Murder Takes a Break

by Bill Crider

  I looked around for the Mauser, found it a few feet from where I'd fallen, and picked it up. I wiped it off on my sweatshirt as best I could and stuck it back in my waistband.

  Then I started back toward the house to see how Dino was.

  He was sitting with his back against the palm tree when I walked up to him.

  "I knew it was you when you came over the fence," he said. "You're a really graceful guy, you know that?"

  I'd been about as graceful as a cat. A cat with its tail and three of its legs in splints, that is.

  "Did you get that bastard?" Dino asked.

  "No. He had a car parked over there on the road. He got away."

  "Get a look at him?"

  I'd gotten a look, but all I'd seen was a bulky blur.

  "It was someone big," I said. "Or maybe just tall. That's about all I could tell you."

  "I heard shooting. Was that you or him?"

  "Both," I said.

  "Did you hit him?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Too bad." Dino stood up, bracing himself on the tree bole. "I thought you said you didn't have a gun."

  "I lied."

  "I figured that out."

  "How bad's your shoulder?"

  "Judging from the way you were walking, it's probably not as bad as your knee. What happened?"

  "I stepped in a hole and fell down."

  "Like I said, a really graceful guy. Oh, well. Falling down's better than being shot, I guess."

  "I think so," I said. "You feel like walking to the house now?"

  "You don't think that was Henry J. out there in the pasture?"

  "Do you?"

  "Nah. He wouldn't have had a car waiting. I don't think Henry J.'s gonna to be in the house, though."

  I didn't agree. I was afraid Henry J. was going to be there, all right. Dino was, too. He just didn't want to say what he really meant.

  We walked to the house, or rather I hobbled, and Dino sort of shuffled. We were quite a pair.

  The back door was open, just as I'd thought it would be. I turned on a light that revealed we were standing in the kitchen. It was very clean and didn't look as if it got much use.

  We went through the kitchen into the den, where the light was already on, and that's where we found Henry J.

  He was lying in the middle of the brown rug, and there was a dark stain underneath him.

  I limped over to the window, tracking mud all the way. Henry J. wouldn't mind.

  The window wasn't shattered like the one in Sharon's door, but there was a neat round hole in it, with three thin cracks spreading out from its edges.

  "Stay here for a second," I told Dino and went back into the kitchen to check the back door.

  The lock had been shot off. I thought that Henry J. had been shot from outside, and then the killer had come inside to make sure of him.

  The situation with Sharon had been different. She lived in a crowded part of town, and someone might have happened on the scene at any moment. Checking on her would have been too big a risk. For all the killer knew, unless he knew her well, she might even have been dialing 9-1-1.

  I went back to where Dino was standing, looking down at the body. He touched it with his toe.

  "I never much liked Henry J.," he said. "I even thought he tried to kill Sharon. So why do I feel sorry for him now?"

  I felt the same way, but it wasn't anything I could explain. It's just a lot easier for most of us to dislike a living person than a dead one.

  "Do you think the same person who shot at Sharon killed Henry J." Dino asked.

  "Yeah. It would be too much of a coincidence for it to be any other way."

  "So where does that leave us?"

  I wasn't sure. It shot the hell out of one of my earlier theories, however. I was beginning to develop a new theory, but I wasn't quite ready to put it into words.

  So I said, "We have to call the police."

  Dino frowned. "I had a feeling you were going to say that," he said.

  29

  He tried to talk me out of it, but we didn't argue for very long. Even Dino knew that this time we had to call the cops. The surprise was who they sent along with the evidence team: Bob Lattner. He wasn't exactly the person I wanted most to see.

  He wasn't pleased to see me, either, especially not with the body of Henry J. on the floor between us.

  "Why'd you and Dino kill him, Smith?" Lattner asked casually, as if he were asking what we'd had for breakfast.

  Dino looked at me as if to say see what comes from calling the cops?

  "We didn't kill anyone," I told Lattner. "We came here to talk to Henry J., and we found him lying on the floor right here."

