Murder Takes a Break

by Bill Crider

  Tack Kirbo had been right. There wasn't much in it. I could tell from reading it that the investigating officer, Bob Lattner, had never developed much interest in finding Randall Kirbo, no matter what Dino had said about the pressure on the police. His interviews with Randall's friends were perfunctory at best, and he had simply accepted everything they said with hardly any probing or follow-up. Oh, Lattner had tried to make things look good, all right; he'd checked several times to see if Randall had used his credit card, which he hadn't. Lattner had even gone to Lubbock to do the interviews, but I could tell his heart wasn't in it. His conclusion, based on his "experience and instinct" was that Randall Kirbo had dropped out of sight for reasons of his own and that he hadn't come to any harm.

  He might even have been right, but Randall's parents didn't think so, and it was possible that their experience and instinct were just as pertinent as Lattner's.

  I closed the file and looked at the photo of Randall that his mother had given me before I left the Galvez. It had been taken for his high school yearbook when he was a senior, and he looked uncomfortable in his jacket and tie, as if the collar of his white dress shirt was a little too tight. It probably was. He was the kind who'd find it difficult to get a collar big enough to fit. He had wide eyes and his father's curly hair, but his face wasn't puffy like Tack's. It was lean and angular but softened by a crooked grin that revealed a chipped front tooth. The All-American Boy.

  I wondered where he was now, but I wasn't sure I wanted to be the one to find out. I'd told Mrs. Kirbo that I'd try to help, however, so I would.

  As it happened, there was a place I could start. I had run into Bob Lattner a couple of times during my short stint of working in a local bail bondsman's office. Lattner probably wouldn't tell me anything, but I thought I might be able to convince him to meet me and talk things over.

  Tack Kirbo had also provided me with Chad Peavy's Houston address, and it wouldn't be too much trouble to drive up and have a talk with him. After talking to both him and Lattner, I could most likely use my experience and instinct to come to the same conclusion Lattner had reached. Then I could call the whole thing off.

  Except that I wouldn't do that, of course. It wasn't that I felt that I owed anyone anything; it's just that for some reason I can't bring myself to do a job halfway, as Lattner had done. Sometimes I think I'd be better off if I could.

  Nameless scratched on the screen door, and I went to let him in. It was dark outside, and I looked at my black plastic digital watch. 6:32. I'd been reading longer than I'd thought. The Kingston Trio had been silent for a long time now.

  I opened the door, and Nameless ran directly to his food dish. I'm pretty sure that the only reason he tolerates my company is that I'm a reliable source of Tender Vittles, which is fine with me. I don't mind buying friendship when it's cheap. I opened a packet of Seafood Supper and dumped it in the bowl. Nameless began to eat, purring at the same time. I don't know how he did it, but I thought it was a neat trick.

  I found a can of Hormel vegetarian chili to fix for myself. It was my kind of food — from the can to the microwave to the table in about five minutes. It tasted OK, too, but I didn't purr while I ate it.

  By the time I finished and washed my bowl, it was too late to talk to Bob Lattner, so I took the Kingston Trio off the CD player and put on Elvis's If Every Day Were Like Christmas, which is the only other holiday album I own. Then I flopped down in the recliner and spent the rest of the evening reading more O'Hara.

  After a while Nameless came in and went to sleep on the throw rug under the coffee table. The charms of Elvis singing about a blue Christmas were lost on him. Around eleven o'clock I decided that Nameless had the right idea, so I went to bed.

  I don't know whether Nameless dreamed or not, sleeping there on the rug, but I dreamed of running all night long, although I'm pretty sure I never got anywhere. When I woke up the next morning, I was already tired, and the day hadn't even started yet.

  Tired or not, I went out for an early morning jog. The sky was covered with low clouds, and the fields that I ran past were thick with fog. The sun would burn it off soon enough, but just then it was almost as if I were running through a fine gray mist. Droplets clung to my sweatshirt and stuck in my hair. I had to wipe water off my face.

