by George Wier
“Which concert?” I asked.
“Some skuz band. Probably The Flaming Idiots, or something.”
“I’ll find her,” I said.
“Goddammit.” There was a pause on the phone. Then her voice softened. “I love you, Bill,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
I hung up. Phew!
*****
“It’s been a long day, Bill,” Perry said when I emerged from my office, cleaned and pressed with my hair combed and beginning to dry. “I’m taking Sarah home.”
“That’s fine, Perry,” I said.
He shook my hand.
“Thanks, Bill,” he said. “For everything. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Sure,” I said. I had no intention of seeing him any time the following week.
Sarah hugged me. “It was so nice to meet you, Bill.” She kissed my cheek. I don’t know if I was blushing, or if the room had gotten warm.
CHAPTER NINE
At my desk with my reading light casting a bright yellow cone of light by my elbow. I turned it over in my hand perhaps a hundred times.
No markings. The silver was polished and buffed perfectly smooth. I held it by its chain and let it twirl around before me.
Black magic. Devil worship.
The phone rang, startling me.
“Hello,” I answered it on reflex. After hours we always answered with a simple greeting.
“Bill. Pat Kinsey. Why haven’t you called me back?”
“I was just about to. How is everything over at the Sheriff’s office?”
“I’ll bet you were,” he said. “Not so good. I’ve got a stiff on ice. Someone sent a projectile through its head. I’ve got a Texas Ranger who is under suspicion for sending said projectile through said head, and I’ve got a private citizen—that’s you—poking his nose into the middle of my investigation.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “Walt Cannon came to see me. You know he saved my life once.”
“So did I,” Patrick said.
“Yeah. Did I forget to tell you thanks?”
“Yes,” he said. “You did forget.”
“Well, thanks.”
“Don’t mention it. I need you to lay off this one, Bill.”
I turned the silver pentagram over again in my hand.
“I found a few things,” I said.
“What things?”
“I don’t want to say yet, Pat.”
“Whoa there, cowboy. This is serious, Bill. You can’t be there right ahead of me every time I go anywhere.”
“Like where?”
“Like Point Venture. Like Barton Creek.”
“Did you find the marina?” I asked him.
“I’ve already looked over Burnet’s boat. Nothing there.”
“I’m not talking about his boat. By the way where’d you find it?”
“Floating on Town Lake along the north shore. Empty. The registration was in Burnet’s name, so I’d say it was his boat.”
“Pat,” I said. “He. . . or they, moved the boat along with the body. That was a pretty neat trick.”
“What are you talking about, Bill?”
“You ever play the ‘cold-hot’ game?”
“I don’t play games.”
“Yeah. I guess I knew that. Well, Burnet’s body up Barton Creek, that’s ‘cold’. Burnet’s boat found on Town Lake, that’s ‘freezing’.”
“So then what would be ‘hot’?” Pat asked.
I decided to go ahead and tell him. If I didn’t he could always come arrest me, and I needed to go look for Jessica in the next few minutes.
“What would be ‘hot’ would be a certain abandoned marina on the Lakeway side of Lake Travis. Need a boat to get to it. What’s even hotter is all the dried blood and new sliced-up ropes inside said abandoned marina. I found one of Walt’s cigar bands there.”
“Damn.”
“I hope he’s not guilty, Pat. I like Walt.”
“What’s not to like? Anything else?”
“Yeah. Walt says this has everything to do with the Dewey Bingham arson down in Houston.”
Patrick whistled. “That’s ancient history.”
“It’s unsolved ancient history.”
“So it is. Tell you what, Bill. Come on over to the Sheriff’s Office. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and we’ll talk.”
I dropped the medallion on my desk.
“Can’t right now. I’ve got to go find my daughter. Say, do you know of any concerts in town right now where people are spending the night in line waiting to buy tickets?”
“Sure. Pearl Jam is playing Saturday at the Erwin Center.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Tell you what. I’ll pick up Jessica and then we’ll both come by your office. You’d never arrest me in front of my own daughter.”
Patrick laughed.
“That’s fine,” he said. “See you in a bit.”
I hung up.
Devil worship, I thought. Black magic.
There in my warm office with all things familiar and safe around me, I shivered.
*****
I found her before I even got out of my car. She was sitting among a group of other teenagers, smoking.
I could have done a number of things at that moment, including getting out of my car, charging over there, grabbing her, and embarrassing her in front of her friends. I remembered then that I was once a teenager. So I sat there for a full minute and breathed. I watched from the curb forty feet away until she put out her cigarette, waited another whole minute, then gave my horn the slightest tap.
Jessica looked up, squinted. Then her face registered supreme disappointment.
She stood up slowly, dusted off her backside, and ambled over to me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi, daddy,” she said. Her shoulders sagged.
“Mom’s worried about you. If you can have your friends get your ticket for you so you don’t have to spend the night down here, I’ll spring for their tickets too.”