  "You got any proof of that?"

  "There was someone else here when we got here. We chased him, and he shot Dino in the shoulder. You should save the questioning and let the paramedics have a look at Dino now."I'd called for an ambulance as soon as I'd called the police, and the paramedics were waiting right outside. Lattner wouldn't let them come in. He didn't want his crime scene disturbed.

  "Don't worry," he said. "He'll get treatment in a little while."

  "I think he needs it now," I said.

  Lattner started to say something, changed his mind and said, "You're right. Go on, Dino, but don't try to leave the premises."

  Dino didn't say a word. He brushed by Lattner and went outside to the ambulance.

  Lattner and I moved to the side of the room while the evidence team took pictures, dusted for prints, drew diagrams, and began poking at Henry J.'s body.

  "Tell me about it," Lattner said, and I did.

  I even told him the part about Sharon. His mouth got tight when I reached the part about the GHB, but he didn't interrupt me.

  "Why didn't you call us about the shooting?" he asked when I was finished.

  "You know Dino," I said. "He doesn't like to deal with the police if he doesn't have to."

  Lattner turned his back on me for a minute, watching the evidence team at work. When he turned back, he said, "He likes to handle things himself, right? So the two of you came out here and took care of things."

  "That's ridiculous," I said. "Besides, you don't believe it. So why don't you just drop it?"

  That didn't make him like me any better. He said, "Do you remember what I told you the other day in the drug store, Smith?"

  "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about," I said, though I was.

  "I told you not to mess around in things that didn't concern you. I told you that if you fooled around in a case I was working on, I was really going to get pissed off."

  "Oh," I said. "That. So you're trying to get me to confess to a murder I didn't commit just because I piss you off?"

  "You see?" Lattner said. "That's one of the things I don't like about you, Smith, that smart-ass attitude of yours. This time it's going to get you in real trouble. Because I happen to know you have motive for killing Henry J."

  "I have a motive?" I said. This time, I had no idea what he was talking about.

  "That's right. A motive. You and Henry J. had quite a little ruckus last night, and your buddy Dino was in on it, too. And tonight Henry J. tried to get a little revenge on the two of you by scaring Dino's daughter. So you came out here tonight to finish things. Well, you finished them, all right."

  It actually made a kind of sense. If I'd been in Lattner's position, I might even have believed it myself. But I wasn't in Lattner's position.

  "There was someone else here," I said, and before he could contradict me I went on. "Otherwise how do you explain the wound in Dino's shoulder? Henry J. doesn't have a pistol on him, so he didn't do it."

  Lattner gave me an up and down look. "You look like you've been dragged through a swamp. So you went out and hid the pistol out in the weeds. We'll find it."

  "No you won't. And Henry J. wasn't shot with my pistol, either. So where does that leave you?"

  "It leaves me still ready to hang your ass, Smith."

&nb
sp; It was time to get off that topic. I thought I might tell him one of my new theories. I had a feeling it would take his mind off me for a while.

  "You didn't tell me that you were Kelly Davis' uncle," I said. "If anyone had a motive to kill Henry J., it was you."

  Something red flared deep in his eyes, and I thought for just a second that he was going to hit me. But he must have realized that there were too many witnesses for him to be able to get away with it.

  So he settled for calling me a ten-letter word. I was surprised he knew one that long.

  "Henry J. was selling GHB to some of the kids at that party Kelly went to," I said. "You've been working on Randall Kirbo's disappearance a lot longer than I have, and you don't have a very high opinion of my investigative abilities, so you should have found out about the GHB as easily as I did. What if Henry J. sold something like that to a kid who slipped it in Kelly's drink? What would you do to Henry J.?"

  He didn't answer, but then he didn't have to. The answer was easy enough to read on his face.

  "And if Randy Kirbo was the kid who slipped the GHB in the drink," I said, "what would you do to him? Plant him in a sand dune somewhere?"

