by JM Gulvin
He looked sideways briefly then returned his attention to the clock-face dial on the pump. ‘Little piece up the road there. Had to hike me all the way back.’
Hands in his pockets the mechanic tossed him a smile. ‘I guess you swung right through town without thinking you was needing gas. Easily done, things on your mind like that. Been caught that way myself.’
The needle on the pump clicked back to the top of the dial and he shut it off. Shaking the last few drops from the nozzle he returned it to its housing and fished in his pocket for a dollar. The mechanic took the money, went into the office and came out with a quarter and pennies.
‘So if it’s the county road you need, I guess that’s a couple of miles.’
He looked at him. He looked once more at the can of gas. ‘I’ll bring it right back, soon as I get to the vehicle.’
‘I tell you what,’ the mechanic said. ‘How about I whistle you up there and fetch that jerry jug back myself? Ain’t as if we’re run off our feet right now, and Josie can hold the fort.’
The mechanic drove a wrecking truck with a heavyweight winch on the back. Across the bench seat he sat against the window with the Model 10 Colt hidden under the skirts of his sleeveless jacket.
‘You a veteran then?’ The mechanic indicated the jungle boots.
He shook his head.
‘The draft and all – failed your physical, did you? I know how that feels.’ The mechanic indicated the pedals on the floor. ‘Flat-foot apparently, though I never knowed it till the doc from the Army told me.’
A few minutes later they came up on the Oldsmobile where the mechanic eased off the gas. ‘That her?’ he said, nodding through the windshield.
‘That’s her. I’m obliged to you for the ride.’
Stopping behind the car the mechanic got down and fetched the jerry jug from the bed of the truck and removed the top. Dispensing the gasoline, he gave the jug a waggle to make sure it was empty and then re-fixed the fuel cap on the car. ‘You best fire her up just in case.’
As he fished the car keys from his pocket the skirt of his jacket popped up to reveal the grips of the pistol. The mechanic spotted it and the color drained from his face. For a moment they just looked at one another, then he got behind the wheel of the Olds.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ the mechanic said softly. ‘Whatever business you got going on it ain’t anything to do with me.’
He was no longer looking the mechanic’s way. He was staring the length of the quiet road.
‘Like I said just now, I’m obliged.’ Closing the door he started the engine, slipped the transmission and pulled away with dust rising from the rear tires. In the mirror he could see the pale young man with the jerry jug scuttling back to his rig.
He drove the county road as far as the T junction and waited there. Nothing coming either way, he pulled out to the middle of the road and sat behind the wheel with the engine idling and scrutinized the landscape both north and south. Swivelling round in the driver’s seat he rested the flat of his arm and checked the way he had come. Nothing there either, he turned for the house in the woods.
He drove slowly, eyes on the road ahead as the sun dipped behind clouds that seemed to be gathering off to the east. Signposts for the lake and fishing ahead, as well as the camp ground, he got to the point where the road forked and there he stopped. Leaving the engine idling he got out of the car and opened the tailgate where the boards were still stained with Briers’s blood. Hidden under the raincoat he had the sawn-off shotgun with silver tape pasted over the grips. Back down the road a little way he could hear the sound of another car approaching and he got back into the Olds. Instead of making the turn for the house, he drove deeper into the woods.
Pulling into a glade he sat with the shotgun across his knees and his gaze fixed on the door mirror. No car appeared. He remained where he was, staring into the mirror, but nothing came up the dirt road and he hunched around in the seat. Opening the door he listened but could hear no sound now and gathered his brows in a frown. Starting the engine he closed the door, turned the Olds around and rolled back the way he had come.
He did not see any car and he stopped at the turning that led to the house. There he waited, the Oldsmobile squatting with the wind brushing the trees and the windows rolled down both on the driver and passenger’s side. He fished the pistol from his waistband and laid it on the seat next to the shotgun. Making the turn he crawled along, keeping his eyes on the road until he came to where the driveway peeled off and the mailbox was fixed on its post.
