A Kiss Gone Bad wm-1

by Jeff Abbott

  Not yet, he couldn’t call her. He would need more proof. Fingerprints. Dental records. The business of proving who lay in this bed meant more than simply picking up a phone and summoning the press. They wouldn’t run a story without harder evidence, and he had none.

  Gooch came back into the room. Whit tucked Corey’s cool hand back under the sheets. Corey moaned, rasped, a shuddery breath.

  ‘Any trouble?’

  ‘Nope. The local drugstore sells them.’ Gooch produced a cheap disposable camera from the bag and began to snap photos of Corey from various angles. Whit had thought it an appropriate precaution. He told Gooch what Kathy had said.

  ‘So what are you thinking?’ Gooch asked.

  ‘I think Lucinda put him here.’

  Gooch gave him a disbelieving squint. ‘I don’t like her, but if her child was hurt, she’d want him taken care of.’

  ‘He is taken care of. And his brother tracked him down here – he at least was in contact with this nurse here – and dies.’

  ‘You’re suggesting Lucinda killed one son because he found out about her other son.?’

  ‘I don’t know. And that missing girl, Marcy Ballew? She worked here, then she vanishes from Port Leo. She has to be connected to this somehow.’

  ‘Consider this,’ Gooch said. ‘Kathy knows that John Taylor really is Corey Hubble, long-missing son of a prominent politician. Maybe she wants to sell that information to Pete. And maybe the Ballew girl was in on the scheme. She goes to Port Leo to deal with Pete, loses her wallet, and ends up missing or on the run.’

  ‘If Pete thought Corey was in this town, why not just come here and get him and publicize the hell out of it? It doesn’t make sense,’ Whit said.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t know. She’s calling him from little Missatuck, Texas. Corey’s in Deshay, Louisiana. God only knows what story she told him.’ Gooch finished his roll of film.

  Whit ran a finger along the burr of hair and scar along Corey’s scalp.

  ‘So you think Lucinda shot her own kid and set him up here?’ Gooch asked.

  ‘No,’ Whit said, ‘I think Delford Spires shot him.’

  ‘Why would Delford shoot a teenager?’

  ‘Before he disappeared, Corey told Marian Duchamp that he was going to kill Delford Spires. I think Delford and Lucinda were involved – he is still extraordinarily protective of her – and Corey found out. That weekend he vanished, I think he headed north to Houston, to the conference his mother was attending. Suppose Delford’s shacked up there with Lucinda. Corey finds them, there’s a fight, the gun goes off. Corey’s wounded.’

  They would rush him to a hospital,’ Gooch said.

  ‘You’d think. But maybe Delford’s worried he’ll lose his job. Maybe Lucinda’s worried about the political ramifications of her lover shooting her son. Obviously they chose another route.’

  ‘How would they have taken care of him, though, if he’d been shot?’

  ‘She’s an RN. I saw her diplomas in her office, it got mentioned a lot in the papers when she first ran for office and she was big on health care, nursing home reform.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Gooch, but this is Corey, and he got here with a new identity.’

  ‘So how would this Kathy have found out about Corey?’ Gooch asked.

  ‘A Web site about Pete Hubble included a picture of Corey and the number to Pete’s answering service – sort of an on-line milk carton. Kathy might have seen that and realized she was sitting on a financial opportunity.’

  A jowly man with reddened cheeks and wispy blond hair stormed into the room. He wore a short-sleeve button-down shirt crisp with starch. A succession of chins nearly hid his tie’s knot.

  ‘I’m Felix Duplessis, the chief administrator here. Who the hell are you people and why are you terrorizing my staff?’ he demanded.

  ‘We’re not terrorizing anyone,’ Whit said mildly. ‘I’m Judge Whit Mosley, from Encina County, Texas, and this is my associate, Leonard Guchinski.’

  ‘A judge?’ Duplessis blinked. ‘One of our nurses said you’re bothering this patient.’

  ‘Good,’ Whit said. ‘It’s about time someone bothered about him.’

  ‘I’m asking you to leave.’

  ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Whit said. ‘This man has been missing for sixteen years and he’s just been found, and we’re calling the police and the FBI.’

  Duplessis gaped. Whit explained. At the mention of Marcy Ballew’s name Duplessis grew gray-pale. A return to the main office of the nursing home showed Kathy Breaux was gone. Duplessis paged her over the intercom.

