by Gorman, Ed
His tan Ford was there.
"No lights," I said.
"He sits in the dark a lot."
"And drinks?"
"Uh-huh."
"You think he's armed?"
"Hard to tell."
"You mind if I take out my trusty Ruger?"
"Not if you don't mind if I take out my trusty Smith & Wesson. I love him and I want to help him but I don't want to die for him."
I leaned over and gave her a quick but tender kiss on the cheek. "God, I'm glad to hear that."
"The battered-wife stuff getting you down?"
"Yeah, kinda."
"It is pretty pathetic, isn't it, sticking with a guy who beats you up and degrades you all the time."
"At least you've put some limits on what you'll do."
"Dying is one thing I won't do."
"You ready?"
She nodded.
"Let's go," I said.
The air was cool now and I enjoyed it, along with the smell of water and mud from the creek, and the sounds of the night birds in the trees.
The front steps were wood and they were wobbly.
When we got to the door, Cindy called out: "David, we'd like to talk to you."
She knocked twice, sharply.
"I can't get you that money unless we talk first, David. I'm sorry but it's just got to be that way."
If he was watching us, he saw two people standing on his front porch with guns in their hands. We probably didn't look all that friendly.
The windows were open. Through the screen of the nearest window, a male voice said, "Get rid of him."
"I want him here, David."
"He's an asshole."
"He's helping me."
A snort. "You sleeping with him yet?"
She couldn't hide her pain. "You bastard. You know better than that."
"I need that fucking money."
The booze occasionally got thicker than anger on his tongue.
"Then open the door and we'll talk. All right?"
Night sounds. I looked back across the shanty town of a settlement that inclined downward to a dusty valley. Not much more than a century ago, these people would have been roaming the plains, at one with the birds and the rivers and the steep limestone cliffs.
The door opened up.
He had a gun, too. You could see it in his fist in the moonlight.
It was comic, actually, the three of us standing there with our weapons.
He unlatched the screen door.
We went in.
The trailer smelled of cigarettes, whiskey, heat, dirty dishes and sleep.
He turned on a table lamp, cast in the shape of a bikini'd young lady. I almost wished he hadn't. The furniture was worn and filthy. Pizza cartons with the scabrous remains of various toppings cluttered the coffee table. A pair of dirty socks hung off the arm of the couch.
"God, David, you really should clean this place up."
He smirked. "You wonder why I left you, Cindy? Because of that. Bitch bitch bitch. This place don't bother me, it shouldn't bother you."
He wore jeans but no shirt. He'd tucked his .45 back into his belt. I imagine he thought he looked pretty menacing. All he looked like were half the convicts I'd been forced to deal with in my life. Sad punks, most of them, boy-men who never reached the mental age of twenty-one. Back in 1933 the Barrow Gang — Bonnie and Clyde, if you prefer — hid out in the Iowa town of Dexter. Adults would have kept their whereabouts secret, but Bonnie and Clyde couldn't control themselves at all. Went right on robbing and shooting until they finally brought the law down, a posse of lawmen and angry citizens alike, who surrounded the gang and then killed half of them. Bonnie and Clyde escaped but were killed in another shootout a few months later. Thugs are romantic figures only when they're up on the movie screen.
He sat in a wobbly recliner. We sat on the couch.
She said, "I want you to tell me what kind of trouble you're in."
He didn't say anything. Just glared at her.
I thought of the arm the Border collie had brought me. I said nothing.
"Things got crazy," he said, suddenly.
"What things?"
"What I found out about some of the good people of Cedar Rapids." His face was angry now and he leaned forward. "They put on such a good face for everybody. Such good respectable people."
"David, please, I can't follow any of this."
"No? You can't? Well, too bad, bitch!" He jumped to his feet, swiping downwards with one hand to snag a half-filled quart of Jim Beam.
I just wanted out. And I couldn't believe she didn't want out, too. Some people aren't worth the effort and good old David here was clearly one of them.
He walked back toward the kitchen area and then turned abruptly again and hurled the bottle of Jim Beam into the wall.
He'd wanted a nice dramatic smash of glass exploding against wall. But the bottle didn't break. The open mouth sprayed whiskey everywhere, sure, but then it slid quite undramatically to the floor.
And then he started to cry.
Just like that. No warning.
Standing there all macho with his .45 tucked in his belt and no shirt or shoes. And he started sobbing. Brought his hands to his head and clamped them tight, as if his head were going to fly apart in ugly pieces.
She went to him and I didn't blame her. Not the way he sounded. All those years of grief — I doubted he'd cried much in his life before this — overwhelming him now. He sounded scared and tormented and angry and not a little bit pathetic.
I still didn't like him at all, but neither did I hate him quite so much, either.
She held him. In that moment I imagine she was all the women a man ever needed in his life — mother, sister, friend, lover, protector.
She held him and he sobbed all the more. She finally led him back to his chair.
I went over and picked up the Jim Beam bottle, which still had some liquor in it. In the cupboard above the sink I found a Kraft's jelly glass that felt sticky but looked reasonably clean. I filled half of it with bourbon and carried it over to him.