His eyes were cold, brows still knit and again he stopped the car. For a full sixty seconds he stared at the driveway and the mailbox then he guided the Olds a little further up the road. On the right-hand side the trees thinned out enough to form a turnout where a car could spin all the way around. Pulling in there he switched off the engine then reached across the passenger seat and rolled the window up.
He approached the house through the trees. Cutting north from the dirt road he picked his way carefully, following foot trails and watching for snakes. He found no snakes and as he got closer the woodland grew less dense and the day a little brighter and he could see the edge of the lawn.
He came out of the trees in the lee of the garage. Head cocked, he listened to the sound of someone walking the pea gravel on the other side. He had the pistol in his waistband, the stain-spattered sleeveless Levi undone and the shotgun gripped by the breech. Moving soundlessly he peered around the corner and picked out a Ford and a man in a business suit who was knocking on the front door. The man waited, knocked again and waited but nobody came. A quiver in his muscles, he saw who it was and shrank back. Dr Beale. He listened intently as he crossed the driveway and stopped. He listened as the car door was opened then he heard it close and waited for the engine to start. But it did not start and he peered around the corner once more.
On the far side of the car Beale was facing him but not looking his way. He had a sheet of paper in his hand and he seemed to be reading what was written as if it were some instruction. Turning around he studied the facade of the house before striding across to the garage.
Again he stepped back; saliva in his mouth, he sent his tongue across his lips like a snake. On the other side of the garage the footsteps were suddenly silent and it was fifteen seconds before he heard them again. Releasing a trapped breath, he raised the shotgun so he held it broadside across his chest. He waited for Beale to appear around the corner but instead the garage doors were opened and he heard the doctor go inside. Eyes closed, he leaned with his back to the wall, the sun casting shadows across his face though sweat still cloaked his brow. From inside the garage he heard the grating sound of the trapdoor as it was raised and the clatter as it fell again.
Back to the wall, he waited for silence to descend. Then he made his way around the side of the garage and stood staring at the hole in the floor. Shotgun yoked across his shoulders he stood above the ladder and looked down. Jungle boots on metal rungs, he was in the darkness of the walkway and a moment later in the storm shelter itself. Shelves lined the walls, moulded concrete forming the lowest bank where a man could make doubly sure.
Something on the wall caught his eye: the first aid kit lying open with the tray fixed in the horizontal. For a moment he studied the contents, bottles of antibiotics and painkillers, syringes sealed in polythene bags. He noticed one polythene bag was empty and lying across the top of the fold-down tray. He stared at it for a moment then moved across the room, listening intently as he passed into the passage through the open door.
No sound, nothing at all, and yet he could feel a hint of movement like the faintest of breezes disturbing the otherwise stagnant air. Sweat worked his brow. Shifting the weight of the shotgun his hands were clammy and he wiped them on the legs of his jeans.
He was halfway down the passage before his eyes grew accustomed and he could see that the wooden panel was standing open and that’s why he could feel movement in the atmospher
e. He stopped; he was trembling, swallowing hard as if there was some blockage in his throat. He could hear no sound from the study beyond.
Inside, he had to wipe perspiration where it burned his eyes. He stared at the desk and chair, his gaze attracted by a few dark spots on the floor. Footfall above his head, he cast a short glance at the ceiling and closed the panel in the wall. Then he moved to the door.
There he paused. He could hear Beale moving around above him and he stepped into the passage walking on his toes. At the bottom of the stairs he checked. Still he could hear Beale up there and he stood very still. Slowly, inexorably almost, he climbed to the top of the stairs. Again he paused. The hallway a little dim, he could see one of the bedroom doors was ajar.
Beale did not hear him approach. He was in the living room with a metal box before him on the coffee table and the lid open; he was leafing through a stack of documents inside.
Fifteen seconds, thirty maybe, then, as if Beale felt his presence rather than heard anything, he swung round. Panic in his gaze, the pallor of his skin was wax as he took in the twelve-gauge pump and the pistol grips and the look in the young man’s eyes.
