Cold Cotton: A Hap and Leonard Novella (Hap and Leonard Series)

  “It’s not you that’s the problem,” I said. “Wanted you to know that.”

  “Hell, I know that,” Brett said.

  (14)

  The next day was the day of the discovery of the mass murder. Murders happen in LaBorde and on its outskirts with greater frequency than would be expected. But nothing like this.

  We had just made it to the office. I was standing at the window looking out at the parking lot. Leonard had parked outside and was walking toward the stairs. I watched him saunter. Today he had on his fedora. That and cowboy hats were what he rocked best.

  By the time I heard him coming up the stairs, the office phone rang. I turned and watched Brett pick it up.

  The moment Leonard came in the door, Brett said, “Oh hell. Yeah. We’ll be there.”

  Chief Marvin Hanson wanted us there due to our association with the victims. Pookie was there too. He wasn’t in uniform. Marvin had us all meet at the curb in front of Doctor Cotton’s house.

  We could see the cop cars parked directly in front of the house, but not in the drive leading to the gate. Pookie was standing with Marvin on the short lawn that divided the curb and the big house. From a distance, they looked like a salt and pepper shaker.

  We parked down the street some distance from the house and walked over.

  “So, what exactly?” Brett said, after we had all nodded at one another.

  “You saw them last yesterday?” Hanson asked.

  Brett nodded, started answering Hanson’s questions. They’re the things you expect a cop to ask. None of us believed he thought we did it, but certain questions had to be asked.

  “Can your people tell when this happened?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Hanson said, “but since everyone was in night clothes, they think last night.”

  “Doctor Cotton and a young white woman?” I said.

  “And another woman,” he said. “Mexican. Cuban. Whatever.”

  “Hispanic,” Pookie said.

  “There you go,” Hanson said.

  “The Hispanic lady?” I asked. “Older, younger?”

  “Middle aged, I guess. Certainly not getting any older.”

  “Probably Linda,” Pookie said. Like us, he hadn’t seen inside, and because he had been helping us part time, he was not at this point allowed to be part of the case, lest there was some great conspiracy between him and us.

  “I’m going to need you folks to put on some footies and a paper suit and come with me,” Marvin said. “Since you knew them a little, I need some identification.”

  (15)

  The paper suit was blue, which brought out Pookie’s eyes. The suits rustled when we moved, and the footies made crunchy sounds as we walked.

  We went through the open gate and just inside the gap was a large pile of cut flowers heaped on the driveway, wilting in the heat. They were all manner of colors. There were enough flowers there for an Easter Parade float. A cop was there filming the flowers and moving the camera around to take in other things.

  “What’s the flowers about?” Brett said.

  “No idea,” Marvin said.

  We were led by Marvin to the pool.

  He stopped and stood at the edge and we joined him, looked down. In the pool, strapped with duct tape to a chair, was Doctor Cotton’s nude body. The chair sat on the bottom of the pool and there was blood in the water, and though there was a lot of blood, there was more water. The blood gave the water a thin, crimson sheen you could see through. Doctor Cotton’s hair floated up like seaweed above her head. The blood was spreading slowly. Pieces of flesh had been peeled back from her face and breasts but were still attached; the pieces drifted in the water.

  Taped to another chair, this one turned over, was Linda, fully clothed. Through the thin haze of blood, I could see her eyes. They were open and the whites appeared red. She hadn’t been cut up from what I could tell, maybe a closer look would reveal otherwise.

  “It didn’t happen here,” Brett said. “Not enough blood.”

  “You been reading again, haven’t you?” Hanson said.

  “I’ve seen a thing or two,” she said.

  “Come on,” Hanson said.

  We went in the house, on back to one of the bedrooms. It was neat, even Katherine’s corpse was neat. It lay on the bed with her hands crossed over her chest. She almost looked peaceable, except for the bullet hole in the center of her forehead. Where the bullet had exited the back of her head, the blood had soaked into the pillow, into the sheets and the mattress. There was a lot of it. You could smell it in the air, a kind of coppery smell.

