Bye, Bye, Love

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Bye, Bye, Love Page 19

by Virginia Swift


  Sally hung her head. He was right. She was no detective. “I’m just trying to get a feel for who I really need to watch out for.”

  Dickie put the mug down on the table and leaned on his elbows. “Try this. Worry about every last one of them. Forget about trying to figure out who killed Nina Cruz. We think we know.”

  Sally’s eyes widened. She set down her own glass. “I’d assume that ought to be good news.”

  “It is,” Dickie said, looking anything but cheerful. “We’ve got the murder weapon. A Marlin Model 336, chambered for 35 Rem ammo. Lever action gun. A real traditionalist’s hunting rifle—lighter than the 444. Of course, your serious gun guy will have both, and probably a couple bolt-action and pump models, maybe even a semiauto or two in his gun case. Not to mention his shotguns, and his pistols, and heavier rifles for bigger game.”

  “So Nina wasn’t shot with Willen’s gun,” said Sally. “But it had been fired, and Nels claimed Nina was the one who fired it. That would get him off the hook,” said Sally. “Where in the world did you find the murder weapon?”

  “Nobody’s off any hook right now. And we found the gun in question in the basement gun room at the residence of Jimbo Perrine. It was his rifle. He’d cleaned and oiled it, but the stupid son of a bitch couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it after he shot her. It wasn’t like it was his most precious possession. There were half-a- dozen rifles in his case worth twice what that one is.” Dickie took a paper napkin from the holder on the table, extracted the gum from his mouth, wadded it up in the napkin, and applied himself to his coffee in earnest.

  “Maybe,” said Hawk, “the Marlin was just Jimbo’s favorite. Accurate, powerful, fun to shoot, and the kind of gun that, if you were a decent shot, would put a hole in something and stop it in its tracks.”

  “Fun to shoot?” Sally asked, aghast. “Putting a hole in a human being? That’s fun?”

  “You know that’s not what I meant,” said Hawk.

  “I can’t believe this,” said Sally. “I mean, I know Jimbo was a great hater. And I heard him talk about Nina—he especially resented her, probably because she’d bought a piece of land he’d gotten used to thinking of as a free country for Wyomingites. Maybe it’s just because I know him, but I can’t see him actually getting to the point of killing her. Was he that fucking crazy?”

  “He might have been crazy, but we don’t think that’s the reason he shot her. Or put it this way. Of course he was fucking crazy. And being crazy like he was may have made him a good candidate for shooting somebody. But in and of itself, that wouldn’t have been enough,” Dickie said.

  Sally was thoughtful. “What do you think that gun collection of his is worth?” she asked.

  He smiled slightly. “Good question, Mustang. All told, maybe fifty thousand. Maybe more. And it looked like lately his tastes were getting pricier and pricier. On the day he was killed, he was carrying a spankin’-new Browning rifle worth almost a thousand dollars. Appears he’d also developed a thing for collectible guns. There was a limited edition Winchester 94 in his gun case, never been fired, never meant to. Just for looking at and fondling. We found a receipt. He’d bought both at a gun shop in Fort Collins, on October 12. Paid cash. Then again, he’d have had to. His credit cards were maxed out and had been for months. The mortgage company’s about to foreclose on Arvida.”

  “Oh boy, that poor woman,” said Sally.

  “She should sell the guns,” Hawk said.

  “She is. And his mounts, too. He’s got maybe a hundred all told, everything from weasels and assorted heads and antlers to a mountain lion and a moose. Some of them are worth a pretty penny,” said Dickie.

  Sally couldn’t imagine why anyone would pay anything for a stuffed dead animal. Then again, plenty of women were willing to pay small fortunes for clothing made from the skins of dead animals that weren’t even stuffed and mounted. “So what you’re saying is that somebody paid Jimbo Perrine to kill Nina. And then, presumably, took out Jimbo himself. Who? Why?” She thought about the two sets of tracks in the snow.

  “That’s what we’re working on right now. And at this point, we consider every single person associated with Nina Cruz a suspect.”

  Sally thought again. “What about the Halloween prank? It might be related. How can that help narrow things down?”

  “Not much,” said Dickie. “Actually, not at all.”

