Slow Falling (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 6)

by George Wier

  So, here we have action and adventure. We have, I hope, mystery. We have a little strange happenstance and some odd characters and some science-fiction-esque technology. And, oh boy, isn't that the way it ought to be? It reminds me of something. Maybe... an old pulp magazine? If you were to visit me in my home I could hand you a stack of the things, including Amazing Stores, Five Tales Adventure, Fantastic, etc. They're dinosaurs from a bygone age. They're yellowed with the passage of time and I have to keep them in plastic to preserve them, so maybe they're more like Nunez, here. They're mummies. And let me tell you, these old mummies can speak! You see, they weren't printed to last more than a summer day or two in the hands of a twelve year-old kid, but then again maybe that's why they originally only cost a dime.

  On a different tack, I've been asked if I plan all my books. The answer is both “yes” and “no.” I've really only ever planned the titles, with a vague sense of what was going to happen based on them. But no, as far as detailed planning, I've never been able to write from something as orderly as, say, an outline. I don't know why, really. For me there is a certain sense of contrivance connected with doing so. Now, I find nothing wrong, particularly, with “organized thought”—but to me, writing in that organized a fashion seems less organized and more... how shall we say: fake. Or, not right. At least for me. And I do know I will have rubbed someone the wrong way with the above. Well, I guess that's the way it goes. Sorry. And while all fiction could accurately be classified as “a pack of lies” and summarily dismissed (as some do, although I never really understood such people—I tend to feel that such folks are missing some essential component. Quite possibly it's humanity), for me the lies must have the ring of truth. Those “lies” have to, again, feel right.

  So, lies. Oh, I can tell some whoppers. My wife thinks I should enter a contest. Well, I'm already in one, you could say, and this is it. It's the contest for your attention, and I like this contest. I like it a lot.

  You know, I was raised in a very religious southern family, and I've been to church on Sunday. Now, I ask you: would you prefer a preacher in the pulpit who was all pious and gracious and who had never stepped out of bounds in life? Or would you prefer a preacher who has “been there” and “done that”? For my part, if I was ready to get right with the Lord or something, I would want a preacher who knows sin, who knows it close and personal. I'd want the ex-alcoholic, wife-stealing, candy-from-a-baby-taking, bad-check-passing, like-a-sailor-cussing, obtuse, in your face, brash-and-loud, know-it-all sonuvabitch. And I'd want him to convince me, people! Now, can I get an Amen? Well... alright.

  And that's what I want from my stories. I want a tale told by an out-of-the-bounds, out-on-a-limb, science-fiction-reading, action-adventure-loving, hair-raising-thrills-seeking, egotistical-and-self-centered, love-me-or-leave-me, dyed-in-the-wool, bonafide-and-certified-and-maybe-even-certifiable writer! And for you, that's where I come in.

  Now, sometimes I find myself back-sliding. Every once in that old blue moon I'll get pretty far out on the credulity limb—even for me! And then I'll start to back off a bit. When I do, I find myself re-writing whole chapters, and occasionally, entire damned books! But, fortunately for you, that's all back there behind the theater curtain, back there with all the props and the ropes and pulleys, and the actors (characters?) rehearsing and re-rehearsing their lines (interesting word, “rehearse.” Did they have to take the lines to graveyard twice?). But mostly, I stay on the balance part of the limb. There's a nice fork in the limb here, you see, and I can sit here and bounce up and down a little (just a little, mind you) and see a far piece off and away. I have to admit, I like it fine. The view from here is nice.

  I feel that those of you who have stuck with Bill and Julie and the kids this far have come to know me somewhat, as a cross-result. And I can't help but tell you that I'm delighted by that. First of all, I can't thank you enough for reading these books and sending me your fan mail. Let me tell you, I live for that. I know, to quote Shakespeare: it were a grievous fault. But do, please, forgive my jealousy for your attention (ain't it pathetic, actually? Hmm?). I feel I have to have it. So, thanks for understanding.

