“What about him?”
I leaned against the wall, all the fatigue of the last few hours catching up with me.
“They’ll convict him of killing Clyde Fontenot,” I explained patiently, as if to a child. “And of trying to kill one of my people at my office, when he thought we might have found the box. And of cutting my tires and hitting me in the head, if that matters now. But there’s one thing they can’t get him for.”
She stared at me but said nothing.
“They can’t convict him of killing Doug, because he has an alibi.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Are you sure?”
“Very.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I think you know.” I shook my head, cutting her off. “And you know what? I don’t really blame you. It was Mark, wasn’t it? You found out he was buying some of the same stuff his father was peddling. What did you do, confront him with it?”
She shut her eyes and her fists balled. I thought of the scratch marks on her flanks, the ones she’d put there in a fit of self-loathing. I’d been wrong about her having done that years ago while in prison, of that I was sure. The marks were more recent and came from a sense of guilt over something else.
When she spoke again, her voice was so low I had to strain to hear the words.
“I found it in his room. He’d been acting funny. I used to be a part of that scene. He wasn’t going to fool me. There were mood swings, sudden rages … Finally I nerved myself and searched his room. When I faced him, he took off in the car. That was when he had the accident. The thing of it was he’d hardly had any for weeks. If I’d just left him alone …”
“You couldn’t tell,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything to Doug. He and I didn’t talk all that much. Mark’s dying was just about the end. But I guess it would’ve just sputtered on if I hadn’t heard that Doug was selling the stuff.”
“How did you find out?”
“Staples. He was with the DEA. He came asking questions. Said it was all routine, but I’ve been around cops enough to know what they’re after when they come sniffing. I waited until Doug was gone and I searched his things. I didn’t find anything except some new fifty-dollar bills.” She pointed at the green paper on the stool. “Just like those. I knew he had to be in on it. I remembered enough from the days when I was running with the drug crowd to know fifties are the favorite denomination. And it was the only thing that made sense, the way he’d been paying off debts. I guess I’d shut my eyes up to then because I didn’t want to believe it.”
I wished I didn’t have to hear the rest, but there was no stopping now.
“I listened in on the phone extension one day and heard Doug talking about it to his partner, how much money they planned to make, how his partner would run some more dope up from the Caribbean and how they’d sell it here in the parish. I couldn’t close my eyes anymore.” She looked past me, and a chill ran through me. “With those new bills turning up, I knew Doug had probably stashed the money somewhere on the grounds. The cabin seemed like a good place to look. I went there and found it.”
I exhaled. “And that was when you decided to kill him.”
“He was an assassin, don’t you see? The same as Oswald. He was killing a whole generation. He killed his own son.”
“And that’s why you took his Mannlicher-Carcano.”
“He liked the Oswald story—about how Oswald had come here. He didn’t remember him, probably wasn’t around when Oswald came to see Blake. But he bought the rifle after the assassination as sort of a souvenir. He used to practice with it out there on the slope. Shows the kind of person he was.”
“So you decided to use the same kind of rifle another assassin had used.”
“It seemed to fit,” she said.
I closed my eyes for a second, wishing I’d wake up. When I opened them, she was still talking.
“It took me months to get up the nerve, would you believe that? Months for it to eat me until I couldn’t stand it anymore. They even busted the dope ring in the meantime, but Doug’s friend never talked. He figured his part of the money would be waiting for him when he got out. Funny …” She gave me an ironic little smile. “If he’d only turned Doug in, I couldn’t have done what I did and Doug would still be alive.”
“You could have turned Doug in,” I said.
“He’d have been out in ten years,” she said. “And my son would still be dead.” She turned away from me so I couldn’t see her face. “So I made up a story about a break-in at the house, so Doug would think they were after the dope. Then I stashed the rifle out at the cabin and waited for him to go check on his stash. When he came, I was there. He tried to run. And—”
“Never mind,” I said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Why?” she asked, turning back to face me. “What are you going to do?”
I stared at the woman I might have loved, who had turned out to be a murderess, but whose act of murder had really been an act of justice.
“I’m going to go home and take a bath and get on with my life,” I said.
“And what I just told you?”
“You didn’t tell me anything.” I touched her face and then let my hand drop.
