by Blake Banner
He nodded and climbed out, shouldering the assault rifle and slipping the Sig into his belt.
“Front and back?”
I nodded. “You take the back. I’m going to knock on the door.”
He slipped up the steps to the back veranda and I walked around the side to the front of the house. I peered through the glass in the door, but all I could see was a couple of lamps casting a dull glow on the sofa and the chairs. I could make out part of the dining table, and there was light coming out of the bedroom door. I hammered a few times with my fist and saw a shadow move inside. I hammered again and the shadow resolved itself into a silhouette, moving steadily toward me; a silhouette I knew very well.
Simone.
Twenty FOUR
She stood frowning at me. “Lacklan? Your face… What happened to you? What on Earth are you doing here?”
I raised my voice over the wind and the roar of the downpour. “I went to your house. You weren’t there.” We stood a moment staring at each other. “What are you doing here?”
She hesitated. Behind her, I saw the back door open and Bat slip in. She caught my glance and I raised my voice again. “You going to keep me out here all night in the storm? Can I come in?”
She looked distressed. “This is a really bad time…”
I laughed. “Really? This is a bad time? What? Are you with someone?”
She shook her head. “Why did you come here?”
“Let me in.”
She turned and walked away. Bat had disappeared. I stepped in and pushed the door closed behind me, shutting out the roar of the gale and the rain.
“What’s going on, Simone?”
“This doesn’t concern you.”
“What?”
She turned to face me again.
“Are you out of your mind? It doesn’t concern me?”
She raised her hands and shut her eyes. Her face was tight, drawn with stress. “Shut up, Lacklan. Shut up. I know your friend is accused of Sarah’s murder. And I am sorry about that. And I am sorry that you and I have become close. I didn’t mean that to happen, but this, this, what is happening here, now, tonight. This has nothing to do with you, and you should go.”
“What? What is going on here tonight, Simone?”
“Go away, Lacklan.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You don’t understand!”
“Then explain it to me.”
She shook her head.
“Where is Carmichael?”
“Go away!”
“Where is he?”
She reached behind her back and suddenly, she had a .22 in her hand. It wasn’t a surprise. I had expected it.
“You’ll try to stop me. I won’t let you stop me.”
“Do you know how many people have died tonight, Simone?”
“Don’t! I’m not interested. I don’t care.”
I stepped toward her and she backed up a step. “I don’t believe you. You’re a doctor, a healer of minds and souls. That’s why Sarah loved you.”
“Stop it!”
I shook my head. “Too many people have died already. It has to stop.”
She took another step back and gripped the gun with both hands. She was trembling badly. I pressed on.
“James didn’t deserve to die.”
“He pulled a gun on me. He tried to stop me.”
I took another step closer. “From doing what?”
“Stop it!” Her eyes were wild and I knew she was close to pulling the trigger. Another step and she might snap. We stood our ground.
I spoke softly. “You know I am never going to back down, Simone. We have a good thing. I am on your side. Just tell me what is going on, and where you have Carmichael.”
She swallowed. I could see her jaw muscles bunching. “If you try to stop me, I swear I will kill you and him both. He has to pay, Lacklan. He has to pay.”
I frowned. Over her shoulder, I could see Bat signaling to me and pointing at the bedroom. I took a deep breath and sighed.
“Simone, Bat is here with me.”
She swung around, pointing the gun at him and at me, and backed toward the bedroom.
“Stay away from me.”
Bat said, “All right, Simone?” Like he was greeting her at the pub on a Friday night.
I said, “I’ll tell you what we are going to do. We’re going to sit there at the table and have a drink. And you can explain to us what this is all about, and what it is that Carmichael has to pay for, OK?”
While I was speaking, I walked toward the dining table and pulled out a chair. Bat did the same, signaling me with his eyes to look at the bedroom. Simone was moving to the bedroom door, still holding the gun on us with both hands, saying, “No! No!”
