"How'd you feel about what he did?"
He stopped rocking for a moment, and the amplified silence was only cut by the wind in distant branches. He pursed his mouth as he stared but he never betrayed himself, and he started rocking again. Man had the look of a survivor, like a cockroach in the wake of an H-bomb.
His voice was strained when he talked again. He said, "It was a horrible thing. No man deserves what he got, not even for what he did to your father. Lot of people criticized me for defending him. That’s old ball, man. What you want to go digging around in that for?"
"You wouldn't have had a reason to kick my dad's bucket over, would you? Let him go into the net?"
"I don't know what you're implying-"
"I didn't keep quiet to protect you," I said. I looked down. My hands were shaking. "I did it because I blocked it out. Seeing you and Jarvis Garvey there that night, being witness to all of it, that wasn't intentional. Suppressed memories and all that."
Jarrell's eyes went to his drink. He had stopped rocking back and forth, and the air was so still I was almost afraid to disturb it.
"I don't know if it's because I'm so near to this investigation, or what, but it's coming back to me, slowly but surely. I can remember, clear as day, seeing the both of you standing in the light of my father's high beams, hanging that poor man. Lynching him."
"You best watch your mouth," he said. His eyes thinned to slits. "Your freedom's on the line here, not mine. You think anybody's gonna believe you, somebody raising as much hell as you are right now, going and accusing folks of killing black people. You think anybody's going to pay attention? Shit. Gimme. A. Break."
"Not only that," I said. "I don’t think it was the first murder you were involved in."
"The hell you talking about?"
I steeled myself. "The owners of the Boogie House. I think you and my dad and Jarvis Garvey had them killed and then covered it up."
The old man stared, wide-eyed.
I stood up. "What happens to me happens to me. If I get a year in jail," I shrugged, "I'll do it. I'm going to stand up and pay for what I did. You've spent the last forty years hiding from who you used to be. No matter how many people you defend around here, you'll never make up for the three - or more - you had killed. Or killed yourself, with your own goddamn hands."
Jarrell watched me amble down the steps of his porch. "If I were you, I'd be thinking about how I was going to turn myself in. Detective Hunter is involved with a task force to dredge up old business in little towns like this, and he's become fond of my insight. He’s the one who’ll believe me, I figure."
"You have no evidence."
"Oh, I'm sure something will turn up," I said, and walked away.
* * *
The clock ticked on. I called Hunter, left a message, and then I called the pulpers again, leaving yet another voice mail. Nobody was answering except my best friend. Even Deuce seemed preoccupied, though, and he said it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for me to be seen (a) in public (b) having a beer, so he declined hanging out.
I just went home. I got the feeling that having my face and then showing it in public would be a good idea. I was treated to the mental image of pitchforks and torches. Those who weren’t on the side of the Brickmeyers thought I was just a fuck-up trying to upend the balance of the town. That, or they were convinced I was having some sort of mental episode and was taking everyone down with me in the process.
When you exist in your own head, as I do, then you can’t be entirely certain if you’re crazy or not. Looking at it from the outside, it was hard to argue with anyone making the points my brain was currently making.
I parked down by a gate near the Boogie House and hoofed it to my place. If the cops were waiting me out, then I’d have to sneak everywhere from now on.
Or until they catch me.
“Or kill me,” I mumbled aloud.
The house and everything surrounding it was as dark as the road had been, and I had to fumble for my key a couple of times to get it in the lock. The door creaked open, and I stepped inside.
No cops. No flashlights. No one screaming for me to put my fucking hands in the air.
And yet, still.
Instantly, something felt...off. I cut my eyes in either direction and moved to my left, into the corner of the room. In the bedroom, I heard the constant, monotonous wha-wha-wha of the fan blades. I knew for a fact I hadn't left the fan on. I never left anything on.
Cops could’ve done it, I supposed, but I didn’t think so. It wasn’t time to convince myself out of conspiratorial thought.