  I live on the west end of the Island, between the end of the seawall and the upscale developments, and I went a mile or so without seeing another soul before my knee began to hurt. When I turned to go back home, a big heron lifted off a pool of water about twenty yards away and soared off into the fog without a sound, like a pterodactyl's ghost.

  Nameless was watching for me at the door when I got back. He'd spent the night under the coffee table, and now he was ready for breakfast. Seafood Supper didn't seem appropriate, but it was all I had. He didn't seem to mind.

  I had shredded wheat with skim milk. I was trying to avoid covering my belt buckle the way Tack Kirbo did. While I ate, I listened to the news station on AM radio. Traffic was backed up from Houston almost to Stafford by an accident on the Southwest Freeway, which was really Highway 59, though for some reason I never understood no one who lives in Houston ever calls it that. I was glad I didn't have to drive to work in Houston every day. For that matter, I was glad I didn't have to drive to work anywhere.

  After I finished the shredded wheat, I washed out the bowl and left it in the sink. Nameless jumped up on the counter and leaned over to see if I'd left any water in the bowl. I hadn't, but he licked the bowl anyway.

  "Now cut that out," I told him. "It's not sanitary. You might catch some disease."

  He ignored me, as usual, but when I started toward him, he jumped down and ran to the door. I let him out so he could terrorize the geckos, which reminded me that it might be a good idea to check my cereal bowl for lizard parts that might have dribbled out of his mouth. There didn't appear to be any, so I figured I was safe from contagion.

  I took a shower and pulled on a clean short-sleeved sweatshirt and a pair of faded jeans that I'd worn only once or twice since their last washing. Then I gave Bob Lattner a call.

  6

  Lattner didn't want to see me, not then, not later that morning, and, I got the distinct impression, not ever. I finally persuaded him to talk to me by offering to buy him lunch. I suggested the Chinese restaurant across from the police station, but he said that he preferred the drugstore, which was fine with me. I knew which drugstore he meant.

  "Twelve o'clock?" I asked.

  "Make it eleven-thirty," he said.

  He had a hard voice that sounded as if he'd practiced it on felons for years. It probably didn't have any more effect on them than it had on me, however; most of them were used to harder voices than his. So was I.

  "And good luck finding a parking spot," he added before hanging up.

  I wondered what he meant by that, and then it dawned on me: Dickens on the Strand. The east end of the Island would be a foot lower in the water, thanks to the weight of all the extra tourists.

  I killed the hours until eleven-thirty by doing a few background checks and by searching some of the electronic databases I had access to for any information on Randall Kirbo. I didn't find a thing, but I wasn't disappointed. I hadn't really expected to find anything, to tell the truth.

  At a little after eleven I got in my little blue and white Chevy S-10 truck and drove to town. I wasn't worried about parking. I was pretty sure I knew where there would be a few vacant spots, and I was right.

  I parked in the police station lot. There were cars lining the streets and parked everywhere there was anything resembling a spot for them, but no one was willing to take a chance on parking in a cop's place. All the places in the lot were reserved for employees, and I wouldn't have parked there myself under ordinary circumstances. But today I was willing to take a chance.

  I got out of the Chevy and walked to the drugstore. It was only a couple of blocks, but the sidewalks were jammed. I must have passed a thousand people on their way to
The Strand. Only a few of them were dressed in costume. I spotted a chimney sweep, a Tiny Tim wearing headphones and carrying a disc player, and a couple of guys who might have been trying to pass as David Copperfield. I suspected that they were awfully warm in their Victorian attire. The fog was long gone, and the sun was bearing down. It must have been nearly eighty degrees, and the humidity was so high that I could feel moisture accumulating under my sweatshirt. It was more like spring than the middle of the winter, but I wasn't complaining.

  I walked past a used-book store where two men sat over a chessboard. A very large black dog was asleep in the window. The drugstore was next door, and I went inside. It was a relief to get away from the crowd. Lattner was already there, sitting on a red vinyl-topped stool at the counter that formed a square in the middle of the floor.