But it was too late. I had seen him. Like a grotesque parody of Sarah’s painting of Simone, Carmichael was on the bed, stretched out, with each ankle and each wrist bound tightly to a post, and a gag in his mouth. I narrowed my eyes and shook my head.
“What are you doing? This isn’t you.”
Her scream was shrill, a strange echo of the gale outside. “He has to pay!”
“For what?”
“For what he did to Sarah!”
“What did he do to Sarah, Simone? Tell me so that I can understand.”
“Don’t fucking patronize me! I do that for a living, remember?”
I ignored the outburst and repeated the question. “What did he do to Sarah?”
Her rage was turning to grief and tears were starting to spill from her eyes. “He killed her. He killed her…”
I shook my head. “No, he didn’t.”
The rage returned with a flash to her eyes. “He killed her!”
“That is not what happened that night.” She stared at me, breathing heavily, but she didn’t answer. I pressed her. “That’s not what happened that night, Simone, is it?”
“You don’t know.”
“He was dining at the restaurant. He was seen by lots of people.”
“He killed her.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“It’s none of your goddamn business.”
“She was shot in that bed, wasn’t she?”
“I didn’t know…”
“Is that why you brought him here, so that he would die in the same place, in the same way that she did?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know that she had been killed here?” I stood and walked toward her.
She waved the gun at me. “Get back! Sit down!”
But the moment had passed. Her resolve was shaken. I shook my head. “I am not a threat to you, and you are not a killer.”
I took hold of the gun and gently levered it out of her fingers. Her face crumpled. She stared at me with horror in her eyes. “No… No, Lacklan! He has to pay…”
I held her in my arms. Bat got up, came around, and took the .22 from my hand. She sobbed into my chest for a while. Then I maneuvered her to the table and sat her down. “Tell me what happened, Simone.”
Her face was sodden and twisted with grief. “He killed her. He has to pay, Lacklan. You can’t. You can’t take this away from me.”
“Quit saying that. You know it’s not true.”
“It is!”
The pain and the exhaustion overwhelmed me for a moment and I snapped. “She was shot in that bed, Simone! He wasn’t here!”
She glared at me and half-screamed, “And neither was I!”
Her meaning became clear. I glanced at Bat and he read my mind. He went into the bedroom and Simone started to get to her feet. “What are you doing?” I stood and took hold of her. She struggled. “Don’t you let him go! Don’t you let him go!”
“I’m not! I’m not! Simone! Settle down, goddamit!”
We both stared into the bedroom as Bat approached the bed, leaned down, and removed the gag. It was like blowing a dam.
“You stupid, fucking bitch! You’ll pay for this. I swear you�
�ll pay for this!”
I got up and went to stand in the doorway, looking down at him, helpless on the bed. The windows rattled and rain lashed the glass.
“Lacklan, for God’s sake, man, cut me loose! This woman is crazy! She was going to kill me!”
I nodded. “I know.”
He stared at me, aghast. “You’re not with her, Lacklan! For God’s sake, tell me you’re not with her!”
“I’m not with anyone, Carmichael. Right now, I am exhausted, in pain, and badly in need of a cigarette and a drink. You people are driving me crazy.”
“Lacklan!”
“Don’t worry, nobody is going to kill you, at least not yet.” I turned to look at Simone. She was still at the table, with her head in her hands. I gestured to her to come, and as she approached, I pointed at the chair near the foot of the bed. “Sit. And if you move, I will shoot you in the leg. Believe me, I don’t hesitate. I just do it.”
She looked disgusted and went to sit down. I pulled my cigarettes from my pocket and lit up. I inhaled deeply and let the smoke out slow through my nose, watching Carmichael watching me from the bed.
“Cut me loose, Lacklan, for crying out loud.”
