The Devil To Pay (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 4)

by George Wier

  I looked down at my watch, then out the window to Patrick Kinsey’s face. “Oh,” I said. “I don’t know. I think that’s the one thing you have the most of. Unless, of course, I’m missing something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how long your doctor says you have.”

  I was watching his face, most carefully. It sagged all of an inch.

  “I know, Walt,” I said.

  “How could you?” he asked.

  “I suppose I knew it yesterday morning when you came to see me. I didn’t want to know it, but there are some things that friends—hear me now, friends—can’t hide.”

  He took a long slow breath. For the first time since I had met Walt Cannon in a ranch house in what seemed like a lifetime ago, he looked like any other thoroughly beaten man. In that first encounter, Walt had held a shotgun at my face and shouted at me: “Friend of foe?”

  “You remember our first meeting?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said, a whisper.

  “I said ‘friend’ then. Well, I didn’t have any clue as to how much I meant that at the time, but it was the most truthful thing I’ve probably ever said.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So spill it, Walt.” I said.

  *****

  Of course I knew before the damning word was out of his mouth.

  “Cancer,” he said, and I recalled Jimmy Stewart saying that word to John Wayne in The Shootist. My life seems, at times, to be the reincarnation of old movie lines. At least they were classic ones.

  “How long?”

  “A year at the outside. That’s if I’m lucky.”

  “Not planning on going out that way, are you?” I asked.

  He placed his hands on his knees and shook for a moment as if there was a cold draft through the room.

  “No,” he said. “I guess you do know me.”

  “So how does this help? The confession, I mean.”

  He paused, staring ahead, as if the wall were going to open up and reveal something.

  “I have to,” he said. He said it almost robot-like. Hypnotically.

  “Do you smell that?” I asked.

  He turned his head toward me, wrinkled his graying eyebrows.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Smells like. . .” I sniffed, keeping my face serious, “Smells like... bullshit.”

  He laughed, the smallest of chuckles.

  “You know,” I said. “If you’ll recall, Saturday is only a few days from now. We were supposed to barbecue, have a few beers. Doesn’t look like you were really planning to keep that date.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Another broken promise,” I said. “It’s not like I expected any better.”

  His face grew stony. Good. If I did it right, I’d make him angry enough to bust himself out of here. But hopefully without busting me up in the process.

  “You’re familiar with broken promises,” I said. “Like the one somebody broke that got you into this trouble?”

  “Now you’re grilling me,” he said.

  I held up my hands, Mr. Innocent.

  “No. No way. It’s just, you being a law man, a man who keenly knows the criminal mind, it seems you would have been a little more careful of where you’d place your faith. For instance, a mousey-haired little woman?”

  “That’s enough!” he shouted.

  “Oh, no,” I said, softly, “I’m just getting started. She’s a good swimmer, isn’t she? She could swim a mile or more in one lick if she needed to, couldn’t she?”

  “Stop IT!” he yelled. His face was red with rage. I’d once thought that I’d never be guilty of making this man angry with me. True, it was the closest cousin to juggling nitroglycerin, but I had had enough of mysteries. Of questions unanswered. Of bad things happening to good people around me.

  I could feel Patrick’s gaze boring into me from the window glass. I ignored it.

  One more push. If I was wrong, then it might backfire. The house of cards I had built might come crashing down, with me underneath.

  “Is she worth it?” I asked him. “I wonder what Dewey Bingham’s opinion would be on that score, that is, knowing what we know.”

  Walt stood. His whole body shook. He brought his hand up slowly in front of my face and clenched his fist until the blood in his hand was drained away by the tension. Behind it, in contrast, his face was a beet-red color.

  I made my voice as quiet and as soft as I could.

  “All guesses, Walt. But good ones.”

  He began to slowly relax. It began with his eyes, moved outward across his face and down his shoulders. The hand poised in front of my nose slowly withdrew. By the time he returned to normal I could detect not a hint of emotion.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I nodded, the smallest of nods.

  “Let’s say we get you out of here,” I said.

  “Can’t,” he said. “I’ve confessed.”

  I held up one hand and motioned to Patrick.

  The door opened.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Perry Reilly was waiting for us at Patrick’s desk. Jessica was talking to a lady deputy at another desk who was extolling the virtues and benefits of being a cop. I had some of my own ideas about Jessica’s future, but decided I’d wait a while longer to talk to her about it. What father doesn’t have such thoughts?

  “Hiya, Mr. Cannon,” Perry said.

  “What’s he doing here?” Walt asked.

  “I’m his right-hand man,” Perry said, gesturing to me.

  Walt turned to me with a raised eyebrow and I shook my head ‘no’.

  Patrick opened his top desk drawer, pulled out Walt’s confession and held it up.

  “I just want to hear it directly,” he said. “You didn’t kill Phil Burnet?”

  “No,” Walt said.

  “You weren’t complicit in his murder?”

  “No,” Walt said.

  Patrick paused for a moment. His features slowly sagged.

  “So much for closed cases,” he said. Patrick stepped to the corner of his cubicle and pushed the pages into his paper shredder. The small motor cycled up to a high whine for a moment and the papers vibrated as the machine ate them.

