Dead Man Falls

by Paula Boyd

  Oh, yeah, you can always count on me to be aware. And the thing is, I understood what he meant. If I had to draw--God forbid--the gun might not slide out smoothly because the holster could slip around where it was fed through the narrow belt. Comforting thoughts all the way around.

  The truth was, it was both stupid and unrealistic to think that I could just go along for the ride, pretend to be a part of the game then cower behind Jerry when things got rough. I wouldn’t do that, and I’m glad he’d given me the tools so I wouldn’t have to. Whether what we were doing was right or not was open to debate, even with me, but the options were definitely limited. My mother was in serious trouble and we had to do something.

  I buckled up, slid the gun in the holster, made sure both extra clips were in the front holster sleeve and let my shirt cover it all up. "What about the stake-out guy in the garage?"

  "I’ve let Rick know what’s going on. He can tell him what to do. Besides, I can’t see having him there has been much help so far."

  Couldn’t argue with that. "So what’s the plan? Are your guys surrounding the house or are they going to wait until we get there?"

  Jerry hesitated for a second then said, "I doubt Pollock’s at your mother’s house anymore, Jolene."

  "I know." I’d already run that scenario myself and come to the same conclusion. "He’s a pervert, but he’s not stupid. You could have an army out there at the snap of a finger, and he knows it. So where is he?"

  Jerry motioned toward the door. "Let’s head to Kickapoo. I figure he’ll let us know."

  Chapter 21

  Jerry ran the lights but not the siren as we sped toward Kickapoo. He had several units on standby, as did Rick, but only one would be meeting us at Mother’s house: the one driven by Leroy Harper.

  Before I could ask "Why Leroy?" Jerry told me why.

  "Because his father was supposed to be with your mother."

  And now he wasn’t--for whatever reason. I guess he could have been kidnapped by Pollock right along with Lucille, but neither of them had mentioned Fritz. "He’s not with her," I said firmly. "And if Pollock had somehow hurt Fritz, Mother would have made that clear to us if she possibly could."

  "I agree," Jerry said, turning off the highway and onto the road to Mother’s house.

  I knew better than to let myself get worked up, but knowing better and doing better are apparently a weak linkage in my personality. I took deep a breath and let it go slowly, trying to focus on my breathing, which is about as far as I’ve made it into the meditation program. The extra oxygen might have helped a little, but the sad fact was that I knew firsthand how these kinds of unpleasant situations could go, and bad to worse was the usual direction. The old wound in my upper arm began to twitch and I rubbed it briskly. "This is not going to be good, Jerry. I can feel it."

  He didn’t argue with me.

  When we pulled up to Mother’s house, there were no vehicles parked in the driveway. Mother’s car could be in the garage, but where was Fritz’s truck? And Pollock hadn’t walked up from Abilene. "Just like we figured, they’re gone."

  He killed the engine and opened the car door. "You have a key to the house?"

  I fished around in my pocket and found my key ring, hopped out of the car and headed for the front door. Jerry was beside me before I got the key in the lock.

  "Just because it appears no one is here doesn’t automatically mean they’re not. This could be a setup," he said. "I’m going in first."

  I handed him the key and stood to the side as he shoved it in the door. After clicking open the deadbolt, he turned the knob and eased the door open. "Miz Jackson?"

  No answer and no sound.

  He pulled his pistol from his hip, swung the door back partway and made a quick look around, using the door as a shield.

  I had not removed my gun, for a number of reasons. One, I’d been sort of scolded against it about thirty times, and two, regardless of Jerry’s precautionary stance, I was almost positive no one was in the house.

  We crept into the living room and toward the lamp glowing on the telephone table. There, in the same bold print as was on the box, was a note from Pollock: "Have gone for a tour. Call when you arrive."

  My heart did another fluttery thump and I had a great urge to curse. I managed to keep my ugly words to myself, but I couldn’t do a thing to stop the fear pumping in my chest. Why had Pollock taken my mother and what had he done to her? I blinked away the unpleasant flash of a perfectly coifed pink hairdo with a bullet hole just below the bangs. I couldn’t allow myself to even think such thoughts. If I planned to be of any help to Mother or Jerry, I had to keep my focus on the facts of the situation, not the "what ifs."