I nodded. “But you see, there are things that confuse me. You were going to call Grumman and Ivory to be at the Full Moon, so we could record them and ambush them…”
He was suddenly shouting again, “And I would have been there if this crazy bitch hadn’t…”
“Can it, Carmichael. We’ll come to that. Just listen.” I took another drag. “You called Grumman and Ivory, but only Ivory turns up, with seven of his men. Grumman never shows. Why was that?”
“I don’t know! How should I know? Maybe he spoke to Ivory and Ivory said he’d take care of it.”
I smiled. “Ivory thought you were crazy to suspect Grumman. And so did Hirschfield.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Here’s something else that surprised me. Grumman didn’t show up, but Jackson did, at your house. He came along with two uniforms. Two uniforms he later murdered in cold blood.”
“I don’t know what you’re driving at, Lacklan. Just cut me loose, will you?”
“What am I driving at? Why did you lie about Grumman being involved in a conspiracy to kill you? Why did Jackson, who did try to kill me, turn up at your house to pick you up? I keep asking myself, if Simone hadn’t come and dragged you off for a special evening of bondage and murder at Chez Sarah, what would have happened to me, when you and Jackson and Ivory all got me alone at the Full Moon?”
“No, you’re wrong. I had no idea about any of that! I am victim here, Lacklan! My wife was murdered, and now this bitch wants to kill me, too!”
I smoked for a bit, watching him on the bed. None of it was conclusive. My brain was tired and I knew I was missing things, but the pain in my limbs, my shoulder, and my face kept threatening to overwhelm me.
“Here’s something else that confuses me. The blood.”
“What blood?”
“When I saw the bed, the bed where Sarah was supposed to have been killed...” I shook my head. “I have shot a lot of men, Carmichael, and I have seen a lot of men shot, but I have never seen as much blood as I saw on that bed that day, not from a bullet wound to the gut. I kept wondering about that. So I requested a sample of the blood to be handed over to my attorney. But to be on the safe side, I took a sample myself, personally. And I took them over to Houston to have them analyzed privately in a lab.”
He had gone very still. So had Simone.
After a moment, he said, “Analyzed for what?”
“To see whose blood it was.”
“It was hers, of course! Who else?”
I shook my head. “Here is the confusing thing, Carmichael. The sample that was sent to me by the DA, via Detective Jackson, was somebody’s blood. But the blood I collected from the bed…” I watched his face carefully. I gave a small shrug. “Hazard a guess.”
“You can’t play games with this! This is my wife’s murder you’re talking about!”
“It was pig’s blood, Carmichael. Pig’s blood!”
Simone screamed. I turned to look at her. She had her hands over her mouth and her eyes were wide. She was shaking her head and whispering, “No… Oh God… Why?”
Carmichael’s face was screwed up and he had tears streaming down his cheeks. He was also shaking his head and sobbing, “This is grotesque. Please let me go. This is inhuman. Poor Sarah! Why? Why…?”
I watched him a while. Bat was frowning at me and I knew he didn’t approve of what I was doing. I ignored him and went on. “Then I remembered something James had said to me. On the night that Sarah was killed, he heard a pig squealing like it was being murdered, those were his words, down by the corrals at the back of your house. ’Round about eleven o’clock.”
I pointed at the bed where he was lying. “She was shot by Ivory right there, where you are lying, and that is where she bled out. Then he loaded her into a vehicle and took her to your house, where he placed her in your bed. Then, to make it seem she was murdered there, he went and slaughtered a pig, collected the blood in a bucket and soaked the bed with it. He knew the blood would never be tested, because the investigation would be in the hands of his friend, Detective Jackson, and the weapon would be found with Bartholomew Hays’ prints all over it. It would be a slam dunk.” I frowned and shook my head. “But what confuses me, is, why? Why would he do that? Why would he go to all that trouble, and risk getting caught at your house? How did he know you would be out? And, if he had gone to all the trouble of getting Bat’s prints days before, why did he kill her here? Why didn’t he just kill her at the house?”