  “Now here’s a surprise I saved,” Hanson said.

  He walked us around to the other side of the bed. A young Hispanic male lay on the floor, face down. He didn’t look as tidy. His leg was bent and his arms were spread. His head was turned to one side and we got a good look at his face. What was left of it. He had been shot with a larger caliber in the back of the head, and the entry had scooped some skull, but the exit wound had knocked a hole in the front of his face about the size of two fists pressed together.

  “Who is this?” Hanson said.

  “Ain’t anyone we know,” Leonard said. “Or if we knew him from somewhere else, we don’t recognize him now ‘cause he hasn’t got much of a face. Right gang?”

  Brett, Pookie, and I nodded.

  “This,” Hanson said, “is what we in police work call a goddamn mystery.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “No,” Hanson said. “I just thought it sounded cool. We already ran his fingerprints. His name is Jaime Cabalas. Ring any bells?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  Pookie raised his hand. “My bell rang. We arrested him and his brother, separate times. The brother for breaking and entering, the younger brother, the fellow you see napping before you, on shop lifting cold medicine. He had a face then. Nice-looking kid.”

  “So, his dear old mother had a cold,” Leonard said.

  “Probably not,” Pookie said. “He stole a case of it out of the back of the store’s warehouse. The case meaning several boxes tapped into one container setting on a fork lift. He also stole the fork lift. Might have got away with it had he driven the fork lift into the back of an enclosed truck, but no, he drove the fork lift down the road. It being a fork lift, and it being about three in the morning, he was thought suspicious right off. The only thing missing was a pirate flag waving off the back of the fork lift.”

  “That happened when?” I asked.

  “Some time back,” Pookie said. “Spent some time in jail, but he paid off the theft, and got out pretty quick, all things considered. He was going to sell the cold medicine to some tweekers to make meth. I guess the fork lift was going to be his around town ride. He’s been a good boy since then.”

  “He’s a really good boy now,” Leonard said.

  “Going to show you another little something,” Hanson said. “I shouldn’t, but hey, if you’re going to get the tour, why not the whole tour. And, you knew Doctor Cotton, and maybe you’ll shake an idea loose if I show you around.”

  “Didn’t know her that well,” I said.

  “Knowing her at all is more than I know,” Hanson said.

  In another room, we saw a large painting had been removed from the wall and leaned against a dresser. There was a place in the wall with a large safe stuffed in it. The huge painting had obviously hid it. The door to the safe was wide open.

  “There was money in it at one point, is going to be my guess,” Hanson said. “I think they tortured the folks here to find the safe, to get inside. It hasn’t been blown, so I think it had to be cracked, or more than likely Doctor Cotton or Katherine gave it up and they took what they wanted, what they had been blackmailing her about.”

  I told Hanson about all that, about the dog picture.

  “Ah, a nice family portrait,” Hanson said.

  “Thing I got to wonder about,” Leonard said, “what’s the Mexican boy doing here, and how did he end u
p dead?”

  “He ended up dead because someone shot him in the face,” Hanson said.

  “Ah,” Leonard said. “Part of the mystery solved.”

  “Someday I think I’ll get tired of you jokesters,” Hanson said.

  “Our personalities remain fresh,” I said.

  “And I have good legs,” Brett said. “And I’m smart.”

  “Yeah,” Hanson said, “but that don’t explain the other two guys or why you hang around with them.”

  “Hap has nice legs,” she said.

  As we came out of the house, I said, “Linda’s daughter works here too. Didn’t see her. I’d find out if she’s home and okay.”

  “I’ll do that,” Pookie said. “I’ll do it now.”

  “You’re not on duty,” Hanson said.

  “I can be, though,” Pookie said.

  “Cameras?” I said. “Anything there.”

  “Another sweet thing, the cameras and the alarms were turned off. So, nada. Come on, let’s stroll.”

