Murder Takes a Break

by Bill Crider

  Unlike Big Al, who as far as I knew had never even gotten a parking ticket, much less been arrested for something more serious, Henry J. had a rap sheet that any aspiring hardcase would have envied. I knew for a fact that he'd been arrested for assault at least twice and that he'd done jail time for attempted murder. Rumor had it that more than once he'd done more than attempt it, though no one could prove it and no one was likely to talk on the record. Henry J. liked to use his hands, but he wasn't above using a knife. He didn't much like guns, however. They weren't personal enough.

  Maybe I shouldn't have tossed him over the balcony. The Everly Brothers were singing "Problems." They didn't know what real problems were.

  I wondered if Henry J. might pay me a visit. The thought was enough to make me get up and get my pistol out of the closet. It was a 7.65 mm Mauser in a sheepskin-lined case, but it wasn't loaded. In that condition, it wouldn't slow Henry J. down for a tenth of a second. I had to get the ammunition clips from a drawer in the kitchen. Gun safety is my middle name.

  Nameless heard me open the drawer and thought I was probably getting him something to eat. After all, it had been practically a full hour since I'd fed him.

  He looked up at me and said, "Mowr?"

  I showed him the clip. "This isn't for you. Lead isn't good for cats. People either, for that matter."

  "Mowr?"

  "Forget it. Why don't you go outside and bully some lizards?"

  "Mowr."

  I took that for agreement, and walked to the door. Nameless followed me, but he took his time. He wasn't going to let me think I had the upper hand.

  I opened the back door and he went through it at his own pace. Clouds had come in from out over the Gulf, and the night was very dark. I could hear the sound of the surf and the branches of the oleander bushes scraping against the side of the house.

  I went back to the kitchen, oiled the Mauser and shoved in one of the clips. Gun safety is fine, but I didn't want to take it to extremes. If Henry J. came around, I might need a pistol. Unlike him, I didn't believe that violence had to be intimate to be effective.

  Before I sat back down in the recliner, I put the pistol on a little end table nearby where I could reach it easily. Then I listened to the Kingston Trio sing "A Worried Man." They didn't know the half of it.

  I wondered just how Bob Lattner figured into things. Sure, he was supposedly investigating the disappearance of Randall Kirbo, but the Davis girl had been his niece. That gave him an emotional stake in things, and sometimes that interfered with professionalism. If he blamed Kirbo for his niece's death, he might not care whether Randall Kirbo ever got found.

  After a while I picked up the collection of John O'Hara stories and started reading. Before long I'd forgotten about Henry J. and Big Al and even Randall Kirbo. But not Kelly Davis. For some reason she was always there, just at the back of my mind.

  There are two schools of thought about interviewing people in connection with a crime or a suspected crime. You can either call them and ask permission to talk to them, or you can just drop in, cold, and see if they'll talk to you. I've tried it both ways, and I'm still not sure which one is best. This time I decided to do it the legit way and call ahead. That way had the advantage of saving time. I didn't want to drive all the way to Houston and then find out that Chad Peavy wasn't at home.

  I waited until about nine o'clock the next morning to make my calls, figuring that either people would be staying in for the day or getting ready for church, and I got lucky.

  Patrick Mullen's mother said that he was home and that he would be glad to talk to me. Of course she might have said that because she somehow got the impression that I was representing his university's Student Retention Office and that I wanted to talk to him about ways he might help us keep students in school if we gave him a part-time job.

  Maybe I could smooth that over when I got to their house, or maybe not. I hoped it wouldn't matter because by the time they found out there had been a misunderstanding, I'd already be inside. It wouldn't be easy to get me out, not unless Patrick was bigger than Henry J.

  Since my minor fabrication had worked so well with Mrs. Mullen, I was sorry I couldn't try it on the Peavys. Too bad the kid had dropped out of school. But then, a representative of the Student Retention Office of Texas Tech University might very well be interested in interviewing a drop-out to discover the reasons he'd decided to leave.