I wanted to call Vanessa's name. It wasn't entirely unreasonable to think she had come to her senses and was in the back room, doing whatever, but I didn't fully believe that. Something odd tingled inside me.
My knees began to ache, and perspiration formed at my temples. I felt unsteady on my feet. I was without my firearm. My pistol lay under the bed, in its case. I crept forward, careful to shift my weight to keep the boards from creaking. I reached the edge of the hallway and stopped, rearranging myself so I could peer around the corner.
The fan’s whirring grew louder as I peeked into the hallway. The moon cast no light, so I had no shadows to work with. Only the sliver of the light in the cracked bedroom door.
It was then I heard the first click, which in most situations signified a pistol hammer being cocked. The click was followed by a coarse, assonant grinding, and I knew instantly what was happening. I rose to my feet and bounded down the hallway, yelling gibberish I thought sounded somewhat official, "Stop right there!" or "Freeze!" or something like that.
I rushed into the bedroom to find a man yanking violently at a window. If there was one thing I knew, it was that it wouldn’t come up that easily, not unless he was bionic. Any other set of windows, maybe, but not these. Had he been hiding anywhere else, he might have gotten out before I could catch him.
I stopped cold, held my hands straight out, miming holding a gun. He had his back to me, so he didn't know I wasn't packing, not yet. My entire body pulsed with adrenaline.
"Stop!" I screamed. "Stay right there. I will fucking shoot you!"
He stopped.
"Put your hands up!"
He obliged.
"Turn around, slowly, keeping your hands up."
* * *
"Don't shoot me, man," he said. "I ain't got no weapon."
“I don’t either, but H.W., what the hell are you doing here?"
He looked like he wanted to answer but couldn't. He stood stock-still by the window, not quite sure what to do with himself, with his body, his hands held out in front as if calming a rabid dog.
I didn't see a gun, so I scanned the bedroom. It was trashed: papers and clothes strewn about, drawers flung open, mattresses askew, and the closet door sagging on its hinges.
"You do all this?"
He lowered his hands, gauging my expression, staring at me with that dumbfounded look. I noticed the thin sheen of sweat on his face and arms. He'd been working frantically, looking for something. "People talk about you, McKane, say you're out there, maybe a closet fruit, so I figured you might have a journal or a diary or something.”
“Why?”
“To see what you knew about...that night."
I took a tentative step toward him; he, in turn, took a tentative step back. "So you were there."
"My life's on the fucking line here, McKane. The Brickmeyers are already floating the idea that we killed that boy. I didn’t. I know they said you was involved somehow, but I don’t believe that, neither."
"Jeffrey Brickmeyer's got a completely different idea of what happened."
"He's fucking lying, man. I swear. We roughed the Laveau boy up a little bit, trying to get something useful out of him, but the way he looked the night he was killed, somebody really put the wood to him. He was unrecognizable as human."
I lowered my hands completely. “That’s going to be a hard defense to manage.”
"We
hit him, but only with the intention that he come out and talk about being Jeffrey's bottom, get him to say that Leland knew and hid it from the public to help his own career. You know people in Georgia wouldn't take to that. It'd ruin him. Ronald knew that."
"How did Ronald find out?"
"Caught the two of them together. He was out on patrol."
"And the reason you're here."
"I had to find out what you saw. Ronald hoped the Brickmeyers would keep all of this secret, cover it all up, but then the paper came out today, and, well, shit I figured I had nothing to lose."
"I don’t have a record of that night."
"It's just, well, God, such a damn weird thing to say in public. Out loud to somebody. Ronald don't even know I saw what I did. I was too freaked out to even tell him."
"He'll find out soon enough. What did you see?"
"What?"
"I know what I witnessed. What did you see out there? It might be different."
"Shit, I don't know. It was like dropping a television in the tub. I saw a commotion, and red lights, and people being dragged down into hell. I saw me and my brother, and I saw two black fellas get blown away and dragged outta the Boogie House by their necks. That place is cursed, man. I ain't never heard of nothing like that in all my life."
