Blackbird

  He picked up the paper, tilted his head back to get the best benefit of his trifocals and read the letter, LA watching him closely. ‘The Revelation of St John the Divine,’ he said when he’d finished. ‘Along with snippets from Genesis and Deuteronomy. An interesting juxtaposition. It’s possible the reference to the flaming sword is a nod to the ZOG’s dastardly adventure in Waco some years ago.’

  ‘Excuse me – ZOG?’ said LA, her pen poised.

  ‘Our Zionist Occupation Government,’ replied Keets. ‘Usurpers of the mantle of Jefferson and Jackson. At any rate, the letter is an interesting document. What do you make of it, Lieutenant?’

  ‘That’s my question to you.’

  ‘And I am persuaded by it that you derived no identifying evidence from this,’ he said, glancing at the letter again. ‘Thank you for having the sense not to try to bluff me in that regard. May I assume that because of the reference to a chapel you thought of me as the author?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘For one thing, I don’t believe you would’ve misspelled my name.’

  He smiled. ‘Even as subterfuge?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Unable to assume the guise of ignorance even to avoid prosecution? That’s quite an indictment.’

  I waited.

  ‘Ah, well, you’re probably right.’ He shook his head. ‘Vanity is certainly master to us all.’

  ‘And if you had misspelled my name to throw us off, what would be the point of the chapel reference?’

  He glanced at me sharply and nodded. ‘You’re clearly an intelligent man, Lieutenant.’

  I said, ‘Make a note, Ms Rowe.’

  She jotted something on the pad.

  Keets said, ‘Many people think of athletes, which I believe you once were, as dullards, but the reverse is more often true. In any case, you’re correct, I didn’t write this. Or have it written. But I’m sure the misspelling of your name was an attempt at deception. I dare say the entire letter was intended as a red herring.’

  ‘And not a warning to back off?’

  ‘Please, Lieutenant. Who would be asinine enough to expect something like this to stop a police investigation? Or deter a man such as yourself? Only an idiot, surely. But it is a threat to you personally. The address and salutation tell us that whoever wrote them knew the correct abbreviation of “captain” and the airport designation and common shorthand for Traverton, and was aware that you were investigating the killing, none of which would be particularly consistent with the implied subliteracy of the document. And the author was erudite enough to locate and correctly quote several biblical passages, as well as put them together in a coherent way. It’s clear no ordinary criminal wrote this. But I believe it suggests something further.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I think it’s likely the person you’re looking for is actually someone who not only knows who you are and how to spell your name correctly but is in fact someone quite close to you. Someone with a very specific reason for targeting you.’

  ‘So what do you think?’ I asked LA as we drove down Border through the light mid-afternoon traffic toward Tri-State.

  ‘Well, Keets takes a kind of offbeat pride in his affiliation with the Sword movement, but it’s not his natural element. He’s much too bright for that.’ She fiddled with the radio, settling on one of the Shreveport classic rock stations. A Beatles single from ’67, ‘All You Need Is Love’. She adjusted the volume. ‘He’s a man who’ll never be at peace with himself,’ she said. ‘Think about it – all that mental wattage, but he’s permanently stuck with a bunch of guys who think higher education means getting a GED. His involvement with them was probably a reaction to some trauma he experienced. And he’s ashamed of something about his military service.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ I said.

  ‘His expression when he mentioned it, the fact he didn’t elaborate, the way he jumped immediately from that to his health problems, as if they were a judgement on him in some way. My guess is he either feels he was a coward under fire or he did things over there that he still has guilt about. Maybe both.’

  ‘Then he’s not a sociopath?’

  ‘No. If he were, he’d have spent more energy trying to flatter and manipulate us.’

  ‘He gave it a shot with you.’

  She shrugged. ‘That was nothing – just male reflex. He was much more interested in showing us how smart he is.’

  ‘So what did you write when I told you to make a note?’

  She held the pad up for me to read: Note to self – check definition of ‘intelligent’.

