They passed by Gee’s shop slowly. There were no cars in the parking lot. All of the lights were off inside, just like Hud had left them. “Looks good to me,” he said.
“You really thought she might be here?” Sloane pulled the Crown Vic off the side of the road and parked it there with the engine left to idle.
“Waiting for me,” Hud said. “Looking for me. Yes. I can help her. I hoped she would be here.”
“Burke said you’d always been hung up on her.”
“It was easy, that thing you can’t have.”
“Until you can.”
“Then it screws up everything.” Hud glanced over to Sloane and regretted saying what he had, but there was no apologizing. He hadn’t known that Goldie was married. Hadn’t cared. But Sloane had to have known that Burke was married, what she was getting herself into. “It’s not too difficult to connect some dots, think that Goldie hunted down Tom Tucker and blew his head off. It could be her cigarette butt you found.”
“That’s got to be uncomfortable.”
“It’s a possibility that I don’t want to face. But I can veer away from her as a suspect pretty easily.”
“Who to, then?”
The Crown Vic’s engine rumbled, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Every piece of equipment inside the car vibrated. It felt like a boat restricted to a no-wake zone.
Hud stared out the window toward the lake. “The Tom Tucker killing wasn’t so different after all, if you think about it.”
Sloane looked at Hud like she didn’t believe him.
“He knew his killer,” Hud continued. “Or, it appears that he did. But that’s not the first time that’s happened since this thing first started.”
“Ah, Kaye Sherman,” Sloane said.
“Exactly. The back door was open. There was nothing taken, no sign of a struggle. Her head was smashed against the counter.”
“An emotional response. Rage,” Sloane said, “that got out of hand. A reaction. Not a premeditated murder . . . not a sniper shooting.”
“But a crime of passion.”
“You’re back to that. Which would explain two murders, but not the other two, Pam Sizemore and Leo Sherman.”
“The shooter had time. Knew what was coming. At least with Leo Sherman. Maybe Pam Sizemore, too,” Hud said, still staring at the lake.
“Are you suggesting that there are two killers, that maybe we’re wrong in combining it all into one case?”
“You just considered that possibility for the first time, didn’t you?”
“I did, but I don’t think it’s probable.”
Hud turned his attention away from the darkness that led down to the lake. “In the summer, you can’t see the water from here,” he said. “But once the leaves come off the trees, you can. You can see from one end of the lake to the other from the right spot. Look, I don’t think there are two killers on the loose, either. But I also don’t think Goldie Flowers is that one killer. I saw her face, felt her fear. Something sent her to me, and I think it was her abusive husband. I think she wanted to feel safe.”
“Or maybe it was something else. She could have been using you,” Sloane said.
“What for?”
“To hide in plain sight.”
“You really think that?”
“We can link Tom Tucker to Jordan Rogers and Jordan Rogers to Pam Sizemore. We know that Kaye Sherman was lying about the amount of drugs in her office. Drugs seem to be at the heart of all of this, and her husband is in that mix.”
“What’s that got to do with Goldie?” Hud said.
“You think she didn’t know what Tom was involved in?”
“Maybe. Probably. There was a rift between Goldie and her father. He might have known about Tom, too. The drugs could be the cause of the rift. Tom Tucker might have been desperate, or been a dealer for all we know. We just started looking at him. He might have been willing to do anything to keep Goldie in the style to which she was accustomed. But I still don’t see how that sent her to me? She said they were breaking up. I figured it was because he was physical with her, but what if his business was dying? Charlie Sandburg, the guy that owns the boat company, said there was a turf war going on and that Leo Sherman was trying to help Pam Sizemore. What if that’s what this is? What if the competition just got rubbed out? I’ve seen it before in Detroit. But you wouldn’t expect that here. Not like it used to be. But now you would. Drugs are part of the economy. There’s no denying that.”
“Help Pam Sizemore out how?”
