by C. L. Bevill
“How does one distract someone who might be a murderer?” Peyton questioned.
“I recommend an expanding steel baton,” David said, his voice dripping with excited probability. He produced the item, flicked his wrist, and revealed a baton that was like a child’s toy light saber, except made from steel. Then he swished it three times, demonstrating its lethality.
Peyton’s eyes went large.
David expertly compressed the item. “Hitting the nose, scrotum, shins are all areas of vulnerability. With a woman, of course, hitting the groin does not produce the same effect.”
Bubba and Peyton both automatically covered up the area with a hand.
“Perhaps the bread basket would be an acceptable alternative,” David suggested. “If an individual is busy throwing up, they will rapidly lose interest in murdering you.” He handed the baton to Peyton.
“Is there anything else you recommend?” Peyton asked.
“There’s a nice leather sap I favor,” David said and extracted it out of the Inverness coat’s pockets, swinging the ten-inch tool in the air with aplomb aplenty. “It’s weighted on the end with iron ball bearings. I tried it on a watermelon, may it rest in pieces.”
“Is that all?” Peyton asked quietly, holding the baton as if it was electrified.
David replaced the leather sap and next pulled out a set of brass knuckles. The brass was bright and polished. The engraved smiley face on the bottom of the knuckles was innocuously sinister. “Aim for the jaw,” he advised, “when using this.”
Peyton wiggled his fingers apprehensively. “Really? You have brass knuckles, a sap, and a baton in a hospital?”
“There’s a murderer or two afoot,” David explained. “It’s best to be prepared, old snort.”
“It makes sense ifin you take in his plan to isolate a killer,” Bubba said. It did make sense. David might be acting foolhardy, but he had the equipment to back him up. At least he didn’t have a stun gun, homemade or otherwise.
David offered the brass knuckles to Bubba. Bubba shook his head. “Don’t need none of that,” he said. He experimentally punched his fist into the palm of his other hand.
David glanced at the people at the other end of the hallway. They disappeared around a corner. “We should go,” he said. “Death waits for no man.”
“Or dog,” Bubba added before he whistled sharply for Precious.
* * *
Tandy looked out the window. She had located Room 34 and persuaded Dr. Adair to unlock the door for her, where, with great glee, she had appropriated three packs of Lucky Strikes from the schizophrenic’s nightstand. Presently, she stood next to the window and smoked while watching the exterior. “It’s starting to get light outside,” she said.
“Good,” Ratchley said, “I could use something else to eat. Eggs and bacon. Some toast. Do we have kippers? I wonder if sardines would taste like kippers if you fried them. I think there’s a case of Vienna sausage, too. I’m pretty sure I could eat a few of those. You know, if we’re going to die, then I want a full stomach.”
Bubba sat by the double exit doors and thought about what David had said and what Peyton had said. Bubba was gambling with all of his not-so-calculated responses. He could go and look at Blake Landry’s office again, searching for clues or for his body, but Bubba knew that he wouldn’t find anything that would make sense to him. Someone who had planned all of this so meticulously wouldn’t leave that kind of clue for an average Texas redneck (Rednecki Texasicus) to find.
Bubba could also go look in Leeza’s, Thelda’s, and Abel’s rooms for clues. He didn’t know exactly what he would or wouldn’t find, but again he suspected it wouldn’t be that easy. He could even look in Ingrid Ferryjig’s room, but Dr. Adair said it had been completely cleaned out the day after her death. There was nothing there for Bubba to see.
Bubba was sure of one thing. Hurley Tanner was the target. The emphasis was on the. (Not thuh, but thee.) The rest of the murders/disappearances were just CYA. In fact, Bubba could picture Sheriff John biting at the lure he’d been provided. David was a shiny, iridescent spinner waiting for a big fish to chomp. Sheriff John wasn’t stupid, however, and he would listen to Bubba and Bubba’s theories, but the evidence was somewhat damning. The Xoom would be reconstructed and the memory examined. David didn’t have a good alibi for anything. Never mind that someone would have marks on his or her hands from the garrote, and maybe they would have to explain…
Wait.