  At the moment I have beside me two manuscripts to prepare. They are the next two books in the lineup. I'll apply the appropriate amount of shine and see how quickly I can get them out to you. So, lot's to do here.

  Thank you for reading. Thank you for your indulgence with these little Author's Notes, and most of all, thank you for being you.

  I happen to think you're pretty fantastic.

  George Wier

  March 9, 2012

  Please enjoy the first chapter from the next thrilling Bill Travis Mystery:

  Caddo Cold

  Coming soon!

  CHAPTER ONE

  When Holt Gatlin fell he fell hard.

  He had been working on re-roofing the aged and defunct theater in Karnack, Texas, when a piece of slate came loose beneath his feet and sent him in a whirling plunge to the ground below.

  Holt was fortunate in that he didn’t break his neck. That was about all anybody could say about the incident: “Holt was lucky he didn’t break his neck.”

  This was first told me by Willett Mahoney, Holt’s carpentry foreman. I had been trying to reach Holt to tell him that his stock had just split and that he was two million dollars in the black. Instead I got Willett, who answered the phone at Holt’s house. Willett told me the tale. It was the first time I’d ever heard him utter more than a singular grunt.

  Willett gave me the number for the hospital in Marshall, Texas, twenty-five miles away. When I called the hospital and asked for Holt’s room I got Pierce Gatlin, Holt’s nephew; a man I’d never met.

  When I asked how Holt was doing, I heard that line again, exact words, same inflection.

  How was he? Holt was lucky he didn’t break his neck. He would have a long row to hoe. He had a broken arm and wrist, three cracked ribs and a pulverized femur.

  After I hung up with Pierce I just sat there at my desk for a bit and let the news settle in.

  If he pulled through Holt would almost certainly be retiring.

  I never once thought to inquire if there was any malice behind Holt's fall because from all appearances it had been a terrible accident and nothing more.

  Who could have known?

  *****

  I first met Holt Gatlin the day after his sixty-fifth birthday. He came into my office on San Antonio Street near downtown Austin—no invite and no appointment. When he left three hours later I knew I had landed a potentially valuable client as well as made a new friend.

  He had retired from the paper factory near Huntsville, Texas and after thirty-five years was moving back home near Karnak, Texas, an insular East Texas town half surrounded by Caddo Lake, Texas’ only natural lake. I remembered from my Texas Almanac that all the rest of the lakes were man-made. Karnak’s smaller, companion town name was Uncertain, Texas. When the locals of the smaller berg nestled against the southern lake shore decided to incorporate in 1969 in order to obtain state licensing to sell liquor, the secretary at the meeting filled in the blank on the form for incorporation “Uncertain”, which actually meant “it’s late, we’re tired, we’ll decide later. That’s enough for now.” But once you fill in the blank on an official form, it becomes the way things are, so the town of a hundred and fifty souls became ‘Uncertain’ thereafter, and thereby hangs a tale. Uncertain is a few miles from Louisiana. Despite legend, this factor has nothing to do with it’s name.

  Before heading back to the town where he grew up, Holt made the trip to Austin on the advice of an acquaintance to see a certain (no pun intended) money-shifter about doing something with his retirement account. I was astonished at the figure on the statement he handed to me: Two-hundred-and-seventeen thousand dollars.

  I asked Holt how he had managed to salt that much away. To my knowledge, no factory ever paid that much in wages, even to a foreman, which was what Holt had worked there as during most o
f those thirty-five years.

  Holt looked at me with his sober, teal-colored eyes and said: “Oh. You know. Here and there.”

  His expenses, he went on to explain, never amounted to much. He had roomed with an elderly lady on Avenue “O” in Huntsville for most of those years and she had never increased his rent. The last month he was there he paid thirty-five dollars; the same amount he had paid the day he walked through her front door in 1970. Also, he drove the same Ford pickup truck that he had bought when he was a sophomore in High School, so he never had to make car payments. Also, as a hobby, he whittled out complete chess sets.

  “Chess sets?” I had asked him.

  “Yep. The game.”