“He didn’t say. I’m not sure he knew,” Hud said. “But there’s a link between the Shermans and Pam Sizemore.”
“Drugs for the kid?”
“Maybe. It’s all we have at the moment.” Hud looked back at the lake. “We need to talk to Charlie Sandburg, but first I think we need to go to the highest point on the lake. Where you can see everything. Where a 30-aught-6 had the range to reach both murder scenes. The ridge where Pam Sizemore was shot, and the backwaters where Leo Sherman was shot.”
Sloane closed her eyes, as if she were trying to imagine just the place.
“There’s only one place I can think of,” Hud said.
“Yeah, me too,” Sloane answered. “The old Ferris wheel.”
“Exactly,” Hud said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The boardwalk hadn’t started out as a collection of games of chance, cotton candy stands, and thrill rides. Instead of greed and profit, the boardwalk, and the towering Ferris wheel that announced its presence from miles away, were born of tragedy. Or at least that was how Hud had heard the story.
A ramshackle carnival had rolled up on a perfect summer day in 1926. After finding an open field next to the water, the collection of rides and vaudeville acts set down stakes, hoping to draw a crowd. Cottages were starting to be built around the lake, an overflow of the prosperity of the roaring twenties. The peace dividend from World War I had paid off handsomely and the Great Depression wasn’t on anyone’s radar. Fun was in the air; it smelled of cotton candy, popcorn, and opportunity.
About two days into the carnival’s stay, one of the Ferris-wheel buckets came loose, tossing two young girls and their pregnant mother to the ground. Luckily, the bucket hadn’t been at the wheel’s apex when the bolts gave away, but even from halfway up all three of them suffered broken bones and severe trauma. The unborn child was lost. The carnival was shut down immediately by county officials, and sometime during the night, the owners and everyone else sneaked off. What rides were left behind were repaired, legally acquired by the landowner, and a new venture popped up almost overnight around the Ferris wheel. The boardwalk expanded during the Depression, despite the desperation of the economy, drawing people with pennies and nickels for a high sight of the lake and other distractions from their hopeless reality. Gee had gotten her first kiss on the original wheel, looking out over the lake, a place she loved and would never leave, and Al Capone was rumored to have visited the boardwalk after a secret stay-over at the Demmie Hotel, but that was more likely a tall tale than truth. Postcards had been printed up and sold three for a penny, all featuring the Ferris wheel, the only one permanently mounted for hundreds of miles.
The Ferris wheel had been replaced twice, once after World War II, and then again in the early seventies, before the energy crisis hit and the economy tanked again. Now, after years of neglect, the giant metal circle sat silent and unmoving, rusting away, threatening to fall into the water where it would surely give in to the ravages of time. Its lights had been darkened forever. There would be no replacing it again; such an endeavor was too expensive.
All of the shops were empty, too. The boardwalk was a ghost town of snooker shanties that moaned and trembled as the wind whistled through shattered windows and open doors; a mother’s scream echoed from 1926 and joined the chorus of broken dreams, lost hope, and the certainty of demise. Only raccoons, rats, and snakes made the place home now.
The Ferris wheel was t
he tallest and most obscure perch Hud could think of for a sniper to use. From it, two of the shooting spots would be in range of a 30–aught-6. “We should’ve checked this place out sooner,” he said.
“Maybe in the daylight?” Sloane swung her flashlight upward to the top of the wheel, cutting through the darkness like a sharp knife. “If I see anything with beady eyes, I’m shooting first and asking questions later.”
Hud flickered a smile and silently agreed.
The bright white beam cut across red rust growing on disconnected metal rods and braces that dangled in the wind. A few of the lower buckets had been removed, or fallen into the lake, but the rest of them looked to be intact. Paint had peeled away, but there were still eerie outlines of clown faces on the buckets. The sky was obscured by clouds; moonlight and starlight were hidden, making the lake look blacker and deeper than any abyss that Hud could imagine. He tried to avoid looking at the water. It was an unmarked grave, dangerous, begging him to dive in and search the bottom for a human bone, a ring, a tooth, anything that he could hold onto, no matter the weather or time of day. He had never been afraid of the lake, of water, until his mother had disappeared.
