Blackbird

  Little by little, I lost my sanity. Sometimes, far from the house, miles from any other rider, I could hear a strong, clear tenor voice softly singing ‘Cielito Lindo’ in the darkness. Other times I saw Kat, made not of flesh and blood but of pale light, floating in the air ahead of me, her eyes burning into mine.

  Rachel got into the habit of meeting me at the back door when I came in at night to hand me a bread and meat sandwich or something rolled into a tortilla, which I usually took a couple of bites of before falling face-down on my bed, unwashed and without even kicking off my boots. I’d wake up in the same position an hour before dawn, fight off the stiffness and head for the door, Rachel there again with food and a bottle of water, probably knowing I’d drink the water but throw the food to the birds, her eyes filled with pain but steady and sober and registering no awareness of how I must have looked and smelled.

  Once she found me trying unsuccessfully to gouge an extra hole in my belt with my pocket knife, my hands shaking and the knife slipping through my fingers. She brought a chocolate bar from the kitchen and made me eat all of it while she watched, waiting a couple of minutes to make sure I wasn’t going to throw it up, then cut three neat new holes in the leather to let me cinch the belt tighter.

  ‘There,’ she said, her voice breaking as she helped me get it on and buckled. ‘Now you’re set.’

  Kat’s mother and father arrived from Shreveport International in a rental car and stayed with us at the farm for a week.

  ‘Katherine writes such nice things about you, James,’ Mrs Dreyfus said, dabbing at the corners of her tired eyes with a tissue.

  In his business voice Mr Dreyfus said, ‘Maybe when we get all this straightened out you can come visit us in Massachusetts, Jim. I know Kat’ll want to show you around.’

  ‘Oh dear God,’ Mrs Dreyfus cried, pressing the tissue to her mouth.

  Eventually deputies started dropping out of the search, riders had to get back to their jobs, Sheriff Fellows said things about the cost of operating the helicopter, and I could feel the world beginning to move on.

  The sheriff’s last press conference was about how the investigation was ongoing and every lead was being pursued, how justice would not rest until the answers were found, how Rains County was still a good and safe place for families to live and raise their children. Everyone understood that he was pronouncing the search a failure. Kat was gone.

  I believed it was over.

  TWELVE

  Looking up from the forensics report, I saw Danny Ridout, wearing stacked Wranglers, Lucchese python boots and a turquoise Navajo shirt, walk into the conference room, drop into the first empty chair and flip his pocket notebook open. Mouncey came in behind him wearing a white tracksuit with a gold accent stripe and silver Nikes, carrying a can of Sprite. She strolled past him to take the chair across the table from me, a half-sprung red wingback that had been knocking around the offices for as long as I could remember. She crossed her long legs and sipped from the can.

  I held up a finger for time. According to the forensics update Wayne had just handed me, he hadn’t found any identifying marks, foreign materials or ‘adulterants’, except for fibres from the victim’s clothes and the rope, on the crossbeam, but the cut ends of the tree limbs showed two different tool signatures that could be seen in the close-up photographs – what he called macros. The biologist he borrowed from Domtar thought the crossbeam had most likely come from a tree that had grown in central or south central Arkansas, and the ring growth showed it had been cut down between eighteen and twenty-four months ago. I was impressed that she could tell all that from looking at the wood but couldn’t think of any way it was likely to help us. Possible DNA samples and a partial cast of somebody’s molar were recovered from a piece of bubble gum and two gobs of snuff and saliva found at the scene. Also found within fifty metres of the body were hairs from mice, rats, cats, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, even armadillos – which most people thought had no hair – deer, at least six different dog breeds and freshly shed hairs from three different human heads other than Gold’s or any of the bystanders Wayne’s crew had taken samples from. Two of the types were medium brown and the third was dark blond, all of them testing positive for various combinations of methamphetamine, opiates and marijuana. No useable footprints were identified. Dozens of cotton, wool and synthetic fibres were recovered, all apparently from clothing, but the fibre types and dyes were too common to be of much use. The whitesuits had also found a pewter button and a musket ball from the mid-nineteenth century, and both halves of a broken chert arrowhead that was probably a lot older.