It was completely different from what I'd seen. "Did you recognize any of the men from the hallucination?"
"What?"
"Their faces. Did you see their faces?"
He sputtered, trying to fake an incredulous laugh. "I tried not to see what was happening. I thought I was losing my damn mind."
"But did you see them?"
"The people's faces? No. They was just smudged. Blurry, you know, like a picture taken at dusk where everybody's moving. It was all just a blur. Is that what you saw, McKane? You see the same thing as me, or am I going crazy?"
"I think everybody around here's gone a bit crazy," I said.
"Ain't that the truth." He placed his hands on his hips. "Ron tricked me. Told me he'd get my warrants taken off the books if I helped him."
"If you kidnapped Laveau."
"Right. But I swear on my life, McKane, we didn't do nothing but slap him around some. We ain't killed him. Somebody framed us, came in behind us and killed him off."
I stared him square in the eyes, thinking about the pictures randomly sent to the police department. "Well, I reckon that's something you'll have to explain to a lawyer," I said, intending only to mean he’d have to talk about this sometime.
However, his expression changed immediately. He became beet red, his whole body rigid, and his eyebrows converged to a single black line above half-opened eyes.
“No,” he said. He was gearing up to whoop my ass.
I knew I didn't have a chance if he got going, so I tried to catch him before he got charged up. I didn't have time to lunge for my piece - which was under the bed - so I took two quick steps and smashed him in the face as hard as I could.
The punch just seemed to wake him up, to distract him. He rubbed his jaw with one hand, staring at me, though his expression had smoothed out somewhat.
But it hadn’t. It was like the threat of a fight calmed him.
The impact of his fist sent me into another plane of existence. I had to blink to stay conscious. He had a hell of a right hand, and it knocked me to the floor, onto the pointed edge of one of my drawers, just out of reach of my weapon. I managed to stay aware enough to reach for the pistol case. I thought I was about to get the worst beating of my life.
But that didn't happen. H.W. ran from the room, and I listened to his thunderous footsteps as he disappeared down the hall.
I retrieved the .45 and followed him, swaying punch-drunkenly on my feet. No sign of him. I got to the end of the hall and flipped the light on.
The front door hung wide open, and I've got to be honest: I didn't want to go through it. Not at all. Still, I crossed the living room and edged up toward the door, watching for any sudden movement. None came. I swung around and peered outside. Nothing.
My entire body seemed like it was buzzing with a faint electricity. The yard lay empty, deathly still. I couldn't hear the big man lumbering off into the distance but still I had to make one last appeal to him. "Hey," I screamed, "I'm not gonna turn you in. Come back and talk to me."
I went off into the front yard and ran toward the road. Every few steps I glanced behind me, keeping the .45 handy. I tripped once and nearly fell but managed to keep my feet despite the darkness.
It was about the time that I reached the road that I saw the faint glow of taillights, but they were nowhere near. H.W. had stashed his vehicle down the road a ways so he could escape through the woods. His truck disappeared around the curve, and I backtracked to the house, fumbling for my keys. They weren’t in my pocket.
I went back inside, thinking I might have dropped them on the table next to the door, but they weren’t there, either. The bedroom yielded no keys, too.
When I went back outside, I noticed that my car - Jarvis Garvey’s, really - wasn’t parked in the driveway. I walked over to where it had been and stared at the dirt on the ground as if I might find it there.
H.W. had an accomplice, probably his brother, who snatched the car while the two of us were talking. It had to have been an impromptu theft, because they hadn’t planned on me showing up.
I sighed. It wasn’t my car and wasn’t worth the time it would take to find it, but I was pissed. Why take the fucking car? What purpose would that serve? What were the Bullens going to do, drive it into the Brickmeyers’ kitchen?