  He admitted to me that he had never learned how to play, nor had any interest in it whatsoever. But, he had heard once that a fellow had paid a thousand dollars for an intricately-carved chess set. Holt studied up on it and took to whittling. He had a business card printed up and went around to all the antique stores within a fifty mile radius during his weekends. He sold his first chess set for two-hundred dollars in 1972. Since then he had produced over forty of them. The highest he’d ever been paid was ten thousand dollars sometime during the mid 1990s. He wrote “For Deposit Only” on the back of the check and dropped it in the night slot at his bank and forgot about it, just as he had done with every other check that resulted from his hobby.

  And over the course of the three years since he walked into my office, I had helped him turn his nest egg into an egg farm. That’s what I do, by the way. Turn nest-eggs into egg farms. By way of saying that I work as a financial consultant and accountant.

  And now, in his golden years, Holt had taken a fall and had fallen damned hard. Which left me with a problem. I had control of his resources, but I had no provision for what to do if he were to die. I ruminated over this for a several days while putting in occasional calls to check up on him.

  Holt underwent extensive surgery on a cold Saturday morning in early December and came through it.

  I finally got him on the phone in person on Sunday night by calling his room at the hospital in Marshall directly.

  “Oh,” he said. “How are you, Bill?”

  “Me? I’m fine, Holt. The question is, how are you?”

  “I’ll live. Not sure if that’s best, but looks like I will. That’s not the important thing, though.”

  “What, Holt? What’s more important that your living and getting well?”

  He paused. I could hear his labored breathing.

  “Holt?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Good. You were about to tell me something.”

  “I know. I’ve been refusing the pain medication because I don’t like to be without my faculties, so I wasn’t—”

  “Nodding off,” I finished. “I understand.”

  “Yeah. I was thinking.”

  “Holt,” I said. “Most of the time thinking is a waste of time. Spit it out, okay?”

  “Alright. I’ve got to tell somebody, and I can’t tell that nephew of mine. He ain’t here anyway, which is a good thing.”

  I clammed up and waited.

  “Bill, this ain’t easy for me to say. But if I know you, you’re not gonna say a word until I say it.”

  I breathed loudly to let him know I was still there.

  “There are bayous in this part of the country. Some places no one’s ever seen, I think. There’s a stretch of one that has a little island in it. It’s all bald cypress and Spanish moss and alligators back in there. But—” Holt coughed. I heard a low moan of pain.

  “Holt?” I could tell that he was hurting, and something awful, but there was about two-hundred-and-fifty miles between us, and, consequently, little I could do except wait.

  “Damn!” he said. “I’m... I’m here. Barely.”

  “What’s on the bayou on the island, Holt?”

  “Some people. Or what’s left of them.”

  “People,” I said. “What people?”

  “They’re just skeletons by now. I... I haven’t been back there in... it’s been almost fifty years, now. But I go to sleep with them every night, Bill. Every... Every night of my sorry life. I hear the screams, Bill. I hear the crunch of metal and tree limbs snapping and I hear them crying in pain in my head. I want it to stop, Bill. But it won’t ever stop. I’ve been hearing it every night of my life since that night. Since 1955. My God... why won’t it... Stop?”

  He was crying. I don’t like it when grown men cry, and especially not when it’s a man I consider to be my friend.

  His sobs faded out. I heard the telephone receiver at his end clank against something metal.

  “Holt.” I said, raising my voice. “Holt!”

  I waited. I could hear a faint voice. Someone was there in the room with him.

  The receiver was being jostled around again.

  “Who is this?” a gruff voice asked.

  “Who is this?” I asked.

  “You first, buddy. What are telling my patient?”

  “Take care of him, Doc,” I said. “You take real good care of that old man.”

  “Are you family? I thought I had met all of the family.”

  “Tell Holt that Bill is coming. Would you do that?”

  “Fine,” he said. I wasn’t sure I believed him. “Good bye.”

  The sharp click in my ear had a note of finality to it that I didn’t care for.