  "Shut up," Lattner said. His voice sounded as if someone were squeezing his neck with both hands. "Don't say another word, Smith."

  He didn't scare me, not with all those witnesses around. They were going about their business with great concentration, but I was sure they'd notice if he tried to kill me.

  At least I hoped they would.

  "GHB can kill people," I went on. "It's cheap, and it's easy to make. A capful costs, what? Ten dollars? Henry J. was probably selling it for twenty. It doesn't take much to knock a person out, and it can even affect some people by making them so sleepy that they don't ever wake up. Is that what happened to Kelly?"

  "You can walk out of here tonight, Smith," Lattner said. "But someday I'll catch you when there's no one around to look out for you. Then you'll be sorry you didn't shut your mouth when I told you to."

  "Maybe. But I'm going to finish what I'm saying. GHB can't be detected by the routine drug screen at an autopsy. Kelly could have been full of it, and no one would have known. Is that it? Is that what happened?"

  He squeezed the words out. "How. . . the . . . hell . . . would . . . I . . . know?"

  "I just have the feeling that you would, being the ace investigator that you are. If a pud like me can figure it out, surely you could."

  "You'd better leave now, Smith. It might be your last chance."

  "Fine with me. I thought you were going to arrest me and throw me under the jail."

  "Like you said, all the evidence points to the fact that someone else was here tonight. But you'll be questioned again. Hold yourself available."

  "Sure," I said. I started for the door.

  "And Smith," he called after me.

  "What?"

  "No matter how smart you think you are, you don't have any idea what's really going on. Before this is over, you're going to screw everything up. And then I'm going to nail you."

  I didn't let it bother me. After all, he was probably right.

  30

  Dino was looking less than dapper in a cast that the paramedics had rigged on him, but aside from that he didn't look especially bothered by the fact that he'd been recently shot in the shoulder.

  "What did they give you?" I asked.

  "Some kind of hypo. I don't like needles, but whatever was in the one they just stuck me with is OK by me. They took ten stitches, and I didn't feel one of them."

  "Good. Are you ready to get out of here?"

  "Hell, yes. I'm the one who wanted to go before the cops came, remember?"

  "Was that you? I thought it was me."

  "Don't kid around. I'm leaving right now."

  It sounded like a good idea to me, so we jumped into the S-10 and took off. Well, jumped isn't an exact description of what we did, but we got in without falling down and humiliating ourselves.

  We drove back toward Galveston, coming in behind the seawall on Stewart Road because it was quicker to get to Dino's house that way. I had the radio tuned to the oldies station, and we were listening to "Take a Chance on Me" by ABBA, the only group from the disco era that I thought was worth hearing. Well, not counting the Village People.

  "You didn't get a look at who shot you, by any chance?" I said.

  "Nope. Too dark, and too far away. You got a better look at him than I did."

  He was right, and I hadn't seen much in the darkness. It could have been almost anyone.

  "Do you think it could have been Lattner?" I asked.

  Dino sat up a little straighter in the seat, wincing when a pain shot through his shoulder. He might not have felt the stitches when they went in, but he was feeling them now. The shot was probably wearing off.

  I was feeling my knee, too, but at least I was able to drive. There've been times when I couldn't even do that much.

  "Lattner?" Dino said. "What makes you ask a thing like that?"

  "I was just wondering how he got there so fast."

  "You noticed that, huh?"

  I'd noticed, all right. Lattner had arrived on the scene before anyone, almost as if he'd been waiting for the call. Or as if he'd been in the neighborhood.

  "It might not mean anything," I said.

  "Then again, it might," Dino said. "But there's something else I've been thinking about."

  ABBA was replaced by Roy Orbison. "Pretty Woman," of course.

  "Eventually they're going to wear that one out," Dino said. "And they they'll have to play 'In Dreams.' Or maybe even "Only the Lonely."

  I didn't have the heart to tell him that CDs didn't wear out. And even if they did, the station would probably just buy another copy of "Pretty Woman."