  Sure enough, Mr. Peavy found that a reasonable idea. He even sounded enthusiastic about it, which made me feel a little guilty, but not much. He thought my talk with his son might encourage him to return to classes, but I was pretty sure it would do just the opposite.

  After I hung up the phone, I wondered if either Texas Tech or the University of North Texas actually had Student Retention Offices. If they didn't, they were missing a bet. Maybe I should consider going straight. I could call up the universities and talk to someone about it. If they already had an office dedicated to retaining students, I could go to work for them, tracking down drop-outs and counseling them.

  Sure I could, about the same time that Big Al and Henry J. joined Big Brothers and Sisters.

  I went to the bedroom to look for something to wear.

  14

  Contrary to what many people believe, I do own a sport coat, some slacks, a white shirt, a tie, and a regular pair of shoes. Of course the coat is about ten years out of style, and the tie is even older. As for the shoes, I have no idea whether anyone wears wing-tip loafers with tassels on them these days.

  But no one expects academic types to be fancy dressers. They're supposed to be intellectuals, concerned with things of the mind, not with material possessions and outward show. Or at least that's what I hoped people expected.

  What bothered me most was just how the S-10 fit into this scheme of things. I was pretty sure that even academic types wouldn't be driving to Texas City in a thirteen-year-old pick-up truck. As a representative of the Student Retention Office, I'd most likely have a school-issued car, some dull-colored four-door sedan. Since I didn't know anyone who owned a car like that, and since I didn't feel like renting one, I'd just have to take my chances.

  I'd also have to hope that no one thought to ask me for a card. I didn't have a card of any kind. I did, however, have something almost as good: a clipboard with a yellow legal pad held down by the silver clamp at the top. A man carrying a clipboard and a yellow legal pad could hardly seem anything other than completely legitimate, especially if he was wearing a jacket and tie.

  Tying the tie presented a problem, since I was considerably out of practice, but I finally attained something resembling respectability. The shirt could have used ironing, and the jacket didn't hang exactly like an Armani original, but I'd shined the shoes, and the crease in the slacks was above reproach.

  "So," I said to Nameless, "how do I look?"

  He looked up quizzically. "Mowr?"

  "Not exactly the overwhelming endorsement I was hoping for, but it'll do."

  "Mowr?"

  "Oh. You're right. I forgot the clipboard. No wonder you thought something was lacking."

  I got the clipboard and tucked it under my arm. "Well?"

  "Mowr."

  "I think so too. They'll spill their guts to a sharp-looking guy like me."

  Nameless didn't even bother to respond to that one. He went off somewhere to sleep, probably in my recliner, which I wouldn't ordinarily allow. He knew I was leaving, though, and he was going to take advantage of the opportunity to misbehave. Cats are like that.

  I drove into Texas City on Highway 146, going past the mile long stretch where the Union Carbide plant sprawled, a labyrinthine entanglement of pipes and towers that always filled me with amazement. I wasn't at all amazed at the myriad products the plant produced. What amazed me was that anyone could ever have built something so intricate and complicated in the first place.

  Steam and smoke spiraled into the sky, and I resisted the urge to hold my breath. I told myself that I was on
ly imagining that my throat was beginning to tingle.

  I turned down Palmer Highway and went toward town, if that was the right word. Texas City is one of those towns that really isn't there anymore. All the business had migrated out toward the interstate, and I drove past huge discount houses and restaurants serving everything you could think of, from Chinese food to barbecue.

  Somewhere along the way, Palmer Highway changed names and became 9th Avenue. Fewer restaurants, but plenty of fast food: sandwich shops, a Dairy Queen, a Jack-in-the-Box. I didn't bother to stop to see if Mr. Box was there.

