by Ken Oder
“I . . . I can’t do that. I have a meeting.”
“Come by later tonight, after your meeting.”
“I can’t do that either. I have . . .” His voice trailed off. “I just can’t.” He lingered for a moment, looking as perplexed as she had felt until a few moments ago. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” He bolted across the room. He stopped at the door and looked back at her, an abashed expression on his face. Then he pushed the door open and he was gone.
Running scared, she thought. Still faithful to Carrie. Kelly’s eyes filled up. She sat in the booth until she cooled down. That was stupid, she told herself. He’s set in his ways, dedicated to his memory of Carrie. Besides, it’s too late. We’re too old for such foolishness. She resolved to purge her feelings for Cole from her mind.
She went behind the bar and poured herself a glass of wine.
The back door swung open. Her head turned to it quickly, but it wasn’t Cole reconsidering her invitation as she found herself hoping, despite her resolve of less than a minute ago. Short, stumpy Tilly Goodstone filled the bottom half of the doorway, squinting into the restaurant through the thick lenses of her purple horn-rimmed glasses.
Archie sucked in his breath.
Tilly limped into the room, leaning on a cane.
Archie climbed down off his barstool. Hunchbacked by age, he teetered over to Tilly and grasped her elbow.
She looked up at him, frowning sternly. “Archibald! What’s this urgent business you called me about?”
“It’s a personal matter of great importance. I’ll tell you all about it over a glass of wine.”
Kelly watched Archie guide the unsuspecting Tilly to a booth by the windows.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Reba’s Alibi
March 6, 1967, Monday morning
Monday morning, Cole sat at his desk at headquarters, feeling stupid. His reaction to Kelly’s invitation had bothered him all weekend. He’d acted as though socializing with her constituted cheating on Carrie, which was ridiculous. She’d merely invited him to supper, for pity’s sake. He told himself he would apologize for brushing her off so brusquely, but when she called that morning to report that no one on her staff remembered seeing a car parked in the lot the night of Betty Lou’s murder, the apology caught in his throat. After an uncomfortable silence, he mumbled a thank you and hung up.
Embarrassed yet again, he considered calling her back to apologize. He picked up the phone, but his hand hung in the air. After a few moments, he placed the receiver back in its cradle and stared at it until he realized why he was flustered. He was attracted to Kelly, but he couldn’t pursue a relationship with her. When Carrie passed on, she took his heart with her. There was nothing left to give to someone else. It wasn’t fair to Kelly to pretend he could forget Carrie. And it wasn’t fair to Carrie. He wouldn’t apologize to Kelly. He wouldn’t approach her again. He would put her out of his mind.
He burrowed into his work and spent the rest of the morning catching up on the status of the investigations. Frank Woolsey updated him about the assault on Walt Ballard. Walt was alive, but still unconscious and in critical condition. Frank’s team was in the process of analyzing a bloody shirtsleeve, a set of tire tracks, and boot prints found at Walt’s place Saturday morning, and Frank had taken custody of the bullets Walt’s surgeons withdrew from his thigh and shoulder.
Frank’s work on the crime scenes on Bobcat Mountain and at Bessie Tilden’s place had borne fruit. The bullets fired at Cole were .30-06 longs, as Frank had said. The shell casing Chase found at the big white pine had housed one of the bullets. Frank had lifted a partial fingerprint from it.
Shirley West estimated the time of death of the corpse on the summit as falling within a forty-eight-hour period around Betty Lou’s murder. Frank recovered four prints from the wine bottle Chase discovered on the summit, and they matched the corpse’s fingerprints.
The partial print on the shell was different from the corpse’s fingerprints, and neither of them matched any prints on file with the county. Frank sent them to the Virginia State Police Central Criminal Records Exchange Friday afternoon, requesting an expedited statewide check.
A couple hours after Frank left Cole’s office, Mabel came in to report that the Records Exchange had gotten a hit. She handed Cole a manila folder containing a mugshot of a horse-faced young man with stringy blond hair.