  “So you’re concentrating on motive,” said Sally. “Trying to figure out what kind of person would do these kinds of things, and why. Do you have any theories?”

  “You might as well forget about trying to pump me, Sal. Naturally we have theories. And we have investigative techniques, and sources of information, and ways of making sense of that information, most of which is none of your goddamn business. Indeed, the less you know about the specifics of how we’re handling this matter, the better for everybody concerned, including you.”

  She conceded the point. “Okay, no specifics. But how about generally? What inclinations or experiences or personality traits might lead somebody to pay a killer, kill the killer, and, just possibly, try to scare me?”

  “I’m no psychologist,” Hawk said, “but there’s one kind of person I can think of. Somebody who feels so personally wronged by Nina Cruz that he or she isn’t satisfied with killing her. There has to be wreck and ruin beyond the grave. That’d have to be somebody pretty twisted.” He got up and poured himself another Beam.

  Dickie eyed Hawk’s glass involuntarily, caught himself, and slugged down a big swallow of coffee. “Twisted puts it mildly. There’s something both impersonal and personal in a series of crimes like this. Police shrinks have profiles for these kinds of perps. Patterns of childhood abuse are pretty common. Religious or political zealotry can be a big factor, as you’ve seen before, Mustang. There might be a financial motive in there somewhere, but it’s mixed in with lots of loco.”

  “Very creepy,” Sally said, shivering as she got up to splash a little more whiskey in her own glass, check the pork chops, turn the potatoes.

  Dickie nodded. “But the creepiest part is that the killer wouldn’t necessarily appear to be badly bent. Some are the kinds of quiet loners who suddenly show up with a basement full of corpses, and all the neighbors saying, ‘He seemed like a nice guy. Kept his lawn mowed. Kept to himself.’ And others you’d have to call sociopaths—people who to all appearances are nice, outgoing, well-adjusted, productive members of society. Wonderful, charismatic people. And then you find out that there’s a whole second soul inside, doing absolutely unexpected horrible things. We see that kind of thing in people who prey on children, for example. So we have to look at even the people who seem sweetest and most well meaning.”

  Unbidden, a fragment of Stone Jackson’s beloved hit “Springtime in the Country” tripped into Sally’s mind. A song with a lilting bounce, an irresistible hook. A song that made you happy just to hear it, until you listened a little closer and realized that the lyrics were about a mental crack-up.

  “I can imagine,” said Sally, “that the killer would be less than delighted to have his or her dark secrets exposed.”

  “Which is the kind of thing your little oral history interviews are liable to turn up,” said Hawk. “If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, I don’t know what should. Not to mention that it’s worth considering whether the person who pulled the Halloween trick on you might already think you know something you shouldn’t.”

  Dickie suddenly looked very tired. He finished off the last of the coffee, but it didn’t give him any visible boost. He reached in his pocket again, popped another piece of Nicoban.

  “Glad I don’t have your job, amigo,” Sally said, coming over to squeeze his shoulder.

  “You should be,” he replied. “Especially when you consider that we’re about to play host to this big hoo-ha benefit, with all kinds of people coming in from all kinds of places and a local police force of maybe thirty people, between the county and the city, to keep an eye o
n things.”

  Hawk nodded, face grave. “What about help from the state and the feds?” he asked.

  “They’re already involved. The FBI has been working on the murders, and you ought to know that you’ve attracted a little of their attention since Halloween. It’s always a little drifty dealing with them, because we never know when they’re holding out on us, and sometimes they come in here thinking they know fuck-all about everything and screw up all our work. But we don’t have any choice. They’ve got sources and resources we need. We’re hoping we can get a hell of a lot of cops in here Thanksgiving weekend.”

  They all looked at one another. “Thanksgiving weekend. You know what that means,” Sally said at last.

  Dickie nodded. “Pray for good weather,” he said.

