His voice broke.
Taking a few seconds to get back on track, he said, ‘But she fought us like a goddamn tiger, man.’ He closed his eyes tight but opened them again almost instantly, as if what he was trying not to see had been even harder to look at behind his eyelids than in the light of day. ‘When it was over we buried her there and took off.’ He hung his head. ‘There’s no words to explain how bad it hurts, Bis.’
‘Don’t try.’
He looked at me, nodded once.
I said, ‘I want you to testify against the guys you used in the killings, Johnny.’
Another nod. ‘Already done,’ he said, holding up a red flashdrive. ‘It’s all here.’ He tossed it back on his desk and looked at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. ‘I made love to Li twice last night, Bis. First time I’ve done that in fifteen years. I wonder if it told her something. You think it did?’
I watched him.
Johnny slid a cigarette from the pack on his desk, patted his shirt pocket, pawed around a little on his desktop, then reached into the pocket of his trousers and – still the magician he’d always been – produced a Walther .380.
‘Oops,’ he said, levelling the little pistol at my chest. ‘Thing is, I can’t take the needle, Bis. And I’m not doing life, either. Not saying I don’t deserve it.’
He brought out a lighter, lit the cigarette and took a long drag. He blew smoke out toward the ceiling and watched it mushroom. ‘I think what we need here is to clear the board.’
‘So let’s clear it,’ I said. ‘What would it be worth to you to sleep again?’
Johnny looked at me for a couple of seconds. ‘That was pretty good, Bis. You always did have a certain gift for the apt phrase. You’d have made a hell of a trial lawyer.’ Eyes on mine, he laid his cigarette in the small cut-glass ashtray, carefully laid the Walther down on the blotter, opened a side drawer and brought out a pint of Wild Turkey.
‘Little snort?’ he said.
I didn’t answer.
‘Hope you don’t mind if I do.’ He uncapped the bottle and took a long swig, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Custom o’ the country,’ he said. ‘I love you, Biscuit. Is it okay yet for a guy to say that?’ Eyes still locked with mine, he set the Wild Turkey on the blotter next to the .380.
I was thinking about the comparative clumsiness of my own hands, and trying to remember exactly how my jacket had bunched on the right side when I sat down.
‘I really do love you, Bis. But – ’
He picked up the automatic, aimed it at the third button of my shirt and snapped the safety off.
The butt of the SIG was exactly where it needed to be, behind one fold of my jacket. In some mental zone that had nothing to do with thought or even conscious intention, I came out of the chair with the SIG up and bucking in my hand, the shots somehow sounding soft and far away, Johnny jolting back in his own chair with each round as the Walther slipped from his hand.
I stopped firing, hearing the last shell casing clatter against the baseboard across the room.
Johnny, his shirt already drenched red, whispered, ‘Bang.’ He bent slowly forward and laid his cheek on the blotter beside the bottle of whisky, the cigarette still burning in the ashtray, its blue ribbon of smoke rising smoothly until it began to ripple and fold on itself.
With Regina screaming behind me, I picked up the cigarette and stabbed it out in the ashtray, then reached across the desk for the weapon whose trigger Johnny had never pulled. As I picked it up carefully by the chequered grips, its weight told me it wasn’t loaded. I left it on the end of the desk away from Johnny’s dead hand.
Which was procedure, every bit as useful as the meat wagon that would respond to the 911 I was punching in.
FORTY-SIX
At trial Johnny’s confession, long, lawyerly and airtight, turned out to be damning for all three of the defendants, as if at the end Johnny – skilled litigator that he was – had done the only thing he could to clean up his mess by leaving out no detail of the crimes and closing every loophole any of his accomplices could possibly have slipped through.
Stonewall Jackson Merritt pleaded guilty to all three murders and turned on his co-defendants, admitting that he and the Jewells had killed Dr Gold for the late attorney John Trammel in return for twenty-five thousand dollars each, luring her to her office that evening with the promise of a huge fee for a custody-related court appearance the next morning. Frix, who’d known for years about Gold’s relationship with Johnny, had been murdered for another twenty-five thousand, divided three ways, after trying to blackmail Johnny. For killing Pendergrass, Merritt, acting alone this time, had doubled his price.