  “Where does that leave us?” Perry asked.

  “With a woman to catch,” Walt said.

  *****

  “Who is she?” I asked. “Her real name?”

  Patrick sat at his desk. Perry sat in the chair to the side of the desk while Walt and I stood. Jessica was still in deep conversation with the lady deputy thirty feet away.

  “Candace Bingham,” Walt said.

  “Dewey Bingham’s wife?” Patrick asked, disbelief in his voice.

  “Yep,” Walt answered.

  “Dewey’s whole family perished in a blaze in Houston. What was it, fifteen years ago?”

  Walt’s fingers tapped on the desk. “I thought all these years that the woman was dead. But then I ran into her at the Waco museum—”

  “The Ranger museum?” Patrick asked.

  Walt nodded.

  “Sorry,” Patrick said. “Just clarifying. Continue, please sir.”

  “As I was saying, I saw her there. She and Phil Burnet were in a back room hunched over an old file spread out on a table.”

  “What file?” I asked.

  “A file about one of my old cases. The indictment of a Federal Judge on judicial misconduct. That was a Valley case—down in McAllen, Texas. I recognized her instantly, but she put up an act when I called her by her right name. ‘Candy?’ I said, and she looked up at me, startled, and said ‘there may be a candy machine in the break room.’ But I knew it was her. She was older, thinner. She had changed her hair and her manner of dress. Even her mannerisms. But it was her.

  “Burnet asked me to leave, but I stood right there and fired off one salvo after another at her. ‘How did you get out of the house?’ I asked her. She didn’t reply, just looked at me as if I was both stupid and r
ude. ‘Why didn’t you come forward?’ I asked, to which she likewise refused to answer.

  “I suppose Burnet had had enough. He sort of blew up at me. He threatened me. He told me it was his museum and he made the rules and if I didn’t leave he would write a report. I told him I’d loan him my pen. We nearly came to blows, but I was a lot bigger than Phil Burnet. When I clamped my hand on Candace’s arm, she wiggled her way away from me and ran. Burnet tried to stop me, but I knocked him to the floor. He did succeed, though, in giving her the chance to get away.”

  “This is going to be a long story, isn’t it?” Perry asked.

  “Hush up, Perry,” I said.

  “Sorry,” he said, and propped his head on his palm, with his elbow on the corner of Patrick’s desk.

  “No,” Walt continued. “It’s not a long story. By the time I got outside she had vanished. When I went back in to corner Phil Burnet on it, he was gone as well. He’d left via the rear entrance. This all happened three weeks ago.”

  “Walt,” I said. “Her kids died in that fire, didn’t they?”

  “No,” Walt said. “His kids. She was Dewey’s second wife and those kids were no more hers than they were yours. I used to coach the youngest, Albert, in little league when I kept an apartment in Houston back all those years ago.”

  “Walt,” I said. “I found a stub of one of your cigars at the marina yesterday. The abandoned marina at Lakeway. It was in a pantry where someone had apparently been tied up. There were cut ropes lying on the floor and a bit of dried blood, no more than a week old.”

  “Bill,” Walt said. “You still think I had something to do with Burnet’s death.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I said. “I’m just telling you what I found.”

  “I was there,” he said. “After.”

  “What about the fight in the clubhouse at Point Venture?” I asked.

  “What fight?” Patrick asked.

  “Sorry. Verbal exchange,” I corrected myself. “Between you and Burnet, probably the same day he disappeared.”

  “Choreographed,” Walt said.

  I nodded.

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” Patrick asked.

  “It’s all elementary,” Perry intoned.

  “Shut up, Perry,” Walt, Patrick and I said at once.

  Jessica’s head turned and looked our way. I hoped she wouldn’t come over just yet. I shook my head ‘no’ at her.

  Perry sat back in his chair and made a zipping motion across his lips.

  “Well,” Walt continued, “choreographed as far as I was concerned. I wanted Candace to know I was hot on her trail. Burnet took the final two weeks of his time at the museum off. The official line was he was going to use up as much of his paid vacation leave as he could. I knew better. The son of a bitch was seriously dodging me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Makes sense so far. Except for one thing. Burnet’s house. You ever been in there, Walt?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You’re right about one thing. Hell has everything to do with it.” I looked at my watch. I’d substituted my water-soaked one for a cheap watch from my nightstand at home. “Okay, whoever is going with me had better saddle up. I’ve got an appointment with a certain gate guard in thirty minutes.”

  “First, somebody has something of mine,” Walt said. He gave Patrick a long, hard stare.

  “Oh,” Patrick said. “Forgot.” He opened his bottom desk drawer and pulled out Walt’s badge, gun and wallet and handed them to him.

  “Thanks,” Walt said, then turned to me. “I’m not going with you.”

  “That’s fine. Why?” I asked.

  For a moment I thought I was going to see a replay of what had happened downstairs in the infirmary, but fortunately that didn’t occur.

