preliminaries.

  “You know why I wanted to see you?” she asked.

  “You want to tell me that you killed your husband.”

  Her eyes never faltered but it took a while before she said, “Yes. But first you must tell me that you will try to protect Catherine from any further consequences of this shameful business.” She spoke slowly, like she was tired, but her voice was strong—stronger than I would have expected.

  “I'll do my best to keep the publicity down. I'm sure Lieutenant Rankin will help, too.”

  “I don't mean just the publicity. She must be spared any more pain. She has been the victim of stupid mistakes made over twenty years ago. She must not be a victim any longer. She must try to forget about it, but she is going to need help. I'm asking you because I know she has turned to you. She cares about you.” She stopped and I knew she was waiting for me to say something.

  “I care about her, too, Mrs. Garber.”

  “I needed to hear you say that. You must understand that she has not had a normal life. There is no possibility for her to have one while either her father or I live. She was a precocious child who was damaged emotionally at an early age. It has been difficult for her to have friends or be close to anyone in any way at all. Why is it that a person must be dying before realizing these things? It is a small consolation to say you did your best but my soul shall not rest in peace for having said it.”

  “Why did you kill him, Mrs. Garber?”

  Her eyes closed and fluttered open. “Why?” she repeated bitterly. “Because he was a dishonorable man who shoved aside his wife and daughter to have an affair with a woman who was no better than a tramp.” Her anger was as fresh as it would have been if it had all happened yesterday. She raised a withered hand and let it fall back to the sheets. When she spoke again it was with less anger. “I'm afraid I had possession confused with love. It hurt me terribly, and I shared every bit of that hurt and all of the reasons for it with Catherine. She was only seven years old. That was a very great sin. I never did know the entire story, but to have it completed by that woman's friend ...” Bitterness rose into her eyes, making them seem to burn even brighter. I knew she was trying, but she still could not separate herself emotionally from the past.

  “But I must tell the story coherently, so it can be repeated to the police. They must have their facts, mustn't they? Have they found Lucy McDermott yet?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Have you met her?” I said I had. “A despicable woman. I couldn't understand why Stanley hired her. She belonged in a gutter, not in the bookstore. But I didn't say anything about it until I found out about all the money he had given her. I knew if I asked him about it I wouldn't get any answers. So I went directly to her. That was the day before Stanley—before I killed Stanley. I took the gun. I had assumed they were having an affair, but she denied it. I had expected her to do that, but then she told me she had known Stanley from the days of his affair with Jeannette André and that she had raised his and Jeannette's little girl. She was blackmailing him.”

  “You didn't know about the child?”

  “No. It shocked me. I didn't really hear what else she said. I didn't need to—I knew most of it already. She agreed to leave town after I threatened her. We left together and I went home. Stanley and I had a terrible argument. Twenty years’ worth of anger poured out. We were making the same mistakes all over again. He had started it all and I wouldn't let it drop. He wanted to push everything aside, forget it happened. But he kept trying to push me aside, too, just like he'd always done, to go off into his own little world where he had lived during most of our marriage. I became more and more worked up until it's a wonder I didn't drop dead that day. Catherine walked in during all that. She locked herself in her room and wouldn't come out. I know she heard every word. I knew what she was suffering and I think it was then that I decided to kill him. It was a very cold and calculated decision. I went to the store the next morning and did it.”

  She had become very tired while telling me her story and now her eyes closed. I stood for a moment and then started to leave, but a cold, veined hand came up and clutched mine on the bed rail. Her
eyes were wet, but not as bright as they had been.

  “I deserved that bullet. AH these years. I wouldn't let her forget it. I talked about it. I told her every horrible thing I knew about him. I wanted her to know. I wanted to protect hen I didn't want it to ever happen to her.” She paused as one side of her mouth dropped in a grimace. “I pulled that trigger twenty years ago,” she said. The hand slid back to her side and the eyes closed again. I glanced up at the monitor. The beeps were coming very far apart and the jagged lines were not reaching as high as they had.

  I walked stiffly to the door and jerked it open. Catherine was standing on the other side of it, one foot in the room. Her mouth was quivering and her eyes, her whole face was full of misery. I felt something that went far beyond sympathy and I desperately wanted to do something to help her, but I was helpless as a drowning kitten as she passed me on the way to her mother's side.

  I went on out leaving the door open as before and stood with my back to it a few steps away. I wasn't there very long when three nurses rushed past me into the room. I turned to see a straight line on the monitor

  Outside in the waiting room I sat dragging on cigarette after cigarette like the same kitten back on the bank of the river sucking in the air.

  When Catherine came through the swinging doors her eyes were blank. I sat with her and held her. She looked at me, first with disbelief, then with despair. She would put her hand on my arm, but it kept slipping off like she couldn't hold on. It was like that for a while. I wanted to take her home, but when we got down to the parking lot she told me she had to be alone and would I come in the evening. I followed her to make sure she made it alright and then went on uptown.