Women on the Case

by Sara Paretsky

  “Okay, angel,” I said once I’d struggled to my feet. My legs felt tingly and achy. My left arm burned. I wanted to sit in the snow and cry. Lie down. Make my own angel.

  “What?” he said.

  “Are we going to chat or shoot?”

  “Can I get up?”

  “Why? You want to die like a man?”

  “It’s colder than a witch’s tit down here. If we’re gonna talk this thing out, let’s get in the car and turn on the heater.”

  “I have a better idea,” I said, reaching behind me and lifting my bag out of the trunk.

  “What?”

  “Keep flapping those arms. I am now going to take ten steps away from the car. Don’t worry. That won’t put me out of firing range. Then you will stand when I tell you to, and you will march over to the car, and get in the trunk.”

  “In the trunk?”

  “We’re trading places.”

  “Then what?”

  His voice hailed from somewhere south. No wonder he didn’t know how to make a snow angel. His accent reminded me of someone else’s; its cadence was familiar, but not the same. His voice was higher pitched.

  “I didn’t get a chance to ask ‘then what?’ when you shoved me in,” I said reasonably. “Now, did I?”

  He glared. No reply.

  “I’m taking my ten steps,” I said. “You can get up now.”

  He followed orders.

  “Who hired you to freak Dee Willis?” I asked.

  No response.

  “Come on,” I urged. “You think I couldn’t shoot you dead and walk, buddy? Think it over. I’m a legit private eye on a legit case. My gun’s legal. There’s evidence—my blood and sweat and hair—in the damn trunk. Your fingerprints on the tire iron. There’s self-defense written all over this baby.”

  Nothing.

  “So who hired you?”

  I was freezing my ass for nothing. I don’t know, in the movies, somebody’s got a gun, they ask questions, and people tell them what they want to know. In real life, I get perps too stupid to plan beyond their next meal.

  I blew out a steamy breath, said, “Okay. Let’s do it the hard way. Empty your pockets. Drop everything straight down in the snow. I want to see the car keys drop. I want to see your wallet drop. I expect you have a knife, and I would like to see that hit the ground, too.”

  “Shit.” His drawl split the word into two syllables. “I ain’t got a knife.”

  I sighted to the left of his foot, pressed the trigger gently, hit closer than I’d intended. The ground jumped four inches from his toe.

  “Knife,” I said.

  “Jesus, lady,” he said. “It’s in my boot.”

  “Well, sit your fat butt on the ground and take your boots off. Easy, now. Rest your weight on your right hand. Like that. Take your boots off with your left. One at a time. Slow and easy. Lay the blade on the ground. Take your socks off, too, while you’re at it.”

  “I could get frostbit.”

  “You could get dead,” I said pleasantly. “Okay. Now stand up and walk to the car. Hands over your head, please. Take one step toward me, make a move for the knife or the tire iron, and you’re meat, understand? My hands are getting too cold to go for anything but gut shots. And, trust me, I will empty the magazine. I’ve got seven left. And they’re not twenty-twos.”

  I felt better as soon as I’d slammed the trunk. I grabbed the keys from the snow and locked the damn thing just to make sure.

  I slung my bag into the backseat, then gathered up the “chauffeur’s” belongings, boots, smelly socks, and all.

  In the driver’s seat, I turned on the engine and let blessed heat flow over my shaking hands and chilled feet. I set the safety on the 40 and stuck it in the glove compartment.

  I searched for a map. Nothing in the dash. Nothing in any of the fancy seat pockets. As dawn brightened the sky, I settled down for a thorough exam of the man’s wallet.

  Cash: one hundred and eighty-seven bucks. A crumpled note giving my name—spelled wrong—airline—spelled right—and arrival time. I stuck it in my pocket, went on to examine a mine of contradictory ID. He had a California driver’s license in the name of Claude Fillmer. A Discover card for one Clyde Fulton. Several business cards for Clyde, one introducing him as a claims rep for State Farm Insurance, another asserting his connection to California Security, Incorporated. He’d made himself vice-president. I wondered why he hadn’t gone for the top job.

  A motel key. Room 138.

  A video-rental card for Claude.