Twenty-six
Pious caught up with Quarrie before he left the ranch. The Riviera fully gassed up and ticking over, he was letting the engine warm up.
‘Wanted to get a-hold of you before you-all took off,’ Pious said as he came over from the cottage he shared with his mother and sister. ‘Georgia, Ike Bowen – I made those calls like you wanted and a buddy of mine from the old 2nd Company called me back last night.’
‘What did he say?’ Quarrie was adjusting the straps on his shoulder holsters.
‘Not a whole lot as it goes,’ Pious stated. ‘Not much to say about Ike Bowen except he was a pretty good soldier.’
‘Yeah, well, that part I figured already.’
Pious made an open-handed gesture. ‘That shelter he’s got going underneath the garage: all that stuff backed up in case of a hurricane or whatnot, they reckon he was always one of those survivalist types. As far as the service goes he had something of a reputation as a point man, never missed a booby trap once. A little paranoid maybe, but they said he was pretty tough.’
‘Pious, all tough guys are paranoid. You ought to know that by now.’
Pious cracked a smile. ‘Anyways, there is one thing struck me as a little odd maybe. Back in the day Ike was something of a lady’s man apparently. It wasn’t as if he had a girl in every port or anything, but he did like to fool around.’
At that Quarrie raised an eyebrow. ‘Lady’s man, uh? That don’t seem to square with him living way up there in the grassland all on his lonesome.’
‘No, it don’t,’ Pious agreed. ‘But it might account for his wife leaving out when she did. That feller you mentioned from Oklahoma, he was 82nd with Ike when the Japs hit Pearl Harbor.’ Pious fished in his back pocket for a slip of paper. ‘Sergeant name of Morley. They gave me this address. Came through that little town myself, John Q, after I got out of Leavenworth and found me that grabbling spot.’
Walking around the car he checked the tailpipes where a little moisture was leaking out.
‘Sounds like she’s running OK.’
‘Sweet as a nut; you know how she always is.’
Lifting the hood, Pious checked underneath. ‘So you’re headed back to East Texas again then, are you? What’s up with that? Don’t you have any Rangers over there?’
‘Sure we do, but they’re tied up with all the protests right now.’ Opening the driver’s door Quarrie slipped behind the wheel as Pious settled the hood. ‘Blame it on the students, bud – them or LBJ.’
‘You sure you don’t want me to fly you back over there?’ Pious said. ‘It’d be no trouble.’
Quarrie shook his head. ‘No sir, thank you. I’m going to need wheels when I get there and I already gave Marion County theirs back.’ He cast a glance towards his cottage. ‘What I need is to get quit of the Rangers and find me a sheriff’s job.’
‘James is it you’re thinking about?’
‘No momma around all these years and his dad on the road all the time. You know that can’t be good.’
‘John Q,’ Pious said, ‘if we laid you down and cut you open we’d find the word Ranger stamped right through your marrow. James knows that. He’s always known it and he’s just fine. Got him a black man to learn life’s lessons from, and in this day and age that ain’t any bad thing. You might not be around as much as you’d like but they’s plenty good folks looking out for him – Mama and Eunice, Mrs Feeley and Nolo, not to mention all the other hands. Think on her this way: your son’s got a whole bunch of different influences to study on, and I never knew Mary-Clare, but from all of what you told me, I reckon she’d settle for that.’
Quarrie drove back to Fannin County and the Bowen house. When he got there he found both the Pontiac and the pickup truck parked in the driveway and the trapdoor open in the garage. As he parked the Riviera he saw Isaac peer out the front door. He did not say anything but the expression in his eyes was hollow.
‘You OK?’ Quarrie called. ‘Isaac, are you all right?’
Isaac did not speak. He just stood in the doorway, dressed in his uniform with his tie loose at the collar.
Inside the house Quarrie could see that the furniture had been shunted around, marks in the carpet where the couch had been, the coffee table was standing askew as well as one of the armchairs. The card table was on two legs where it leaned against the bar. The fire was burning, though it was warm outside, and he could see the family photograph lying on the mantelpiece with its glass smashed.
