Leather Maiden

  But it wasn’t an explanation I was buying.

  I eased around the bed, had to tiptoe to keep from stepping on the prints and smears of prints that were everywhere. I could figure what had happened pretty easy. Whoever had hacked Ernie to death had then grabbed the girl and waltzed her through the bedroom and out the front door, into the van in the driveway. I went into the living room following her bloody prints; they went bloody to the door.

  I went back to the bedroom and flashed the flashlight back on the wall. There was a spot where someone had put their finger in the blood and drawn little V-like shapes, like a series of shots of a blood-red bird rising. It went up from behind the bedstead to near the ceiling. There was writing there too, done in blood with a fingertip. It read: “And the birds of prey, having plucked the bones, had flown, leaving neither flesh nor soul.”

  The crude bird drawing and the verse must have been the bit the chief was holding back. Something he could use to nail the killer later, something only the killer and the police would know. I had a pad and pen in my pocket. As a reporter, I always carried them. I put the light in my teeth and wrote on the pad what I had read off the wall. I drew my impression of the V-winged birds too. I put the pad and pen away and stood there for a while with the flashlight back in my hand, moving it slowly around the room, just looking, unhurried and careful.

  I came back to the birds and the verse. The way they were positioned meant someone had stood on the bed to do it, and that doing it meant something to them.

  I thought about Tabitha again, and followed her tracks back through the door that went into the living room. There were a lot of bloody shoe prints, and I bent down and looked at them. There were two sets. I was sure of it. They were the same kind of shoes, same kind of treads. Tennis shoes most likely. But it was two pairs, no question. One large and one small.

  I went to the front door, flipped the lock and cracked the door easily and looked out at the yellow tape across the door, and then I looked out into the driveway where the van would have been. From the door to the van was about ten feet. I could see faint bloody footprints on the driveway.

  Nothing clever here. They had pulled up in the driveway and come inside and killed Ernie and hijacked Tabitha. Must have worked the door somehow and caught them sleeping, or maybe the couple knew them and let them in.

  But who did it, and why?

  Whatever the reason, I was pretty certain it had something to do with the DVDs, and maybe with me and Jimmy. Maybe it was as simple as them trying to blackmail someone who had the same idea Jimmy had, about killing them. Only it was more than an idea for this guy, and he had wanted to take it out on Ernie, big-time. But why kidnap Tabitha? Did he have other plans for her?

  I locked the front door and watched my footing. I looked around with my flashlight. The computer was smashed and there were clothes thrown about and drawers were dumped and shattered dishes were on the floor. Maybe they wanted it to look like some kind of insane druggies committing a murder, or maybe they really were looking for something, like the computer discs and hard drive I had hidden in my closet ceiling. Maybe Ernie and Tabitha had hidden other copies, stuffed them under dinner plates, inside the couch, anywhere, and the searcher, or searchers, had found them. Or maybe what caused all the blood was that they didn’t find them. No doubt in my mind Tabitha or Ernie would have told them about Jimmy and me, about us taking the DVDs. The thought of that made it feel as if someone had dropped an ice cube down my back.

  I went through the bedroom and got my coat and went out the back window, and closed it. I put the neckerchief in my coat pocket, and went over the fence, across the yard and over the fence on the other side. I started walking back toward my car. I pulled off my gloves and put them in my pockets.

  When I got to the car, I drove out toward San Augustine, a nearby town. I drove on out that way until the woods got thick. A few miles before I came to the town I came across a little red clay road and I took that. I parked alongside the road next to a slough of water, shining silver in the moonlight. I took off my tennis shoes and put on the leather shoes I had brought. I got out of the car and took the tennis shoes and tossed them out into the slough. If the police found my tracks back at the house, printed in some of the blood I might have accidentally stepped in, and if anything led them back to me, I didn’t want to have the shoes in my closet for them to look at. When I got home, I had to remember to clean the gas and brake pedals with paper towels and flush them down the commode, in case any of the blood from my shoes had ended up there. It wasn’t exactly a superhuman effort to elude the police, as I couldn’t imagine them having anything that might lead them to me. But it was something to do, and it was all I knew to do, and it made me feel better to think about doing it.

  I got back in my car, and when I put my hands on the wheel they were trembling. I drove down the road a ways because it was too narrow to turn around, drove with the window down, letting air blow on me, keeping me alert.

  I imagined I could still smell that stink of death from the house. I even paused and pulled over to put some more Vicks up my nose. I drove until I found a narrow drive with a cattle guard. I pulled in there, backed out, got on the road and went back to the highway and drove into town.

  I tried not to do it, but I drove by Gabby’s. I didn’t get the rush I usually got. Sometimes it was an angry rush, sometimes a nostalgic feeling. But tonight what I got was nothing short of a dead sensation, as if all my nerves had died and been hauled off for incineration.

  When I got home, Jimmy’s motorcycle was parked out front and he was sitting on my doorstep under the porch light.

  28

  I opened the car door and was getting out, but before I could, Jimmy was over by the car.