  ‘What can you tell us about John Taylor?’ Whit asked.

  Duplessis shook his head as he dug through a file. ‘Not much. He’s our youngest patient by far. He’s supposed to be transferred today. We just received a call this morning.’

  Transferred. Someone wanted the evidence whisked away, dumped in a fresh bed. ‘How is his care paid for?’ Whit asked.

  ‘A trust fund pays for what the government don’t.’ Duplessis pulled a thick file with TAYLOR, JOHN on the tab.

  ‘Who administers this trust?’

  ‘A woman named Laura Taylor. From Texas. Austin, I believe.’

  Faith worked out of Austin as Lucinda’s chief of staff. ‘Does she ever visit?’

  ‘Rarely. She was here, oh, a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘What does she look like?’

  Duplessis shrugged. ‘Big old girl type. Early forties, tall, heavyset, pretty hazel eyes. No nonsense.’

  Pretty hazel eyes. Faith.

  Whit flipped through the file. John Taylor, thirty-two years old, born in San Antonio, Texas, suffered severe head injuries in a car crash sixteen years ago and vegetative since the accident. He had been moved to Deshay six years ago from a home in Texarkana, where he had spent the past ten years. At the back of the file were the transfer papers from Texarkana, the signature at the bottom a loopy scrawl with the name typed beneath: Buddy Beere.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Whit said. ‘Oh, no.’ He reached for the phone.

  40

  David knocked on the door again. Claudia stood at the porch’s end, watching the oaken limbs sway in the wind.

  Yeah, stay out of the way, because you’re not even an officer anymore, just a tagalong. Give David a peck, send him on his way, get on your own feet, find yourself a job. Maybe out of Port Leo.

  ‘Mr Beere?’ David called through the shut door. ‘Sheriff’s department, open up, please.’ He gave Claudia a half smile, warm, just happy she was there. She half smiled back.

  They had driven out to Buddy Beere’s address in David’s cruiser, outside the Port Leo city limits, cutting through a grove of bent live oaks, and driven into a small clearing, studded with a few laurel oaks and a tidy cabin. A van was parked next to the cabin. Beside it was a shanty garage, tilting slightly with age. The cabin faced away from the road, faced away from the direction of town and bay, as though the little house had turned its back on the world.

  ‘Anyone home?’ David called. ‘Mr Beere?’

  They heard movement inside then, a scuffling sound, someone hurrying across a wood floor. Locks unlatched slowly – six of them – and the door creaked open an inch. A brown eye – oddly reddened and squinting – peered out at them.

  ‘Mr Beere?’ David said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m Deputy Power with the Encina County Sheriff’s Department. This is Claudia Salazar, you spoke with her on the phone yesterday.’ Claudia nodded, not drawing closer. She wasn’t here in any official capacity and didn’t want to give the wrong impression to Buddy that she was still an investigator. One hint of that and Delford, in his current mania, would press charges against her.

  The eye blinked. ‘Hello. Yes. Sorry it took me a while to reach the door, I was in the bathroom.’

  ‘Not out campaigning today?’ Claudia asked in a little too-bright tone from her end of the porch.

  ‘Oh, no, not today,’ Buddy said.

&n
bsp; ‘Over your cold yet?’ Claudia asked.

  ‘Mostly. Thank you.’ The door did not open any farther. ‘I don’t want to give my cold to y’all.’

  David cleared his throat. ‘We don’t mind. Your boss is helping us with some inquiries. We’re reviewing when certain patients were transferred into your nursing home.’

  Buddy opened the door a little wider, and over David’s shoulder Claudia could see his whole face now, round, soft, some slight scarring from old acne, a puzzled look. He wore surgical scrub pants, the kind she’d seen at the nursing home, a thick T-shirt. He slid his hand up along the locks set into the door.

  ‘Transfers? Gosh, all those records would be at Placid Harbor.’ He opened the door a little more. He was stronger than he looked, stocky, arms and chest thicker than she would have guessed from the hunched way he bore himself about town.

  ‘Okay, Mr Beere, would you mind stepping outside here for a moment?’ David asked. ‘So we can talk?’