The court gave him consecutive life sentences for the murders of Deborah Gold, Benjamin Frix and Mark Pendergrass.
Bobby Wayne Jewell’s lawyer, gambling on a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, acknowledged his client’s participation in the crime but argued that he was an honorably discharged combat veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder sustained in defence of his country, and that his criminal actions were a product of that disorder. He got the needle. He’d avoided my eyes during the trial, but when the sentence was read he looked at me and shrugged. At a press conference on the courthouse steps after the trial his attorney said something about ‘kangaroo justice by association’, but he mentioned no plans for an appeal.
Against all odds and everybody’s expectations, Rayford Dougliss Jewell hadn’t died of his head injuries after all, or at least hadn’t stayed dead. The EMTs had managed to jump-start his heart on the third try, bringing him back to the world of trouble he’d briefly left behind.
It had been Ridout who called me with the news about this particular Jewell.
‘He’s bad fucked up, Lou. But the docs say he’s probably gonna live, if you can call it that.’
Bone was tried in the Gold and Frix murders after a hot courtroom debate over his competency to stand trial. According to expert witnesses, the haemorrhaging in his brain caused by the impact of Jordan’s massive dictionary falling from the third-storey loft, and the resulting cardiac arrest and oxygen deprivation, had left the elder Jewell with intractable seizures and traumatic dementia. His attorney, moving for dismissal, argued that Bone couldn’t understand the charges against him or assist in his own defence.
‘He may not be as smart as he used to be, counsellor,’ said Judge Gaither, ‘but I’ve watched you down there asking him questions and listening to the answers ever since we went into session. Motion denied.’
Jewell was found guilty and given concurrent life sentences. He sat slumped in his wheelchair and gave no sign that he heard the verdict or the sentence.
Hearing about his condition, Jana had said, ‘Jesus! Not that he didn’t deserve it, but that’s horrible. I hope Jordan’s going to be all right about it.’
Jordan settled that question for me when she said, ‘I don’t know what he expected, going around capturing people with a gun that way.’
Casey only wrinkled her nose and said, ‘He smelled like roadkill.’
Without Dwight Hazen’s pressure, the case against me evaporated overnight and the council offered me my job back with a raise and a service commendation. I turned them down.
FORTY-SEVEN
I was off the job, but for me the story wasn’t over. Dwight Hazen was indicted on four counts of sexual contact with a minor and three of sexual assault based on information provided by three victims, all former patients of Dr Gold. They had come forward after Geoff Dean’s ‘Lateline Special Report’ and the publication of Cass Ciganeiro’s articles in the Gazette, all the coverage well salted with references to the fact that Hazen had been making blackmail payments to Gold. Heather Obenowsky didn’t want to testify unless absolutely necessary, but she agreed to be there in court with the other girls for moral support and to help Benny with a group for sexually abused girls.
By the time Hazen’s indictments came down
he’d vanished like smoke. The cameras then turned to a series of public officials – not including OZ – who were eager to share their disappointment and outrage as well as their sorrow for the victims and the community, referring repeatedly to the huge personal, philosophical and political differences they’d always had with Hazen but hadn’t acted on, out of respect for both the sacred will of the people and the requirements of due process. It turned into a time of advisory panels, investigations and blue-ribbon committees, and there was even some loose talk of a morality czar in Traverton.
Then came an anonymous tip to Dispatch, relayed to me by Mouncey, that I had a personal pickup waiting at Sylvan Park. Politely declining offers of police backup, a bomb squad sweep and secret surveillance by the FBI, I drove alone out to the cemetery in the cold, coppery late-afternoon sunlight. On the way I met the black rental Ford I’d seen in front of the Cutchell place. This time it was headed toward the airport, the driver now dressed in a tan western suit and bolo tie. His mirrored shades prevented me from seeing his eyes but he offered me a small nod and touched the brim of his white Stetson as he passed.