  A Burger King receipt. I was getting nowhere; I should have made him strip.

  Mooney, my former boss at the Boston PD, once told me that ex-cons tend to keep more than knives in their boots. I could practically hear his voice. I hoped I wasn’t starting to hallucinate.

  Inside the left boot, I felt the raised outline of a cardboard rectangle. I upended the sucker, shook it hard, but the card was stuck to the insole. It felt too thick and stiff for a manufacturer’s label. I used Clay’s (or Claude’s or Clyde’s) knife to pry it out, taking grim satisfaction in the gouges I hacked in the leather.

  I found the kind of ID card that comes with cheap wallets. Clayton Fuller had filled out parts of it in a barely legible scrawl. If anything happened to Clayton, anything necessitating the removal and examination of his boots, he thought Mrs. Caroline Fuller of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, was most likely to care.

  Hazlehurst, Mississippi The name swam before my eyes.

  Memphis means Elvis.

  Detroit is Aretha.

  Liverpool equals Lennon and McCartney.

  Hazlehurst, Mississippi, is the birthplace of the legendary Robert Johnson, a man who recorded forty-one tunes in a tragically short twenty-nine-year life span and left his imprint on country blues forever. King of the Delta Blues, they called him. Any blues musician worth his salt would boast of sharing a hometown with Robert Johnson, even a player born years after Johnson’s mysterious death in 1938.

  One had.

  I needed to rock the car to get us moving. I may have done it more vigorously than necessary out of consideration for my passenger in the trunk.

  I had no idea where we were. I drove, searching for a convenience store, a phone booth, a police station. The Lincoln had half a tank of gas.

  I pulled into the parking lot of a little mom-and-pop store near a crossroads, taking care to remove the keys and lock all the doors. Wouldn’t do to have my possibly stolen car possibly stolen again. Mom-and-pop sported a Pacific Bell logo on their door. The clerk shook his head sadly as he informed me that I was in the town of Gresham, Oregon. Women drivers, his glance said, hardly ever knew where the hell they were. I was glad I’d left my gun in the glove compartment.

  I requested a phone book and ten dollars’ worth of change. I learned that all of Mississippi shares one area code: 601.

  Clayton’s mama was home, practically housebound, she said, what with the “artheritis” actin’ up like it done, and just full of chitchat about her son and his best boyhood pals. What a memory.

  I was exhausted by the time I talked her off the line. I used some of Clay’s cash to buy a local Oregonian, a map, a cup of steaming coffee, and a huge Nestlé’s Crunch bar.

  Breakfast.

  I knocked on the trunk in passing.

  “I’m gonna faint in here,” Clay yelled.

  “Good,” I hollered back.

  God knows what the nosy clerk, peering through the blinds, thought. I gulped the coffee without tasting it, ate half the candy bar standing in the chill morning air. It felt fine to be outdoors in sunlight.

  The air was different, canned and smoky, at Dee’s first Portland gig. After managing a few hours’ sleep, I entered the hall as soon as the doors opened, the first fan inside the tiny auditorium. The stalker was not in the house. The police had been glad to take him off my hands. We’d had a little private eye-to-felon chat before I turned him in. I’d mentioned the inadvisability of naming Dee Willis, unle
ss he wanted his fifteen minutes of fame fast, followed by a lifetime of hate mail and hard prison time.

  Dee’s popular with inmates. She does jailhouse concerts.

  I kept my lies simple. I’d landed late at the airport. No cabs. Guy had pretended to be a legit limo driver, offered me a ride into town for twenty bucks, tried to attack me. I showed my license, my Massachusetts permit to carry. Perp had picked on the wrong victim. The cops were sympathetic. I presented them with Clayton’s various IDs, suggested they check outstanding warrants and parole violations in all his assumed names as well as his own.

  I didn’t think they’d come up empty.

  I watched the crowd filter in, young and old, dressed up, dressed down. Joking, laughing, getting ready for a great time.

  No opening act. The curtain rose on the band, playing “For Tonight,” the early rocker Dee had made her anthem. Her voice came from everywhere, amplified. The audience gawked, expecting her to enter from stage right, stage left, down one aisle, then another. She chose her moment brilliantly, theatrical as always, appearing suddenly behind an onstage scrim, rainbow lights glistening her white satin tux.