  I drove between the high school and the Moore Library. Not far ahead on my right, a bulbous water tank with "Fighting Stingarees" painted on it sat atop its towering legs. I passed a park with a train engine and a caboose in it, and then I was nearing what had once been the downtown area. On both sides of the street were auto repair shops, car washes, pool supply houses, pest control offices.

  The downtown itself was a mere shadow of its former self. There was a nicely restored building housing a coffee shop, and there was a pharmacy that looked prosperous, but that was about all. Down 6th Street, the Street of Memories according to the sign, there was an old movie theater, the Showboat, with a poster for Blackbeard the Pirate displayed in front. Linda Darnell, Robert Newton, William Bendix. All of them dead now, like most of the downtown itself. Across from the theater was an entire block of deserted buildings, their plate-glass windows dark, some of them cracked, some of them covered with writing: "Going out of business."

  I drove straight on down 9th Avenue for a couple of blocks into the residential area. The yards were full of tall palm trees and oaks that spread their branches all the way across the street. The houses were well-kept but old, though not as old as the oak trees. There were other areas on the outskirts of town where the hundred-thousand-dollar houses were, but the Mullens didn't live there. I didn't blame them. The older homes had character, and they were only a few blocks from Bay Street and the Texas City Dike, a great place to fish. I wondered if Big Al ever went there, but I didn't think she did. She preferred Seawolf Park.

  According to the directions I'd been given, the Mullen house was on the corner of 3rd Street and 13th Avenue, and I found it easily. It was a big house of light-colored brick with a wide front lawn, most of which was still green. In front of the house, as in front of a lot of others I'd passed, there were Christmas decorations standing under a palm tree. In some yards there had been scenes of Santa, with the reindeer pulling his sleigh, which looked pretty strange in their tropical setting, like the lights on the palms at the Galvez. But the Mullens had a manger scene, which somehow looked more appropriate. Not that I knew whether there were palm trees in Jerusalem. And if there were, they were probably a different kind of palm tree from the ones in Texas. Still, camels looked better standing under them than reindeer did, at least to me.

  I parked the truck on the side street, hoping that no one in the house would notice it, and walked around to the front yard. My knock on the door was answered by a short woman with big hair and a wide smile.

  "Mr. Smith?" she said.

  I admitted that I was, holding my clipboard in front of me so she couldn't miss it.

  "Come right on in," she said. "I'm Carolyn Mullen. Patrick's in the his room."

  I followed her down a short hall, through the living room, and into another hall, where she stopped and knocked on the second door.

  "Patrick?" she said. "Mr. Smith from the college is here to see you."

  A voice behind the door said, "Come on in," and Carolyn Mullen turned the knob.

  When the door opened, I looked over her shoulder and saw that Patrick kept the place pretty neat. There was a poster of the UNT basketball team on one wall and one of Cindy Crawford on another. The bed was made up, and Patrick was sitting in the only chair in the room, which was at a small desk. He was looking at what might have been a chemistry book.

  He closed the book, then got up and crossed over to us. His mother stepped back and to the side, and I put out my hand.

  "Hi, Patrick," I said. "I'm Truman Smith, from the Student Retention Office."

  He shook my hand briefly and dropped. "Yeah. That's what mom said. You want to talk to me about something?"

  "About keeping students in college," I said, waggling my clipboard. When you have a prop, use it, I always say.

  "You two are welcome to use the living room if you want to," Mrs. Mullen said. "I'll be in the kitchen."

  She left us there, looking at one another.

  "Let's go in the living room," Patrick said. "I don't have any chairs in here."

  We went back to the living room. There was an artificial Christmas tree with blinking lights in one corner, but there weren't many presents under it. The carpet was almost new, thick, and much too light-colored for my tastes. The chairs, the couch, and the coffee table were older. Patrick sat in one of the chairs and made himself comfortable. I sat on the couch, got out my pen, balanced my clipboard on my knee, and wrote his name on the legal pad.

  "So," he said. "What's this about a job?"

  He was a good-looking kid, not much taller than his mother, with wide-set, intelligent eyes and longish hair that fell artfully over his ears.