  "You were going to tell me what you'd been thinking about," I said.

  "Oh, yeah. I know it sounds crazy, but what if the person who shot at Sharon and the person who killed Henry J. were two different people? It's possible, isn't it?"

  I didn't think so. I still liked Lattner for both jobs, but I thought I'd go along with Dino this time just to hear what he had to say. He likes to be humored now and then.

  "It's possible," I said. "Not very likely, but possible. Why?"

  He squirmed a little, trying to get comfortable. I could have told him that he wasn't going to be comfortable for several days, not with a little chunk of his shoulder shot out, but he'd figure it out for himself sooner or later, if he hadn't already.

  "This is the way I figure it," he said. "Sharon knew that Henry J. was selling GHB at the party at Big Al's beach house, but since she hadn't told anyone, he didn't think he had to do anything about it. Then you and I started nosing around. If it had been just you, he might not have thought of Sharon, but when I showed up, he thought she'd dropped the dime on him."

  "It costs a quarter to make a phone call now," I said. "Unless you've got one of those phone cards that everybody's selling."

  "You really are a flippant bastard, aren't you?"

  "True, but I'm good for your vocabulary."

  "I'm serious about this, Tru. What's wrong with what I said?"

  "Nothing. Go on and tell me the rest of it."

  "I'm not sure I want to."

  "It's either that or listen to Gerry and the Pacemakers," I said, as "Ferry Cross the Mersey" came on the radio.

  "Jesus, what a bunch of wimps," Dino said, reaching out to snap off the radio. "Don't they every play the Stones?"

  "About once a month, I imagine. And they never play "Sympathy for the Devil."

  "It figures. Anyway, what I was thinking is that maybe Big Al found out about what Henry J. was up to. Maybe he got worried about shooting at Sharon and even went by and told Big Al about it. She told him to go home, simmered for a few minutes, and then went out there and shot him. It could have happened that way, couldn't it?"

  It could have, but I didn't think it had. I told Dino that there was one way to find out, though.
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  "How's that?" Dino said.

  "We can go and ask her," I said.

  31

  I wasn't really sure that another visit to the Hurricane Club was a good idea, considering the fact that neither Dino nor I was in what you could call prime condition, but Dino assured me that he could take anything Big Al could dish out, and although I didn't believe it for a second, I was too macho to admit that I wasn't so sure about myself.

  Anyway, this time I had my pistol. And the bartender didn't have his little baseball bat. He'd had the one we took away from him for forty years, so I didn't expect him to replace it anytime soon.

  So we drove up to the club again and parked practically in the same spot we'd used the night before. I wondered if that was a good omen, or a bad one.

  Dino didn't seem to care. He got out of the truck with surprising ease, and he was practically inside the club before I was able to catch up with him.

  "Don't be in such a hurry," I told him. "I'm sure they have enough enchiladas for both of us."

  "I'm not interested in ordering dinner," he said. "I think we're on the right track here."

  I didn't, but it was nice to see him so enthusiastic about something besides a bargain on the Home Shopping Network for a change. Maybe I should consider making him a partner. That way, we'd both get out of the house a lot more often.

  The inside of the Hurricane Club was no more appealing than it had been on our previous visit, maybe even less so, and the clientele looked pretty much the same, except that the guy with the eye patch was missing.

  The Christmas tree on the bar didn't look any worse, as far as I could see, but it might have shed a few more of its needles. I suspected that by New Year's Eve there would be a pile of brown needles about an inch deep under it, while the branches of the tree would be completely bare.

  The juke box was playing a seasonal number, a syrupy instrumental version of "White Christmas" that would have driven away any self-respecting tough guy. It was almost bad enough to make me want to turn around and go back outside.

  Big Al was sitting alone at her table. There was no food in front of her this time; she'd most likely eaten already. She took a drink from a beer bottle, but she set it on the table when we came in and motioned for us to join her.