I had no idea what I’d find when I got to the cemetery, but I had a feeling it would relate to the Gold case. And it did.
Without thinking about it, I turned left as soon as I was through the gates, toward Joy Therone’s grave. From a distance it looked as if the monumental angel standing watch over her was holding out a big sack of garbage for inspection. As I got closer I saw it was Dwight Hazen, wearing a black bouffant wig and dressed as a pregnant woman, cuffed to the angel’s wrist and grimacing with the effort of standing on his tiptoes. Several thousand dollars in Mexican pesos and a street map of Ciudad Miguel Aleman were later found stashed in his girdle.
On later questioning he refused to say where he’d been and what he’d done between the release of the indictments and his arrival at Sylvan, and I resigned myself to the likelihood that I was never going to know all of what happened, including the whole story of how he ended up at the cemetery, in the angel’s custody.
But I saw him twice more. The first encounter came when he was in court to challenge the legality of his capture. I was there to testify at an appeals hearing in an old case and ran into him in the hallway outside the courtroom. Despite his lawyer’s efforts to steer him away from me we came face to face for a couple of seconds, long enough for him to sneer contemptuously at me, and for me to develop an unaccountable but absolute certainty about something.
I tracked Rick Hart down in the third-floor men’s restroom. I said, ‘Zip and listen, Rick – Hazen killed Joy Dawn Therone. Don’t ask me how I know. I know. All you’ve got to do is prove it.’
The investigation that followed uncovered enough evidence for an indictment, leading to, among other things, a desperate battle by Hazen’s lawyers to keep him from having to provide DNA samples in the Therone case. They lost.
The second meeting came when I made the trip to Tri-State to visit him in his cell on the fourth floor, where I found him pale and unshaven but still defiant.
‘I suppose you think you pulled one off, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘You tell me.’
He watched me for a few seconds, breathing hard. ‘What did you come here for?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘To get a good look at you, now that I know who you really are. Maybe to hear what somebody like you says when he’s busted once and for all. Or maybe just to look you in the eye and tell you what you already know – you’re through with little girls. The DNA’s going to be the end of you.’
‘What makes you so sure I’ll get the needle?’
‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘But there’s always hope.’
‘Funny talk, considering the source,’ Hazen said, trying for a cynical smile. ‘You always said you were against the death penalty.’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘On the other hand, sometimes a man’s got to show a little flexibility.’
‘You know, I’ve always hated jocks like you, Bonham – grabbing all the girls and headlines. God’s gift to the fucking world.’ He slammed his fist down on his thigh. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘Nobody, really,’ I said. ‘But just the same, I’ll be there with the Therones when the techs stick you. Look for me. I’ll be the guy in Joy Dawn’s chair.’
FORTY-EIGHT
Dusty, looking as fit as he was when I was in high school, had been waiting for us at the front gate of the Flying S on the day the story ended – by becoming another story – leaning back against the grille of his old tan Dodge four-by-four in the thin wintering sunlight with a steaming mug of coffee in his only hand, legs crossed at the ankles. In his blue flannel shirt, faded jeans, boots and weather-beaten black Resistol he looked completely at home on the range, the perfect image of what he was – a horseman in his element. At his side Knuckleball, the yellow Lab, pink tongue hanging out, watched with him as the caravan gradually slowed and turned off the highway.
Tyres crunching in the gravel, the vehicles rolled one by one through the wrought-iron arch and drew even with him: two sheriff’s department cruisers full of deputies, the coroner’s Blazer, Buford with me at the wheel and LA and Zito on the seat beside me, a couple of official county pickups, one a four-wheel drive pulling the backhoe on a double-axle flatbed trailer. When we’d all eased to a stop Dusty spoke briefly to the drivers of the two cruisers, then, with Knuckleball at his heel, walked along the line of vehicles, nodding and trading a few words with the occupants as Knuckleball gave three polite wags of his tail at each stop. After concluding his inspection of the trailer, Dusty walked back to my window.
