“Flat or harness? Steeple?” I asked.
He paused, and picked at his own pad thai before answering. Apparently he didn’t like it as well when someone else was asking the questions. “Flat,” he said finally. “I was never stupid enough to do the steeplechasing. Too easy to break yourself. Do you ride?”
I cocked my head in a noncommittal way and pretended to be too interested in him to talk about myself. “Where did you race?”
“All over the South. Nothing high stakes like the Derby. Nothing famous. Ever hear of Mother’s Little Helper?”
“No, sorry.”
“He was one of the horses I rode for a while. Placed a couple of times but never won a race. I guess you could blame me.”
“Ever race at Pompano Park?”
Another pause, then, “Sure.”
“When?”
I kept my eyes on his face, but the dining room table has a glass top and through it I could see him picking at a bandage on his right palm.
“In the seventies,” he said.
Then and throughout the evening he seemed both a trifle edgy and overly polite, like a man who’s socializing in a different class and is insecure about it. But there was more. The feeling lingered that he was playing me as much as I was playing him. That one of us was the cat and one the mouse and I wasn’t sure who was which. That didn’t allow for either of us to get anywhere, like evenly matched chess players.
After dinner Carlo said he was going to fire up the telescope, sight it, and enter some coordinates for interesting spots he had picked to view. He rubbed his hands together as he said that, and looked expectantly at Jerry.
Jerry wanted to help with the dishes. I tried to shoo him away, but he insisted. Specifically, it appeared he wanted to put his own dishes in the dishwasher. I watched him as he rubbed his thumb and index finger vigorously over his knife and fork before placing them in the utensil compartment.
He spent some time with Carlo and the telescope, used the bathroom before saying he needed to be on his way home, and left.
Twenty
Beaufort was taking a chance, and he knew it, but didn’t have a choice if he wanted to get in their good graces and make it easier to find out what he needed to know. The woman’s niece was there, too, and stared at him half the time as if she was dissecting him in her mind. Gemma-Kate was her name. She had fixed the dinner, something oriental but not like what he’d ever gotten in a Chinese restaurant, made with shrimp and crushed peanuts. And noodles instead of rice, what was it with that? Next dinner was going to be a big steak and mashed potatoes, he decided.
“Interesting aroma,” he said. “What is that smell?”
“You’re probably smelling the fish sauce,” the niece said. “It’s kind of like soy sauce but heightens all the other flavors better.”
If the dinner was long and dull, the time with the telescope was pure torture. Carlo kept training the telescope on one area after another, stepping aside to let Jerry exclaim over pale smudges of light while Carlo kept advising him on how best to see them, looking out of the corner of his eye, for example. Telling him about star clusters, nebulae, the moons of Jupiter. Could he see the four spots of light that were the largest moons? Could he see the bands across the planet itself?
Could he keep from slamming Carlo’s face on the eyepiece? He had held it together through the dinner, and mostly through the telescoping, but the effort of not simply shooting the three of them and searching the house at his leisure was almost too much to bear. What rotten luck, that the priest had gone and married an FBI agent. Retired or not, she wouldn’t think the way other people do.
This is what he was thinking about while pretending to see the things that Carlo was pointing out. Beaufort thought he did pretty good with the conversation, sidestepping most of the questions. But he’d gotten a little cocky by the time the jockey business came up. What was with all those questions? And him offering unnecessary information. Was Pompano Park even around in the seventies? Stupid! Jerry said he had to use the bathroom, and the young girl showed it to him. There he held his hand up and saw it shaking in the mirror. The bandage on his palm was peeling around the edges. He sank to his knees in front of the john as if he would throw up, and actually did heave a bit. He let his forehead rest on the toilet seat a moment. A little better, but standing in the backyard wasn’t getting him anywhere near what he was looking for, and it was time to go.
As he did with the utensils at dinner, Jerry was careful not to leave a print in the bathroom in case the wife began to suspect him. He didn’t suppose he had given her any reason, but you never knew what those people were thinking. Could she get his DNA somehow? Would it have been left on the fork that he put in his mouth, or even on his plate? As he thought about this his stomach wrenched again, but he took a deep breath and it passed. He used his wrist to flush the toilet, and likewise to raise and lower the water faucet handle. A piece of tissue worked for the door handle. Goddamn forensic science.
Telling himself that he was overreacting to the horse track business, and that just getting inside the house was progress, he felt a little calmer now. When he opened the bathroom door, to the left he saw two more rooms in darkness except for a shaft of light from a ceiling fixture in the hall. In the room on the right he could barely make out what looked like an office desk with a file cabinet next to it. It could be there.
In the room on the left he saw bookshelves that ran not just along the wall the way bookshelves usually do, but down the center of the room as well. It looked like a little library. He stood at the entrance to the room despite himself, as if it had hypnotized him, was luring him into its darkness. It could be there instead. He started to hum his old tune absentmindedly.
The overhead light went on, and Beaufort, jumpier than he thought, jumped.
“I’m sorry, Jerry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Carlo’s voice behind him said. “Do you like to read?”
“Some,” Beaufort said.