  We left the house, and as we neared the front gate, one of the uniforms came over and said to Hanson, “We got a little treat for you, Chief.”

  He walked us over to where the shrubbery was thick and up close to the fence. Between the fence and the shrubbery, off the ground due to being caught up in the shrubbery, was a dead man. Or he was very good at being still and looking dead.

  A closer look.

  Nope. Dead.

  He had a large hole in his chest and his mouth was twisted into what could have passed as an ironic smile.

  “Seems to have been trying to climb over the fence, and someone popped him, fell back here,” said the uniform. “My guess is the shooter, and maybe some compatriots, hoofed it out pretty quick after this, as I don’t think this was a silenced weapon. Lady down the road said she heard some loud pops about four a.m. last night.”

  Hanson said, “Okay, does anyone know him?”

  “Yep,” Pookie said, “That, sir, is Vincent Cabalas, the young faceless Cabalas’ older brother.”

  “I can see the family resemblance,” Hanson said. “They both have a hole in them.”

  (16)

  That night I dreamed the world was full of marching people, marching around the globe in circles, and I was with them, and we marched over the oceans because they were covered in concrete.

  We were in rows, all of us marchers, but we were no more than an elbow length apart. We were marching and we couldn’t stop marching. Space kept getting smaller, filling up, and there were people with whips. Fat people with meat-greasy lips and protruding eyes, very frog like, very satisfied looking, and the rest of us were part of this marching system, and I realized our marching was turning the world, and all of us were making it happen, the world turning for the fat frogs who I guess owned everything, and as we marched, our clothes were rotting off some of us, and there were some men and women marching who were completely nude, and the flesh was falling off many of them, as if their skin was the same as the rotting rags. As I marched, I began to wish for a plague to kill the fat frogs, maybe kill us all, and then I came awake.

  I got up and went to the bathroom and washed my face and sat on the commode with the lid down, sat there and gathered myself. I felt as if I were trying to figure my place in the new world, one where everything that was good seemed to be going backwards, and everything that was bad was moving forward at a high rate of speed, and all the poor people, all those who might have been considered well off some time back, were now not so well off, and were marching for the big, fat frogs. Keeping the machine working. I couldn’t shake the dream, silly as it was, and silly as it was, it made me sad and scared and disappointed, and not sure of what it was I was dreaming about.

  The kind of greed that destroys everything, maybe. The kind of greed that drives people to kill other people, the kind of greed that allows someone to lock themselves behind a wall and think they’re safe, removed from the daily grind, avoiding brushing up against the unwashed masses, and there were those among the unwashed who wanted to be less unwashed, wanted what the big frogs had, and they were willing to do whatever it took to have a piece of that, even murder.

  As I sat there, my legs felt as if they were hurting from all that walking.

  (17)

  Hanson stopped by mine and Brett’s place the next morning about nine. I invited him in and fixed him some buttered toast and a cup of coffee.

  Brett, who had been showering for a late entry into our office, came out of the bathroom dressed in jeans and a loose shirt, barefoot with her damp, hair mounded up under a towel.

  She came over to Hanson’s chair and gave him a hug, then she joined us at the table.

  Hanson sipped coffee, said, “I didn’t want to take Linda’s daughter in, on account of she might be illegal, and with things insane like they are now, I fear she’ll be on a bus to Mexico, compliments of Immigration. You know, she’s been here so long, she doesn’t even speak Spanish. Don’t get me wrong, she had something to do with the crime, I’ll put her behind bars so fast the door will lock before I close it. Otherwise, I might have a witness, or a suspect being shipped across the border, and might not can get them back.”

  “And you’ve come to us why?” I said.

  “I need you and Brett, Leonard if he wants, to go over there and talk to her, obviously not in a police capacity. She knows y’all a little, and she might be more comfortable talking to you. Way her mother, everyone at the house was murdered, Mindy thinks she might be next. She’s scared to death. That’s about all I could get out of her, really.”