‘What happened here?’ he said. ‘Looks like there’s been a fight.’
Squatting down beside the fire Isaac stared. ‘My brother happened,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
Isaac did not look at him.
‘Isaac, what do you mean your brother happened?’ Quarrie indicated the uniform. ‘You told me you’re done with the service. Why are you dressed like that?’
Getting up, Isaac set the card table back on its legs. ‘I was going to Shreveport,’ he said, ‘on my way to see Dr Beale. He didn’t call, so I thought I’d go over there anyway and figured I’d feel more confident if I was dressed like this. I’ve been in so long I still can’t get my head around being a civilian.’ He looked back. ‘Dad had to have a soldier in the family – did I ever tell you that? It was a given right from when me and Ishmael were kids. There’s always been a Bowen serving, firstborn usually, and I guess with this generation that should’ve been Ish.’
‘Isaac,’ Quarrie looked at the fragments of broken glass that seemed to float in the strings of the rug. ‘You said you went to Shreveport. What happened?’
‘Nothing, I never made it.’ Isaac shook his head. ‘Fact is I only got as far as the H-E-B in Paris. Went in to take a leak and I swear …’ His voice seemed to fail him suddenly.
‘What?’ Quarrie said.
Isaac stared into space. ‘I thought I saw my brother. I thought I caught sight of Ishmael standing at the door, but when I looked I couldn’t find him, not inside the store or out in the parking lot.’ He worked the heel of a hand through his hair. ‘Gave me one hell of a shock because I’d already resigned myself to the fact he was killed in that fire. But he wasn’t. Ishmael didn’t die in the fire; he was there at the grocery store.’
Arms folded, Quarrie stared.
‘I figured he’d come here so I drove on back.’ Isaac gestured to the way the furniture had been shifted. ‘He must’ve made it ahead of me though, because this is how I found the place. Like you said just now, it looks for all the world like someone had a fight, and Ishmael fights with himself.’
He sat down heavily in a chair. In the kitchen doorway Quarrie stood with his arms still folded. Isaac not looking at him, he was staring into the fire. Warm in the room, Quarrie slipped off his jacket and sat on the couch with his holsters pouched against the walls of his chest.
‘Isaac,’ he said. ‘Why I’m here – there’s something I have to tell you, something you’re not going to like.’
Isaac snorted. ‘I swear to God, there’s nothing you can say that’ll piss me off any more than I am right now.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on it,’ Quarrie said.
Taking a moment, he drew a breath. ‘I’ve been working down in Marion County. I told you, on account of a couple of murders?’
Isaac nodded.
‘One of them was a woman called Mary-Beth Gavin and she used to work at Trinity Hospital. She ran the office down there but took off right after the fire.’ Quarrie was quiet for a moment before he went on. ‘The thing of it is the National Crime Information Center has picked up on a set of fingerprints. That’s the forensics department the FBI put together, and they discovered that the prints found in Mary-Beth’s house match a set from a motel room in Fairview, as well the sawn-off barrel of a shotgun. The same prints were also found at a Baptist mission cottage in Marshall, Texas, where a young maid was murdered. I’m sorry, bud, but another set were recovered from right here at your daddy’s house.’
As if he couldn’t quite comprehend what he was being told, Isaac stared out of half-closed eyes.
‘The lab team from the sheriff’s department,’ Quarrie went on. ‘They sent all the prints they recovered back east, but they didn’t know about Marion County. The NCIC picked up the match and sent a teletype to my captain in Amarillo.’
Isaac lifted a palm. ‘So what’re you telling me? What does all that mean?’
‘It means that the coroner got it wrong. Isaac, whoever it was killed those other folk, they murdered your dad as well.’
Isaac was trembling where he sat. Eyes closed tightly, his lips no more than a scar against the pallid shades of his face. He did not say anything; he just sat there with his hands clasped in his lap. And then he looked up.
‘John Q,’ he said. ‘You remember how I told you that whoever it was killed him they came in through the garage?’