  “While you were out screwing around,” he said, “I been sitting here waiting on you. Do you know how late it is?”

  “You sound like Mom.”

  “Have you seen the news?”

  “Unless you’re upset they’re not going to be filling potholes on Lufkin Street anytime soon, I’m going to surmise you’re here about the murdered kid and the kidnapping.”

  “Smartass.”

  “I left you a message, you know.”

  “You didn’t say about what.”

  I shouldered past him and unlocked the door, and we went inside. I went straight to the refrigerator, got out a bottled coffee for both of us. I wanted whiskey straight, a beer chaser to tamp it down, but I knew better. Besides, I didn’t have a drink in the house. I had purposely tried to make sure it wasn’t handy.

  I brought the coffee over and gave it to him. Jimmy twisted off the top. “Whoever got to those kids, what if they told them about us?”

  “We don’t know they did,” I said.

  “Got to figure, whoever did that to him, they didn’t borrow Tabitha to take to the prom. They’re asking her some questions. They could be coming for us right now.”

  “Chief of police thinks she killed Ernie and is on the lam.”

  “The chief is an idiot,” Jimmy said.

  “That’s what he said…Isn’t Trixie going to miss you this time of morning?”

  “I have learned to be quite the liar.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “This thing, with Ernie and Tabitha. It’s got me chilled to the bone, baby brother.”

  “You were wishing them dead before,” I said, and sat down in my most comfortable chair, twisted the top off my cold coffee and drank.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “I was wishing them dead. And I thought about doing it myself. But I didn’t. They got hit by a truck, something like that, I don’t know I’d feel real bad. They’d be out of the way. This is different. It’s not that they’re dead, it’s that them being dead could somehow connect to us if they talked.”

  “For a minute there I thought you’d got Jesus, but no, you’re still the asshole I thought you were.”

  “I know. I’m a shit. It’s all about me.”

  “Agreed,
” I said. “As for what they might have talked about to whoever did this, my guess is there wasn’t a lot of talking. Least not with Ernie. I visited with the chief of police today, and I went over there and had a look for myself tonight.”

  Jimmy raised his eyebrows. “You went in the murder house?”

  I nodded. “I snuck in when it got dark. I don’t know exactly why, but I did. I looked around, and what happened there was pretty damn brutal. I think Ernie was taken by surprise, in his sleep.”

  “And the cops think Tabitha did it?” Jimmy said.

  “Chief likes her for it, but even he thinks he’s got crummy detecting skills. Right now, a case this big, he’s probably wishing he had a job jacking off sailors. Here’s an oddity among many. In the house, on the wall, in blood, were crude paintings of birds. Or maybe it was supposed to be one bird, different views, rising up toward the ceiling, each one slightly off center of the other.”

  “Birds in blood?”

  “Someone took time to stand on the bed, in the blood, near the hacked-up body, and draw those birds on the wall. It had to be important to them.”

  “Birds don’t make any sense,” Jimmy said.

  “You got me there, but I’m sure that’s what it was.”

  “You think it was a taunt of some kind?”

  “I think whoever did it has some kind of agenda we can’t begin to figure. And there were more than birds. There were words too, and they mentioned birds. The words were written in blood.”

  “What kind of words?”

  I told him.

  “You think it was one person?” Jimmy asked.

  “No.”

  “How many do you think?”

  “My guess is at least two. There were bloody prints and some drag marks. I think whoever did it had a stun gun of some kind. One person stunned the girl while the other hacked the boy. They dragged the girl out the front door. That’s what the prints indicate anyway. Carried her out the front door and put her in a van parked in the drive and drove off.”

  “Surely someone saw the van.”

  “Next-door neighbor. Said it was a dark color and they didn’t think anything about it when they saw it. I don’t think the neighbor got the year or model, and I’m sure he didn’t get a license plate.”

  “They were just lucky.”

  “I think playing poker online isn’t near enough for these folks. They know exactly what they’re doing, and they’re not afraid to do it. They gamble big. They’ve maybe been doing this awhile, or something like it, and they’re getting bolder.”

  Jimmy took in a deep breath of air. “Trixie has been wanting to try out that lake house we bought with Mom and Dad. And she’s off for the summer. I’m finishing up the first summer session tomorrow. I just decided. Supposed to go two days beyond that, but I’m going to end the class early. Give everyone an A on the final, and then I can go.”

  “I want you to get Mom and Dad to go with you. They’ll go easy. Dad has already mentioned it to me. Just don’t tell them why.”

  “Of course not,” Jimmy said. “Do you take me for an idiot…Don’t answer that.”

  “Just take them,” I said.

  “I will,” Jimmy said, “but I advise you to saddle up the old pony and go with us until this shit storm blows over.”

  “I’ll join you in a few days,” I said.

  Jimmy lifted his eyebrows. “A few days? I’m thinking maybe I don’t even need to teach one last class. I’d rather get a reprimand from the division chair, or the dean, than end up cut up like fish bait, and I’m telling you, you ought to go with us. That place is pretty isolated.”

