He found him halfway across the dreary, desolate field, most of its headstones broken or abandoned, pushed over, names worn off by time and neglect. Gerritson was slumped down, leaning against the eagle column, a huge bubbling stain of blood spreading out across his shirt. A lung shot. Given time it would kill him but for the time being he was still alive. Ray dropped down beside him, wiping the rain out of his eyes.
‘Where’s the girl?’
‘You must have seen her.’ Gerritson coughed and blood flooded out of his mouth and nose. ‘Hawaiian Sunset.’
‘Not her. The little girl. Zinnia Brant.’
‘Why—’ he stopped and choked and coughed again, ‘should I tell you?’
‘Because if you don’t I’m going to call an ambulance and get you sent to Parkland, where they’re going to fix you up and get you to stand trial, and then by Christ they’ll put you in Huntsville for a hundred lifetimes. Not that you’d last a week before the inmates did to you what you’ve been doing to their sisters and their daughters.’
‘And if I do tell you?’
‘I’ll put a gun in your ear and pull the trigger and that’ll be the end of your sorry fucking life but at least it will be quick.’
Gerritson coughed more blood. ‘The house,’ he said finally. ‘She’s at the house.’
‘Your wife’s house?’
‘There is no wife.’ He coughed more blood, dark red clots from deep in his lungs. The single shot must have taken him side on and gone through both the organs, maybe even nicked the heart. ‘I found that picture in an album I picked up somewhere. Makes me look more… real.’
‘Is the girl alive?’
‘Yes. Hadn’t started on her yet.’
‘Lucky for you.’
Ray put out his gun hand onto the grey, dirt-mottled column and started to lift himself up.
Gerritson suddenly looked terribly frightened. ‘What are you doing? I told you where to find the girl. You promised me.”
Ray boosted himself upright and stood over Gerritson, looking down. ‘I lied, Charming Billy. I lied.’
‘Bastard!’ With a flourish, Gerritson dug under his bloody, rain-wet shirt and pulled out a long, thin knife that was actually a ground-down jigsaw blade used for slitting uncut pages in finished books, one end of the razor-sharp tool covered with a wrapped leather pad. Gerritson swung the blade, aiming for Ray’s upper thigh, but, exhausted as he was, Ray managed to lift his shoe and kick the blade away. It arced into the air and disappeared into the undergrowth on the other side of the eagle column.
Ray lifted the automatic and drew a wavering aim on Gerritson’s head, then lowered the gun again. He turned and walked away, wiping the rain and the tears from his eyes, paying no attention to the blood leaking down his wrist and hand or the feeling of terrible dread that filled his chest. He heard Charming Billy’s voice calling out to him weakly as he headed back to the street.
‘You’ve got to keep your promise. I can tell you something. I didn’t kill J. P. It wasn’t me but I know who did it!’
‘So do I,’ said Ray softly and kept on walking.
* * *
Ray called Jimmy Leavelle at home and got him to make the call to headquarters. An ambulance and a squad car were dispatched to pick up what was left of William Cooper, also known as William Gerritson, and a few people from the Crime Scene Search Section, including a photographer, were sent to go over the basement of the Commutator warehouse. He also asked Leavelle and a squad car to meet him at the address Betty Finch had given him for the mythical Mrs William Gerritson and to bring along an ambulance there as well.
The house turned out to be a perfectly ordinary bungalow on a perfectly ordinary street in Oak Cliff. It took Leavelle and two uniformed officers almost an hour to find the secret soundproofed room in the basement, hidden behind a false wall of stored books. Zinnia Brant was naked, tied to the four corners of a makeshift bed and gagged. She had urinated and defecated in the bed more than once and was both dehydrated and in shock.
The ambulance attendants cleaned her up as best they could, gave her a small dose of Demerol and transported her to hospital. At this point, with the vinyl on the Chevy’s seat between his legs covered in blood from his wound, Ray Duval finally passed out. Leavelle called for a third ambulance and Ray was transported to Parkland Hospital, where he was given first aid and three pints of blood.
