by Matthew Iden
She was silent.
“You have information that could be important to finding J.D.’s killer. Crucial. But, in order for it to help, you have to give it to me. If you don’t want to give me a hand, that’s fine, but then all I’ve got is wandering around town, questioning random strangers, which I can tell you so far hasn’t been all that useful. And, if that’s the way it goes, in another few days I’ll give up, get in my car, and go home.”
“Why would I care if you left?”
“I saw your face at your mother’s house. You wanted me to stay. To help. And you need it. Judging by how uncooperative the police were, I think I’m your last, best hope.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then, “You went to the police?”
I shrugged. “You obviously weren’t getting anywhere with them, but I wanted to see what their attitude was, what progress they’d made.”
“What did they say?”
“That J.D. was hiding out in Cain’s Crossing from the gangs that he ticked off in DC. And that they finally caught up with him and killed him.”
“What do you think about their theory?”
I wiped a trickle of sweat away. “I think it’s phony baloney.”
“Why?”
“Because they wouldn’t have waited. If there’s ever a time to kill somebody that’s pissed you off, it’s in prison. Especially if the hit’s coming from a gang. They’ve got guys lining up around the block to make their bones. Believe me, if J.D. made some boss angry—on the inside or outside, doesn’t matter—they would’ve gotten to him in the first month. They wouldn’t have waited twenty years and they sure wouldn’t have waited until he came back to Mayberry to do it.”
She smiled when I said Mayberry and I felt a tiny sense of victory. “Who did it, then?”
“I have no idea, Mary Beth. That’s why I called you. I don’t even know how J.D. died, where he died, who found the body. Hell, I only just found out he was married.”
Her head snapped towards me, her mouth open with surprise. “J.D. was married?”
I looked at her. It was my turn to be nonplussed. “Yes. Didn’t you know?”
“I…no. I didn’t know,” she said, swallowing. “To whom?”
“Ginny Decker.”
“Good Lord. I suppose it makes sense—they dated in high school—but I had no idea he’d gone and married her.”
“Dorothea not forthcoming with information of that sort?”
She shook her head and kept shaking it as she leaned forward and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook with small spasms while I looked on, afraid to say anything. Besides my natural reluctance to bother people while they were grieving, Mary Beth was my last chance for information on J.D. If I tipped her over the edge, I might as well get in my car and start driving north, like I’d said.
Slowly, she got a hold of herself and sat up straight on the bench. I fished out a tissue and handed it across like a flag of truce. She took it and nodded before blowing her nose.
“She’s such a bitch,” Mary Beth said, wiping the tissue across her nose. “I shouldn’t be surprised she didn’t tell me.”
I said nothing.
“Dorothea Hope has had her own way since she was old enough to walk,” she continued. “No matter who gets hurt, run over, or abandoned in the process. It’s no accident that J.D. ran off to DC or that I ended up in Baltimore for most of my adult life. The real question is why we didn’t end up farther away.”
“She tough at home?”
“You have no idea. I haven’t had kids yet, but I’ve seen parents who live through their children. My mother took that idea one step further, pulling our strings until both of us—at different points in our lives—felt we had to leave or go crazy.”
“J.D. was older?”
She nodded. “Five years. It wasn’t his fault he was born first. He made all the mistakes and I got to learn from them. If our places had been reversed, you probably would’ve arrested me, instead. As it was, by the time I even thought about getting in trouble, J.D. was in jail.”
“And that was enough to keep you on the straight and narrow?” I asked.
“That and my intense dislike of confrontation,” she said. “Which I demonstrated from the masterful way I handled my mother when you came by. I’d make a lousy crook, I’m afraid.”
“If it’s any consolation, J.D. wasn’t a criminal mastermind himself.”
She smiled sadly. “Friends used to call him Bounce, because he got himself into so many scrapes that he had to learn how to come back from them. This time, though, Bounce didn’t come back.”
We were quiet for a moment, then I said. “Can you tell me anything about J.D.’s life here? Friends, lovers, associates? When did he come back to Cain’s Crossing? Did he get together with old high school buddies, make new friends, hang at the same old places?”
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “It sounds like you know more about him than me. I’m embarrassed to say it, but I knew him better when he was in prison. We corresponded more, that’s for certain. When he was released, he came back here and I assumed it was to start over from the beginning, you know? But from what I heard from the police after his death, apparently he started over, all right.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily trust their opinion,” I said. “Didn’t your mother tell you anything? Surely she came clean with you?”
Mary Beth picked at nonexistent lint from her slacks. “Not really. I got the impression from her that he asked for some money when he first moved back, dropped in every few weeks, and otherwise kept himself as far from her as he could and still live in the same town.” She looked pained.
“You said you don’t live in Cain’s Crossing?”
She shook her head. “I’ve lived in Baltimore since my husband and I separated. When J.D. was killed, I took a leave of absence. But I can’t stay here forever and need to make some kind of headway before I have to return. We need an answer.”
I watched as a butterfly came through the garden, lit on a leggy, flame-red bush, and began opening and closing its wings slowly. “I know this hurts, but can you tell me how J.D. was killed? And where?”