Hud eased his own flashlight across the ground, looking for a shell casing, anything that would have suggested that the shooter had been there. The silence of an October night surrounded them, blanketed them, all the while leaving them unprotected. They spoke in soft whispers. There were no more sirens in the distance, no traffic noise, no boats on the lake for a nighttime cruise. It was too cold, to desolate for a joyride of any kind.
Crisscrossing beams of light didn’t turn up anything, at least nothing that jumped out at Hud and demanded that he investigate further. There were too many cigarette butts, soda cans, and various other types of trash lying around for him to single anything out. It would be like hitting the lottery if he did find something useful. A thorough investigation would have to wait until daylight came around again. He thought he’d enlist Deputy Moran to help him if it came to that. Help calm the waters. She was still most likely pissed at him for leaving her at the scene of Leo Sherman’s shooting.
Frustrated, Hud swung the light up to the top of the Ferris wheel and let it rest there. A seat sat where he expected it to. Then he scaled the light down slowly, like he was taking steps, calculating the reach from one bucket to the next. He sighed out loud.
“You’re not seriously thinking of going up there, are you?” Sloane said.
“Only if I have to.” He brought the beam back to the ground, then walked to the edge of the seawall. The opposite shore was dark, just like the one to the south of him. But there was a building with lights on to the north of them. It was within walking distance. He looked upward at the top of the Ferris wheel and then back to the building. “Which do you think is taller? The Ferris wheel or the Demmie Hotel?” he asked Sloane.
She shrugged. “The Ferris wheel, but only by a little if you’re on the roof?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” Hud said. He stared at the hotel a little longer. It was a beacon in the dark, one of the few businesses that stayed open year round and catered mostly to the locals. Hud had felt comfortable there, was glad that Tilt Evans was still behind the bar, serving up wisdom and offering advice, even if it was to stay away from Goldie. “What was Pam Sizemore’s last Twitter post to Jordan Rogers?”
Sloane sidled up to Hud and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, staring at the water, then to the hotel. “Last call.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought it was. Last call. But maybe we mistook that text for something it wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“We thought it was a drug deal set up, that she was almost out, the end of a batch. Come and get it while it lasts. But maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe it said exactly what was meant to be said.”
“Okay, but what are you thinking? I’m not following you.”
“Last call. Like in a bar. Jordan Rogers worked next door at Johnny Long’s; they met at the bar at the hotel after he got off work. Tilt told me that when I asked if Pam Sizemore ever came into the bar. They’d come in at the end of the night. Maybe that’s where they made their exchanges.”
“We can ask Jordan.”
“We can, but that’s not my point.”
“What is?”
“Tilt Evans would know what was going on. He wouldn’t miss something like that. He knows everything that goes on inside that bar. I’d bet my life on it. There might be a reason why Tom Tucker came to the bar looking for Goldie. I thought it was for another reason. I thought he was looking for me, but maybe he really came in to talk to Tilt, but I was there so he couldn’t. Wouldn’t talk freely with a cop there—either one of them. I think we need to talk to Tilt.” Hud turned away from the Ferris wheel, and started to hurry to the car.
“I’m calling for backup,” Sloane said, following after him.
“That’s probably not a bad idea,” Hud said. The wind picked up his words and carried them away. They were no longer whispers, and each syllable bounced off the lake, amplifying and flying in all directions. He could only hope that no one was listening.
“So, Burke’s father had motive to kill your mother?”
“What if they were having an affair and she finally wanted more? That she didn’t want to be a mistress anymore? She said everything was going to change and she hadn’t meant it in a bad way. She was happy before she died.”
“Did he have a black car?”