  As I laid the pages down, Mouncey said, ‘Do he point out the murderer?’

  ‘My job’s the blueprint,’ Wayne said. ‘Framin’ up is on y’all.’

  ‘Perp’s white,’ offered Mouncey.

  ‘How come?’ Ridout asked, his shoulders and arms straining the fabric of his shirt as he reached across the table for the water pitcher.

  ‘Brother chewing on anything, be a Kool,’ she replied.

  ‘Nothing tucked between cheek and gum?’ said Wayne.

  ‘Nothing he gone spit out, honey.’

  I said, ‘They’re about my size, in pretty good shape – at least one’s probably a rough carpenter, or was, and at least one’s a deer hunter. They could have hauled Dr Gold out there in a crew-cab or four-door pickup, but I’d bet on a van.’

  The room went silent. Finally Ridout said, ‘Not questioning anybody’s investigative skills, least of all yours, boss, but how the shit do we know all that?’

  I summarised what I’d learned on my second visit to the crime scene – except for the results of my meat thermometer experiment – ending with the damage to the back of the tree trunk. ‘The marks were from the bottom half of a climbing deer stand they used to reach the crosspiece – ’

  Wayne cleared his throat, his cheeks flaming red.

  ‘We all missed them the first time,’ I said. ‘They were on the other side of the tree, behind the body – hard to see them at all unless you were already thinking they might be there.’

  Wayne sketched a quick nod but stayed red.

  ‘Nobody but a deer hunter owns a stand like that,’ I said. ‘He’s gonna carry it around in a pickup or SUV, or possibly a van. But considering what they’re up to, they’re gonna throw it in the van if it’s not already there. One with no windows on the side – ’

  ‘Be your Abduct-O-Matic special,’ Mouncey said.

  I said, ‘What did you find out, Danny?’

  He took a sip of water and said, ‘First, cyberspace, the final, final frontier; I spent two and a half hours trying every keyword, combination and tag I could think of. Bottom line, I got ass lividity but I can say without fear of contradiction that nobody’s ever done anything quite like this murder anywhere in the whole wide world. Unless you want to count dead guys with their dicks stuffed in their mouths.’

  ‘Uh uh,’ said Mouncey, shaking her head. ‘That godfather bidness a whole different tune.’

  Ridout grunted, flipping a couple of pages in his notebook. ‘So back to the here and now. The civilians who beat us to the scene were Michael Phillip Haber, 16; Joseph Neil Baines, 15; John Alan Haber, 41, the father of Michael; and Darryl Lewis Pascoe, 46. No dippers, no bubble-gum chewers, DNA pending.’

  ‘Don’t sound like no Romans to me,’ said Mouncey.

  ‘What would sound Roman to you?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Thinkin’ Alfredo Linguini, maybe Chef Boy-ar-dee.’

  Ridout continued, ‘Mike and Joey were out kicking around, looking for something to do, saw the body, freaked out and ran home to Mike’s house south of the interstate, where they told his father and the next-door neighbour, Pascoe. All four returned to the scene after leaving instructions with Mike’s mother to call the police. No serious sheet on any of them other than a DWI Pascoe caught four years ago after a Christmas party outside Longview. No connection I could find between Deborah Gold and any member, f
riend or neighbour of either family.’

  ‘How them players feel about Jews?’ asked Mouncey.

  ‘My thought, about as much as they like lawyers and proctologists; not necessarily crazy about ’em but probably don’t run into ’em at cocktail parties that often either. Just my personal take, there’s nothing there.’

  ‘I think you’re right,’ I said. ‘Much as I hate it.’

