Long Gone Man

by Phyllis Smallman

  “If Johnny was killed with this gun, what did I do, shoot him and then run back up to the Beast and hide it under the seat?”

  “Maybe you left it outside and picked it up when we went to bring your van up.”

  “Did you see me do that? Did you see me retrieve a gun from the bushes?”

  “No.”

  “And the cops searched around the house before they moved on?”

  “Maybe you slipped out in the night and took it up to the van.”

  “Oh yeah, good idea, with cops crawling all over the place. Don’t take up a life of crime; you’d be lousy at it.”

  “I don’t know how you did it. I just know you did. I’m calling the Mounties.”

  “You already did.”

  The gun dipped a little lower.

  “Okay, once more.” Singer enunciated clearly, as if Lauren had suddenly developed hearing problems. “I didn’t kill Johnny.”

  “Why do you have a gun?”

  “Living on the streets you need a friend. Let’s get out of this room.” Singer limped to the door without waiting to see if Lauren followed her.

  In the family room, Singer sank down onto the leather couch. She rubbed her eyes. She was tired, not just from the last two days, but deep-down exhausted from years of struggling to stay alive. It was wearing her down, and sometimes staying alive just didn’t seem worth it. But experience had taught her that was only true until the threat of death became real again.

  Lauren came into the room, put the heavy gun on the couch beside Singer, and sat on the couch opposite.

  “I’m calling Steven,” Lauren said. “Then I’ll tell you what I know.” She pointed at the gun. “Hide that thing. It’s better if no one knows we’re armed.” She went back to the office and to the phone on John’s desk.

  Singer picked the gun up, eyes searching for a place that was secure, and called out, “Now you see the advantage of my skirts. Hides a multitude.”

  “Yeah, for sure you could hide a whole host of things under that ugly, orange tent,” Lauren replied. Then she swung the mouthpiece back up and said, “Hi, Steven.”

  Singer put the gun under a pillow, nice and close, where she could get it in a hurry, while Lauren told Steven what had happened to Missy and asked him to come up to the house. Singer wanted to ask Lauren if Stevie Dee had enough time to kill Missy and then get home to answer the phone. Instead, when Lauren hung up, she asked, “What makes you so sure he isn’t the murderer?”

  “If Steven is the murderer, he’ll be right here where we can keep an eye on him.” Shock washed her face. “And if he’s not the murderer and there’s some nutcase out there, I’ve led Steven right to him.”

  “Don’t worry, even psychos need some reason to kill.”

  “What reason did they have to kill Missy?”

  “To scare us or to hurt you, take your pick.”

  “Well, whichever it was, it sure as hell worked.” Lauren slumped down on the couch across from Singer.

  “There’s yellow paint on John’s Yukon.” Lauren wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them to her chest, holding herself together. “After they used it to try to force you off the road, they came back and put it in the garage. So it has to be someone who lives up here who tried to kill you.”

  “I’d pretty much figured that out.”

  “What were they searching your van for?”

  Singer shook her head. “Haven’t the foggiest.”

  “Stuff was all over the place, worse than this morning. That’s why I packed everything up.”

  “Thanks for that, Lauren.”

  “You’re welcome. I figured if the searcher didn’t find what they were looking for, they might come back.” Lauren dropped her chin to her knees. “We made a mistake. We should have called the police when we got back here this afternoon. We have to tell them about someone trying to kill you.”

  “They’re coming now.”

  “Yeah, but from Kilborn or the south island?”

  They sat in silence, until Lauren asked, “Was Michael’s copy of ‘Long Gone Man’ in the van?”

  “Nope. Michael had it when he went into the desert. He was working on it. I never saw his copy again. That’s what I was hoping to find here tonight.”

  “No way John kept it. He may have been a pack rat but he wasn’t stupid.”