  I settled into my crushed velveteen seat and fell for the magic. For glistening bodies shiny with sweat. For the beat and the lyrics and the glorious close harmonies. For the old songs, by John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson and Son House and Mama Thornton, that Dee had taken, transformed, and made her own. I saw her through a looking-glass of memory at first, but she shattered the barrier with song after song, dragging me into the moment, her moment.

  That’s her gift. She makes you forget everything but the song. Makes you care about lyrics written seventy years ago by a Mississippi sharecropper, makes them more important than a crummy day at the office or a fight with the kids. Dee gets so deep into the music, it’s a wonder she ever climbs out.

  I didn’t leave my seat at intermission, I didn’t move until the last encore ended. Didn’t stand till everyone else had gone. Then I parted a red velvet drape and mounted the steps leading backstage.

  The dressing rooms were upstairs, eight of them, two per floor, four floors. The “chauffeur” had outlined the setup. I knew which room was Dee’s. First floor back. I kept climbing, up to the second floor front. I knocked once, stepped inside. I kept my voice low; I didn’t want Dee to hear.

  The room was Spartan, linoleum floor, peeling paint on bare walls. Air freshener and body odor warred, neither victorious.

  Dee and I have long shared a taste in men: tall, bone-thin, and musically inclined. Ron, in his early forties now, and Cal, my ex, shared enough superficial similarities to pass as a pair of matching bookends.

  Ron was buttoning a purple silk shirt over his skinny torso, tucking the shirttail into tight jeans. The jeans disappeared into high snakeskin boots. His guitar lay across a countertop. I brushed a string to get his attention.

  He glanced at my reflection in the mirror, sank into a hardbacked chair.

  “Carlotta,” he said, both grin and voice forced.

  “Don’t bother smiling for me, Ron.”

  “No bother,” he lied. “Long time.”

  “I’ve had a talk with your boy, Clay.”

  He fumbled for an answer, an excuse. “Clay doesn’t know shit,” he said, after a long pause. “Clay’s not my ‘boy.’”

  “He knows who hired him, Ron. He’s real sure about that.”

  “You don’t fuckin’ understand,” the lead guitar player said, slamming his fist down against the countertop.

  “I understand that you love Dee, Ron. I understand that’s hard.”

  He nodded, so slightly it was barely perceptible.

  “I mean about Clay,” he said. “There’s no understanding Dee. I’ve given up on that. But with Clay, it got out of hand, Carlotta. I never meant it to get ugly.”

  “Ugly, Ron? You’re talking about scaring somebody half to death. You’re talking about a stalker. You’re talking about a guy who tried to kill me last night.”

  “Shit.” He split the word into two syllables, just like Clayton Fuller.

  “Did you tell him I was coming?”

  “Only reason I did was to scare him the hell off, Carlotta. Told him Dee’d hired a pro, somebody who’d nab his sorry ass. I figured he’d split. He’s changed, you know? People fuckin’ change on you.… He’s somebody from the old days. Guy I played football with in high school. That’s all.”

  “Hazlehurst,” I said.

  “Hazlehurst High, yeah. He was a tough guy then. Still is.”

  “You send for him?”

  “He came to a concert. Out of the blue. We went out for a drink. He wanted me to introduce him to Dee. That’s what every guy in the fuckin’ country wants, an intro to Dee.”

  “So?”

  “So I told him that Dee and I were … together, but we were having our troubles. You know, like we always had.”

  “Trouble staying faithful, you mean?”

  “You know her.”

  I folded my arms under my breasts, gave him a look. “Whereas you were always a saint, Ron. I remember that.”

  “I only care for Dee. If she’d—”

  “Did you ever ask her to marry you?”

  “I always ask. Says she doesn’t want kids, so what’s the point?”

  “And she likes men,” I observed.

  “Probably sucking some guy’s dick right now,” he said without stopping a beat. “Celebrating ’cause Clay didn’t show.” Ron’s voice sounded dead as an urn full of ashes. “Wanna go check? It’s not like I never walked in on her before.”