Bubba glanced around the room. Everyone’s hands were seemingly unmarked by the computer wire that had been used. There were two explanations for that. One was that the killer had worn gloves or that...
Swinging his head around, Bubba looked at Dr. Adair.
It had been a decade or more since Bubba had seen And Then There Were None on TCM. Sure there were remakes galore, but the first one had been the best. Bubba had even gone through an Agatha Christie phase, reading all the books, and getting movies from Netflix. He’d liked the original film version of that one the best. The plot wasn’t hard to understand. It was a locked-door mystery. Ten people come to an island. They find out someone arranged it. Then people start dying of various causes and in relationship to the Ten Little Indians rhyme. Bubba couldn’t remember all the details of the rhyme except that one by one, Indians disappeared or died, and hey presto, one was left, who hung himself.
It was kind of like being deliberately trapped in an insane asylum on a mesa in rural Texas. Kind of.
Stupid games folks play, Bubba thought. He eyed everyone again, slowly panning the room. He’d seen a man and a woman kill because 1) they thought there was gold treasure, and 2) framing Bubba might mean that the property would be sold to them so they could sell it to Walmart. There was a revenge killing or two, or was it three? He’d lost count. Then there was two killings because someone had wanted money. The last death hadn’t been a murder at all. He was wholeheartedly getting tired of it. He was supposed to be getting married, enjoying Willodean’s pregnancy with her, and anticipating the birth of his first child, not all this dram-a.
Willodean. Bubba pursed his lips. It was likely the poor dear hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep the previous night worrying about him. He hoped she was taking her blood pressure medicine and trying to rest a little. Likely, she was probably cleaning her weapon in expectation of having to kill someone over his disappearance. Cain’t do nothing about that now ‘cepting stay alive and figure out who’s doing what.
Who?
David paced back and forth in front of the windows, holding the calabash pipe again. Peyton sat primly at a cafeteria table, grimly examining his fingernails. Dr. Adair was leaning over a table, holding his head in his hands, looking immensely worn. Cybil lay on the floor with her eyes shut. Tandy was still at the window, puffing and watching the gray in the east turn to gold. Ratchley was contemplating the kitchen while one hand tapped nervously on the cafeteria table. Finally, Precious lay near Bubba’s feet, snoring gently as behooved a lady of her esteemed position. She followed that up with a fart, and she rolled over so her feet all pointed heavenward. A moment later the snoring resumed.
Six little Indians left. And a Bubba. And a wedding planner. And a dog.
Bubba couldn’t help the feeling that he should be out looking for Abel, Leeza, and especially Jesus and Thelda. But it was a double-edged sword. If he went looking, then something could happen to the people left behind. There was, of course, no guarantee that one of the remaining people in the cafeteria was a murderer. There was definitely someone else out there, or more than one, waiting and lurking. But on the other hand, what if one of the remainder was a murderer?
Bubba could cross off David because David had asked for help, and he knew David. He could probably cross off Peyton because he had nothing to do with all of this. However, what if Peyton was part of some elaborate plan that involved Bubba’s wedding, braised almonds, and grayish grey graying greyful tuxedos?
Bubba shook his head. Peyton wasn’t a m
urderer. He was a metrosexual wedding planner.
Then there was Tandy. She was a movie actress who liked to do the doob. She’d seemed rational when he’d interacted with her before, except of course for tobacco withdrawal. The logic was that an actress who was doing reasonably well in the Hollywood business wouldn’t be a logical candidate for a mass murderer. Bubba could probably blow holes in his theory, but he went with it for the moment.
There was Cybil. Cybil was usually chipper and upbeat when she wasn’t being actively stalked by a murderer. However, Bubba didn’t really know a lot about her. She was a receptionist at the Dogley Institute, sometimes she worked at their thrift shop, she had a boyfriend, and she was allergic to sand. Or was it the beach?
Who was allergic to sand? That was suspicious all by itself. Wouldn’t a murderer say she was allergic to sand to get out of a trip when she needed to murder people instead?
Bubba had difficulty imagining the petite redheaded receptionist on the serious end of a garrote, leaning backward with all of her body weight as Blake Landry slowly strangled to death.