“J.D. was found in a motel room that he’d been renting long-term. He’d been…” she took a deep breath, “he’d been hit in the back of the head. A tremendous blow, the coroner said.”
When she paused, I asked, “Just once?”
“Yes.”
“That was the only wound? He wasn’t beaten?”
“The police told us that he hadn’t been hurt in any other way before he was killed. His death was probably instantaneous. No one else was injured. No one heard a struggle. There were no witnesses and his…body wasn’t discovered until several days later, so memories were fuzzy and no one remembered seeing anyone suspicious entering or leaving. It was also a motel, so…”
“Lots of coming and going,” I said. “Every room has its own entry.”
She nodded.
“What else do the police say?”
She squeezed her hands together. “They don’t give a damn. The detective in charge as much as said so. When we heard nothing after the first month, I started calling him. After the second month, I went to the police department every few days. Before that happened, he would simply shrug and say they didn’t have the resources to chase everyone who might’ve wanted to kill J.D. It wasn’t long before he refused to take my calls and stopped letting me back to his office.”
“Were there any personal effects?”
“You mean like a box of his stuff?” she asked. I nodded. “One suitcase, I think. Just clothes. A few odds and ends.”
“There were no other leads?” I asked. “What about coworkers, friends, girlfriends, drinking buddies?”
She shrugged helplessly. “J.D. couldn’t keep a job, his friends were probably people you don’t want to meet, and I wasn’t around enough to know about the others.”
“Where’s the motel J.D. was staying at?”
/> “It’s a cheap place on the outside of town. Just the kind of place you’d expect to find an ex-con.” Her voice was bitter. The butterfly took off from its perch, zigzagging to its next destination. “Does that help?”
“It does,” I said. “I’ll go out there, see if there’s something someone remembers. The color of a car or a glimpse of a face.”
She looked at me. “That’s not much.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s a start, though.”
“Why are you doing this?” she asked suddenly, as though she were trying to shock me into a truthful response. “Why look into J.D.’s murder?”
Twist. “Like I told your mother, I’m curious. I was a cop, I like to see rights wronged.”
“Bullshit,” Mary Beth said.
I paused. “Okay. Maybe it’s because I helped put him in jail. I feel responsible for J.D. and what happened to him to some extent. He served his time and deserved a fair shot at things.” I was quiet for a second, then shook my head. “I don’t know. Those aren’t very good reasons. Maybe I’m not the best person to help you, after all.”
She reached out and touched my arm, a shy and curiously intimate gesture. “You have to be. You’re the only one who’s called.”
Chapter Twelve
Mary Beth gave me the address to J.D.’s motel and the instant after she got in her car and left, I jogged over to mine, punching in directions to the motel on my phone. In five minutes, I was heading out to the Dixie Inn. It turned out to be a bank of one-story ranch-style motel huts not far from Route 29, just farther north than the exit I’d taken to get to Cain’s Crossing. Each hut of the motel was painted maroon with white trim on the windows and doors. Unfortunately, the nails in the trim had rusted, giving each a rusty dot with a corresponding rusty smear heading south. There were three cars parked in front of a total of fourteen huts. Business was booming.
Across from the motel was an abandoned ice-cream stand. A sad and badly out of date price list hung in the window and a humongous cake cone still adorned the peak of the roof. I cruised by once to look the motel over, did a U-turn a quarter mile up the road, then came back. I eased the car off the road and pulled in tight against one wall of the ice-cream stand. My car could be seen by someone really looking for it, but I was modestly shielded from the first hut, the one that said OFFICE in large white letters. A shiny new silver Tahoe was parked in front of the office door. It looked like a designer tank.
A portion of the ice-cream stand was boarded up, but one dirty corner of the front window was untouched. If I ducked my head down, I could just sneak a peek through and see the office’s front door. All of the huts with cars in front of them were visible.
I settled in to watch. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I figured some reconnaissance and a little bit of patience wouldn’t hurt. The name of the motel was the first hint of a lead I’d gotten since rolling into town—I hadn’t actually said “Hot damn!” when Mary Beth had given me the address to the motel, but I’d been tempted—and I didn’t want to squander it. So, rather than running pell-mell into the office, why not hang out and see if anything crawled out of the woodwork?
Two hours later, with the sun beating down on the paved lot and nothing to show for my patience, I started to wonder. I hadn’t brought anything to eat or drink and the car’s AC was fighting a losing battle. Drowsiness and boredom set in, relived only when a flatbed truck hauling tomatoes bumped down the road to my right. It passed out of sight, things calmed down, and I returned to contemplating pulling my hair out one strand at a time to stay awake.
Around four-thirty, the door of hut number seven opened and a pale figure appeared in the doorway. It was a stick-thin woman with brown hair just past the shoulders and skin so pale she glowed. She wore a ribbed tank top and red panties with no pants. Her thighs had no muscle tone and she had knobby knees that nearly touched. She was lighting a cigarette, but her hands shook and had trouble keeping the lighter steady. The tip eventually caught on fire and she took a long drag, then gazed out over the road. She looked as bored as I felt.