Thurman Durwood Bowie
Inmate 38686, Richmond Penitentiary
Birth date: 01/03/43
Height: 6′ 1″
Weight: 158 lbs.
Hair: blond
Eyes: brown
Intake: 06/12/62
Release: 06/22/66
Last known address: Box 440, Dealeton Rd., Dealeton, Va.
Thurman’s rap sheet was impressive for a twenty-four-year-old man. Tried for murder and acquitted; convicted of assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, and robbery; a string of criminal misdemeanors.
“I called Buck County Sheriff Feedlow,” Mabel said. “He said a woman from Dealeton named Rosabelle Sally Steeger reported Bowie missing two weeks ago.”
“What’s her connection to him?”
“She says they’re engaged to be married. Chase wants to go to Buck County to talk to her.”
“Tell him to go ahead.”
“I did. He’s on his way.”
Mabel handed Cole the Mundy case file. “Rachel McNiel called this morning. She represents Reba Emley. She offered to bring her in for questioning. I knew you’d want to jump on it fast, so I set it up for one o’clock, here in your office. You’ve got one hour to prepare.”
“Let’s review the file together. I want you in the meeting with me.”
* * *
Cole and Mabel sat side by side at the conference table across from Rachel and Reba.
The unseasonable scorching weather continued. Headquarters wasn’t air conditioned, so Mabel had set an oscillating floor fan beside the table and opened the office windows.
Rachel had arrived first and told them Reba had been at Walt Ballard’s bedside since the shooting. Cole was surprised. Reba was the one who filed for divorce.
While her client chain-smoked and stared off into the distance, Rachel laid out Reba’s history with Leland and Betty Lou. Dressed in a black suit jacket over a long-sleeved white blouse, sweat beading on her brow, black curls sticking to her forehead, Rachel impressed Cole with her advocacy. The little girl he had known years ago had come a long way.
Too buttoned-up by their almighty lawyer rules, most criminal defense attorneys held their cards close to the vest, but Rachel knew better. In this meeting she followed the “open kimono” strategy Cole remembered as a trademark of her deceased mentor, Burton Jaffee. She showed Cole everything, knowing some of it didn’t look so good for Reba, but figuring full disclosure would enhance her credibility.
Nothing Rachel presented was surprising until she placed a handgun on the conference table and said Reba shot Betty Lou with it twenty years ago. Cole looked at the gun closely. A miniature revolver. Ancient and in poor condition. He wasn’t convinced it could still fire a round.
Still, Reba’s attempt to murder Betty Lou troubled Cole. She’d had a powerful motive to kill her back then, and that same motive could have driven her to murder her sister in February. Reba was in love with Leland and Betty Lou stood between them.
When Rachel finished her presentation, Cole turned to Reba. “You said Leland left your trailer the morning of the murder at six thirty.”
“That’s right.”
“What did you do after that?”
Reba looked at Rachel.
“Tell them,” Rachel said.
“When Leland left, I thought about everything he’d said and I knew he’d never come back. Betty Lou ruined my life and broke Leland’s heart, but she had Leland and I had nobody. It wasn’t right.” She nodded toward the pistol lying on the table. “I got that gun out of my dresser drawer and went out to my car. I was halfway
to Fox Run when I heard about Betty Lou and Leland on the radio.” She gave Cole a hard look. “I would have killed her if someone hadn’t beat me to it.”
Cole searched her face. He saw no signs of deception, but the timeline of her story was uncorroborated. If both Leland and Reba left her trailer earlier than she claimed, she could have followed him to his house and arrived in time to kill Betty Lou.
Apparently, Mabel had the same thought. “Can you prove you didn’t leave your trailer until sometime after six that morning?” she asked.
“We have a witness,” Rachel said. “Floyd Spivey was watching Reba’s trailer that night.”
Cole felt a jolt of surprise.
“Why was this man watching her trailer?” Mabel said.
“Sheriff Grundy knows the reason.”
Cole said, “I take it Floyd’s been up to his old tricks.”
“I’m told it’s an addiction,” Rachel said.
