Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  He sat back in the taxi and kept his face in shadow, out of the rearview mirror’s line of vision for the driver. He needn’t have worried. The cabbie, a Mexican guy with a bushy mustache, kept his hands on the wheel and his gaze straight ahead of him. The drive west on I-30 from downtown consumed a quarter of an hour.

  He’d given the driver a made-up address a couple of blocks from Hardin’s, and hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. He knew the street and the approximate hundred-block, but for all Lackey knew the address didn’t exist at all. Hell, what if the place was a vacant lot or something? He breathed a sigh as the cab pulled up in front of a two-story Gothic home. The driver turned expectantly around as Lackey glanced over the seat to check the meter. Eight forty-five. He had to be careful with the tip. A too-small tip would serve to piss the driver off; too big of a tip would be just as bad. Either one would cause the driver to remember him. Lackey handed a ten over and told the guy to keep the change. The driver stuffed the bill in his pocket and did an eyes-front. Lackey got out of the taxi, walked up the sidewalk toward the Gothic house until the cab had rounded the corner, then retraced his steps to the front and took off down the walk toward Percy Hardin’s place.

  A hazy half-moon shone overhead, accompanied by a few softly twinkling stars, and a faint warm breeze was blowing. Lackey passed under a streetlamp where moths and June bugs whirred their wings and banged against the glowing bulb, then crossed the wide street and walked by a house with a lawn the size of a ballpark. Somewhere in the distance a golf-course sprinkler spit and hissed. Just ahead, a woman waited patiently, leash in hand, while a white poodle pissed on a lightpole. Lackey lowered his head and quickened his pace as he went by. His thick hair was dirty and wild and he hadn’t been able to trim his beard or shave his neck. He still wore his Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and dirty sneakers without socks, and a guy wandering around this neighborhood in his condition was likely to prompt a call to the law. The woman barely glanced at him. The .45 weighted down his back pocket and bumped against his rear end; he reached around and adjusted the gun so that the handle pointed upward and the barrel sideways.

  He wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he reached Hardin’s house, and didn’t even know why he was going there. He didn’t even know for sure that it was Hardin who’d done his own wife, but that was Nancy’s theory. Lackey had known a lot of people in his life who thought they had all the answers—Jesus, the army had been crawling with those guys—but Nancy wasn’t one of them. Nancy was the type to keep her opinions to herself, and when she did have something to say, Lackey had always found her ideas to be pretty accurate. Hell, Lackey thought, it’s got to be Hardin. Why else would he give all the servants the day off and leave his wife at home by herself?

  Lackey was smart enough to know that even if Hardin was the guy who’d hired the snuff man, that didn’t necessarily mean that Hardin knew anything about what had happened to Nancy. That could be unrelated. But one thing which Lackey was sure of, if Hardin hadn’t had his wife killed (and, Lackey thought with a slight wince, Lackey Dumbass Ferguson hadn’t tried to get rich quick by getting that high-dollar bathhouse job), then Lackey himself would be happy as a clam doing cheap northside remodeling jobs, and Nancy wouldn’t be out there in God knows what danger. Mr. Percy Hardin owes us for this, Lackey thought. He quickened his pace in the moonlight, hustling through another intersection. Only a half-block to go. Lackey’s eyes narrowed and he touched the butt of the .45 through the fabric of his pants.

  The sprinkler system at Hardin’s place was running, hissing and spraying tiny droplets; the fine mist dampened Lackey’s cheeks and beard as he made a 90-degree left-face off of the sidewalk and marched across the yard. He passed the bush where, just a week ago, the Mexican gardener had been working with pruning shears. The twin brick spires towered overhead as Lackey went between them and entered the patio. The hissing of the sprinklers grew faint behind him. Lights were on in the foyer and shone from two windows on the second floor of the house. Lackey had skirted a quarter of the fountain in the direction of the porch when he stopped in his tracks, put his hands on his hips, and regarded his sneakers. Visible in the corner of his eye, the goldfish underneath the surface of the water were twisting dark streaks.