“And us?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe I’d have done what you did, under the circumstances. I don’t know.”
“So?”
“I didn’t. Let’s let it go at that.”
“Alan …”
I gave her a peck on the lips and walked out of the house.
EPILOGUE
It was a Friday evening two weeks later. I’d come in from work tired, after struggling through a management summary of the work we’d just completed on the dam project. The report had been faxed to Bertha at two o’clock, but I felt sure she’d knocked off early and would whine on Monday that it hadn’t reached her when it should.
I’d gotten a short letter from Pepper meanwhile, telling me they’d headed back into the rain forest to try to finish the excavation before the rains interrupted. Naturally, she’d be out of contact during that time. During the rains they’d retire to the lab in Chetumal for artifact analysis. Maybe I’d see her in August, unless I flew down sooner.
The problem was that I had a business to run and reports to write. Bertha had intimated that there were a few other delivery orders on the horizon, and if I worked at it, maybe we’d survive.
I’d settled into the living room with a pizza to watch a ball game. The Astros were beating the Braves black-and-blue, and I was starting to feel sorry for the Atlanta team, something I seldom did.
I hadn’t seen or heard from Cyn since that night, and it had been a tough couple of weeks. I kept telling myself I was guilty of misprision of felony—knowing about Cyn’s crime and not reporting it. But the fact of being a lawbreaker just didn’t sink in. She’d fought to avenge her son, and if that meant the killing of a man like Doug Devlin, I wasn’t going to be her judge.
I’d just watched the ’Stros catch Walt Weiss off first with a throw from the catcher and I was telling myself old-time baseball wasn’t dead yet when I heard the door chimes.
Who now? The weekly poker game wasn’t until tomorrow night, when I’d cook up a big pot of jambalaya for those who attended. Right now I wasn’t expecting anyone.
Digger bounded forward and then started barking his happy bark at the door.
I pulled the door open and went weak.
“Hi,” Pepper said. “You got a place I can stash my bags?”
I stepped back, speechless.
“But I thought …”
“Yeah, well, we finished early, and I told Eric if he wanted me back next season, he’d have to let me go right now.”
She grinned and rushed into my arms, and I pulled her to me, lifting her off her feet and spinning her around.
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Jesus, you look go
od,” I said, feasting on the tanned legs, the straw-gold hair. “I missed you so much.”
“Me, too.”
I grabbed her hand and started for the stairway that led up to my bedroom, but she nodded at the door.
“Don’t you want to close the door? And get my things in?”
“I’d rather get your things off,” I said, starting to tug off her huipil blouse.
She kicked the door shut.
“I don’t guess anybody will steal my valise.”
“God,” she said, after we’d kissed for an endless minute, “I missed you so much. When I thought of you sitting here, just waiting, nothing happening, while I was down there, I felt so guilty.”
“And you’ll pay,” I said.
“Gladly,” she said, dropping her blouse on the sofa. “But can’t we at least put Digger out?”
I looked down at his expectant face.
“Come on, boy,” I told him. “Tonight you get pizza. But I get caviar.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The story presented in these pages is fiction. It is based, however, on local lore. Six reputable persons in and around the town of Clinton, Louisiana, have maintained for over thirty years that Lee Harvey Oswald appeared in Clinton late in the summer of 1963, looking for work at nearby Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson. One witness swore that Oswald arrived in a car driven by a man resembling Clay Shaw, who was later tried and acquitted of complicity in the Kennedy assassination. Another testified that he saw Oswald and Shaw together with David Ferrie, another alleged conspirator. Two employees of Louisiana State Hospital testified at the Shaw trial that Oswald had filled out an application for work. The application has never been found.
In the opinion of the author, the evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, shot and killed President John F. Kennedy is compelling. The possible appearance of Oswald in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, in the summer of 1963 remains a historical enigma.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author owes a great deal to several people. Chiefly, he is grateful to his editor, Jennifer Sawyer Fisher; to her assistant, Clare Hutton; and to the entire staff at Avon Books. He is also appreciative of the efforts of his agent, Peter Rubie, and of the continuing support of his wife, Margaret.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Malcolm K. Shuman
Cover design by Michel Vrana
ISBN: 978-1-4976-5027-5
This 2014 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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THE ALAN GRAHAM MYSTERIES
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