“What are you reading?”
Beaufort thought of the book he saw at Gloria’s place. “I’m reading one by J. K. Rowling and it’s good,” he said. “I think I’ll get some more of his books.”
“Ye-s-s,” Carlo said with a look that Beaufort couldn’t read. He walked over to a tiny desk against the wall under a window and picked up a manila envelope darkened to orange with age. “Speaking of Father Santangelo. Just the other day I was talking about that time and dug this old thing out. Maybe you’ll be interested.” Carlo opened the flap that had once been sealed with tape that had lost its stickiness long ago, and pulled out a sketch of Richard Hickock. “Do you recognize this?”
He knew it from the moment Carlo had mentioned Victor Santangelo. At last. At fuckin’ last! “No,” he said. “Who is it?”
“It’s a sketch done by one of the killers of the Clutter family, you know, In Cold Blood.”
“I remember something of that. How did you get it?”
“It was part of some things Victor gave me when I left the active ministry. He wanted me to know that he still had faith in me even when I didn’t have faith in myself.” Carlo slid the sketch back inside the envelope and put it on the desk. “Do me a favor and don’t tell Brigid you saw it. She doesn’t know I have it, and with our anniversary coming up I thought it would make a great gift.”
“You’re going to give her a sketch of a murderer as an anniversary gift?”
Carlo smiled. “Macabre, I know. You’d have to understand Brigid.”
Beaufort ached with wanting to ask Carlo what else Santangelo had given him, what else might be right in that envelope, but don’t be too eager, he told himself. It’s all about keeping control so don’t rush it. It’s not like what he was looking for would be out in plain sight for him to pick up.
“Well, thanks for the evening,” Beaufort said. “I’m thinking I’d better be getting home. It’s past Achilles’s time to go out.”
Twenty–one
Sometimes you can’t rid
yourself of an obsession, but you can replace it with another. Which is almost as good.
Uber had brought Gemma-Kate up to the house, but I wanted to take her back to her dorm so I could talk to her about the evening, and about the man. I figured, being a psychopath (not that she’s been formally diagnosed, but we all know it) she’d be able to tell if he was somewhere on that spectrum.
“Come on, we’re going,” I said, putting on a thick sweater and giving Gemma-Kate hers as soon as I saw Jerry get on his bike and turn left at the first street. That meant he would be leaving the Black Horse development on the western side.
“But I wanted to ask Uncle Carlo a few more questions,” she said.
“No time right now,” I said. I hustled her into the car and took the long way around, out the north entrance, and turned left on Golder Ranch. I picked up his bike reflectors crossing Twin Lakes, heading north. I followed far enough behind so I could see him turn right on Hawser, and head to an area where the pavement ended. Not too many houses down there. I pulled the car off the road.
“You wait here,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Aunt Brigid, you worry me sometimes,” Gemma-Kate said.
Here in the desert there’s precious little shrubbery to hide behind and the tree trunks are hardly wide enough, but on Hawser I managed to slip from sage to mesquite to bottlebrush without, I think, him knowing I was there. I made it to the corner in time to see his rear reflector light stop.
I sprinted after him to make sure I saw which house he stopped at, then hid again to watch him unlatch a gate.
I went back to the car, moving at a more leisurely pace now, and Gemma-Kate looked at me with some disdain as I buckled in, drove off, and asked her what she thought about Jerry Nolan.
She didn’t have too much to offer right off the bat. “He’s definitely odd. And the steatopygia is odd.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He has unusually large buttocks for a man,” she said. “And what was that tune he was humming when he walked off after dinner? It sounded familiar.”
“To me, too,” I said. I hummed a bit of it. “But I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the title. I bet Carlo has.”
“He knows everything.” She almost sounded a little peeved by that observation.
“So tell me what you think.”
“I think he’s creepy. I don’t mean in the sense that he shouldn’t be around children, not that kind of creepy, but more like he’s trying really hard to be what he imagines is human. It makes him nervous.”
“Where would you judge his IQ at?”
“Top half of the bell curve but just barely. He strikes me as thinking himself much more clever than he actually is.”
I agreed. “And the name Nolan. It’s old. No-Last-Name.”
“Now, Aunt Brigid,” Gemma-Kate said. “I’m sure that some people actually have that name and are not trying to con you.”
“Why do you think his rear end is significant?”
“Well, everything about him screams jockey, the short stature, the thin frame, the wiriness. Except for those buttocks. I would think it could affect his horseback riding. And why were you badgering him with all those questions about his being a jockey?”
“Because he was never a jockey,” I said.
Twenty–two
Beaufort remembered there was a bigger purpose for cutting out of that house. Apart from finding what Carlo had from Santangelo, he needed to find out when Pompano Park had been built. So that was the reason he was already a little on edge when he walked through Gloria’s front door to find her in her bathrobe, with Achilles in her lap, sulking. At first she appeared to want to give him the silent treatment, but he couldn’t be lucky enough to have that kind of woman.
“Where were you so late?” she asked.
The whining grated on his nerves, but he forced himself to keep his composure. “It’s nine o’clock. That’s not late.” He couldn’t help adding, “It was two in the morning when I picked you up.”