  ‘Sure. Let me get my sandals. There’s splinters on that porch,’ Buddy Beere said, reaching by the door. ‘Just a second-’

  David turned and took four steps toward Claudia, shrugging, a question forming on his lips: ‘You wanna ask…’ and then a blast of thunder exploded from the door. David fell, blood and flesh flying from his shoulder. Buddy Beere stepped entirely out of the door, bringing the shotgun around and up. Claudia threw herself off the porch as the barrel roared again and little meteors screamed past her, heat cutting near her throat, her hair.

  She had no weapon. She scrabbled to her feet and ran for David’s cruiser. Another blast and the cruiser’s windshield dissolved into pixie dust. She was a clear shot in his sights. She swerved left hard, running low, putting the corner of the shanty garage between her and him.

  Another blast, into the cruiser’s hood. He was laughing. No, giggling.

  Mother of God, he’s killed David.

  Claudia hunkered down by a corner of the weathered garage, trying to guess which approach he might take. There was a rifle and radio in David’s cruiser, but it was twenty feet away and she imagined Buddy Beere, the gun steady in his hands, watching for her to stick her head out as a sweet target.

  The garage might offer a weapon, but once she went in, she would be pinned. The doors were antique, opening in the middle like a horse’s stall. Unlocked and slightly agape. Running across Buddy’s acreage offered little in the way of cover, beyond the motte of live oaks situated on the wrong side of the garage. To the other side seacoast bluestems grew thick but only thigh-high. Not enough. He could take a leisurely bead on her head and fire at will.

  She heard the kick of his feet coming along the side of the garage, between her and the police cruiser. She made her choice.

  She slipped inside the garage. It was neatly kept, small windows offering a hint of light. Tools were aligned along the back wall, a broom, a set of fishing tackle, an old sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle parked on the right side, cramped in the space. A trailer, carrying a small fishing skiff, was next to the Beetle. She hurried to the back of the garage, squeezing between car and boat. Her eyes ranged along the back wall of the garage: screwdrivers, wrenches, a pair of wicked-looking gardening shears.

  ‘Claudia?’ she heard Buddy’s voice ask. He said it Clau-di-a, the honeyed singsong a child might use in playing hide-and-seek, hoping to lure a playmate into the open. She grabbed the gardening shears and hunkered down behind the skiff; it offered the most immediate cover. But it gave her the least room to run or fight. She crouched, the shears heavy in her hands.

  Shot pummeled through the doors, just in case she’d been hiding there. Sunlight glowed through the frail, splintered wood. Silence followed, and she saw one of the doors creak open.

  ‘You know,’ Buddy said, almost conversationally to the empty air, ‘John Wayne Gacy invited the surveillance cops to breakfast at his house. That’s when they noticed the funny smell and found a basement full of dead boys. I always thought he should have killed the cops – how stupid just to cave. Dennis Nilsen pointed to where the chopped-up remains of his darlings were when the police came knocking. He should have at least killed those cops, gone out with a bang.’

  Kneeling, breathing through an open mouth, she saw his feet paddle past the other side of the Beetle. ‘Come out now,’ he called. ‘I don’t want to shoot up my nice car and boat, and I’ll make it quick.’

  She didn’t move.

  ‘That other cop, he’s messy but still breathing. Come out or maybe I go back up there and make sure he stops.’

  She didn’t move. He began to walk toward the back wall. A few more steps and he would be able to spot her. She braced herself.

  As he turned, the barrel swiveling toward the ground, she launched herself up, slamming her forearm against the blued bottom of the shotgun’s barrel. It swept right, exploding, cannonading into the garage wall. She pistoned her legs, driving Buddy hard into the side wall of the garage. She dropped the shears, both hands grabbing hold of the shotgun, trying to wrest it away.

  He slammed the shotgun barrel against her head, hard, twice, stars and sharp pain blurring her vision. Shoving up with her arms, she got the gun above her head and powered her knee square into his gut.

  He squirmed back, gasping, still holding the gun, and she kicked, hammering him in the mouth. Teeth broke and lips opened under her boot’s heel. Buddy staggered back, blood bursting from his torn mouth. She pulled hard on the shotgun. It discharged once more in the air, deafening in the small space of the garage.

  With a scream he yanked the weapon free from her grasp and swung it at her head. She fell to her knees, ducking, taking the blow on her shoulder. He pulled the gun back to its firing stance, squeezed.

  Nothing.