  “Yeah, he probably just transcribed it and threw out the original, but maybe someone thinks I have it, or an earlier copy, something that proves Johnny didn’t write ‘Long Gone Man.’” Singer added, “That’s the only reason I can think of that someone would try and push me off Mount Skeena and then search Beastie.”

  “More likely they’re trying to stop you from telling the cops about Michael. Did you keep a journal? Did you write anything down?”

  Singer shook her head. “I haven’t got anything that would hurt someone trying to keep this secret.”

  Lauren got to her feet. “John had a safety deposit box.” She went across the hall to the desk and pulled out the top, right-hand drawer. She rifled through pens and office supplies. “I thought I saw the key in here.” She tried the other drawers. “Nothing. It isn’t here.”

  She came back to the couch.

  “The police likely took it,” Singer said. “Haven’t you got an extra key?”

  “Nope.”

  A pounding came from the back of the house. They froze, waiting to see what new horror would reveal itself. Singer reached under the pillow for the gun. More pounding.

  Lauren rose and went to Singer and held out her hand. “Use the cane, I’ll bring the gun.”

  That’s when the ear-piercing screech started.

  Forty-seven

  When Lauren called Steven David, he really didn’t take in what she told him about Missy. He’d been drinking heavily all evening and the only thing he got out of the conversation was that something was wrong with Missy. Lauren wasn’t a nervous person; if she said there was a problem, there was a problem.

  He pulled on a jacket, picked up a flashlight and a walking stick at the back door, and started up the path through the woods to John’s house.

  Something scurried through the underbrush ahead of him. He smiled. He didn’t feel threatened by the dark or the woods. He’d done this walk hundreds of times or more and felt comforted by being alone with nature.

  He smiled again. John was gone now. He was safe here for a while longer. He’d panicked when John told him the day he died that he was going to sell the mountain. When Steven told John he wouldn’t leave, John had laughed and said that he would cut off the water from Glenphiddie Lake. With no water, Steven and the rest of the people living on the mountain would have to leave. John shouldn’t have done that.

  At Syuwun, the lights came on as Steven stepped onto the patio. He went to the sliding doors by the kitchen table, as he always did. He flicked off his flashlight, put it in the pocket of his jacket, and reached out to open the glass door. It wouldn’t budge. It never occurred to him that the doors might be locked. They must be stuck. He shook the handle until the doors rattled before finally realizing he couldn’t get into the house. Something must really have freaked Lauren out. Steven knocked on the glass with a knuckle. He was annoyed and impatient now. When no one came, he moved to the kitchen window, where he could see down the hall towards the front of the house. Steven tried the window. It was locked too.

  A faint unease jangled him. Lauren was tough. She’d even held her own with John. Only this morning, after John’s murder, the door had been unlocked when he and the others had come up. What had happened to make her frightened enough to lock the kitchen window over the sink?

  What had she said on the phone? He tried to sort it out. He rapped louder and called her name. Not waiting for her show up, he swung away from the window, towards the fig tree, casting about for something to break
the glass. He walked right into Missy’s body. He started shrieking, a sound so unearthly that he didn’t recognize it as his own voice, a noise that sent him spinning out of control as he wrestled with the small, dead body, pushing it away from him and then standing there to be hit by it when it returned. He shrieked even louder and threw Missy from him again.

  Suddenly Lauren was there, tugging at him. “Come in, Steven, come in.”

  He tried to push her away but she held on, pulling him from the tree with its strange fruit. Even as she led him away, he glanced back, still trying to take it in, trying to make sense of it.

  “Don’t look at her.” Not once did Lauren let her own eyes stray to the tiny, gyrating body.

  In the light of the kitchen, Steven’s terror grew. Missy’s blood was on his hands and smeared across the front of his jacket. He wiped his hands down his sides. “Get it off me, get it off me.” He looked at his palms, still covered with blood, not understanding. “Please, get it off me.”

  Lauren pulled at the zipper of his jacket and tugged the coat off his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. She pushed Steven down the hall to the powder room, murmuring, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” like she was comforting a child.