  The drugstore consisted of one large, high-ceilinged room. The counter took up most of it, but there were display cases that held souvenirs and collectibles like old magazines and movie star photos. The walls were covered with advertising signs, most of them as old as the magazines. A woman with brown hair and wise eyes was behind the counter, and a man with eyes just a little less wise was sweeping the floor with a push broom.

  "Crowded out there?" the woman asked me.

  "Just a little," I said.

  "I wouldn't go out there for a hundred bucks. I just stay in here till it's time to go home, and then I leave. I don't want anything to do with a crowd like that."

  I knew what she meant. The crowd would be so thick on The Strand that you couldn't walk where you wanted to. You'd just have to go wherever the ebb and flow of the herd took you.

  "I don't blame you," I said. "How's the barbecue plate today?"

  "It's good," she said. "But then it's good every day."

  I sat down by Lattner. He was snake-skinny and his belt size must have been about 28. He had a hatchet face, black hair that he combed straight back, and black eyes that looked right at you. His sport coat must have been ten years old, and it was about one size too big for him. Maybe he'd lost weight some time during the last decade.

  "Barbecue all right with you?" I asked him.

  "That's what I came for," he said in that hard voice of his. "That and the potato salad."

  "Make it two," I said, and the woman turned away to fix the plates. The sweeper disappeared somewhere into the back. Maybe there was another room after all.

  Lattner didn't seem inclined to talk, but I figured that since I was buying the lunch he might as well earn it.

  "About the Kirbo case," I said.

  "Nothing to it," Lattner said. "The kid came down here, and he never went home. No evidence of foul play. He was probably tired of college and didn't want to face the folks at home. Case closed."

  The woman set two glasses of water in front of us. "Get you anything else to drink?"

  "Water's just fine with me," I said, but Lattner wanted iced tea. Probably because I was paying.

  "The case isn't really closed," I said. "Kirbo's still missing."

  Lattner tilted back his head and took a drink of water. His Adam's apple was the size of a golf ball.

  "Just a manner of speaking," he said, setting his glass on the counter. "It's an open case, sure, technically open. But it might as well be closed. No one's going to find that kid. I've talked to his friends; they don't know where he went or what happened to him. I've talked to his parents; they don't know either. He hasn't used his credit cards, he hasn't phoned home, and he hasn't turned up on America's Most Wanted. He doesn't want to be found, and no one's going to find him."

  "I am," I said, and immediately regretted giving Lattner an opening.

  He didn't hesitate to take it. "Bullshit. You couldn't find your fanny with a flashlight. I've heard about you, Smith."

  I didn't ask what he'd heard or where he'd heard it. Galveston is a small town. Word gets around. What interested me was why he wanted to make me angry.

  "That's pretty funny, that flashlight bit," I said. "I remember laughing a lot when I heard it the first time. About thirty years ago."

  "I know you're a smart-ass, too, so you don't have to waste your time proving it. And I know one other thing. I know you have a habit of messing around in things that aren't any of your business. I don't really care about that, not unless you start messing around in something I'm involved with, like the Kirbo case. If you do that, you're really going to piss me off."

  Our barbecue arrived about that time, and Lattner had worked himself up to such a state of self-righteous dudgeon that I figured he'd just get off the stool and leave. I was wrong, though. He turned his attention to the food and started to eat with a dedication to the job that even Nameless would have admired.

  I didn't watch him for long. I ate my own barbecue. The sauce was just tangy enough, and the potato salad wasn't too sweet. I took my time. Lattner was finished long before I was, but for some reason he didn't leave. He got up and walked around the drugstore, looking in all the display cases as if he might actually be interested in buying a black and white glossy of James Dean.

  When I'd finished sopping up the last of the barbecue sauce with a piece of bread, Lattner came back over to the counter and sat beside me again.

  "If that kid could have been found, I'd have found him," he said. "And I'm twice the investigator that you are. So why don't you just go back and sit in your little house and listen to your records and keep your nose where it belongs."