“You’re not answering my question.” Her voice quaked a little with the courage it took to say that, and he knew it was because she was a little angry, and a little scared, both of him going and him staying.
“Oh, baby,” he said. “You think I was out with another woman?” He went up to the chair, leaned over and tried to kiss her. She turned her head away and he ended up with a lick from Achilles instead. “I swear you’re enough woman for me.”
“You didn’t take your car.”
“Didn’t you see, I took my bike. They needed me at the stables,” he said.
“What for?”
“There was a night ride. Then I had to take care of the horses. Then I had a drink with the owner and shot the shit for a while. Any other questions?”
“Night ride? Sounds something like a submarine race. And I’ve seen the owner. She’s young and pretty.”
“When were you there?”
Abused women can always tell the smallest change in a man’s voice, some inflection that predicts violence. Beaufort wondered for a second why it never stopped them. If only they’d stay quiet they wouldn’t get so beat up.
“Oh, I was never there,” she said cautiously. “I just saw her, across the parking lot at Bashas’, not even close enough to talk.”
Beaufort tried to keep that dangerous inflection out of his voice. There might come a time when it would be useful but this was not one of them. What was of benefit was that the tables had turned and he was now questioning her. As gently as he could, “Then how did you know it was the owner of the stables?”
“She had one of those magnetic signs on the side of her truck. I swear, Jerry”—this was a good sign, when they started to protest in their own defense—“she didn’t even look in my direction.”
Was Gloria spying on him? If so, it was only a matter of time before she started snooping around, asking questions, and finding out he didn’t work at the stables at all. He needed to put this to rest or find himself looking for another place to stay before he had gotten what he came to Tucson for. He was too close to screw it up now.
Beaufort took Achilles off Gloria’s lap, and he knew he still had her from the way she let the dog go, as if she knew what was coming. He leaned forward and reached into where her bathrobe closed. Her hips moved in response.
“There you go,” he said. “I’ll show you I haven’t shot my wad yet.” That came out before he could think about whether it was the best way to say it.
She didn’t seem to think it was crass. “You could have left a note,” she protested, but weakly now, as if begging him to lie.
Beaufort stood up, left Gloria in the chair with her knees spread slightly, went to the desk, and turned on her computer. It was that conversation with the wife that set him on edge. Was that racetrack built after the seventies? Is that where she caught him? He had taken an awful chance with saying a time when he had raced there. He googled Pompano Park history. It was built in 1964. Close one, but safe. He was getting good at this computer business.
Gloria’s voice got to him before she did. It made him jump. You were always on alert inside for someone coming up behind you. She didn’t seem to notice, though, when she said, “I understand, Jerry. Sometimes a man has to look at a few porn pictures to get in the mood.” Then he could feel her standing behind him, looking at the computer screen. “A racetrack?” she said.
Beaufort’s hands hovered over the keyboard, frozen in space. It wasn’t the racetrack question that alerted him. That could be innocent with Gloria thinking he had worked with horses. It was the remark before it. His mood had definitely soured. He stood up, his back to the screen, the desk chair pushed aside rather than coming between them. “What did you say?” he asked.
Gloria got that scared puppy look she got sometimes when she knew she had said the wrong thing, the thing that might make a man hurt her or, what would be worse, leave her. But he knew she couldn’t imagine anything worse than that. Gloria, for
all her charm, had a very limited imagination.
Beaufort said again, “What did you say?”
Gloria stumbled and bumbled her way around the words. “It’s just … I saw … you know … every man does…”
He rolled the desk chair back between them, facing her. “Sit down,” he said.
She sat. He turned the chair around so it faced the computer, and stood behind her. “Show me how you know.”
She pointed to a group of boxes underneath the Google search line. Macy’s, one of the squares said. And there was Pompano Park where he was just looking. And Weather Channel. And Movie Tickets. And YouTube. And Facebook. And Sexy Girls. He had never noticed this before.
“See? It’s okay. It’s not like you were looking at children, or violence.” She turned to look up at him with a tone that was meant to encourage. “You’re just a red-blooded American male,” she said, and turned the chair slightly to nuzzle his crotch, which was at about cheek level. “They all do it.”
“So you looked at what I was looking at?”
“I just—”
“What do you do, click the cursor on that box and it takes you there?”
“Well yes, I—”
Jerry put his hands on her upper arms, which was more a gesture of get-out-of-my-chair than let’s-have-sex. There was no mistaking one for the other as he added, “Go to bed, honey.”
“But. Are you upset that I looked at your sites?”
His hands tightened, allowing no opposition. “Just go to bed. I’ll be there in a while.”
“But tell me you’re not angry at me,” she all but whimpered.
“If you insist, I’ve got this thing about people snooping around, watching what I do. I guess your life coach would call it a hot button. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He was tempted to say you certainly are, but refrained. She stood, more like heaved herself out of the desk chair, and dragged herself into the bedroom without looking at him. He was happy for a moment, thinking how much more manageable Gloria was than the priest’s wife.
We Were Killers Once Page 11