‘Hi again, Dusty,’ said LA.
‘Hi, girl.’ Now Knuckleball’s tail waved continuously as he grinned from ear to ear.
Dusty said, ‘You holding up okay, son?’
‘Yeah, I guess so, thanks,’ I said. ‘Dusty, this is Floyd Zito, an old sidekick. Zito, Dusty Rhodes.’
Zito reached his one hand across to shake, and Dusty eyed his empty right sleeve, set his coffee on Buford’s roof and took Zito’s hand. ‘You and me together might make a piano player, Floyd.’
‘Yeah, if you can tell me what the hell all those little black and white keys are for,’ said Zito.
Dusty smiled. He said, ‘Bis, I told those boys in the cruisers they’ll need to leave their vehicles at the house. Guess I’ll let ’em ride in the back of my truck, the ones I can’t get in the cab.’ He nodded at the backhoe. ‘Dry as it’s been, we might get that rig across the creek. Can’t make it, I’ll come back for a tractor.’
Rachel met us on the drive behind the house. ‘I guess I wish you luck,’ she said, hugging me hard.
Overhead, barn swallows looped and dived in the clear air.
As we bumped along behind the trailer, over trails I had for most of my life associated with hooves, not wheels, LA tuned the radio at low volume to an oldies station out of Texarkana, a long-ago ballad about seeing a sunrise in a lover’s eyes.
I said nothing, gazing blindly off into distances I’d once thought were beautiful.
LA said, ‘When did you know Johnny’s gun wasn’t loaded?’
I hadn’t expected the question, though I probably should have. I wasn’t sure of the answer. I hoped it was after I fired the first round.
‘Not soon enough to let him live,’ I said.
‘It was the way he wanted it, Biscuit. Once he knew it was over. It was you he chose.’
I looked at her, not speaking, the sour sickness of that moment churning in me like hot slag.
‘He thought he owed you that,’ she said.
I still didn’t answer. I turned off the radio.
Finally I said, ‘It didn’t buy him anything.’
‘He wouldn’t have wanted it to.’
Forty minutes later we stood watching the men offload the backhoe beside the pond.
‘Can he dig careful enough with that thing?’ asked Zito.
‘He’s done it befo
re,’ said one of the deputies.
LA glanced at him.
‘Dug up bones, I mean.’
The operator, a freckled old farmboy with calloused hands the size of catcher’s mitts, extended the hydraulic arm over the site I had marked out for him and brought it slowly back, a uniform three-inch layer of soil and bracken curling gracefully into the bucket.
‘Hey,’ said Zito. ‘Guy knows what he’s doing.’
Another careful pass, then another, all of us watching like student surgeons as the earth slowly gave up its truth.
‘Did he say anything about how deep?’ asked LA.
I shook my head, saying, ‘I don’t even know if he was telling the truth about her being out here.’
‘Might ask the bastard again, if we knew the area code for hell,’ said Zito.
I looked down at my shoes.
‘Sorry, bud,’ he said. ‘I just meant why would he lie, right there on the verge of dying and all?’
LA, losing interest in the conversation, wandered in closer to the point of excavation and stood where she could see the new earth as the bucket uncovered it. The lulling regularity of the machine’s movement, the perfect sameness of the cutting strokes and the cough and roar of the diesel seemed to enclose us in a kind of bubble of isolation, a dimension where the meaning of ordinary time slipped away.
Suddenly LA signalled the backhoe operator, and we all moved forward. No one spoke as we stood looking down at the ivory curve of bone exposed by the last pass of the bucket – the visible edge of a long-gone world and a story that was finally ready to end.
When the almost-weightless body bag had been loaded into the coroner’s wagon, we still stood in silence, because there was nothing to be said. LA stood apart from the rest of us and watched in silence, her eyes brimming, haunted by her own sorrows, old and new.