  "We need help," I said. "Every semester, all through the semester, colleges lose students. They withdraw from their classes and disappear, and most of the time we don't even know why. We're trying to get in touch with them, find out why they left, and see if there's something we can do to get them back. We need all the students we can get, since our funding is based on them."

  "Yeah, I know about that," he said, "and I could use the job. Mom doesn't make a lot of money as a secretary at the plant. But what would I have to do?"

  One of the reasons I like working at home with my computer is that I rarely have to lie to anyone, and I didn't want to lie to Patrick Mullen. But I reminded myself that he'd probably lied to the police about things, and was therefore just as guilty of lying as I was. Maybe two wrongs don't make a right, but the fact that the first wrong wasn't mine made me feel a little better about things.

  So I said, "You'd make some phone calls, talk to people, ask a few questions. That's really all there is to it. Of course, you'd have to record their answers on a form we'd provide, but I'm sure you could handle all that."

  "I think so. It doesn't sound so hard. Who recommended me? Was it Professor Williams?"

  "Let me see." I flipped through a few pages of my legal pad, then looked up at him. "Did you say Williams?"

  "He teaches in the management department. I made an A in his class last semester, and he told me I was one of the best students he'd had in a while. I thought maybe he recommended me."

  "Oh, yes," I said, putting my finger on a page. "Here it is. Professor Williams, management department. He's the one, all right."

  "I figured. So how many hours a week would I be working?"

  I heard pots rattle in the kitchen, and I thought about how tough it must be for a single mother to be sending a kid to college. I wished that the job offer were real.

  "Just a few," I said, tired of the game. "What you'd do is call up the students on a list that the office provided. I have a sample list and questionnaire right here."

  I took them from behind my legal pad. I'd printed them out on my computer before I left, hoping the questionnaire looked somewhat legitimate. As for the names and phone numbers, I'd made them all up, except for the first two.

  He didn't even look at the questionnaire because he saw the two names first: Kelly Davis and Randall Kirbo.

  15

  His eyes widened, then narrowed as he looked up from the paper that he still held.

  "You're not from the school," he said, keeping his voice low so his mother couldn't hear. "I bet you never heard of Dr. Williams."

  He had me there. I didn't know Dr. Williams from Dr. Seuss. So I said, "That's right. I'm here for a different reason. I want to know about two names on that list I gave you. T
he first two."

  "I ought to throw you out of here."

  I have to admit that he had spirit. I was nearly a foot taller than he was and in pretty good shape for someone he probably thought of as an old guy.

  "You don't want to do that," I said. "We could damage the furniture. Besides, it might embarrass your mother."

  He looked toward the kitchen, where the sounds of meal preparation continued. Then he looked back at me. He didn't seem pleased to see that I was still there. Maybe he'd thought I'd take the opportunity to slip away quietly to avoid a thrashing.

  "You got in here under false pretenses," he said.

  "I'm sorry about that," I said, trying to sound as if I meant it. "But I had to talk to you."

  "You're not a cop, then. I've already talked to them."

  "No, I'm not a cop."

  "If you're not a cop, then I don't have to tell you a thing."

  "That's true. You don't. But Kelly Davis is dead and Randall Kirbo is missing. It seems to me that you'd want to do something about that."

  "I don't even know who they are," he said. "Why should I want to do anything about them?"

  "Well, you see, that's where I just don't believe you," I told him. "I think you did know them, or at least you saw them at a party you went to. That's what you told the police when you talked to them."

  He shook his head. "I was wrong, though. The pictures the cops had weren't very good, and I made a mistake. Haven't you ever made a mistake?"

  There were beads of sweat on his forehead, but the house wasn't all that warm. He'd made a mistake, all right, but not about identifying the pictures.

  "It's going to be easy enough for me to find out if you're telling the truth," I said. "There's another witness, someone who saw you there at the party."