The hut roof’s narrow overhang kept her from contact with direct sunlight, which was a good thing, since I was pretty sure it would turn her into a steaming pile of goo if it touched her. She stayed there until she’d smoked the cigarette halfway down, then blew out a big lungful of smoke and tossed the butt into the parking lot. She leaned out to check the modest row of parked cars—one last attempt at garnering excitement, perhaps—then pulled her head back in and shut the door.
I could barely get my breathing under control. Something had actually happened. The little bit of action carried me through until just after five, when a white Dodge Caravan came down the road and pulled up directly in front of number seven. My angle let me see both van and hut door. I watched as a man slid out from behind the wheel. He had on dress slacks and a dress shirt that had been purchased several years earlier, based on how taut the material was over belly and butt. He took his time getting out, leaning back in the Caravan and fiddling with the glove compartment and the door. Behind him, the blinds twitched for a second, then the door opened and the skinny woman appeared in the doorway again.
She said something to the van guy, who looked up, then slammed the door shut and tried the handle to make sure it locked. He walked towards the woman and they had a brief conversation that involved her shaking her head a lot. They eventually resolved their disagreement and went inside, closing the door behind them. Twenty-eight minutes later, the man came out looking just as he had when he’d gone in. He jumped in the van and took off without looking back. It was all I needed to see, but I hung out for another hour and was treated to a second man following roughly the same procedure, though he and the woman didn’t seem to disagree about anything. When that guy left, I was sure I had what I needed—or would die of old age waiting for more. I got out, did a few stretches, then got back in the car and drove over to the office.
I parked and walked in to the jingle of a little bell above the door. A too-small AC unit was doing its best to pump cool, Freon-tasting air into the room. Small foil ribbons on the unit’s louvers fluttered to prove its struggle. The office walls were paneled in faux-walnut strips and a chandelier made of deer antlers hung from the center of the room. The floor was linoleum and the whole place smelled like a urinal mint. The room rates, posted on a bulletin board behind the counter, wouldn’t have paid for overnight parking in DC.
A small man in his fifties looked up from behind a wide computer screen at the counter. He had a mustache shaped like a comb and was balding. He’d grown his hair long in the back to compensate and it trailed over the collar of a dingy, short-sleeved dress shirt that once had been white. Glassy brown eyes drifted up from whatever he was reading on the screen, registering neither interest nor surprise.
“Can I help you?” he asked unenthusiastically.
“Yes, sir,” I said, smiling. “I’d like to see J.D. Hope’s room, please.”
He paused. “Who?”
“J.D. Hope,” I said. “About forty, dirty-blond hair, missing some teeth. Killed in one of your motel rooms.”
“Oh,” he said. That one? “Are you a cop?”
“Once upon a time, yeah,” I said. “Right now, I’m looking into his murder for the family. And looking into a killing usually starts with the crime scene. Mind if I take a look?”
“You’re not a cop,” the man said, though he seemed to ask it.
“Like I said, no. Used to be. Before you start citing the Bill of Rights, though, let me point out that there’s probably not much in the room to see. You’ve had it cleaned and I bet it’s as neat as a button. So, it should take you less than ten minutes to stand up, unlock the door to Hope’s former room, let me look around, then lock it back up again. Or, we could stand here and argue about your inalienable rights for twice as long.”
He looked at me like I was some kind of fish for about ten seconds, then shrugged and said, “What the hell.” He g
ot up, came out from around the desk, and led the way outside, proceeded by a potbelly. He had on Bermuda shorts, black socks, and leather sandals.
I hid a grin as I realized we were probably about the same age. I might be sweating through my clothes, but I was wearing jeans, a white short-sleeved polo shirt, had all of my hair, and weighed less than I had when I’d entered the Academy. I could thank cancer for the severe drop in weight, but I’d beaten that so far and felt fit and trim. I wanted to buy this guy a beer. It was the first time I’d felt good about myself physically in more than a year.
But I resisted hugging him and we trooped down to hut number three. The door had a simple, old-fashioned lock, not an electronic key card. The manager unlocked it with a master key, then led the way inside. The sun was too bright to make out any details, so I shut the door and turned on the overhead.
It was about as mean and dreary as I’d pictured it. The walnut paneling motif from the office continued here and mottled brown-black carpeting made the room look twice as dark as it had to. A queen-sized bed with a ratty green coverlet took up the majority of the floor space. Flanking the bed were boxy particleboard nightstands, each with a lamp. There was a long, low dresser with a TV bolted to it. A wardrobe squatted in a corner and there was a tiny bathroom done in grimy, salmon-colored tile. The light in the bathroom took four bulbs but only one worked.
I turned to the manager. “You know where the body was?”
The guy gestured vaguely at the floor beside the bed. “Here, I guess. Blood everywhere. Glad I had that carpet or I would’ve had a hell of a time cleaning it up.”
I looked in every drawer, peered behind every piece of furniture, and checked under the bed. I opened the wardrobe, looked on top of it, and tapped its sides. I opened the medicine cabinet, poked around the toilet tank, felt underneath the sink. I avoided the carpet next to the bed when I got down on my hands and knees to look under the bed. I found nothing.