Doc Rose came up to tell him that the shot from Ray’s big automatic had pierced Cooper’s left lung, nicked the heart in passing and then blown out through the other lung. By the time the ambulance boys reached him he was just another dead boy in the Old City Cemetery. Rose made a joke about digging a hole and just dumping him into it but Ray wasn’t in the mood for humour. He also wasn’t in the mood for Rose’s suggestion to keep him overnight for observation. Ray told him that being under observation by the county medical examiner was too much like being under observation by the Grim Reaper himself. He asked Leavelle to accompany him on one last errand. Then he’d go home to bed.
Leavelle agreed and they left the hospital. They walked to the parking lot, Ray going slowly, Leavelle supporting him at one elbow. ‘Sure you want to do this, Ray?’
‘Don’t do it now it’ll never get done. Strike while the iron is hot and all that stuff.’
‘All right, Ray. You’re the boss.’
‘Even if I only found a murderer who killed poverty-stricken little girls?’
‘Now don’t go on like that, Ray. Not everyone in a white Stetson is part of the Klan, you know. And anyway, Ray, I hear from the Crime Scene boys this guy killed babies, ripped them out of women’s bodies. Black or white, something like that matters.’
‘Two bucks says it doesn’t make page ten. Five bucks says it doesn’t make the paper at all.’
They walked along to Leavelle’s unmarked car. As they reached it Ray stopped, his hand on the handle of the passenger-side door. ‘Question for you, Jimmy.’
‘Sure.’
‘What the hell’s a commutator?’
‘You got me, Ray.’
They climbed into the car, slid back onto the freeway and headed north.
* * *
‘I’m not sure what your point is, Detective Duval.’
It was Sunday and Dick Schwager, dressed in his loose dark trousers and a striped silk shirt open almost to the waist and wearing his blond cancer wig, was dusting in his apartment. Leavelle was waiting in the parking lot.
‘The point is William Gerritson, or more properly Koop, or William Cooper, said that he didn’t kill Jennings Price but that he knew who did.’
‘You also told me that he was the child murderer you’ve been looking for, correct?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So why believe him?’ Schwager slapped the bouquet extra hard with his duster.
‘I didn’t have to. I already knew.’
‘Really? Is this like some Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot novel where all is revealed by the detective to a roomful of enthralled suspects?’
‘I’m no Hercule Poirot and you and I are the only ones in the room, Dick.’
‘You’re accusing me?’
‘That’s right. You killed him right here in this room, just after Futrelle left and you arrived. He was waiting for you, telling you that he wasn’t going to put up with the blackmail any more. You hit him, probably with something heavy, and then you got the bright idea of chopping him up and making it look like old Koop was back in town, which of course he was, and you knew it.’
‘Sounds very circumstantial, Detective.’
‘How many of these carpets do I have to kick aside before I find dried blood you couldn’t quite scrub up? Or take some of that blue paint off the walls to find the blood spatters. I smelled fresh paint when I was here before but I didn’t make the connection. Beginning to sound like real evidence?’
‘Go on,’ said Schwager.
‘How long will it take me to find out where you bought the plastic to wrap up the pi
eces or the paint or the piano wire? It might take a little time but I’d put it together and you’ll go to jail.’
‘Seems rather pointless. I’ll be dead in a few months anyway. I wouldn’t live to see my judge and jury.’
‘I won’t last that long myself. Heart. Probably not as long as you.’
‘We certainly make a pair, don’t we? The dying murderer at the hands of the dying detective.’ He paused. ‘So why our little confrontation?’
‘I want to know why. Simple curiosity.’
‘Is that all?’
‘I want to know that I’ve tied up all the loose ends before I go.’
‘Perhaps that’s why I did it, because J. P. was a loose end in my life as well.’ Schwager gave a long sigh and sat down in a chrome-and-leather chair close to his glass wall of antiquarian objects. Ray dropped down into a chair across from him.