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Forgin’ ahead. Best guess, the doers originally approached the scene along the tracks from the north instead of from the road. Looks like three or four good-sized people scrambled up the bank about twenty-five yards back from the scene. Figure it was our guys, and they left their vehicle someplace up the way, out of sight. I’m them, I secure a perimeter and then detail a couple guys off to go grab the doc. They come back by way of the road to get as close to the scene as possible before they have to pull her back out of the vehicle. Three access points within a couple miles along the tracks north of the scene. The next one after that takes you almost halfway to Texarkana. Long way to hoof it along a railroad track in the dark and the rain, so I’m figuring the first or second crossing. It’s all crushed rock at the crossings, so there’s no tracks. Towsack full of cigarette butts and soda cans, but no useable prints left on anything, DNA pending again. There’s plenty of access to the south and the track right-of-way is wooded most of the way down to the trestle, but in that direction the rails are never more than about thirty yards from the road. And that approach puts you pretty much in town except for the last hundred yards or so. Plus why approach from the south and walk past your site, then come back?’

  Wayne said, ‘Recon?’

  ‘Could be, but I’m thinkin’ characters like these would’ve already done that. And anyway, how much recon can you do at night in the middle of a storm? Assuming no night-vision gear.’

  ‘Which we can’t.’

  ‘Can’t what?’

  ‘Assume.’

  ‘Right. But it’s still better logistics to come in from the north.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Nobody I talked to that lives around any of the accesses said they saw or heard anything unusual that night, except a couple of ’em said the thunder sounded a little funny.’

  ‘Funny how?’

  ‘Couldn’t put their finger on it,’ he said. ‘Same hear-no-evil story for the doc’s office. There’s some houses not too far from there, and other offices in the complex, but nobody heard or saw a thing.’

  I said, ‘Any witnesses talking about horses or the sound of marching?’

  A general turning of heads, all eyes finding me. After a couple of beats Ridout said, ‘Not that I heard, but then I clean forgot to ask. Dast I enquire where that question came from?’

  Before I could answer him the phone light flashed. ‘Medical Examiner’s on the line,’ said Bertie’s voice. Dr Huang Huang, the assistant examiner who’d done the autopsy on Gold.

  ‘Lady have total hysterectomy, belly liposuction, also thighs and butt, different times. Gotta cellulite all over the place, pregnant one time, maybe more, tummy tuck, face and neck tighten up. Gotta five-eighths-inch gold ring through left nipple, looka like maybe fourteen-carat. Semen inna vagina say intercourse five-six hours before die when vagina where belong – no gotta DNA yet. Gotta old green-stick fracture right ulna, no other fracture, little bit of arthritis, not bad. Gotta lotta new scratch and bruise onna face, neck, hands, arms – ’

  I said, ‘How close to the time of death did she get those?’

  ‘Figga one-two hour bottom, maybe ten top.’

  ‘What killed her, exactly?’

  ‘Okay, we gotta dead heat here: lady die from shock and asphyxia, plus she drown – one don’t getcha, other two will.’

  ‘Drowned?’

  ‘Buncha blood from her mouth inna stomach and lungs, lady strangle along with she not breathe worth damn anyway. Shock is ice onna cake.’

  According to Huang, Dr Gold’s septum and mucus membranes showed signs of regular cocaine use. ‘Take-a cocaine less than twelve hour before she die,’ he said. ‘Plenty, but not gonna kill her. Also, we gotta little estrogen replacement here, we gotta little over-counter antihistamine, we gotta lotta THC. Guy who cut out her tongue and pussy, he pretty good, but don’t think he surgeon.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Way docta think. Certain places he cut, certain ways. This guy more like hunter.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah, I say you gotta some kind crazy-ass case here, man.’

  I thanked him and hung up, thinking about killers wearing gloves and long-sleeved shirts but probably not hoodies.

  Ridout flipped to another page in his notebook, saying, ‘We got two tip lines and the Crimestoppers lead sheet running, and so far ninety-eight concerned citizens have had enough civic spirit to pick up a phone and try to help us out. Sad to say – and naturally it comes as a shock to us all – it looks like most of ’em are clinically stupid, bad crazy or rattling our cage for one reason or another. Got one here thinks we ought to take a real close look at the husband, and while we’re at it find out if Dr Gold had any enemies. Lady over on Beech suggests questioning local criminals with violent histories, see if they know anything.’

  ‘Good plan,’ Mouncey said. ‘It pointers like that make us better investigators.’