  The outside lights flicked off, leaving Singer alone in the harsh glare of the kitchen lights, back in the center of the bull’s eye, a target again. Singer limped to the door and checked to make sure Lauren had locked it and then she went to join Lauren and Stevie Dee.

  After Lauren washed the blood off Steven’s hands, she steered him to the small sitting room at the front of the house. It was a stale, unused room, smelling of forgotten ashes from the dead fireplace and the newspapers left in the wood rack to start new fires, but at least the windows were covered by thin curtains. Each one of them needed this small security.

  Lauren settled Steven in a chair as if he was a fragile elder and covered him with a throw. He was trembling as though he stood naked in a deep freeze.

  Lauren knelt to the grate. “A fire will warm you, Steven.” She pushed open the damper and began to lay a fire. “A fire will make us all feel better until the police get here.”

  Steven stopped studying his hands and looked up. “Police?”

  Lauren piled logs from the copper rack beside the mantle on top of kindling and crumpled paper. “We called them about Missy.” She stuffed newspaper under the grate and struck a match. “There, it will only be a minute.” Lauren sat back on her heels and watched the fire jump in the crumbled paper, crackling and licking at the dry logs. She hoped its homey warmth could lift them from the horror they’d fallen into.

  Singer had no interest in making Stevie feel better. After waiting twenty years to hear what happened in the Taos desert, the time was right to get answers to her questions about Michael while Stevie was still shocked and fighting for sobriety.

  Singer stood over him and began, “Remember camping out with Johnny and Pinky in the desert south of Taos?”

  Steven lifted his head and considered her for a moment before going back to examining his hands.

  Singer resisted an urge to shake him. “It was the fall of 1974. I joined you in Texas. We’d only been together about a month. Johnny thought a screaming girl singer might give Vortex an edge. I was in my Janis Joplin stage, wonder there’s anything left of my voice. Michael was trying to get me to change.” She put her hands on her knees and leaned towards Steven, trying to take his mind back to the crazy summer when they all thought that gas was going to dry up and their touring days would be over. “Remember the gas shortage? Every day on the news there were pictures of people roller skating and biking on closed freeways in Europe. The government was putting a plan in place where you could only drive on alternate days depending on the last number of your license plate, odds and evens. How the hell could we tour like that? The only work we had was moving from bar to bar, back and forth across the country.”

  Steven’s eyes rose to her face, but there was no telling if he understood what she was saying.

  “Maybe you don’t remember me. Don’t go by how I look now. I’m not the same as I was back then.” But then neither was Stevie Dee. He’d been gorgeous, strutting like a peacock in silk shirts and tight pants. “It wasn’t just my voice Johnny thought would help the band—didn’t hurt that I was hot and had big hooters.” She cupped her hands under her breasts and winked at him, trying to coax a smile from him, but he didn’t respond.

  “I was with Michael Lessing.” She’d been wrong about Steven paying attention. His eyes drifted to the fire. “Michael Lessing was there, remember?” Her voice grew louder, as if volume could make him concentrate.

  He turned his face away from the fire and frowned at her. “Michael Lessing?”

  “He was our roadie.” She patted his knee in her eagerness. “Remember?”

  “Kind of.” But his eyes showed confusion rather than enlightenment.

  “Alan was with you.” It was the magic name.

  Forty-eight

  “Alan,” he repeated and smiled.

  She had his attention now. “We were between jobs, broke and waiting for our next gig in Vegas. You guys were camping with Pinky and Johnny to save money. Michael was there too.”

  He nodded now. “Five of us. Alan and I moved away from the others. Privacy, and John was being an ass. Everyone knew about us, but John didn’t like it. Always making crude remarks.” He grimaced. “He had a real mean streak.”

  Lauren rose from her place by the fire and went to sit on the couch, drawing her legs up under her.

  Steven watched her and said, “He treated you badly the last few years; don’t know how you stood it.”