‘I suppose it started when we were very young,’ said Schwager. ‘I knew J. P. in Atlanta, we both came here during the summers to make a little money.’
‘That’s when you met Cooper?’
‘Yes. Love at first sight, of course, but he never even looked at me sideways. It was crushing.’
‘But you helped with killing his uncle, the bookseller?’
‘Yes. I didn’t think it was necessary to kill him, I thought we could just sneak in and knock him out or something, but Cooper was the leader. He was always the leader and I would have done anything for him then. He made me put the pillow over the old man’s face while he and J. P. held him down.’
‘And then you met again during the war?’
‘Bad luck, fate, karma, call it what you will. The whole thing replayed like a fucking record. It was like I was a puppet on a wire. When J. P. came back with Koop that day, started calling us the Triumvirate, I should have just fled, run away forever.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘No.’
‘This has to do with the Bible salesman, doesn’t it?’
‘You know about him?’
‘I talked to a man named Jan van Plaut.’
‘Jannie! He was at the reunion a few years back. I wore a blond wig and everyone was utterly dumbfounded.’
‘The Bible salesman,’ Ray reminded. The painkillers they’d given him at the hospital were working to dull the pain in his hand but he could feel the steadily growing pain in his chest again. He tried to ignore it.
‘Koop had met a man. A German named Grosskurth, Christian Grosskurth. He had all sorts of things to offer, including a Schrifft Bible and Cavalieri’s Portraits of the Roman Pontiffs.’
‘He went to the meeting and someone tried to kill him.’
‘Not so simple.’
‘Explain.’
‘J. P. and I beat him to the punch. We had dozens of things to trade with Grosskurth. Portable things, jewellery, mostly.’
‘You double-crossed Koop?’
‘Yes. And asked Grosskurth to get rid of him for us. Paid him extra.’
‘That’s where he got the burn and all the rest of it?’
‘Yes. They beat him half to death and then set him on fire. I don’t know how but he managed to escape and killed Grosskurth in the process. I have a sneaking suspicion he left his own dog tags on Grosskurth. Then he disappeared.’
‘Did you know about the dog tags at the time?’
‘Just a guess.’
‘But he came back. To Dallas.’
‘Yes. A few months ago. I recognised him and so did J. P. At first we didn’t know what to do. Koop knew everything about us, all the forging work, the smuggling of artwork out of Europe after the war. He could have brought all of us down. He told us that was exactly what he was going to do but that he wanted to see us squirm a little first. He even said he had evidence.’
‘Such as?’
‘Records that the Schrifft Bible belonged to the Quedlinburg collection. Records that J. P. had sold it for a huge profit after he smuggled it back to the United States. Even records of previous dealings he’d had with Grosskurth.’
‘So you decided to kill him?’
‘That was J. P.’s idea. I refused. It was too precipitous. We didn’t really know what Koop had come back for, don’t you see? It seemed as though he was going to blackmail us but we couldn’t be sure.’ He shook his head, then ran both hands through his thinning hair. ‘J. P. even went to Army Records to see if they had any background. They came up empty. According to them he had died in the ruins of the Nollendorfplatz Theater in Berlin. Death by misadventure. Graves Registration has him interred in Invalidenfriedhof Cemetery in Berlin.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We argued. He insisted. Killing Koop was the only way.’
‘So you hit him.’
‘I didn’t mean to kill him.’
‘But you did cut him up to make it look like Koop had done it. Or at least some psycho.’
‘And to let Koop know that it might have been him. I even used an engraving tool I stole from his shop.’
‘You thought you could scare a man like that?’
‘I thought he might leave. If he was coming here to get his revenge on J. P. somehow.’
‘And what if he wanted his revenge on you?’
‘He knew I was a follower, not a leader. He knew I had cancer as well. There wouldn’t have been any point. He would have left me alone. Even though I knew most of his dirty little secrets.’