  Chapter 19

  Tortilla Soup

  The next morning dawned cold and clear and perfectly crisp, the kind of morning that made you glad to be breathing pure, exhilarating Wyoming air. Hawk was already gone when Sally awoke, bursting with energy. She put on her tights and running bra, pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt, got into her socks and running shoes. This was not a day to groove up slowly with Dionne Warwick singing “Alfie.” She’d have to set a fast pace just to get warmed up, so she pulled out an old tape she’d made that kicked off with Van Morrison doing “Domino,” and really cranked from there. From the first stride, Sally felt like she could high step it and run forever.

  Why the hell was she feeling so good? Last night, Dickie had achieved his purpose of scaring her silly, all the while putting down most of the pork chops and a small mountain of pan-fried potatoes. He’d given her reason to worry that the idol of her youth was not, as he appeared, the spirit of light and art and compassion. Instead, Thomas Jackson might be a sociopath who’d had his ex-wife killed, then turned his own gun on the hired shooter, and might be continuing along some warped path of imagined revenge. She thought about the note she’d found in Nina’s office. Could Stone be the one who dwelled too often in the dark?

  Jackson, however, was just one of several potential candidates for Wyoming serial killer of the year, all of whom she hoped to interrogate—er, interview—in the near future. She was having lunch today with Randy Whitebird, a man who could easily turn out to be the psycho killer. Worse yet, she was picking up the check. Was she insane, or merely stupid?

  You could be insane and stupid, she realized as she rounded the corner by the Washington Park band shell.

  And yet, Sally thought as Grace Slick wailed “Somebody to Love” in her ears, if this was middle-aged crazy, she’d make the most of it. Her life had definitely gotten a lot more interesting since she’d packed up the Mustang, said goodbye to Santa Monica, and put the hammer down for the high country. She admitted she got a rush from solving real-world puzzles, although she could take or leave the close encounters with mortality. But quite apart from that, it occurred to her that here in Wyoming, she really had found somebody to love.

  Wonder of wonders, it seemed as if he loved her right back. Hawk Green was a marvel, a man who could put up with the likes of her and keep her interested at the same time. Not perfect, and not perfect for her. But who wanted that? As Delice Langham had recently observed, “He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s probably a keeper.”

  Much as he might like to, Hawk wouldn’t stop her from pushing ahead with the book. He might break a few dishes along the way, but he’d watch her back and help her think her way through the hard parts. As it happened, he’d saved her ass a time or two, and then proceeded to admire that same ass in ways that even now, sweaty and breathing hard, gave her some nice body flashbacks.

  He was there when she got back. Sweaty, too, after his early-morning basketball bout, making a cup of coffee.

  Had his back to her. The teakettle was whistling, and he didn’t hear her come in. She walked up behind him, put her arms around him, rubbed against him, and ran her hands down inside the front of his shorts.

  “I need a shower,” he said, reaching behind him and around her to take hold of that well-appreciated part of her body with both hands.

  “What a coincidence,” she said, enjoying his firm grip, and the friction of body on body. “So do I.”

  Fortunately, neither of them had classes to teach that morning. They took their time washing each other, and then retired to the bedroom and spent a lot of time looking seriously into each other’s eyes, and using their hands and their mouths on each other’s body.

  “This is going to sound weird,” Hawk said during a slow-breathing, gazing interlude, “but being afraid of something horrible happening to you makes me want to make love to you as if I might not get the chance again. So I’m going to try to keep this slow, and do everything I can think of to please you.” His hands moved, light and soft, on either side of her spine.

  “God, men are so insensitive.” She sighed, moving in to kiss him, exploring the inside of his mouth with her tongue, willing their bodies to melt together, slip and slide and linger over each other, melt again. She wanted to be so tangled up with him that she couldn’t tell the beginning or the end. To rock together in the waves of a warm sea, to be swept, together, away.

  Oh, tenderness.

  To doze, and wake, and take another shower, and smile, and take a deep breath, and give each other a soft good-bye kiss, and head out the door to get on with the day.

  “Please,” he said, swinging his daypack up over his shoulder and turning toward the university, “be careful. Really. And if you need me, give me a call.” He pointed to his belt. Much to her surprise, he’d clipped on the cell phone she’d given him. He hated the things, and it usually lived on the kitchen counter, turned off, gathering dust in its charging unit.

  She smiled at him. “You’re wearing the phone. You really do care.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve just decided to get addicted to betting on pro football, and I don’t want to miss a call from my bookie.”