  "What does he mean, call?" I asked, fairly calmly, considering. "I don’t know how to call, who to call, or where to call."

  "Doesn’t your mother have a cell phone?"

  "Yes, but I don’t know the number," I said, seeing where this was headed and not liking it much. "She gave it to me once, but I don’t have it with me. She says she never has it turned on anyway. Emergencies only, that sort of thing." I paused and took a deep breath. "I don’t know the number, Jerry. I can’t call her."

  Then I noticed the light flashing on the answering machine. One blink, one message. "Look! It’s him. Has to be." I reached over and pressed the button.

  "Jolene," said my mother’s voice. "You need to call me on the emergency phone right away. I just knew you wouldn’t remember the number. You know how you are, always forgetting things, like the time you forgot the combination to your locker at--"

  Pollock’s voice blurred in the background.

  "Well, here’s the number, sweetheart." Her voice oozed some very un-Lucille-like sap. "There’s a number two pencil in my desk right beside the lined notebook paper. I always keep notebook paper to remind me of when you were in--oh, all right!" she said, apparently to Pollock. "Mr. Pushy here won’t even let me talk. I’ve just about had it with his nonsense, I'll tell you for sure."

  She eventually spit out the cell phone number and I jotted it down. She repeated the number to be sure I got it right, which was a good thing since hearing her voice--and how she was saying things--had upset me more than I wanted to admit.

  "Hurry up, now, sugar plum," she added, syrup dripping from every word. "I’m trying to be a little lady about all this, you know, but it isn’t easy. You be a lady, too, now, Jolene, sweetie pie. Sometimes it’s just the only way. You know how I taught you to be a good little good when--"

  The message ended abruptly and I guessed that Pollock had heard enough of her rambling discourse and had clicked her off. Mother’s antiquated machine didn’t record the time and date of the calls, so we didn’t know how long ago she’d left that message.

  I punched the save button on the recorder and turned to Jerry. "You know she never talks to me like that. The nicey-nice stuff was to get my attention about something, trying to tell me something." I knocked my fingers on the telephone table. "Like this. She's never called this a desk." I picked up the pad of paper and pen sitting by the phone. "No pencils, no notebook paper either." I looked up at him, a shiver shaking through me. When this, when that…good little girl… "He’s taken her to the school, Jerry."

  "Get in the car," he said, running for the door. "We’ll make the call from my phone."

  As soon as we were in the Expedition, Jerry signed on with his department and Leroy came on the radio immediately. Leroy was about fifteen minutes away from Kickapoo.

  Hearing only one side of Jerry’s conversation with his staff made it hard to follow, so I tried again to think of a good reason why an innocent person would kidnap my mother to get to me. The only thing that made any kind of sense was that he believed I wouldn’t talk to him otherwise. He was right about that. I do exhibit masochistic tendencies at times, but I wouldn’t willingly allow Pollock to cause me grief--just thinking about him was grief enough. Still, it was a pretty radical move just for a chat.

  The flip side
of that rationale was that Willard Pollock had been in town for at least a week, had killed everyone he had easy access to and now had to switch gears for Jerry and me. Time to get right to the point, finish his hit list and move on. But were we really the last ones? And why kill Red White? Why kill any of them?

  I could come up with a motivation for killing Rhonda, but only if she’d somehow decided to look him up and blackmail him for what he’d done over twenty years ago. And that didn’t fly very well if Rick’s information on her new civic-mindedness was really true. On the bright side, maybe we could get some answers out of Pollock--if he didn’t kill us first.

  Jerry set the radio aside and said, "Fritz isn’t with your mother. He called in to dispatch a few minutes ago."

  I had already guessed that, but the confirmation still shook me. My mother rarely appears scared, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it. And I figured she was feeling very scared right now. Of course, if Fritz had been there, what would Pollock have done? "They were supposed to have stayed together. What happened? Why didn’t she go with Fritz back out to his house?"