Back in the bedroom, I dialed Deuce's number, nestling the phone between my ear and shoulder as I cleaned up some of the mess. The junk strewn about my bed needed a place to go until the morning.
When Deuce picked up, I told him about what happened, told him to keep it from the police, and then I closed my phone and lay in my messy bedroom, pressing a frozen bag of peas to my swollen and throbbing eye. I suddenly had the urge to talk to Vanessa. In sobering up, she had become so zen about this world, more objective. It was as though she could see truth for truth’s sake, and I needed that stability.
But who knew where she was. My eyes fixed on an uncertain dark point on the ceiling, and I stared at it, waiting for headlights to appear, until my own lights went out.
* * *
Emmitt Laveau wasn't the only person to visit me in my dreams that night. This time I ended up in the Boogie House during an elaborate party, bumping into people long dead. I stood with my back to the bar and listened to the tinkle of shot glasses and the inexplicable roar of laughter.
A group of people parted, and I saw Vanessa in the center of the dance floor, hands clasped behind her back, smiling sweetly across at me. She seemed - like the others - to glow, and I followed the illumination to her.
I leaned into her and we danced, turning slowly with the gentle back-and-forth rhythm of the piano. The song was slower but not quite bluesy. More of a traditional jazz ballad, and it lent itself to slow-dancing. "I'm going to miss you," she said. Her voice tickled my ear.
"I didn't mean to make you mad," I admitted. "Please don't go away. I still love you."
"I love you, too," she said. "But that's not all that matters. You can't repeat the past, Rol. It never works out."
I nodded, and wetness stained the shoulder of her dress. I said, "I'll be here when you're ready to come back. The house will always be there."
"The Boogie House is nothing but ashes," she replied.
I tried to tell her that wasn't the house I was thinking of, but then I saw who was playing the piano and stopped. Emmitt Laveau was stooped forward, his hands moving deftly over the keys. "Give me a moment," I said, and then I went over to where he was playing.
I turned and caught one last glimpse of Vanessa before the crowd swallowed her again. She was beautiful, unmarked by her addiction. She was the person I always imagined in my mind when I thought of her, young and pretty and elegant - innocent
- and the way she smiled then would stay with me forever.
I waved and turned my attention to Emmitt.
"Hey, partner," he said, not looking up. "I'm lucky to be playing at all, or for you to be hearing it, for that matter."
"Why's that?" I asked, watching his fingers. The song was slow and sweet and sad, and the people in The Boogie House murmured with the music.
"I'm six feet under the earth. Do you even realize how loud this must be in the graveyard?"
"I'm going to find your killer," I said.
He smirked. "I know."
He added a little flourish to the melody, and I admired the way his hands moved. I almost got caught up in the music, felt the swell almost pull me away. I had to force myself back into the conversation.
"I think the Bullens did it. I think they tried to frame Leland Brickmeyer with it to get their land back. Or something like that."
"Seems about right. I'll just stay here, if you don't mind. I’m real busy right now."
"That's okay."
“The longer I keep playing, the longer they let me stay. Whenever I stop, I can feel the darkness coming in closer on me. So I don’t. I don’t stop playing, ‘cuz I like it here, and I’d rather not leave.”
“I understand that,” I said.
“I won’t like the alternative. I don’t think anybody does, and that’s why they stay here. They figure if they stop, then the party stops, too.”
“Nope, I guess not. You don’t have an opinion on me finding out who killed you?”
“That’s my mama, I reckon. Not much I can do from here. Maybe it’ll change my situation, and maybe not. It’d be better, I suppose, if you found out. Might help you, and it might help mama out, but it’s no consequence. Plus, I don’t know if I want to know what exactly happened to me.”
“But it might keep the darkness away.”
“Nope,” he said, banging away on the keys a little bit harder. “The darkness always comes around, no matter what you do. You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.”
I hadn’t considered that. “I guess you’re right,” I said.
Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery Page 30