Cole knew all about Floyd Spivey. His rusted-out Airstream squatted like a broken-down dwarf blimp directly across the road from Reba’s trailer in Hukstep’s Trailer Park. A snaggle-toothed, scraggly-haired man in his fifties, so short and skinny he could hide behind a fence post, Floyd was a peeper.
Six months ago, Reba caught him looking in her bathroom window as she stood naked in front of the mirror applying her makeup. “It’s the third time he did it,” she’d told Cole last fall. “I saw him at the window when I stepped out of the shower the first two times, but he only got a glimpse before he ducked down. I didn’t turn him in cause I felt sorry for him. Probly the only time in his life he got a good look at a naked woman without paying for it. So I said what the hell and let it go, but this time he got too good a look for too long. Gave me the creeps.”
Cole had walked across the trailer park road and knocked on Floyd’s door. Floyd turned pale as a head of cauliflower, broke down, and admitted everything. Cole marched him across the road to Reba’s trailer. She stood in the doorway while Floyd shifted from one foot to the other, sweating bullets, his head bowed, clutching a Southern States ball cap.
“Go on and tell her,” Cole said.
“I’m s-s-s-sorry, m-m-m-missy. I w-w-w-won’t do it n-n-no more. S-s-s-swear to God!”
“Good enough for you, Reba?”
She hesitated.
“I’ll take him in if you want.”
Cole watched Reba’s anger drain off. “I won’t file charges, but he damn straight better not do it again.”
Cole marched Floyd back to his trailer. “You got off easy this time, Floyd. If there’s a next time, I’ll run you in and Judge Blackwell will lock you up for a couple months.” He tapped Floyd on his sunken chest. “No more peeping.”
“I p-p-p-promise. I w-w-won’t d-d-d-do it n-n-no more.”
Apparently, Floyd had broken his promise.
“When Reba told me about the peeping,” Rachel said, “I sent my law clerk out to talk to Floyd on the off chance he might have seen Leland or Reba leave her trailer. He denied watching them at first, but when my clerk pressed him, he broke down and admitted he’d been peeping again.”
“He was at my bedroom window while me and Leland was . . . together,” Reba said, blushing.
“He saw Leland drive away from Reba’s trailer at six thirty,” Rachel said. “He saw Reba leave at nine.” Rachel withdrew a document from her briefcase and handed it to Cole.
“Affidavit of Floyd R. Spivey.” Cole scanned it. He didn’t doubt its veracity. Floyd’s peeping was a grave embarrassment to him for which he expected to be jailed. He wouldn’t lie about it.
Cole handed the affidavit to Mabel. She looked it over, grinning.
Floyd’s statement swept both Leland and Reba off the table as suspects. Cole’s thoughts fell back to Betty Lou’s boyfriends. “Leland told you Betty Lou cheated on him,” Cole said to Reba. “Do you have any idea who the man was?”
“No.”
Cole thought about Saturday’s interviews. “Have you ever heard her refer to anyone as Papa Bear?”
“Betty Lou called Daddy Papa Bear. Momma did, too, but that was forty years ago. How do you know about it?”
“Betty Lou was seeing a man just before she was murdered,” Cole said. “Twenty years older than she was. She called him Papa Bear. She told him to call her Little Girl. Do you know why she would do that?”
Reba looked perplexed. “Betty Lou said Daddy called her Little Girl and, like I said, she called him Papa Bear. He died when I was two, so Betty Lou was seven when he passed. I don’t know why she’d use those nicknames with some man she took up with lately.”
“What was your father like?” Mabel asked.
“I don’t remember him, but Betty Lou worshiped him. Said he was kind and gentle and always took up for her when Momma treated her bad.”
“What did your mother say about him?”
“Momma hated him for dying without leaving us a penny.”
“What did he die of?” Cole asked.
“Heart failure.”
“How old was he?”
“In his sixties.”
“So he was a lot older than your mother,” Mabel said.
“Thirty years older.”
“How did they meet?”
“I don’t know. She never said.”
“Why did she marry a man so much older?”