  "According to what Fritz told Doris in dispatch, Lucille wanted to stay at the house and get ready for a big date they’d arranged for tonight. He went home to shower and change out of his uniform."

  "Didn’t she know we have a serial killer on the loose?"

  "We’ve made it a point to keep things as quiet as possible," Jerry said. "She didn’t know about the last two murders, or about Russell."

  "Didn’t Fritz know?"

  "Probably not. And even if he had, there was no reason to suspect that Lucille was in immediate danger."

  "Not that it would have mattered anyway. Fritz was clearly smitten with my mother, and if Lucille had told him to jump in the lake for a bath, he would have. He went home to get fancied up for their date just like he was told."

  "Doris in dispatch is going to keep trying to reach Fritz at home, but there’s no time for Leroy to swing by the house. He’s headed straight out here to meet us."

  "I was afraid Leroy might not have a job after the funeral home incident."

  "I can’t fire Leroy," he said simply. Something must have clicked, because Jerry grabbed his cell phone and held down one of the automatic dial buttons. "Rick, did Harley Danvers know anything about Willard Pollock?"

  Jerry said nothing for a long while, just listened. When he finally punched off, he turned to me and said, "Harley suspected that his mother had a secret past, but never heard of Pollock. Also said he knew nothing about any other children. He did, however, admit to knowing Calvin Holt."

  "No surprise there."

  "He’s never been to Abilene and knows no one from there."

  "Did he have anything helpful to say?"

  "Not really," Jerry said. "He’s pretty upset."

  "I don’t doubt it. Losing his mother and learning Leroy is his father all in the same day has to be devastating."

  "He did have a suggestion on who might have killed his mother."

  I scooted up a little in the seat. "Really?"

  "Yes, but Rick told him you had an alibi."

  No, it was not funny. It also wasn’t a surprise. No telling what Rhonda had told her son about me, all of it lies, of course. "I’m going to talk to Harley at some point. He needs to know the truth about his mother." Jerry narrowed his eyes at me. "No, Jerry, I'm not going to bring my stupid teenage grudge into it. Rhonda had a really tough life--something I didn't understand until now. I doubt she ever told her son about it. Knowing some firsthand details could help him deal with whatever dirty laundry finally gets sorted out."

  "You may be right," Jerry said. "But let’s hold off on that particular humanitarian mission until we’re sure he’s not involved in any of this."

  Good point. Or was it? Pollock was the one who had kidnapped my mother, not Harley.

  Jerry hung a right onto Pecan Avenue a few blocks before we got to the school. If I remembered correctly, Mulberry was next, then Bois d’Arc. None of these "tree" streets were paved. A few of the main streets in Kickapoo had asphalt, a few more had tar and gravel. Most, like these, just had gravel.

  The houses were small, frame types, probably built in the late forties or fifties, with pier and beam foundations and small front porches. Most were painted white, but there was one lilac-colored house along with several yellows, a pink, and a very unpleasant green. The yards were fairly well kept for the most part, but a lot of the structures were showing their age.

  The travelogue and house appraising had calmed me some, but now that we were seconds away from facing Pollock, my nerves jumped into alert mode again. "I’d feel better if we had a plan."

  "That’s why I headed down this way. We’ll turn and circle around to the far end of the school and get a feel for the situation."

  "Why don’t we just charge in?" And shoot him. "Catch him off guard?"

  "I think we have a better chance by playing straight. If he gets scared, he’s liable to do something stupid."

  "Like hurt my mother."

  Jerry parked south and west of the school, stopping just out of view. "Make the call."

  I ran my fingers through my hair, then grabbed my cell phone and dialed. I didn’t have much time to think of what I’d say as Willard Pollock picked up on the second ring.

  "Hello, Jolene," Pollock said, his voice lilting up in that same old cocky way it had years ago.

  I shuddered. "I want to talk to my mother."

  "It’s been a long time," he said, ignoring my demand. "Your mother tells me you look the same as you did in high school. I can’t wait to see for myself. I think we had a bond, don't you?"