  "Compact discs," I said.

  That bothered him. "Huh?"

  "Compact discs, not records. I don't play records; I play compact discs."

  "I don't care if you play goddamn tiddlywinks. I don't want you messing in my cases."

  "You don't like me much, do you Lattner?"

  "I don't like you at all." He slid off the stool and started for the door. Just before he got there, he turned back and said, "Thanks for the lunch."

  I had to laugh at that. The counter woman was picking up our plates, and she said, "Swell guy. He a good friend of yours?"

  "Not yet," I said. "But he will be. I have a way of winning people over."

  She stacked my plate on top of Lattner's. "I'll just bet you do," she said.

  7

  I was pretty sure who Lattner had been talking to about me, a cop named Gerald Barnes. He'd probably checked with Barnes after I'd called, knowing that I'd had dealings with Barnes on a couple of other cases, something that wasn't any big secret around the cop shop. I'd thought Barnes had begun to develop a sort of grudging respect for me because of some of the work I'd done. Obviously I'd been wrong, however, and I didn't think it would do me any good to try to get anything more out of Lattner. He appeared to be the kind of cop who had no regard for people he considered amateurs, meaning anyone who didn't carry a badge. I wasn't going to be able to impress him with a list of my successes. All he was interested in were my failures, and there were more than enough of those.

  I stood outside the drug store and thought for about a tenth of a second about walking down to The Strand and looking things over. I could hear a band, and I knew that there was a parade every day about this time. With an elephant or two, even. Then I thought again about the crowds and started toward my car.

  I passed a boy about ten gnawing on a giant turkey leg. His father and mother walked along beside him, and their turkey legs were even bigger than his. I wasn't quite sure exactly what the connection between Dickens and turkey legs was supposed to be, but they seemed to be enjoying them. I've never been tempted to try one.

  When I got to my truck, I saw that I was in luck. No vindictive city employee had ticketed me. I decided that since I was in the neighborhood, more or less, I'd drive by Sally Western's house and pay her a visit. Sally had been around for a long time, and she knew as much as anyone in Galveston about what happened on the Island. Also she enjoyed talking. Maybe she'd heard something about Randall Kirbo. There weren't many people who paid Sally a visit these days, and she was usually glad to see me, even if the
only times I dropped by were when I needed information from her.

  I stopped off at a liquor store and picked up a bottle of Sally's favorite wine — Mogen David. Sally's family was among the Island's elite, and her personal fortune was somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty million dollars, but she had simple tastes, which was just as well for me. I couldn't afford the kind of wine that most multi-millionaires no doubt preferred, and I wasn't even sure that the stores I went to would have it in stock.

  When I got to Sally's house, I parked in the street and climbed the steps to her front door. Almost as soon as I knocked the door was opened by John, the old black man who'd been working for Sally for as long as I remembered. He wasn't as old as she was, however. Hardly anyone was as old as Sally, who must have been getting close to a hundred.

  "Hello, Mr. Truman," John said.

  "Hello, John." I handed him the wine. "Is Miss Sally in today?"

  "Yes, sir, she is. She's in the parlor, and I know she'd be glad to see you."

  He moved back to let me in, and I followed him to the parlor. He always announced visitors, no matter how well Sally knew them.

  "Come in, Truman," she said in a voice that belied her fragile appearance.

  I stepped inside and looked around. The parlor hadn't changed at all since my last visit, but then I suspected that it hadn't changed in the last fifty years or even longer. There were two cane-bottomed rocking chairs, one for Sally and one for visitors. There was a small wooden table beside Sally's chair. An old piano stood against one wall, and on the wall I could see the dim mark that showed how high the waters of the flood of 1900 had risen in the room.

  Sally's appearance hadn't changed either. She was dressed all in black, just as she'd been the last time I'd seen her. Her hair was just as white, and her eyes were just as sharp and alert.

  "I don't suppose you came by just to see how an old woman is doing, did you?" she asked.