I figured we'd probably have one of those little moments. You know, where the jerk comes to his senses and realizes that it's a pretty all-right world after all.
But when I held the glass out to him all he did was yank it out of my hand and say, "I want your white-boy ass out of here, man."
Cindy looked up at me with lovely, tortured eyes. "He doesn't mean it."
"Sure he does. He's a prick."
"Please . . ."
"I'll show you who's a prick, white boy."
He started up out of the chair at me and while I was not exactly your macho type, the notion of putting my fist in his face — even if he later pounded the hell out of me — sounded pretty good, but Cindy stayed in her adult mode and got between us.
David sat back in the chair. Took some whiskey. He was shaking so badly, his teeth chattered against the rim of the glass. I had the sense that he might accidentally bite off a chunk and cut himself. I'd seen it happen when people were in psychotic states.
He decided to will me out of existence. From then on, he didn't once look in my direction or acknowledge me in any way.
"You're the only one I can count on, babe."
Cindy had gone from bitch to babe in just a few short minutes. A promotion of sorts.
"I really need the money. You could have gotten it by now if you had really wanted to."
She shook her head. "Not until you tell me what's going on."
He went crazy again, pushing his face into hers, shouting with such force that he sprayed spittle everywhere. "Quit asking me questions!"
Then, abruptly, he froze, was quiet, listening.
He had good ears. Much better than mine.
Heard them coming and jumped to his feet. Ran back to his bedroom and grabbed his shirt and cowboy boots.
"David, what's wrong?" she said.
He held his hand up for silence.
We
listened.
After a few seconds, I heard it. A heavy car rolling down the narrow street. Tires crunching gravel. Coming toward this trailer.
"David!"
She went to grab for him but he was too fast. He was out the screen door before she could even say his name again.
Nothing dramatic. No big goodbye speeches. He was just gone.
She went after him but I gently took her arm. "You'll never catch him."
"I have to help him." She was starting to cry.
"You can't help him. Not now."
Outside, the car pulled up to the trailer. The lights stayed on.
She glanced out the window. "It's my boss. Chief Gibbs."
"Yes," I said. "I kind of figured it would be."
Chapter 11
You might easily mistake Police Chief Richard Gibbs for a small town druggist or the crabbiest teacher in junior high. He had squinty eyes, stooped shoulders, thin lips that always looked just about to be displeased, and gnarly arthritic hands. In his khaki uniform, with his sleek bald head, he might have been a Scoutmaster searching for some aggravating troops.
Until he saw Cindy, that is. And then he changed. A light, a kind and wise light, shone in the brown eyes. And he slid his arm around her with genuine tenderness. "How you doin', hon?"
She tried a smile. "Been better, I suppose."
"All right if we go inside?" said one of the two uniformed men on the trailer's front steps.
"That's what we got the search warrant for, wasn't it?" Gibbs said.
"Well, uh, yeah, I guess so."
"Then go the hell in."
They went the hell in.
Lights came on in the dirty windows.
The small trailer rocked and tilted under the assault of their weight.
Gibbs glared at me. "Who is this guy?"
"A friend of mine."
He glared at me a little more. "Oh yeah, that federal guy. Personally, they always gave me a pain in the ass."
I laughed. "Gee, and I imagine they were just thrilled about working with you, too."
He smiled. "I was about the crankiest bastard they ever saw. Worked a couple of kidnappings with those stuck-up sonsofbitches and gave them hell every chance I got."
He put his hand out. "But that don't mean that every one of you is a stupid sonofabitch."
I shook his hand. "Right. Take me — I'm probably not a stupid sonofabitch now, am I?"
With a perfectly straight face, he said, "Too early to tell." He turned back to Cindy. "Your David did it this time."
"Maybe I don't want to know."
Fond as he obviously was of her, he wanted her to hear. "You remember all these years what I told you?"
"Please don't give me a speech, Gibby. Not now. Later on, all right. But not now."
We were silhouettes in the squad-car headlights that lit the leprous wounds of the trailer wall. The stars were faint now. A coyote cried out long and lonely from the limestone cliffs.
"I got a call."
"From who?"
"Don't know."
"They didn't leave a name?"
"Right. No name," Gibbs said.
"And they said what?"
"They said I should look inside his car trunk."
"For what?"
The other two cops came back out. "He's gone, Chief," one of them said. He had a blond crew cut and needed to lose thirty pounds. Everything about him was small town in a comfortable way.
"I would've told you that," she said.
"That's bullshit, Cindy, and you know it," said the cop who'd done the talking. "I tried to arrest him for public drunkenness that time, and you was all over me."
"You were hurting him."
"You seem to forget he kicked me in the nuts."
"That's enough!" Gibbs said. "All we're concerned about right now is tonight. Not the past."
But I was glad I'd heard the exchange between Cindy and the other cop. It made me understand better why the radio dispatcher had spoken about her with so much contempt. Cops run interference for family members all the time, but there are limits and I sensed that Cindy had pushed those limits pretty far.
"Let's go take a look at the trunk."
I didn't have any doubt what we'd find.
All the time they were trying various keys and pries to get the trunk-lid up, I knew exactly what we'd find. Pictured it perfectly.