  ‘Okay, got me,’ I said. ‘If Keets had been right about me I would’ve known better than to ask. So, back to the reverend – you were talking about how you know he’s not a sociopath.’

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘The other thing is, with a sociopath you don’t get a lot of signs of autonomic arousal.’

  ‘You’re saying he had them.’

  ‘Yeah. Especially when he read the letter.’

  ‘What were you watching at that point?’

  ‘Heart rate, blink rate, respiration, pupils.’

  ‘How the hell did you watch his heart rate?’

  She touched her finger to the side of my neck the way she had the night she arrived. ‘Looked right here,’ she said. ‘Carotids are just under the surface.’

  I visualised my throat constantly pulsing out my thoughts for all the world to see, my irises semaphoring every emotion, my mind naked as a pole dancer. No wonder I could never beat her at gin rummy.

  ‘So what did all that tell you?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think he knew anything about the letter at all before you showed it to him. But in the abstract it interested him very much, juiced him, gave him something to think about. A puzzle, a new angle on the world. Guys like him are bound to get pretty bored in prison.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s another thing that’s never made a hell of a lot of sense to me – how a character that smart ends up in the joint in the first place.’

  She opened the window a couple of inches, lit a cigarette with her slim gold lighter, took a drag and blew out smoke. She said, ‘Short answer?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Smart is probably the wrong word. Keets is intelligent all right, but the thing is, IQ scores don’t really have much to do with how smart you are or how well you’re going to do in life. About the only thing they’re good at predicting is what kind of scores you’ll make on your next IQ test.’

  ‘You’re saying Keets is intelligent but not smart. Why do you think he got himself locked up, exactly?’

  ‘I think in his case it’s self-punishment. He probably wasn’t raised to hate people, or do the kind of things he’s done, but he got pushed around somehow in his life and ended up grabbing for any kind of strength he could find. Hate looks strong, so he signed on and never looked back. But the boy his mama tried to raise right is still in there somewhere, and the little guy keeps sabotaging the adult’s agenda. Bright as he is, Keets has probably always been basically a schmuck who shoots himself in the foot every time he goes for his gun.’

  ‘So you don’t think he knows anything about the killing?’

  She looked at the ash on her cigarette. ‘I didn’t say that.’ She watched a white Taurus full of teenage girls passing us in the outside lane. ‘I’m sure he knows exactly who killed Dr Gold.’

  I stared at her.

  ‘Watch the road,’ she said.

  ‘Do I dare ask why you say that?’

  ‘I think at first he figured we were there about the credit-card scam M told us about, which he’s probably running. He was ready for that, but when you said we were investigating the murder, it caused an adrenaline dump. No way that happens unless he’s at risk somehow. At risk means involved. Involved means he knows something.’

  ‘LA, are you ever gonna stop jerking rugs out from under me?’

  ‘Hah.’

  ‘So wha
t else does Keets know?’

  ‘That’s what we’ve gotta find out, Mr Dillon.’

  I dropped her off at Kiln-Roi, then drove the half-mile to Three, where I found Mouncey and Ridout in my office, Ridout playing solitaire on the computer, Mouncey flipping through the fattening Gold file. Ridout closed the game and cleared out of my chair.

  ‘How’d it go?’ he said.

  While I was summarising the interview for them Zito stuck his head in the door. ‘Hey, grunts,’ he said. ‘Say, Bis. Seen LA?’

  ‘Naw,’ said Ridout.

  ‘’Spect she hiding,’ said Mouncey. ‘Kind of riffraff we get around here.’

  ‘She’s at Jana’s place,’ I said. ‘Come on in and provide us with a federal presence.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Suffer the little locals is my motto.’

  ‘You gone enjoy this,’ said Mouncey. ‘We fixin’ to study up on the sex group Gold and Frix in.’

  ‘Order of the golden whiz,’ said Ridout.

  ‘Butt-whup of the month,’ added Mouncey.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Masks, whips, boots,’ I said. ‘The Freakers’ Ball.’

  ‘Now y’all have gone and made me imagine Frix nekkid in high heels,’ Zito said, shaking his head.