Bubba looked at Dr. Adair. He really didn’t know anything about the psychiatrist. He didn’t live in Pegramville because Bubba would have remembered that. That probably meant he lived in a bigger city and commuted, which wasn’t unusual for people with specialties. Pegramville might be in need of a psychiatrist, or three, but they didn’t want to pay for one, or three. Consequently, there wasn’t a psychiatrist in town. (There was a licensed marriage and family counselor, but he didn’t work at Dogley.)
The doctor had said he was divorced and that no one was expecting him. There wasn’t anything suspicious about that. Working at the Dogley Institute didn’t seem like a bad gig to Bubba, and the man was a medical doctor, so his salary couldn’t be too awful. It was even possible that he liked living in rural Texas where the cost of living was almost too good to be true. (Unless you were unemployed, and then the cost of living was not too good to be true.)
There was a similar story with Nurse Ratchley. Bubba didn’t know her. She’d said she was married, that her husband was expecting her to work the weekend, and that if he didn’t hear from her on Monday or Tuesday he would come looking. That implied a lot of things. One was that she didn’t live in Pegramville or Pegram County because there was always a nursing shortage in the area. The hospital probably had special rounds for the psychiatric nurses just to make things work. After all, with their exalted clientele they could pay a nurse to come in and work for 32 hours and pay her for 40. (In one of her more friendly moments, Dee Dee Lacour, the short, irritable African American nurse who worked for Dr. Goodjoint, had explained to Bubba why nursing could be a lucrative business. The conversation had occurred right after filming for The Deadly Dead concluded, and the director’s wife had been generous with several cases of Dom Perignon, which explained Dee Dee’s loquaciousness.) A nurse might want to murder her patients, but Ratchley seemed more interested in eating everything in sight.
Consequently, that meant that everyone was a suspect. Even Bubba was a suspect. All the recent wedding stress suddenly caused a vein in his brain to explode, transforming him into a multiple personality, which caused him to come to the Dogley Institute to murder people not connected to him in any way.
Bubba sighed. Right. The best plan was to hold on until the police showed up, and let them take over. Except if it was Willodean, and she could just sit on the sidelines eating pickles with cream cheese until she realized what Bubba had done and rushed over to bash him over the skull for intimating that she couldn’t handle her job. Of course she can handle her job, he justified, but she’s pregnant, not that I like her job much when she’s not pregnant neither. But I ain’t stupid enough to demand she stop being a sheriff’s deputy. Not this corn-fed bubba, no sirree.
Bubba shook his head. Precious snort-snored and rolled onto her side. Clearly, she was missing her comfortable doggie bed in Bubba’s room. The movement reminded him he was on a clock, even if it was a kind of death clock.
If Bubba had to narrow it down to immediate suspects, it would be Dr. Adair and Ratchley. Ratchley got up while he watched and went for the kitchen. Through the pass-through windows, he could see her open a refrigerator door and pull something out. She exclaimed, “There’s Jell-O cups!” and pulled three more out, holding them in the air as if she had discovered something truly worthwhile. (Perhaps Jell-O cups were valuable to Ratchley.)
Does a vicious cold-blooded killer cry with joy over the extracting of gelatin desserts?
Bubba looked at Dr. Adair. The psychiatrist didn’t seem like a viable candidate either. He looked like a tired hospital employee with a rumpled shirt. He had discarded his tie and jacket hours before. His orangish tan appeared a little jaundiced in the fluorescent lights of the cafeteria. He appeared pooped and upset. What psychiatrist wouldn’t be upset that a murderer was running around his ward killing off his patients and/or also making his patients disappear?
Bubba glowered. All this thinking was bad for a fella’s health. It made his head hurt even worse than it already did. Leave it for the po-lice, he advised himself. That’s the best thing I kin do.
The problem with that was that Bubba couldn’t leave it for the police. Not just couldn’t, but wouldn’t. The very idea went against everything in his nature. People were in danger, not excluding himself, and he couldn’t just stand there and let the train wreck go on.