“It wasn’t Burke’s car that she got into on that last day. I knew the Burkes’ cars. I would have recognized it. I didn’t know the car that she got into.”
“So that doesn’t add up.”
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t driving, or that he had someone else pick her up.”
“Someone else would have been involved, complicit. Even if they had dropped her off somewhere where he was, they would have spoken up. Maybe not then, but years later. You know how that works. Secrets always bubble to the surface. People talk. No one has.”
“I don’t know whose car it was.”
“It would have been uncomfortable, considering how close you all were, if Burke had left his wife for your mother.”
“It wouldn’t have looked good. Burke’s parents were thick with the society people. His position was electable, so morals held value. I’m sure appearances meant a lot. There was a lot at stake if things got out of control, don’t you think?”
“Your mother fell in love with him of all people?”
“Sheriff Burke had the means and the knowledge of how to make someone disappear.”
“The sheriff was a killer? You think he took her down some lonely road, killed her, dumped her in the lake, then went home to his wife and son and lived happily ever after?”
“You sound like you don’t think that’s possible, that a cop can’t cross a line.”
“Not true. I had my suspicions about you, that you killed your snitch in Detroit. Have you forgotten?”
“I’d never forget something like that.”
The neon Open sign buzzed in the window of the Demmie Hotel bar. Hud and Sloane sat in the Crown Vic surrounded by the dark of night, alone in the parking lot. There was only one other car, and Hud knew that it belonged to Tilt Evans.
The dispatcher’s voice droned on over the radio, and they both listened intently. “There is no record of any criminal activity for Clyde “Tilt” Evans,” the woman said. “Only two traffic tickets, and both of those were issued several years ago.”
“Where were they?” Hud said into the mic.
“Hold on.” Static, then silence, then more static. After a long few seconds the dispatcher said, “Chicago. Both tickets were issued in Chicago.”
“Chicago,” Hud whispered.
“What is it?” Sloane said.
“I don’t know. I guess I had never associated Tilt with Chicago. He’s always been here,” Hud answered, then said 10-4 back to the dispatcher while he looked at the ho
tel with a fresh set of eyes.
“We all came from somewhere.”
“We probably don’t know as much about Tilt as we should,” Hud said as he grabbed the door handle and opened it.
“Aren’t you going to wait for backup?”
“No.” Hud flicked his head to the bar. “The lights just went off inside. It’s hardly closing time . . .”
A cold wind pushed past Hud as he exited the Crown Vic in a quick sprint with his .45 sliding upward to the ready position. He half expected to hear a shot, feel the burn of lead pierce his skin, but that didn’t stop him. Running toward the truth never had.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The door to the bar was unlocked. Hud hesitated, looked over his shoulder at Sloane and saw her pale, white face edged with fear. He knew at that moment that she’d never been in a situation like this, one full of uncertainty and the possibility that they might face resistance, gunfire, maybe death. Being a county detective in a seasonal tourist community had given her little experience when it came to such a thing. Winter burglaries were her specialty. Not hunting down a cold-blooded killer. Hud would have been more confident with Deputy Moran at his side, with her kickboxer attitude and relentless fierceness. Not somebody who had succumbed to Paul Burke’s charms and then come to regret it.
“Stay close,” Hud whispered, trying to boost her courage. He had no idea if Tilt was capable of murder, or of all of the things that had happened since Pam Sizemore. It was a long line of incidents to link together, and he hadn’t had the clarity of mind, or the time, to attempt the feat, but Hud was fairly certain that Tilt Evans knew more about what was going on than he was telling. And now he was showing something by turning off the lights early, like he had made the Crown Vic and decided to run and hide. That was just speculation on Hud’s part. Nothing might be wrong. There could be a million reasons why Tilt had decided to close the Demmie Hotel bar down early—but it was out of character. He never closed early, at least since Hud had been back. Tilt’s presence had been as constant as the North Star.
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