  He gave her hand one last squeeze and headed for his office. She had half an hour before she was due to meet White-bird, three times as much time as she’d need to walk downtown. It was still a glorious day.

  The Laramie merchants, to their credit, had held off decorating for Christmas until after Halloween. But now, as Thanksgiving neared, the streets were festooned with tinsel garlands and shiny plastic bells, and the shop windows sported elves and reindeer and candy canes and Santa Clauses of all kinds, from a religiously inspired Saint Nick in a white robe with a golden crown to the traditional fat guy in the red suit and stocking cap to the Buckhorn Bar’s window painting of a jolly old fellow in a red union suit, black high-heeled boots, and a red cowboy hat with a white fur hatband.

  As she walked up and down Ivinson, checking out the store windows before going on to the Yippie I O, she recognized the brown Toyota 4Runner parked in the diagonal spaces out in front of the Buckhorn: Scotty Atkins’s personal vehicle. Scotty sat behind the wheel, talking to another white male in the passenger seat. Sally was dying to know who, but she couldn’t get a good look without crossing the street and walking right past them. Ordinarily, she had a penchant for the obvious, but where Scotty Atkins was concerned, she’d found herself more often opting for the oblique. She registered the information and kept on walking.

  As she entered the Yippie I O, she noted that Patsy Cline, chef John-Boy’s particular goddess, was playing on the sound system. Burt Langham was manning the reception stand, the picture of dude elegance, as usual. Today, he was sporting pressed jeans, red cowboy boots, a vintage Western shirt (turquoise with a black yoke, pearl snaps, and black-and-white striped piping), and a diamond horseshoe in his left earlobe.

  “No Christmas music?” she asked Burt as he led her to her favorite table in the corner.

  “Not ’til Christmas week,” he answered. “We try to be sensitive to employee morale around here. The chief employees being John-Boy and me. Christmas music makes him really bitchy. I once saw him throw a live lobster at a CD player after one too m
any rounds of ‘O Tannenbaum.’ ”

  Sally nodded. “Chefs can be so temperamental,” she said.

  “He’s usually pretty mellow,” Burt told her. “I’m the high-strung one. But that drove him right over the edge. You can never tell what’ll set somebody off,” he finished.

  She found the casual remark unsettling, but shook off the shiver. “For me, it’s John-Boy’s tortilla soup,” she said. “The very thought of it makes me want to offer myself up as his love slave.”

  Burt raised his eyebrows and offered a very small smile. “That job’s taken, thank you very much, Sally,” he said. “But after what you’ve been through, I’ll overlook the suggestion. In fact, you can even have seconds if you want. Don’t tell Delice.”

  Delice, Burt’s cousin and more-or-less silent partner in the café, was famous for never comping a morsel of food or drink to anyone under any circumstances. When her brother and his cops stopped in at the Wrangler, you’d hear her yelling, “No coffee on the house for you freeloaders! If you want to mooch, you can haul your asses down to Dunkin’ Donuts!”

  But everybody also knew that both the Wrangler and the Yippie I O did a hell of a lot of charitable work. Meals on Wheels and the Salvation Army and the battered women’s shelter would have been in deep trouble without the help they got from the Langhams.

  Sally looked around while she waited for Whitebird. She loved the Yippie I O, with its incredible bar (vintage cowboy boots in Lucite, topped with a swoosh of crimson lacquer counter), the high tin ceiling, the sky-blue cloud-painted walls, and Moostapha, the fez-wearing moose head over the pizza oven. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder whether Jimbo Perrine had been responsible for that particular piece of expert taxidermy. She motioned Burt over.

  “I’m curious. Where’d you get Moostapha?” she asked him.

  “Actually, my dad gave him to us as a restaurant-warming present. He used to hang over the mantel at my family’s place out on Lone Tree Creek.” Burt had grown up on a ranch near Cheyenne. He liked to observe that his upbringing hadn’t been able to make him a heterosexual, but he’d by God never be a vegetarian. “I knew he would be perfect for this place, so I kind of hinted and hinted until he had the big idea. Dad shot him himself,” Burt said proudly.

 

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