  “Let’s not change the tune here, Ron. It’s not illegal to sleep around. It is illegal to threaten somebody’s life.”

  “Honest to God, I tried to stop him, Carlotta. Everybody in the band’ll tell you that. He was like a hound on the scent, out to do me a favor whether I wanted one or not.”

  “You should have called the cops.”

  Ron swallowed. “I thought about it. I told him it’d gone too far. He kinda laughed, then he said he’d cut my hand, cut the tendons, so I’d never play again. He swore if I turned him in he’d tell everybody it was my idea from the get-go.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “Carlotta, I love her. I might have said something to Clay, probably did after I’d downed a few shots. Like, you know, I wish to hell she’d stop screwing around. Clay took it real personal. Said he’d been through two divorces and every time it was his wife cheatin’ on him, bangin’ this guy or that guy while he’s out earnin’ bread for the table.”

  “And you believed him?”

  Ron stared at his boots. I noticed a deep scratch across one toe. “I reckon if his wives ran off, they had good reason. I knew a girl he dated back in high school. She’d look at another guy, he’d smack her ’cross the mouth. She moved away, didn’t tell anybody where she was headed. What I understand, one of his wives, at least, has got a restraining order out on Clay, maybe an arrest warrant. He told me he can’t see his kids, called his wife a castrating bitch. Really got off on it, how wicked she was. Couldn’t tell me enough about that evil woman.”

  Good, I thought, hoping for the arrest warrant. I wanted the bastard locked up, but not at the expense of involving Dee. She didn’t need the tabloid coverage. She didn’t need every jerk who could read the Star or the Enquirer getting the idea that stalking Dee Willis might be a fine way to pass the hours.

  “Did she sound evil to you?” I asked Ron. “The wife?”

  He shook his head. “Sounded like she didn’t like gettin’ the shit kicked out of her. Sounded like she’d had enough and wanted out.”

  I repeated, “You should have called the cops.”

  He faced me directly, stared at me with ice-blue eyes. His voice sounded low and raspy, exhausted. He shook his head, kept shaking it slowly, side to side, as he spoke. “I thought he’d stick around a few nights, maybe make her realize a true thing, Carlotta. Like it’s not how it used to be out there. You know it isn’t
.”

  “How’d it used to be, Ron? I forget.”

  “You could get crabs, Carlotta. Maybe the clap. Shot of penicillin. Big fuckin’ deal.”

  “You afraid she’ll bring home AIDS? Stop sleeping with her. Use a condom.”

  “You think I’m just worrying about myself here? Goddammit, I love her.”

  “So you hire some jerk to scare her to death. What’s he supposed to do for a finale? Kidnap her? Rape her?”

  “I’d never—I only thought he’d keep her home nights. I thought she’d turn to me, for help, for protection. Instead, she called you.”

  The way he looked at me, I could tell Dee’s cry for help, for my help, had been bitter medicine. Yet another injury to his pride.

  “And just what was Clay going to do to me, Ron?”

  “I dunno,” he said studying the linoleum like it was a work of art. “Man’s a foot. I guess he figured he could scare you.”

  I thought about my time in the trunk. Especially the few moments when I hadn’t known whether Clay would open it or walk away.…

  He’d done his job.

  Ron was speaking. “I think Clay’s way past thinkin’ about me, Carlotta. I’m afraid he really wants Dee. I’m scared he’ll hurt her.” He swallowed audibly. “I guess I’m ready to go to the cops.”

  I said, “No reason to, Ron. I’ve taken care of the cops. You’re going to do something harder. Tell Dee. Every nasty detail.”

  “No.”

  “Then pack your bags and update your resume, because she’ll fire your ass. You know she will, if I tell her.”

  He didn’t say anything, just stared into the mirror like he was saying good-bye to the best pan of himself.

  “Do it, Ron. Apologize. Stay with her.”

  “She’s never loved anything but the music, Carlotta,” he said, his Adam’s apple working. “She doesn’t love me.”

  “She comes back to you, Ron.”

  “She comes back.”

  “Maybe that’s her kind of love. Maybe that’s all the love she’s got.”

  “I don’t know if I can live with that,” he said.