  Empty, jammed, she thought. Buddy charged at her, raising the Model 870 like a club, and she plowed back into him, knocking him to the dirt floor. She scooped up the fallen shears and vaulted into the narrow skiff to clamber toward the garage doors. He rammed the side of the light boat with his body, and she fell from the prow, diving headfirst, scraping her back against the trailer hitch, hitting the hard-packed dirt. The shears were beneath her and she twisted, trying to free them from her own weight. She saw Buddy squeezing through the narrowed space between the tipped boat and the Volkswagen. He tried to vault it, land on top of her, but he tumbled headfirst as she scrabbled out from underneath the boat.

  He grabbed her ankle.

  Claudia screamed, trying to kick him again. He tugged her back toward him, the shears slipped from her grasp, and she saw him pull a long brightness from a shoulder sheath. Bowie knife.

  He slammed the knife into her calf, and she screamed her throat raw in one second. She felt her own flesh tearing, the knife colder than ice. She kicked hard with the other leg, impacting collarbone, and pushed away, frantically grabbing for the shears. She smelled her own blood as her fingers closed around the shears’ handle. Pain – beyond pain – raced along every nerve in her body.

  He lifted the knife from her flesh.

  ‘Quit fighting, quit fighting!’ he yelled. He climbed on top of her and lifted the reddened knife. Claudia rammed the shears into his gut, hard, feeling Buddy Beere’s innards part before the points. She surged to a sitting position as she pushed, felt the blades slide along rib bone, and the shears vanished into him, all the way to the hafts.

  Her face was an inch from his. She felt the bowie tear into her shirt below her arm, the blade catch in the fabric, its edge whisper along her skin.

  Buddy did not scream. He fell away from her, hands slapping the shears’ smooth handles. Blood seeped from him and she crab-crawled backward, smelling his blood, her blood, kicking the dirt between them. Buddy lay on his side, blinking at her, mewling.

  ‘No… Mama, help…’ he wheezed.

  ‘You fucking loser,’ Claudia gasped. She hobbled to her feet. Agony lanced her leg, blood greased her skin. She staggered toward the cruiser and threw herself inside, glass from the broken windshi
eld crunching under her. Buddy Beere still lay on his side, the shears protruding from his stomach, mouth a wet ruin from her kick, eyes dimming of life.

  Claudia flicked at the radio. It still worked. ‘Officer down… help me… this is Claudia Salazar… with David Power. Officer down… officer down… He’s been shot, gunshot… I’ve been stabbed… suspect is Buddy Beere… I think I killed him… officer down… we’re at Buddy Beere’s house off FM 1223… couple of miles past Port Leo on the right

  … 4704 FM 1223… hurry, hurry.’

  She clutched her leg. Movement at the edge of her vision. Through the shattered windshield she saw a woman, stumbling from the house, naked, bruised, her face a mass of blue.

  The county dispatcher’s voice blared on the radio, telling her to hold on, help was on the way.

  ‘Velvet!’ Claudia called. ‘Velvet!’

  Velvet limped toward the car but saw Buddy collapsed in the shadow of the garage. Claudia, clutching her leg, pulled herself out from the cruiser. Velvet stopped, stared at Claudia, then stared back at Buddy.

  ‘Velvet, honey, it’s okay…’ Claudia gasped. ‘It’s gonna be okay.’ God, she hoped. She wasn’t sure she could stay conscious much longer. And David, oh, babe…

  Velvet knelt by Buddy, yanked the shears out with a decisive pull, tore open the scrub pants, and began to perform crude surgery. In the distance sirens roared in their approach.

  ‘Velvet! Stop! Stop!’ Claudia called.

  The blood flew upward with Velvet’s blows, dotting her face, and soaked the ground.

  41

  ‘I need to talk to Claudia,’ Whit said into the phone.

  ‘She don’t work here no more. Judge,’ the weekend police department dispatcher, a lady named Trudy, told him. ‘Delford fired her. She went and raised holy hell with the Hubbles, and he canned her.’

  ‘Hell over what?’

  ‘That girl they pulled out of the bay… the one that found Pete Hubble’s body, apparently she had something going on with Sam Hubble and Sam’s disappeared, although Delford don’t want to put out an APB. I heard him and Claud arguing about it. Delford’s furious with Claudia, I don’t even dare say her name aloud when he’s around.’ She quickly told him about Junior Deloache, Heather Farrell, all the whirl of death since he left town.