  ‘Happy to share,’ said Ridout.

  ‘Any way he could be good for Gold’s killing?’ asked Zito. ‘Then an accomplice turned on him?’

  ‘That be good,’ said Mouncey. ‘Be like a Bogart movie.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That way it’s a two-fer murder. Makes for more challenging police work.’

  ‘I sense a nasty streak of laziness developing in you, old buddy,’ said Zito. He looked over at the folder Mouncey held. ‘Hey,’ he said, grabbing a sketch of a framing hammer Wayne had apparently made earlier. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘It’s probably what drove the nails that crucified Gold,’ I said. ‘A California framing hammer. Ever seen one?’

  He looked up at me, saying, ‘Seen it? I got it in my evidence locker, hoss. We found it at the Frix fire.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘It was laying in the ashes a couple of yards from the body. Some of the handle’s gone, but it was this puppy all right. Seemed a little out of place to me so I tagged and bagged it.’

  ‘Well, shee-it,’ said Mouncey.

  ‘Line three,’ Bertie announced from the doorway. ‘Lady named Earlene Cutchell says she’s got something you need to know about Dr Gold’s killing.’

  A quick series of images from Saturday Night Live – stained glass, Dana Carvey in drag – flitted through my mind before I clicked on Earlene Cutchell as the name of the church lady who’d been Deborah Gold’s secretary.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The sky was November classic, hazed at low altitude and streaked with high cirrus mare’s tails, as I drove out to the Cutchell place. Turning up the driveway, I glanced in the rearview and saw the third of three vehicles that had been behind me, a completely anonymous black Ford sedan, flash by, giving me a strobe shot of the guy behind the wheel. His posture, the set of his shoulders and his general look seemed somehow out of sync with his scruffy flannel shirt. He didn’t even glance my way as he passed, but I saw his Stetson and caught the flash of sun on his shades.

  He was the man I’d seen watching me at OZ’s fish fry.

  The Cutchells’ house was a square white pier-and-beam on an acre or so of land off Buckner, a World War Two-era structure shaded by mature native pecans, sweetgums and turkey oaks. It was flanked by forsythias, pyracanthas and spireas, and a camellia surrounded by a white fall of curled petals stood by the walk. Parked under one of the big oaks in front of the house were a red five-year-old Corolla and a dusty black Ford stepside that looked closer to fifteen years old. A composed-looking tortoiseshell tabby sat on the hood of the Toyota, watching me with cautious amber eyes.

  Mrs Cutchell answered my knock almost instantly, as if she’d been watching the driveway through her front window the way country people do when they’re expecting company. She was a tall, plain woman in her early fifties, a Pentecostal wearing wire-rimmed glasses, no makeup, a simple print dress hemmed below the calf and sturdy shoes, her hair pinned in a bun at the back of her head. She invited me into a small, organza-curtained front room that smelled like floor wax and mothballs, and introduced me to her invalid husband and Brother Ritchie – ’our pastor’, she said in a slightly hushed tone. With his wavy slicked-back hair, orange polyester pants and wide white belt, he looked like Jerry Lee Lewis in his prime. Holding a well-thumbed bible in his left hand, he stood and offered me his right, which was warm and moist.

  Mr Cutchell was a collapsed, angular grey man in clean, pressed denim overalls and railroad shirt, with oxygen tubes in his nostrils. Without getting up from his worn easychair he gave me a cool bony hand and a small nod, and waved me to the couch. A multi-coloured braided rug covered most of the dark pine floor, and what looked like a hundred-year-old grandfather clock stood in the hall, its darkly gleaming brass pendulum sweeping out a slow, back-and-forth arc behind the etched glass. Brother Ritchie returned to the caned rocking chair beside Mr Cutchell.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ said Mrs Cutchell. ‘Some tea or coffee?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said, bringing out the small notebook I carried in my shirt pocket.

  ‘Lieutenant Bonham, I want to say something about why I decided to call you.’ She looked at the other men. ‘It was Raymond and Brother Ritchie who convinced me I needed to tell the truth about this.’