‘How did you know?’
‘I made it my business. Followed him. Saw him in the ruins, buying chocolate bars for little girls. Then taking them away. The same girls who showed up in the MP’s incident reports a few days later. Butchered, just like the children up north before the war.’
‘You made the connection?’
‘Just because I’m gay, Detective, doesn’t mean I’m stupid. After a while it all started to fit together. The police were getting too close so he joined the army and disappeared. He wasn’t the only one, believe me.’
‘Did you ever confront him?’
‘I made sure he knew. Dropped a few hints. I wasn’t in a position to throw stones, Detective. I had my secrets too and Koop knew it. Being homosexual in the army is a crime. They send you to Leavenworth.’ He smiled weakly. ‘Kansas has never been my favourite place.’
‘So it was a stand-off?’
‘I guess you could call it that.’
‘One more thing,’ said Ray.
‘Of course.’
‘Killing Price is one thing, maybe cutting him up, but what about the rest? Wiring him together, getting him into the refrigerator, all of that?’
‘I had help, obviously.’
‘Who?’
‘Not telling.’
‘I’ll find out eventually.’
‘You won’t live that long, Detective, and neither will I. Let’s just say it was someone who had a vested interest. Someone who’d go to jail if he was ever exposed as J. P.’s accomplice in crime.’
Errol Timmins.
‘I didn’t think the little bastard had it in him.’
‘You’d be surprised at the depth of the young man’s talents,’ said Schwager. He grinned, his face turning into a death mask topped by the ridiculous wig. ‘But you didn’t hear it from me.’
‘He’s an accessory.
‘I didn’t give him much choice. Leave him alone, Detective. He’s harmless.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’ Ray asked. He levered himself up from the chair, the pain in his chest increasing. He felt an overwhelming sense of fatigue and something close to despair. He’d managed to save little Zinnia but how many had gone unsaved before her? How many like Luci Edmonds had there been over the years?
‘I suppose that depends on what you’re going to do, Detective.’
‘Nothing. William Cooper is dead. Jennings Price was punished for his crimes and you’ll be punished for yours, sooner or later.’ He shook his head. ‘Five days ago I didn’t know anything about this. Tangled lives and deaths, lies and d
eceit. Five days from now it probably won’t matter at all.’
‘No,’ said the man in the silk shirt. ‘It probably won’t. Lost in history. The unfortunate death of President Kennedy has seen to that. Nobody’s ever going to remember any of this or any of the people involved.’
* * *
That evening, lying in bed with Rena, letting her gently rub his back with baby oil, Detective Sergeant Horatio Duval suffered his second heart attack of the day and was taken by ambulance to Dallas Veteran’s Hospital in the southern part of the city.
Monday
November 25, 1963
Chapter Twenty-Seven
By noon the following day the various doctors at Dallas Veteran’s who had attended to Ray pronounced that while still suffering from acute congestive heart failure, the damage done by the two heart attacks – the first at the Commutator warehouse and the second in his own bed – was not serious. They put him on a light diet and a continuous intravenous dose of Diuril, the most effective diuretic available at the time.
At one o’clock, when visiting hours began, Ray and Rena went down to the TV lounge and watched the Kennedy funeral in Washington, D.C. The lounge was filled, mostly with ageing men in bathrobes, a few visitors and several nurses. At least half the people in the large, dingy room were crying and an orderly took it upon himself to walk around the semicircle of TV watchers offering tissues directly from the box.
As the funeral procession reached the gates of Arlington National Cemetery, Ray sat forward in his uncomfortable chair and stared. Just inside the gates there was a thinly treed rise to the right of the roadway with only one or two stones in place.
‘That’s it,’ he whispered to Rena. ‘That’s where I want to be buried.’
‘In Arlington?’
‘I’m a veteran, that’s my right.’
Wisdom of the Bones Page 32