  ‘Et cetera, et cetera,’ said Ridout. ‘Other perpetrators: the FBI, the Trilateral Commission, a crew of seven or eight real small but well-conditioned and unusually vicious extraterrestrials, a conspiracy of the Mafia, the CIA and rogue elements of the Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, the Daughters of the Confederacy, the niggers, the honkies trying to get the niggers in trouble, the Jews trying to get the goys in trouble, Hell’s Angels, the Dog Men of Arcturus, the offensive line coach of the Dallas Cowboys – which is who my money’s on – somebody called the Chaplain, that Channel Ten weekend anchor with the maroon hair and – last but definitely not least – you, Lou.’

  Imaginary headlines began materialising in my mind: ‘POLICE INVOLVEMENT?’, ‘DEPARTMENTAL COVER-UP?’, ‘HOW HIGH DOES IT GO?’

  ‘Don’t know about the rest of y’all,’ Wayne said, ‘but that last one woulda clean got by me.’

  I tossed the sheets on my desk.

  ‘Least you be handy when we ready to make the collar,’ noted Mouncey.

  I looked at Ridout. ‘You don’t talk in your sleep, do you?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Just thinking of your social life lately.’

  He stared at me blankly for a few seconds before he got it, then said, ‘Don’t worry, Lou, these irresistible lips are super-glued when I’m in dreamland.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Anybody have anything else?’

  ‘Define “anything”.’

  ‘Define “else”.’

  ‘Haemorrhoids count?’

  I stood up, stretched, and unclenched my teeth. LA had once told me that denial was the workhorse of ego defences, and I had no reason to doubt it. Ignoring the piles of message slips on my desk, I walked out of the office and across to the break room, got a can of tomato juice from the refrigerator and went to the bulletin board. Culling several dozen old notices, outdated memos and miscellaneous clutter, and dropping all of it into the wastebasket against the wall, I made enough free space to spell out ‘glowen’ in red, yellow, green and blue thumbtacks. I stood looking at it for a minute without getting any new ideas, rearranged the tacks to represent a drooping upper-case T, got no inspiration from that either, then tried the arm and hammer but ran out of tacks before it looked like anything at all.

  The small TV on the counter caught my attention; all morning the news programmes had been running shots of the Tri-State Justice Building and the crime scene, but now there I was on the courthouse sidewalk, trying to answer some question about the investigation. I looked out of shape and discouraged, and I didn’t like the way I sounded. I wondered if broadcasting schools actually trained their students in edit
ing footage to make interviewers seem smart and tough and people like me dull and slow. I walked over to turn the set off, visualising plaid flannel shirts and leather work gloves. For a second I thought I caught an odd, unfamiliar smell – a mixture of hemp, tobacco, maybe something a little chemical – and looked around for the source, but the odour was gone so quickly and completely that I ended up writing it off as one of my useless little flashes of the so-called Sight.

  THIRTEEN

  Back at my desk I pulled up ‘Psychologists’ and found Dr Porfirio Benavides, with numbers for ‘Off.’ and ‘Ho.’ I dialled ‘Off.’

  ‘Professional offices,’ said a woman’s voice as calm and congenial as the one in space movies that announces the ship is going to self-destruct in eighteen seconds. A picture of the receptionist formed in my mind, but I couldn’t retrieve her name.

  I told her who I was and she promised to have Benny call me back between patients.

  While I waited I read through the background information in Deborah Gold’s file. In the last ten years she’d given media interviews on what I took to be standard topics like ‘Beating the Holiday Blues’, ‘How to Talk to Your Teenager About Sex’ and ‘Recovery From Divorce’. She had also taught some undergraduate courses at the university as an adjunct, but not recently, and had had two clinical associates working for her, both with master’s degrees, which in a psychology practice, going by what LA had told me, meant they probably did most of the actual work. Before that she’d had a psychologist partner, Mark Pendergrass, for two and a half years. Dr Pendergrass was originally from Houston, divorced with two middle-sized kids, who’d left the partnership this year and was now working in the federal prison system. I had met him but didn’t really know much about him.