  A wisp of a smile lifted one corner of the pastor’s mouth, his expression shifting, vulpine.

  ‘But before I called I asked people I trust about you, people who know who you are, and I prayed about it.’ She sat in the mate to her husband’s easychair, knees and ankles tight together in front of her. ‘Can I ask you one question?’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘That man you injured several years ago, the drug dealer – I was told you did that to keep your partner from shooting him. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, it is.’

  ‘Something else I was told was that you conduct yourself like a true Christian, that you try to do what’s right even if you have to break rules and even if you get hurt doing it. I felt led to you.’

  Not knowing how to respond to this, I didn’t try. I said, ‘Mrs Cutchell, are you aware of how Dr Gold died?’

  ‘Mercy, can there be anybody above ground who isn’t?’ she said. ‘And now that Frix man. It’s all just so horrible! Have you learned anything about who’s responsible?’

  ‘Not much. I appreciate your offering to help and being willing to go over all this again.’

  She looked down at the backs of her hands. ‘I’m sure the detective who came out was a nice man.’

  ‘Danny Ridout?’

  ‘Yes, I think that was his name.’

  ‘He’s a pretty good investigator,’ I said. The oxygen tanks hissed faintly. Brother Ritchie cleared his throat.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said, looking at Ritchie, who gave her an encouraging little nod. ‘Mr Ridout was fine, very polite, but there were some things I didn’t tell him.’

  I waited again.

  ‘It’s not an easy thing for me to admit, Lieutenant Bonham, but I’m afraid I strayed from the light a long time ago.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘I was raised in the Lord. There’s no excuse for it.’ She met my eyes again. ‘I gave in to pridefulness and envy and greed. And worse. I denied the Lord and turned away from Him to follow my own desires. I fell short of His grace. But when Raymond got sick it brought me to my senses, and Brother Ritchie led me back to the light. That’s what the church is, you know, a light unto the world – ’

  I said, ‘You worked for Dr Gold a little over six years, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Six years that I’m not proud of. I guess I once thought I was.’ She shook her head.

  ‘What was it you had trouble with about those six years?
’

  ‘Well, I didn’t have trouble at the time. While I was working for Dr Gold I thought, maybe the Devil led me to think, that her way of doing things was the right way.’

  ‘What was her way?’

  ‘Oh my goodness. Her way. Well, her way had a lot to do with it being the only way. With lying and cheating, and with hating anybody who might take a patient away from her or get more attention than her or beat her in court. She never forgave anybody for anything, and when she had it in for somebody, getting revenge was all that mattered to her. She thought everybody had it in for her. She was just so needy.’

  ‘Needy?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is that the right word? I guess what I mean is she could never be satisfied. Not with anything. If she had three school contracts she wanted five, ten. If she saw twelve patients a day she wanted it to be eighteen. More. If somebody in town was getting forty-eight per cent from one of the insurance carriers she wanted to get sixty.’

  ‘Forty-eight? Is that typical?’

  ‘Actually that’s probably a high figure. The insurance companies are the worst thieves you can imagine. They’re even beginning to extort money from treatment providers just to be on their so-called “panels”, meaning you have to pay to be allowed to treat their patients.’

  ‘How much money are we talking about?’

  ‘Oh, say a thousand dollars or so a year for each network. If they aren’t stopped it’ll eventually be a lot more, of course. Then when you file, they “lose” a certain percentage of the claims, say they didn’t receive them, or some trivial piece of information is missing, or you used the wrong forms or codes. Mostly lies of course, and if you call them on it, usually they’ll eventually “discover” the error, and maybe even apologise, but payment is delayed at least until the next billing cycle. Usually longer. And by then they’ll be denying something else for no good reason. It’s just an endless battle.’

  ‘What went on between Dr Gold and Dr Pendergrass about this?’

  ‘Oh my, they were constantly at odds, especially there near the end. I believe Dr Pendergrass felt he was being cheated. But he wasn’t, or at least not by us. I know because all the billing went through my hands.’