“She said he told her he was rich. He was old and sick, so she figured he wouldn’t last long, and she thought he’d leave her a fortune when he died, but if he ever had any money, he lost it all somehow. When he passed on, all we got was that old shack in Saddleback Cove and the little clump of piss-poor land it sits on. Momma said if she’d known he was dirt poor she never would’ve polished his knob.”
Mabel frowned.
“Her words,” Reba said. “Not mine.”
“How did Betty Lou get along with your mother?” Cole asked.
“She hated her, same as me.”
That seemed to pique Mabel’s interest. “Did they make amends before your mother’s death?”
“No way. Momma could never make up for what she did to me and Betty Lou.”
“That brings us to the last subject we want to talk to you about,” Rachel said. She looked at Reba. “Are you okay with this? I won’t tell them if you don’t want me to.”
“I already agreed to it. Let’s get it over with.”
Rachel then told Cole and Mabel that a man wearing a leather mask paid Hazel to molest Reba repeatedly for two years, starting when she was ten years old.
When Rachel finished, Mabel left the room. Another wave of guilt came over Cole for not having found out and stopped it.
Mabel returned with a box of tissues. Rachel took one. So did Mabel. Reba did not. Her eyes were dry and angry.
Mabel picked up her pen. “How old are you?” she asked Reba.
“Forty-two.”
“What’s your birth date?”
“March third.”
“The last time he raped you. How long was it after your twelfth birthday?”
“About a month, maybe two.”
“So the last time would have been in April or May, 1937.”
Reba thought for a moment and then nodded.
“You say he was bleeding after you shot him. Do you know precisely where the wound was located on his body?”
“I aimed for the middle of his gut, but my fist clenched when I squeezed the trigger. When he stood beside the bed, it looked to me like I shot him in the side.”
“Which side?”
Reba thought about it. “Left side.”
Cole knew what Mabel was thinking. “Did he bleed a lot?” Cole asked.
“He bled some, but not enough to die from it, I’m sorry to say.”
Cole and Mabel fell silent.
“Is there any chance you can find the man, Sheriff?” Rachel asked.
“There’s always a chance.”
Reba gave Cole a hard look and then averted her eyes.
He had
the feeling she hadn’t told them everything.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Fiancé
March 6, 1967, Monday noon
After Mabel gave Chase Dooley the go-ahead to track down Rosabelle Steeger, the woman who reported Thurman Bowie missing, Chase headed west to Dealeton, a town in Buck County. In the past, the region’s two main industries were coal mining and rock products, but the coal mines shut down in the thirties and the quarries petered out ten years ago. By 1967, most of Buck County’s residents were unemployed and dirt poor.
Chase stopped at Buck County Sheriff Hubert Feedlow’s office at noon to ask him to go along.
“Hell, no,” Feedlow said.
Tall, lean, and lazy, his feet propped on his desk and his jaw pooched out by a huge chaw of Redman Chewing Tobacco, he spat into a Styrofoam cup. “Bowie was murdered in Selk County. It ain’t my problem. You wanna talk to Rosabelle, you’re welcome to go out there by yourself. Ain’t no trouble finding her place. It’s the stinkin shithole sits at the end of Dealeton Road.”
So Chase drove out to the Steeger place alone. Feedlow’s description was dead-on. Dealeton was a hole-in-the-road just inside the Virginia-West Virginia state line. Three miles south of it, fifty feet past a yellow End State Maintenance sign, Chase parked beside a rusty mailbox, “St g r” the only letters still showing through the corrosion.
A tarpaper shack slouched in a ragged yard. A plastic sheet spanned a large hole in the roof above the front door. Cardboard covered one window; another window was cracked. A pig’s snout, twitching and grunting, poked through the planks of a wooden pen beside the house. An outhouse stood in the far corner of the yard at the foot of a steep mountain that cast a dark shadow over the property.
When Chase got out of his truck, a short young man with long mousy hair and a handlebar moustache threw open the front door shouting, “Y’all won’t take me alive!” He pointed a pistol at Chase and fired three quick rounds that kicked up clods of dirt at the base of the mailbox and sprayed over Chase’s boots.