  Singer cut off Lauren’s reply. “What happened to Michael?”

  His eyes came back to Singer. “I don’t know.”

  “Why wasn’t he in Vegas with you?”

  Steven shrugged. “John said the guy just disappeared. No warning. You know what roadies are like. It isn’t unusual for them to just take off.”

  “But he wouldn’t go without me,” Singer protested, thumping her hand on her chest.

  A log rolled and sparks flew up.

  Steven watched the fire settle. “Alan and I weren’t really paying attention. I guess I knew you were together but it didn’t really sink in. John was our supplier, the leader of the pack, super control freak; we were concentrating on him. We needed him to keep the good things coming.”

  Singer took a deep breath, fighting for patience. “When did Michael go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He didn’t seem threatened by her questions; he spoke as though he was merely being polite. Singer tried another way. “Tell me what it was like in the desert.”

  Steven thought about it. “John was drinking hard, no reasoning with him. He was real dangerous when he drank. He had one of his guns and was shooting up everything around him, so Alan and I packed up our van and drove farther into the desert to get away from John and Aaron. Told them we’d see them in Vegas. That’s all I know. We didn’t see any of them again until we were in Vegas.”

  “Where was Pinky? In the desert, where was Pinky?”

  He gave a snort of disgust. “Where he always was, right beside John, his little lap dog.”

  “So Pinky would know what happened to Michael?”

  The tone of her voice warned him. His eyes went from Singer to Lauren and back to Singer, searching for clues. “Why? What’s this about? What do you think happened?”

  “I never saw Michael again. Where you were camping, a skeleton was found wearing a ring exactly like this.” She held up her left hand. “The pictures on television were very clear. They were using the ring to try and identify the remains of a young man who was buried there in the mid-seventies. He died from a gunshot to the head.”

  “No.” Steven closed his eyes, trying to make it all go away.

 
Lauren started to rise, wanting to comfort Steven, but Singer waved her back. Lauren asked, “Are you going to be sick again, Steven?”

  He shook his head. “Do you think . . .” he said but couldn’t go on. He took a deep breath and said, “Maybe John shot him accidentally.”

  “You think it was an accident?”

  “What else?”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder about that song?”

  “What song?” he asked, but his face said he knew.

  “‘Long Gone Man.’ Didn’t you wonder about it?”

  “Wonder?” His eyes widened. “In what way?”

  “Johnny never wrote a decent piece in his life, never wrote anything that wasn’t cobbled together from other people’s stuff.” Rage, barely dimmed by the passage of years, filled Singer. Not even her throbbing ankle could keep her still. She stood over Steven and said, “The words were Michael’s, the music was mine. I can show you the rest of his poetry.” But was it true? Were all those beautiful words there in the suitcase Lauren had packed, or had they been taken away? It didn’t matter, she knew them all by heart. “Johnny stole that song. And then he killed Michael.” An ache, like it was new, filled her.

  “Oh shit.” He lowered his face to his hands and began to sob.

  Singer and Lauren waited. At last, he rubbed his palms hard over his face and lowered them. “You’re right, John never had any talent. We always joked about where that song came from. And for years we waited for inspiration to strike again, singing the mediocre stuff he wrote and covering other people’s material. He always said he was working on something, kept us hopeful, but never delivered.” He clasped his hands together between his knees and said simply, “I’m sorry.”

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  “Maybe not, but I’ve been living off the profits for a long time.” He gave a huge sigh. “I guess you’re suing us. Don’t worry; you won’t get any grief from me.”

  “Suing you is the last thing I’m worried about.”

  A new idea struck Steven. “Did you kill John?” he asked in hushed tones. “If you killed him, I’m sure it was self-defense because if you came here and told John what you knew he’d have tried to kill you. I’ll tell the cops what he would have done to you if he thought you knew about ‘Long Gone Man,’ if he thought you were coming here to expose him.”