  “I have a doctor’s appointment,” he said, instead.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Perry seemed to be okay with being relegated to the back seat. Jessica sat up front with me and questioned me closely on everything she had missed at the Sheriff’s Office. I omitted a great deal of it and kept to the main points.

  “I wonder what the file was that Burnet and that lady were looking at,” Jessica said. She was questioning me on everything she’d missed.

  “Yeah,” Perry said, leaning forward.

  “That one’s in the back of my mind as well,” I said. “We’ll come back around to it. Just enjoy the ride, Perry.”

  He sat back and shut up. Maybe I was being a little too hard on him. Nah! I dismissed the thought. Couldn’t be.

  “Dad?” Jessica said. “That guy with that big house? He was into some strange stuff. Devil worship and stuff. Wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Looks like.”

  “He had a book by Alister Crowley on his book shelf,” she said.

  “I missed that one,” I admitted. “How do you know about Alister Crowley?”

  “I’m fifteen,” she said.

  “Oh. Right.”

  As we made our way west, traversing the same roads and inter-sections as yesterday, I thought back on all I knew about Satanism and various cults.

  I have a friend that was involved in rounding up the perpetrators of a certain Matamoros murder of a young man down across the Rio Grande. The kid had been sacrificed by the Santerias, a sort of hybrid between Satanism and the drug-smuggling trade.

  I had also once visited the apartment of a strange fellow who showed me his collection of religious artifacts. The Hindu pantheon was there cast in cheap, high-impact plastic. The Norse gods were likewise represented, and in a dusty, closed box, which he opened for me with an eery, gleeful glint in his eye, was a small collection of satanic objects.

  Apparently, in this so-called “enlightened age” the various customs and beliefs of our distant past still flourish. The numbers of their followers are small, perhaps comprising less than a hundredth of a percent of all the “common folk” out there, yet on meeting one it is usually an encounter not soon forgotten.

  *****

  Bob-The-Gate-Guard was there waiting for us.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “Just testing you,” I said.

  Bob was out of uniform. He wore a red-checked shirt and a pair of old blue jeans stuffed haphazardly into the tops of a pair of black brogans. With his rough frame he reminded me of a lumberjack.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Follow me.”

  *****

  Bob drove an old Ford pickup that had seen action. I knew a guy once that had a pickup with nothing but dull primer paint, dents and scratches. I’d asked him once why he didn’t paint it like ordinary folks and he’d said: “I like primer. It gets a scratch, all you have to do is slap on more primer and forget about it.” My old friend and Bob would have gotten along just fine.

  He drove into Point Venture and I followed. The streets began to wind back on themselves and took to having last names like “Circle” and “Loop.”

  Bob’s pickup disappeared ahead where the street had no doubt once been planned but left unfinished and the concrete played out into a narrow rutted lane covered with high grass, little more than a space between the stubby trees and brush.. I followed.

  “We’re not going in there!” Perry said.

  “Cool!” Jessica concluded.

  Branches scraped over my roof. I was overdue for a paint job anyway. My old Mercedes had seen many hard times. If I got a good enough scrape or bump, I’d feel justified in doing something about it.

  The terrain was rough and undulated over small yet steep hills and we plunged downward and across numerous rills that had ceased flowing with runoff. A couple of times I thought we would bog in the mud, but the rocky nature of the soil turned out to be the saving grace.

  After perhaps five hundred yards of the up and down and hairpin dance with the landscape, the trees gave out to a meadow cut cleanly by a creek that fed into the lake.

  The pickup braked and stopped and I drove up b
eside him and stopped, taking in the scene.

  There, rear axles buried deep in the mud half-way up the opposite bank was the car that had been parked in front of Perry’s the night before.

  *****

  Perry was the first out, followed immediately by Jessica. Perry teetered and slid down into the creek but managed to keep his balance until he was at the bottom. The water was low and he hopped quickly across and clambered up the other side.

  Jessica started to follow him but I grabbed her arm.

  “Wait,” I said. “He’ll tell us if he finds anything.”

  Jessica sighed grandly.

  Perry got the car door open and just stood there at that odd angle, peering in.

  “What do you see?” I asked. “Anything?”

  “Good God,” I heard.

  “What?” Bob asked.

  “Blood,” Perry said. His frame was tense and his voice croaked. “Blood everywhere.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We were mud-covered nearly to the knees standing on the bank opposite from where we had parked.

  The temperature was growing hotter and I could hear the incessant buzz of flies coming from the car. The driver’s window had been left down. A set of tracks led off through the high grass and disappeared in the distance. There was no clear tread anywhere to tell us whether it had been man or woman making the tracks, nor any shoe or boot print impressed deeply enough to tell us whether or not one person had carried the body of another. There was little evidence of blood outside the car.

  “She must be dead,” Perry said.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey,” I said. “We don’t know anything yet. You didn’t still have designs on her, did you?”

  Bob was looking through the grass, no doubt hoping to find something, anything, that would help with what had happened here.

  “No,” Perry said. His shoulders slumped. “I suppose not. But when I found out she was definitely still alive...”

  “I know,” I said. “Hope. It can be both friend and foe.”