She was shocked.
“You mean. . . I can go to the concert?”
“Yes. With my blessing. But no marijuana.”
She reached in my window, put her arms around my neck and squeezed me hard.
“I love you, daddy,” she said.
She released me, suddenly full of energy. I fished out my wallet, pulled out two hundreds and handed them to her.
“I want change from this tomorrow.”
She took the money and ran over to her friends. I waited. She came back, got in and we drove off. Her friends waved at me. I guess I was popular with them now, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be so popular when I got home.
CHAPTER TEN
I called home from the Sheriff’s Office to let Julie know that Jessica was with me.
“Good,” she said.
“I also told her it was okay to go to the concert, but no dope-smoking.”
“She’s growing up, isn’t she?” Julie said.
“We can’t stop her from that. Listen, honey, I’ve got to go. Give my best to the baby. I don’t know what time we’ll be in, but I’ll try not to make it too late.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” I said.
I hung up Patrick’s phone.
Jessica, sitting there in front of Patrick’s desk, rolled her eyes. Patrick smiled.
“Nothing changes,” he said.
“Yeah. And everything changes.”
“Okay,” he said, pushing his papers away from him and exposing for a moment a very lurid coroner’s photo of a very dead body.
“That Burnet?”
“Sorry,” he said, covering it up, and nodding toward Jessica.
“It’s okay,” I said. “She’s fascinated by that kind of thing. I don’t know why.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she said.
“Still, I wouldn’t want any hurling out here where everybody can see it,” Patrick said. Patrick and his fiancee were family friends of ours
. Sometimes we barbecued together at my place on the weekends.
“Or smell it,” Jessica said.
“That’s enough,” I piped in, chuckling.
“Bill, what am I missing here?” Patrick gestured toward the file.
I paused, thinking it over. I fished inside my jacket pocket and handed him the silver pentagram.
“What’s this?”
“Found it at the bottom of Barton Creek, near where the body was found.”
“Cool!” Jessica said. “Pentagram!”
“You stay out of this,” I said.
“Let me see!” she reached forward and I blocked her hands. “You never let me do anything.”
“Well, kiddo,” Patrick said, “you can go with us right now over to Burnet’s house, if it’s okay with him.”
“Where the stiff lived? Very cool!”
“I don’t think—” I began.
“Chill, Bill,” he said. “It’s safe.”
I sighed deeply for effect, as if I was granting the world, which possibly I was.
“Fine,” I said. Julie was going to kill me.
*****
Jessica and I followed Patrick in his cruiser. He drove very fast, turning on his red and blues every time he approached an intersection and I stayed right with him. Jessica was thrilled with the speed.
“Not a word to mom,” I said.
She shook her head. “No way,” she said.
Once we got onto the highway outside of town Patrick really opened her up and we blew along doing nearly a hundred.
When we pulled up to the gate at Point Venture Patrick had his red and blues going and the gate guard raised the gate barely in time. We blew on past and into the community.
Jessica went practically skipping up Burnet’s sidewalk. Patrick met us at the door, slit the police tape with a pocket knife, and opened the door with a key.
He entered first and flipped the lights on.
Ancient family photographs greeted us along the foyer hallway and here and there old curiosa were displayed, many of them very costly antiques. On the floor at our feet was a zebra-skinned rug.
“Is that real?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Patrick said. “I’m checking on the legality of possessing one. Also, there’s ivory throughout the house. A fortune-worth. Don’t touch anything.”
Fingerprint dust was apparent on glass table-tops.
“All Burnet?” I asked.
“Him, and his cleaning lady. There are a couple that are questionable that are being checked on,” Patrick said.
“Wow,” Jessica said, and walked over to very large mural in the living room and proceeded to put out her hand.
“Don’t!” I said. She jerked it back.
“Seventeenth century,” Patrick said. “It probably belongs in the Louvre. We’re checking into how it got here.”
“You mean,” I said, “how Burnet acquired it on a museum curator’s pay.”
“Exactly.”
The mural was of the Versailles gardens, with a couple of lovers engaged in a little light petting.
“Who’s the artist?” I asked.
“Phillippe de Champaigne. That’s what the signature indicates. Technically, from an art historian’s point of view, this mural doesn’t exist.”
“Okay,” I said. “What are we looking for?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Well, I think we’re looking for financial records. Bank accounts. Wire transfers. Also, anything that indicates involvement in either drugs or witchcraft, or both.”
“Fine,” Patrick said. “His office is upstairs.”
*****
Any businessman who appreciates fine things would have given anything to have such an office. Apparently a wall had been knocked out between two bedrooms and the space opened up for the extravagant furnishings. A rhinoceros head was mounted on the wall behind the desk, it’s singular large horn nearly three feet in length.
“The guy thought he was Tarzan,” Patrick said.
Jessica oohed and ahhed and walked around in a broad circle, taking in the room. One very long and curved tusk was mounted above the rear windows of the house, encompassing three sets of windows beneath.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you sure that’s elephant?”