  “Maybe she’s scared with good reason,” Brett said. “Seems Doctor Cotton and us thinking the niece was behind it were wrong.”

  “You did warn her to not drop us right away,” I said.

  “Whole thing looks like an inside job, and she’s the only survivor. Got to consider her for it, at least a little. Maybe she had help. Might have been responsible for the threats, building up to blackmail, scaring Cotton, and then she found those pictures, and figured it was time to go for the whole enchilada. Another thing, she might have seen how this would make Katherine look, and that meant Doctor Cotton would decide it was her niece and she didn’t need you guys for protection. That would damn sure make it easy for her and accomplices to get inside and do what they did.”

  “But her own mother?” Brett said.

  “I’ve seen enough to think people are capable of anything,” Hanson said.

  “They seemed close,” Brett said.

  “Still, I got to think scenarios. Find out what you can for me, and that’ll take care of some of the favors you guys owe me.”

  “Fair enough,” Brett said.

  “Here’s another little tidbit. Photo of Doctor Cotton and the canine. It’s on the internet this morning. Dead or not, someone still went after her. Maybe someone posted the photo out of spite. If Doctor Cotton were alive, she’d been selling up and packing out, maybe looking for a job in dog porn. Tell you another thing, whoever tortured Doctor Cotton the way they did, they didn’t do it for money. They did it for fun. First time they cut her face she’d have told them where the safe was, gave them the combination and helped them carry the goods to the car. No one is that tough, not when they’re having their skin ripped off. People did this, I think they got the combination, and after checking it out, taking what was inside, they decided to finish what they started. Maybe Cotton gave them the combo without them laying a hand on her. Could be they just decided to do it because they’re mean. Think that’s why they went ahead and posted the photo. It can’t hurt Cotton now, but it shits on any reputation she might have had. Whoever did this is into slash and burn.”

  “You got Mindy’s address,” Brett said, “soon as we can get out of here, we’ll go over and talk with her.”

  (18)

  We decided to fill Leonard in later, tell him what we found out. We thought it might seem less overbearing for two people to show up instead of three.

  Wh
en we got there, we saw that Pookie was parked down from the house in his own car. He saw us and gave a little wave but didn’t get out. We waved back and went on up to the house.

  Mindy answered. She looked as if someone had ran over her with a truck. She seemed barely able to stand.

  She grabbed Brett and hugged her. “Oh god, she said, it is so horrible, horrible.”

  “I know,” Brett said. “And we’re so sorry.”

  Mindy began to bellow and bawl. It was tough to listen to. It made me sad and sick.

  Brett eased her back into the house and I shut the door and followed them into a modest living room with cheap paintings of Jesus and biblical scenes on the wall. A large cross hung above a small screen TV, and another had been placed above the portal of the doorway we came through.

  After we were in the living room, Mindy sat on the couch, which was covered over with a plastic protection sheet, and Brett sat by her. I sat in a stuffed arm chair across the way. The air smelled clean and sharp with disinfectant and a sheen of lemon deodorizer.

  A few minutes passed with Mindy clutching Brett, and Brett holding her back, saying soothing things to her. Eventually Mindy got control of herself.

  After I let a few more moment pass, I said, “I know it’s horrible to discuss, but why weren’t you there last night, when this happened?”

  “Mom asked me to stay home. She said things were tense at the house, and Doctor Cotton was feeling private. My mom had worked for her so long, the doctor felt comfortable with her. Me, I had just started working there. I was still a bit of an outsider.

  “Did you know of Katherine having a boyfriend?” I asked.

  “She had plenty, but she had a main one,” Mindy said. “I knew that much.”

  “Katherine seemed a little too, shall we say, free-spirited for a boyfriend,” I said.

  “I heard her tell Doctor Cotton her boyfriend didn’t mind what she did with other men, that he liked the idea. That they belonged to some group, Sliders or some such.”

  “Swingers?” Brett said.