"Gimme those," Gibbs said after a time.
He went through three more keys. The third one turned a quarter-inch or so to the right but it still didn't open the trunk.
"I wish you weren't here," Gibbs said to Cindy. "You'd really hear me swear."
"Be my guest."
Gibbs went back to working on the trunk. The two uniformed cops exchanged winks. The Chief wasn't any better at this than they were.
Gibbs said, "If this next one don't work, I'm gonna open the damn thing with a screwdriver."
Lights were coming on in windows around us. Police in the middle of the night guaranteed excitement. Infants cried; dogs barked; a frontier train rattled through the dark.
The lock clicked free.
"Gimme that flashlight," he said, holding his hand out so one of his men could fill it with a long silver light.
The trunk popped open.
We all gathered round.
Gibby played the light inside.
Her arm had been taken off pretty cleanly. That was the first thing I noticed.
The second thing I noticed was that the blue of the naked body matched the blue of the arm I'd seen earlier. Two, three days dead she was, at least long enough for postmortem lividity to set in, the body filling with gas and distending the areas of chest, stomach and thighs. The brown eyes bulged and the tongue looked like an eel trying to escape the swollen lips.
There was talk, but I didn't hear it, and running back to call for additional help, but I didn't pay any attention to that, either.
By now I was fixed on what had been done to her face, specifically her nose.
Whoever had done it had made the remains as crude and ugly as possible.
In Indian lore, as in the lore of Ancient Egypt, one cut the nose from a woman's face so that no man would ever again desire her. The mutilated woman often wandered into the woods and lived out her days alone. At least, these are the tales still told, though there is evidence that some of these women in fact took up new mates, and that others were simply accepted by the tribe the way a crippled person might be. Maybe it was only the most hideously defaced who had to flee to the forest to hide forever.
If she'd lived, this woman, who I now saw was a Native American, would have presented her plastic surgeon with some difficult problems. The killer had taken so much of the nose, and removed it so brutally, that only a bloody hole remained, one that was difficult to look at.
"He couldn't have done something like this, he couldn't have."
Cindy was talking to herself, but I could hear her quite clearly. She stood next to me in front of the open trunk.
Then she took my arm. "He didn't do it, Robert. Really he didn't."
Behind us, Gibbs said, "Cindy, could you come over here a minute, please?"
She shook her head. "You hear his voice?"
"Uh-huh."
"He's already got David convicted."
"You have to admit, this doesn't look real good."
"You think he'd be stupid enough to drive her around in his trunk?"
"You're a law officer, Cindy. You know how crazy people can get after they kill somebody. Especially if they've been drinking or something."
This time, she didn't take my arm. She grabbed it. "Goddamn it, Robert, didn't you hear me? He didn't kill her! He really didn't."
Then she went off to see the Chief. She was going to tell him the same thing.
Meanwhile, I spent some more time following down my ghoulish occupation. I borrowed the Chief's flashlight.
There's a little trick about postmortem lividity. Sometimes it can tell you if a
body has been moved around in a cramped space, such as a car trunk. This means that even if the body has been moved, the lividity will indicate the original position. Sometimes it's helpful to know such things.
I knelt down next to the trunk, holding my breath — the stink being pretty bad — and started training my light up and down the right side of her body.
On the whole, I would rather have been back home with my cats sleeping on the bed next to me and a bowl of Cream of Wheat waiting to be microwaved in the morning.
PART TWO
Chapter 12
On this part of the frontier, the cabins had generally been built of logs that had been squared with a broadax and stripped of their bark. The pioneers built cabins close to creeks and streams for the sake of the water supply; and in an area of woods that looked rife with wild game and crab apples and plums and haws; and where there was an abundance of prairie hay which, along with corn cobs and animal droppings, could be used for fuel in the long and harsh winters.
The pioneers would not have recognized the manor house perched above me on the bluffs. It sat on better than two acres of oaks and dogwoods, a brick Georgian Colonial that bespoke not only wealth and privilege but also a certain disdain for anybody who drove up the steep, winding driveway. The house itself seemed to sense that all visitors would be unworthy. The landscaping, which used vast maples and elms as walls to keep out prying eyes, only enhanced the sense of unwelcome.
I was two steps from my rental Chevrolet when I heard a tennis ball being thwocked back and forth. I decided not to try the front door.
Instead, I followed a narrow stone walk around the massive east side of the house. Below me, in a small valley, lay a most impressive tennis court. Not only was it a double court, it was an illuminated double court. Only one of the courts was presently being used. Claire and Perry Heston were playing, both looking fit and eager in their tennis whites that glowed in the early afternoon sunlight.
I was still sleepy and it showed in the slowness of my walk. I'd finally gotten to sleep around 9.00 A.M., after telling Chief Gibbs about finding the arm. He seemed wary of the fact that not only had I been one of the dreaded Feds — a criminal profiler, no less — but that I now possessed a private investigator's license and worked freelance for both law enforcement and criminal-defense attorneys. He didn't seem mollified at all that I was writing a book of Iowa history, and that I was presently occupied on a long chapter about law enforcement. He just couldn't find much to like about me at all.