“My estates guy says it’s woolly mammoth.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Daddy, your office sucks compared to this, and I like your office,” Jessica said.
“Thanks,” I said. “Records, Pat?”
Patrick tossed me a pair of latex gloves and I donned them.
“Okay,” I said, snapping a glove like a surgeon and holding my hands up before me. “Where’s the patient?”
*****
I was into the second vertical file drawer and pouring through bank deposit records when Jessica’s voice piped in: “Daddy, Patrick. I found something.”
I got up from Burnet’s desk and Patrick followed me across the room to an alcove leading to the bathroom.
“This picture was tilted, so I went to straighten it with my elbow, and I saw that,” she pointed.
Patrick tilted the picture out of true, and under the bottom corner of the small Renaissance painting was the faint outline of a wooden pentagram.
“I’ll be damned,” Patrick said.
“Looks like a button,” Jessica said.
“Push it, Pat,” I added. I was sure she was right.
Patrick pressed the pentagon in the center of the smooth figure and it recessed easily under his hand. We heard a ‘snik’ sound, and the wall pivoted before us to reveal a small, darkened room.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Jessica,” I said. “Stay right here and don’t move.” She was about to protest.
Patrick laid a hand on her shoulder. “If this door closes on us while we’re in there, you may be the only person to get us back out.”
“Fine,” she said, clearly disappointed.
Patrick pulled a small black flashlight from his sam browne belt, clicked it on and played it about inside.
We stepped into the room.
*****
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Pat whispered.
“No,” I said. “More like Lucifer, Satan, and the Devil.”
The walls were lined with small artifacts of cult worship. I noted the jade figurine of Kali, the Hindu pantheon Goddess of Death, six inches high and holding a tuft of what looked to be human hair in her tiny hand. Beside her sat a Jamaican Voodoo doll, very old. And then Patrick’s bright flashlight beam settled on the altar to our right.
I turned to look for Jessica. She was standing there at the doorway, her neck craned so she could see what we were looking at.
“Dad this place is so weird and so cool.”
Patrick’s eyes met mine and we whispered the word together under our breaths simultaneously, “kids.”
The altar was no more than a foot wide and sat low to the floor, where someone kneeling could look up just above eye level to the figure that sat thereon. It was the half-man, half-goat curve-horned figure of Pan, The Trickster, the Greek God of Mischief, the same figure denigrated by Christianity a thousand years later to represent Satan, the antithesis to Deity. The figurine sat on a great black stain on the small inlaid gold altar.
Patrick squatted, fished out a pocket knife with his free hand and tapped the surface of the altar at the foot of the figurine.
“Is it?” I asked.
He scraped with the sharpened side of the blade and held the knife up carefully in front of his flashlight.
“Yeah,” he said. “Blood.”
*****
At that moment Patrick’s belt radio squawked and I nearly leapt out of my skin.
Jessica giggled. “I almost peed,” she said.
Patrick refolded his knife, stood, and grabbed his radio.
“Kinsey,” he said.
“Don’t know if this is related,” the electronic voice said, “but there’s a fire on La
ke Travis right now. Are you at the subject’s home?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Fire Department en-route?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s the fire?” he asked.
“On the lake. Lakeway side.”
“The marina,” I said.
“Okay,” Patrick said into his radio. “I’m headed that way. Um. With two citizens.”
“10-4,” the voice said.
“Geez,” Patrick said. “Let’s go, Bill.”
*****
We could see the glow on the southern horizon the moment we went out Burnet’s front door.
“Patrick,” I said, stopping him. “There’s no way to get there before it burns to the water.”
“So?” he said.
“And whoever set the fire did it by boat. There is zero danger to any other structure in Lakeway from that fire, if it’s the abandoned marina where Burnet was killed.”
“Someone is destroying a crime scene,” he said.
“And that someone is on the lake!”
I finally got my point home to him.
“You lead, Bill. I don’t know where anything is around here.”
“Fine,” I said.
*****
In the car, Jessica beside me, speeding through residential streets in the night, my mind raced. Had Walt set the blaze? I realized instantly what street we were on, slowed and glanced to my right. A few houses flashed by before I saw it: Perry Reilly’s car in Sarah Banks’ driveway, parked right behind her Chevy.
I hoped they weren’t out on the lake right then. That wouldn’t look so good. We didn’t have time to stop and ring the doorbell. Possibly, if they were home, they were busy. I banished the unwelcome image that popped into my head on the heels of that thought. There are some places the mind doesn’t want to go.
“Dad, speed up,” Jessica said.
She was right. I floored the accelerator.
I stood on the brakes as we rounded the curve into the parking lot of the Point Venture marina and skidded into the open parking space by the boardwalk. Patrick’s car slewed up next to us, his front tires bouncing back from the curb. Three car doors flew open simultaneously and we went out into the night.