  What the hell was he thinking about? He couldn’t just walk up and knock on the door. He had a big picture of that—old J. Percival Hardin pumping Lackey’s hand in greeting and asking if he wanted a beer or something. The truth was that if Hardin even suspected Lackey’s presence in the neighborhood, he’d be on the phone to the law quicker than the Rangers could blow another one. End of rescue mission, probably the end of Nancy. End of Lackey X. Ferguson as well. He could talk to the two detectives, Morrison and Henley, until he was blue in the face and they’d just laugh their asses off while the jailer led him away. Lackey retreated at a half-walk half-jog into the front yard and stood in the sprinkler-generated mist.

  Lackey had been in Hardin’s backyard one time, and now called up a mental image of the quick tour on the day—Jesus, only a week? it seemed like years ago—when he’d come by to talk about the bathhouse. Hardin had been really swaggering and strutting as he’d showed Lackey around, the rich guy rubbing the northside guy’s nose in it, and the rich guy had been especially proud of the ten-foot smooth plaster wall which enclosed the backyard and pool. Without a ladder, Lackey thought, that wall would be hell to climb. But he seemed to remember some trees. Yeah, some trees, some leafy elms or sycamores—Lackey wasn’t a nature-lover and didn’t know one tree from another—which stood outside the backyard with their branches extending above the wall. Ignoring the mist thrown by the sprinkler system, his sneakers slogging through wet Bermuda, Lackey jogged around to the side of the house.

  There were trees, all right. Three of them, side by side at twenty-foot intervals along the western perimeter of the wall. But the trees weren’t quite flush with the wall; there was about five feet of yawning open space between the tallest of the trees and the ten-foot dropoff into the yard. From his angle looking upward, Lackey was pretty sure he could make the jump; he clambered up the trunk into the lower branches with his rubber soles scraping bark. Jesus, from this new height perspective he wasn’t so sure any more; it looked to him like one helluva long way. He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes and pictured Nancy as she’d looked the last time they’d made love, shoved off with both feet and launched himself into thin air.

  He hung suspended like Batman for what seemed like minutes as the wall’s top edge crept toward his fingers in painful slow motion. He wasn’t going to make it. No way was he. He was going to slam into that fucking wall and ooze down the side like some kind of Humpty Dumpty, and then Hardin was going to find him the next morning and carry him away in a garbage sack. He’d never see Nancy again, either, he was going to—

  Lackey’s hands scraped plaster and went over the top of the wall. His toes banged into the side and the pain made Lackey wonder if he’d broken something. He twisted and wriggled, threw one leg up and over, hoisted himself on top and sat with his legs dangling down inside the perimeter of the yard and his breath coming like a five-thousand-meter runner’s.

  Jesus, his right big toe was killing him. He wiggled the toe inside his shoe, and it moved up and down. Lackey held his hands up in front of his face. His palms were bruised and there was a drop of blood on his left index finger. He sucked on the finger, watched the back door of the house, and halfway expected Percy Hardin to come out shooting. No one came. As his breathing subsided, Lackey put both hands down beside his hips and vaulted from the wall to drop into the yard. His legs gave way as he landed and he rolled painfully over twice. Then he climbed to his feet and looked around.

  From where Lackey stood, the land sloped downward forty feet or so to the bank of the teardrop-shaped pool. The underwater lights sent aqua shadows rippling, both on the surface of the wall and the south side of the house. The diving tower stood at the near end of the pool like a hangman’s scaffold. Lackey’s fee
t were planted exactly on the spot where the spa at the back of the bathhouse would have been. Moving carefully, limping and grunting at the pain in his toe, he went down the slope, circled the pool, and moved past four pruned, expensive trees. Chinese elms, Hardin had told him smugly. Great, Lackey had thought, if you’re a Chinaman. He climbed three redwood steps and stood on the deck. On his right was a sunken spa covered by molded blue tarp; the thermostat kicked in and the spa’s heater made a humming sound.

  A sliding glass door opened from the deck to the house. Lackey crossed over, gingerly moved his toe inside his shoe as he bent to peer through the glass. The aqua shadows from the pool wriggled over the refrigerator and standup freezer in the kitchen, and the same table where he’d sat down across from Marissa Hardin. She’d fixed him an orange-and-egg shake and had written him a check. He tried the door. It wouldn’t budge. He backed away a few steps and looked upward.