  “I think it’s best someone is on the ground here, paying attention. And I think I’m in a better position to do that than you.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” Jimmy said.

  He stood up, said, “Look, there’s phone service out there, isolated as it is. You need me, call. I can give you directions there.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  “You’re crazy to stick around.”

  “Probably.”

  Jimmy gave me a hug. “Trixie calls, alibi me. Say you had me over to talk about Gabby or something. Sorry to bring it up. But, you know, I got to have some reason.”

  “And why not pick one that makes me feel really shitty, right?”

  “It’s something she would believe.”

  “Does everyone know how nuts I’ve been about Gabby?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. Sometimes me and the grocer talk about it.”

  “That’s funny, Jimmy.”

  “So, I got the alibi?”

  “How and when did I ask you to come over?”

  Jimmy took some time to consider, said, “You didn’t ask. But today, talking to you, I was worried about you, got so worried I got out of bed and came over and we talked. Big brother trying to cheer you up, get you on the right course. Does that work?”

  “Well enough.”

  Jimmy went out and I listened to his motorcycle roar away.

  I went outside and cleaned my gas and brake pedals of blood, went back inside and sat down at my computer and tried to find the words that had been written on the wall in blood. I typed them in and clicked the mouse. The words came up. There was a site for Jerzy Fitzgerald. He had come up before in connection with Caroline. He was a poet and an occasional writer of prose. Mostly Internet poetry, and a lot of it, but he had done a couple of self-published books. He had a strong cult following. Some took him seriously; others looked at him as a kind of Ed Wood figure, bad but totally unaware of it. This Bird Has Flown was one of the books he had published, and one of the poems inside was of the same name, and part of it was what I had seen written on blood on the wall of Ernie and Tabitha’s apartment.

  I had a feeling that this whole thing was part of some bigger picture, and to borrow from one of Jerzy Fitzgerald’s poems a terse fragment: “All of life is framed in fear.”

  29

  At work the next day the office was abuzz, not only with the events of the day before, but with the way I had written my article on the murder and the kidnapping.

  After plenty of compliments, reporters dropping by my desk, everyone but Timpson herself, Oswald came over. He stood by the edge of my desk with his hands in his pockets. He looked like he wanted to reach down my throat and turn me inside out.

  “Nice article on the murder and kidnapping,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I might have taken a slightly different approach.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Is that a smart remark, Cason?”

  “What?”

  “A smart remark. Like, I would have taken a different tack, but it wouldn’t have been any good.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you meant it.”

  “What I meant is no doubt you would have gone after it differently. It is not a smart remark.”

  “I do police reports here and the articles that come from them.”

  “Not this time. You weren’t here, and Timpson assigned me to it.”

  “I had a cold. I would have come in for something like this.”

  “Talk to Timpson.”

  “You could have told her to call me.”

  “I suppose I could have, but that never occurred to me, and that’s not my job description. Call Oswald when a good article pops up and he’s sick. Nope, not on the list.”

  Oswald took his hands out of his pockets. “Watch it, buster.”

  I said, “You have highly overestimated your ability to intimidate, my friend.”

  He glared at me for a moment.

  “Why don’t you go sit down at your desk before I stand up and knock you down and we both lose our jobs,” I said.

  “You couldn’t roll me over if I was dead, Cason.”

  “You don’t want to get me stirred up, Oswald. I don’t mean that to sound like a threat or like I’m trying to be a tough guy, but I kid you not, you fuck with me, and I will
knock you out of your shoes.”

  Oswald considered the possibilities, decided he didn’t care for them much. “Look,” he said, “just call me next time.”

  “I work here just like you. Timpson wants me to do different, and she’s not asking me to set my balls on fire or put a broken Coke bottle up my ass, I’ll do what she asks. Same as you will. I didn’t owe you a call. I don’t need to send you an e-mail or a note tied to a pigeon’s leg. No fucking flowers or a teddy bear wearing an I’M SORRY T-shirt. Got me?”

  “That’s no way to be,” he said.

  “Hey. Aren’t you the one who said not to bend over here because I might find something in my ass?”

  Oswald nodded. “I guess I did.”

  He went back to his desk and took his frustration out on a couple of ballpoint pens that he shoved around, a little notepad too. He twisted a couple of paper clips. That was showing me.

  Belinda came over. When she spoke it was softly. “He’s pretty mad.”

  “I seem to have that effect on people. I presume the rest of the office heard?”

  “Hard not to. Both of you were speaking loudly. I was especially fond of the part about setting your balls on fire and shoving Coke bottles up your ass. Charming.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No apology necessary.”

  I turned around and looked at the other reporters. Most of them had their heads down, pretending they were on a hot deadline. One, a fellow I had actually spoken to only once, and whose name I couldn’t remember, gave me a thumbs-up. I don’t know if it was because he was on my side or thought Oswald was an asshole. I’d settle for either.