Bubba slowly climbed to his feet and prepared himself to find another cup of coffee. His stomach said some nasty words to him, lurched irregularly, warned him that all was not well within his digestive system, never mind his head, and then growled loudly. He had a sudden urge for the pickled turnips that his Aunt Caressa used to make in the summer. She swore they cured canker sores and ingrown toenails, but they tasted awful. Pickled turnips with a little bit of honey on top sounded pretty good at the moment. However, he was fairly certain that there were no pickled turnips in the hospital’s kitchen.
Of course, that was when something blew up outside and knocked Bubba tushie over teakettle.
Chapter 18
Bubba Loses Some More Loonies
Sunday, April 7th
From his position of lying flat on the floor, Bubba looked up at the fluorescent lights and realized they were very dirty. One was blinking frenetically like it was sending messages in Morse code. He also realized that he had been in this position before. Perhaps it hadn’t been in this exact place, but it definitely had been the same position. Being knocked tushie over teakettle wasn’t an unknown occurrence in Bubba’s life, and he knew that fact was wrongity-wrong-wrong.
He lifted his head and looked around. Most of the seven people and one dog in the room had changed their positions and were presently on the floor. The only exception was Dr. Adair. He’d managed to keep his seat at the cafeteria table, and as Bubba’s eyes settled on him, the doctor rose up to his feet and asked, “What the holy hell was that?”
“My deductions lead me to believe that it was another detonation of an explosive device,” David said authoritatively. He slowly crawled to his feet. Then he bent over to help Tandy get to her feet. She was covered with glass and the pseudo-master sleuth carefully brushed her off. Tandy said sadly, “I lost my cig.” She suddenly brightened. “There it is.” Then she bent and picked up the semi-broken butt, expertly putting it back between her lips.
Bubba glanced from one figure to the next. Cybil sat on her butt looking flabbergasted. Ratchley lay on her back, saying, “We’re gonna die, I just know it.” Peyton had been knocked into a wall and sat with his legs spread wide. He rubbed his shoulder and muttered something Bubba couldn’t hear. Finally, Precious, who had already been on her back, lurched to her feet in her usual incomparably graceless technique. Her head swung back and forth clearly searching out the humongous, noisy booger who had just threatened them.
Bubba finally came to himself and scrambled to his feet. He could see the pink light on the horizon outside, but he wasn�
��t immediately certain if it were the leading edge of the sun or something else. A billow of black smoke appeared and blocked out the meager light. It came from the direction of the parking lot. If a fire had started, the whole hospital could burn down, so he put his head down and barreled out the nearest door.
“Wait, Bubba!” Peyton cried out, but Bubba ignored him.
Bubba followed his nose, and Precious kept right on his heels. Dimly, Bubba perceived that several people were following him, but he wasn’t thinking about them. When he came around the corner of the hospital, he didn’t need the dim morning light to see one car burning fiercely in the lot. Whatever explosive had been used had caused it to blow upward and flip upside-down. It sat on its roof, blazing merrily away. Its four rubber wheels spun lazily, as if they might take themselves away from the threat of the fire below them. It took him another second to realize it was the eightysomething Mercedes Benz he’d parked next to earlier.
Bubba took another second to check to see where Ol’ Green was sitting. It was safe and sound, even the scorch marks on it from the last bomb to which it had been exposed were still present. (He was never going to get that dent out from when he had landed on it from that other explosion, but fortunately he had managed to find another vintage windshield from where the front wrought iron gates had gone through the original.) (Were those some new scorch marks on the driver’s side door from the most recent explosion? Why, yes indeedy.)
It took Bubba a third second to realize that the Mercedes had landed on another car, but he couldn’t tell which one it had been. He was guessing it was the Volkswagen Rabbit of indeterminate age. It took Bubba another second to process that information. His brain seemed to be working in extreme slo-mo.
I parked between the Mercedes and the Rabbit, Bubba thought. The Mercedes blew up and over Ol’ Green onto the Rabbit. I need to find me some wood to knock on. And mebe I need to thank someone. He looked heavenward. “Thank you, God. I shorely love that truck. Also, God, ifin you kin let Willodean know I’m okay, I would appreciate it.”