  There was a suspended balcony about ten feet overhead, extending from dead center in the house’s wall and running outward for about fifteen feet on either side. Lackey backed up further and winced slightly as he stood on tiptoes. About half visible over the balcony railing, a second sliding door led into the house. The master bedroom, Lackey thought, and the balcony’s a spot where Percy Hardin can sit and drink cognac while he keeps an eye on the gardener, probably interrupting his reading of the paper once in a while to yell and point the finger at the Mexican guy. Lackey wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His palms stung where he’d scraped them climbing the tree and scrambling over the wall.

  Once upon a time, Lackey Ferguson had been a pretty good basketball player. He would have been a cinch to make the high school team, in fact, if he hadn’t had to work every day after school. Even today he liked watching the Mavericks, in person when he could get a ticket and on TV when he couldn’t, almost as much as he liked keeping up with baseball. Back when he’d played, Lackey hadn’t been a very good shot. But he’d been the best rebounder around, mixing it up under the boards with shoulders and elbows, and he’d been able to outjump everybody in school, even though a lot of the guys had been several inches taller. At one time he could handle a one-handed dunk from a flat-footed start, and give him a couple of steps in the free-throw lane and he’d show you a two-hander with no effort at all. But Jesus, Lackey thought as he looked upward at the balcony, I was eighteen then. It had been ten years, minimum, since he’d even thought about . . .

  He sucked in his breath, rotated his shoulders to loosen the muscles, took two running steps and sprang from the balls of his feet. More pain shot through his big toe, and he missed by a hair. His fingers scraped the bottom of the balcony; he came down hard, stumbled, and righted himself just in time to keep from smashing through the plate-glass door into the kitchen. He gathered himself, backed a couple of extra strides away from the balcony this time, and had another run at it.

  This time there was more spring in his legs and more arc to his jump. His hands came into stinging contact with one of the posts which supported the balcony railing. He grabbed ahold and dangled while his feet swung back and forth in small decreasing arcs. Almost there, buddy, he thought. Just a little more.

  Now his thoughts traveled back to army boot camp, and he pictured the hand-over-hand rope climb, and himself, arms aching as though they might come out of his shoulder sockets, shinning up the rope like a monkey on a string with the big-gutted drill sergeant cussing a blue streak underneath. “You look like an ape fuckin’ a football, Ferguson,” was what the bastard had told him, and Lackey had a special hate for the drill sergeant even today. But Jesus, he thought, what wouldn’t I give to have old sarge here right now. He kicked his feet and pulled himself up. Blood surged into his throbbing toe and he scrambled up and over the rail, finally standing erect on the balcony, not believing himself that he’d made the climb. He touched his shoulder joint. Be sore in the morning, Lackey thought.

  On the balcony was a wrought-iron breakfast table surrounded by four matching chairs. The iron was molded into a leafy vine pattern. Lackey skirted the table and approached the sliding entryway, walking softly. The soles of his sneakers, not quite dry after the wet grass in front of the house, left a trail of damp grid-patterned prints. Just outside the glass panel he halted in his tracks. He was looking into the master bedroom, at a French Provincial vanity and four-postered, canopied, king-size bed. On the bed sat a woman, and she was watching him.

  There wasn’t any doubt about it, she was looking directly at him. Her eyes were bright and there was a tiny smile on her face. She was brushing her hair, her head tilted at a slight angle as she pulled the brush through her hair with long firm strokes. She wore a filmy pink shortie gown, and her crossed legs weren’t half bad. Were damn good, in fact, as was her face, with its slim straight nose and soft feminine cheeks. He couldn’t say that she was as pretty as Nancy— nobody in the world measured up to Nancy, to Lackey’s way of thinking—but this woman would run Nancy a close second. There was something about the eyes, though, that Lackey didn’t like. Where Nancy’s eyes had a straightforward, honest look about them, this woman’s gaze was narrowed slightly, and there was a tightening around the corners of her eyes which made her look like someone you wouldn’t trust. He had a feeling that he’d seen her somewhere before. He searched his brain. Nothing. Never mind, it would come to him.

  Lackey dug in his back pocket, came up with the .45 and pointed it at her through the glass. Her gaze flicked at the pistol, then zeroed in on Lackey’s face. Her smile broadened.