Carmichael had started sobbing like a child and he wouldn’t stop, but Simone had gone very still and very quiet.
Carmichael opened his eyes. He was staring around the room like he was looking for a solution. “I don’t know what you want from me. I loved Sarah more than anything in the world. I am heartbroken, and all you can do is torture me and humiliate me with these insane innuendos. What are you driving at? What are you insinuating?” He lifted his head to look at me. “Why don’t you come out and say it?” His head flopped back. “Because you have nothing but theories, and your mind has been poisoned by this madwoman.”
Simone spoke suddenly and her voice was like poison become sound. “You killed her, you filthy piece of shit. If you didn’t do it with your own hands, you had that bastard Ivory do it.”
He stared at her in despair. “Why? Why would I do that? I loved her? Where would I find another woman like her?”
“Lies! She Told me! She told me herself that she was through with you and couldn’t stand you anymore!”
“In your fantasies, you sick bitch!”
“She was fucking every man she could get her hands on!”
“No! No! No!”
He turned to me and his face was desperate. “Lacklan, you have to believe me! We had our difficulties. I was older than her and we had different likes and tastes. It was normal. But we loved each other and we were determined to fix it. We were working together. She was coming back to me.”
I sighed. “She had changed her will, Carmichael. She had left everything to Simone.”
“That’s a lie! Lacklan, this woman is poisonous! There is nothing she will not stoop to. She forged Sarah’s signature! She’s an artist! Who do you think taught Sarah to paint? All to lure her away from me! Half of these painting on the walls are not Sarah’s, but hers! Especially that disgusting nude! Sarah would never paint anything as base as that!”
I turned to Simone and raised an eyebrow at her. She glanced at me and said, “Bullshit!”
I sighed again and rubbed my face with my hands. “I am tired. We are not going to sort this out tonight. Bat, I say we cut Carmichael free. But we tie them both to their chairs so they can’t kill each other. We have something to eat and sit out the storm. Four hour watches. What do you say?”
He nodded. “There’s
a lot of intel to process here, sir, and I’m shagged. I think we should have Hirschfield look it over an’ all.”
“Agreed.”
Simone was looking at me with narrowed eyes. “You are going to tie me to a chair?”
“And if you resist, I will give you a damn good spanking and throw you in the bayou. Don’t try me, sister, I am in no mood! Bat, we need some rope…”
He looked embarrassed for a moment, then went to the chest of drawers. He pulled open the top drawer and extracted two sets of handcuffs. He looked at me and shrugged.
We cuffed Carmichael and Simone each to a heavy, wicker chair, Bat went to cook some food, and I poured myself a large whiskey.
Then we all settled down to sit out the storm.
Twenty FIVE
I slept fitfully, and my dreams were plagued with the sounds of howling and screaming, which eventually descended into deep groans of pain. Every ten or fifteen minutes, the aches and throbs in my body would wake me. I would try to adjust to a more comfortable position, but it was impossible, because everything hurt. The battering of the wind was relentless and instead of dying down, if anything, it was getting worse. The timbers in the house were creaking like an old ship on the high seas.
In the end, I lay on the floor and watched the room, hoping that sooner or later exhaustion would win over pain. I noticed Carmichael, eyes closed, snoring softly in his chair, oblivious to the storm. I guessed maybe that was the story of his life. Bat Hays, solid and dependable as the Rock of Gibraltar, wide awake on the sofa with the HK416 across his legs. It was good to have him there.
And Simone, also awake, watching me as though she were in a trance, with no expression on her face at all, no clue to her thoughts or feelings. I looked at my watch. It was two AM. The wind gusted, rattling the doors and windows, lashing rain against the glass. The house creaked and groaned.
I saw Bat cock his head on one side, frown, and get to his feet. He put out the lights and stepped silently to the window. He hunkered down, moved the drapes half an inch, and peered out through the corner. I sat up and he said, “We have company, Captain. Now, who’d be out on a night like this?”