  I felt my lip curl, but I couldn’t stop it any more than I could stop the bile creeping up into my throat. As my mother would say, leopards do not change their spots, and the pervert certainly hadn’t changed his. "Why did you take my mother?"

  "You make it sound like a kidnapping, Jolene." He chuckled, a loose rattling sound. "I didn’t take her. I just asked her to show me around a little. But I’m keeping my hands to myself, if that’s what you’re worried about."

  My hands started to shake and I gritted my teeth.

  "At a loss for words, Jolene?" he asked, with a wheezy cackle. "That’s not like you at all."

  Somewhere in the midst of thinking of ways to kill him--slow and painful options mostly--it occurred to me that he was pushing my buttons on purpose. And I was letting him do it. That made me even madder--but at myself. I took a deep breath and held it to the count of eight. "Where are you now, Mr. Pollock?" My voice was firm and professional. No nonsense and no fear.

  "Well, Miss Jackson," he replied in mock formality. "We’ve been driving around for a while, taking in the scenery. Sure are a lot of big houses out on the Bowman City Highway. Amazing growth. Kickapoo proper has stayed about the same though."

  "When and where, Pollock?" I said, cutting to the chase. "I want my mother back."

  He stopped laughing and turned serious. "I’ll be at the school in half an hour, by the old front door, where the main office used to be." Click.

  I relayed the information to Jerry, then added my opinion that he was lying through his teeth. "He’s already at the school. Mother as much as said so on the phone."

  "He doesn’t get thirty minutes." Jerry picked up his radio and called Leroy. Leroy was maybe seven to eight minutes away, so Jerry told him where we’d be going in. If anything looked suspicious he was to call Rick.

  My phone rang in my hand and I jumped, sucking in a breath. Very cool move. I glanced at Jerry and he nodded for me to answer. I did. And sure enough, it was Pollock again.

  "Don’t make this into a big show, Jolene. Tell Jerry Don to keep his deputies away. All I want to do is talk. When you two get in the school, I’ll let Lucille go. Had enough of her anyway."

  Click.

  I leaned back against the seat and rubbed my hands across my face. "He said he’ll let Mother go once we are inside the school. He also sai
d for you to keep your deputies away. Says he just wants to talk."

  Jerry shifted the car into gear. "Then let’s get him talking."

  Within seconds we pulled up in front of our old high school.

  The Kickapoo campus was a sprawling conglomeration of buildings of varying vintage, set back from the road about fifty yards. The general layout had the original brick structure in the center with the first addition--a sixties upgrade for the elementary school, new cafeteria and gym--attached on the right. The new high school was on the left. Our class was the last to graduate from the old building--hence the yellow yearbook debacle--so I had no history with the new place.

  There was also another change on which I had not been consulted, specifically the replacing of the letters HIGH with MIDDLE on the old building. "Great, we’ve been demoted to Junior High. Oh, excuse me, Middle School. Who thought that up anyway?" I said, trying to keep myself from panicking over walking into the building, whatever it might now be called.

  The north end of the campus was now clearly the hub of the school and there was only one car parked in front of the old part where we were headed. A shiny red coupe with a Cadillac emblem on the back sat directly in front of the sidewalk leading to the front door.

  "Pollock’s car," Jerry said.

  I too had seen the bright red Caddy the second we pulled up. "Yeah, that looks like his style."

  Jerry eased up beside the Cadillac. "It certainly fits the man we used to know," he said, peering inside. "I don’t see anything out of the ordinary."

  My thoughts immediately went to the trunk. Ordinary was a matter of perspective these days, and we had no way of knowing which version of that Pollock's trunk fit into--spare tire and jack or dead body. Shaking away that thought, I pointed up ahead to the front door, one side of which was propped open. "I assume that’s our welcome mat. I hope there aren’t any kids or teachers around."

  "Probably not at this time of day. Maybe a janitor." Jerry nodded to my waist on the far side. "Chamber a round and put the gun on safety. Don’t worry about shooting someone you shouldn’t, you won’t. You probably won’t even need it, but it’s better to be prepared."