  Lackey decided that this was the weirdest goddamn female he’d ever seen, smiling at a guy in dirty tennis shoes who was pointing a gun at her. He gestured with the pistol and pointed at the handle on the sliding door. She dropped her hairbrush, gracefully uncrossed her legs, then crossed the room to let him in. The door made a swishing noise as it moved sideways.

  She stood to one side. “Don Juan, right? Where are your tight britches, Don?” Her voice was cultured, with a slightly nasal twang, and her speech was slurred. Her eyes were twin bright points.

  Lackey hadn’t seen near the amount of cocaine in the army as everyone had told him he would, but he had seen quite a bit. He’d never touched the stuff himself, and was glad of it, but he’d learned to spot a user. A faint powdery residue clung to the woman’s upper lip and the skin below her nostrils was inflamed. “I need to see Mr. Percy Hardin,” Lackey said.

  She took a couple of steps in the direction of the bed, then regarded him over her slim, uplifted shoulder. “Well, I’ll tell you, Don. The last time I saw old Perce he was downstairs getting drunk on his ass. He might still be coherent, fifty-fifty I’d say, but if he’s passed out, you’re in deep shit as far as talking to him.” She ignored the gun pointed at her as she pranced the remaining steps to the bed, crawled up on all fours beneath the canopy, and peeked at him around her upraised fanny. “So, Don. You like it doggy style?” She wore pink bikini briefs and had a generous, well-proportioned ass.

  Lackey glanced down at the pistol, then at her uplifted behind, and finally lowered the gun to dangle at his hip. What was he going to do, shoot her in the butt or something? He’d say one thing for her, if she was trying to make him feel like a jackass she was doing a helluva job of it. And he sure wasn’t doing Nancy any good by standing here pointing a gun while this coked-up woman stuck her ass out at him. He went over and grabbed her upper arm, then hauled her to her feet. “I told you, I got to see Mr. Hardin,” he said.

  She stuck her tongue out at him. “You’re no fun, Don.”

  He moved toward the bedroom door with a gentle push. “I got to say you’re not, either. Let’s go downstairs, okay?”

  She gave an irritated “oops,” then shrugged and led the way with the hem of her nightie popping from side to side in rhythm with her hips. Like a parade, Lackey thought as he followed her out of the bedroom. Like she was the majorette and I was playing the saxophone. They passed by a standing suit of armor in the corridor, then
came to the head of the staircase. Lackey stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, then looked down the wide steps into the den.

  He’d never been upstairs in the house, but from his angle looking down at the mammoth den, everything below seemed just as he remembered it, the baby grand piano and rear-projection bigscreen TV, the double french doors on the right which led into the sitting room. It had been in the sitting room where Lackey had first laid out his bathhouse plan to Percy Hardin, while Mrs. Hardin ran back and forth in her robe, bringing them coffee. Overhead were the vaulted ceiling and curtained skylights. Lackey gave the woman a gentle nudge forward, then stayed two steps behind and above her as they descended. She touched the banister on her right every few feet, and there was a saucy rotation to her shoulders as she went down. In the den, a stereo was playing an old Sinatra album, “New York, New York.” There was no one in sight below. The woman descended the final step and took off at a slight angle toward the sitting room. As Lackey followed, he caught sudden movement in the corner of his eye.

  The movement was a shadow on the floor, something outlined in the faint beam of overhead hidden fluorescents, something which detached itself from the shadow of the staircase and moved quickly forward. Lackey flinched sideways and raised his arm to protect his head.

  A bottle smashed into his forearm; Lackey’s shoulders and chest were suddenly wet and his nostrils filled with the odor of whiskey. Shards of glass flew into his hair, past his face, and tinkled on the carpet. Lackey went to his knees. His arm was numb and the shock-waves traveled like lightning into his shoulder and neck. The .45 flew from his grasp, thudded to the carpet, and bounced in the direction of the sitting room. From behind him, a slurred male voice said loudly, “Get it.” The woman spun on her heel and dove for the pistol; the shortie gown flew up to show her tanned midsection. She was giggling. Jesus, thought Lackey, she’s giggling.