Nights of the Red Moon

by Milton T. Burton

I stepped closer to him so my weather-worn old face was only about a foot from his. “You quit hitting on her, that’s what.”

  “There’s no law against—”

  “Yes, actually there is,” I said. “These days Texas has sexual harassment laws. But since she’s my niece, I won’t stop to fool around with anything that damn tedious if you bother her again. Now you leave the girl alone. You hear me?”

  He caved in quickly. “Your niece? I’m sorry, man. I didn’t mean any disrespect. Just guy stuff, you know? She’s a pretty girl and all. And I’ll be happy to come in whenever you want and make that statement.”

  “I’ll let you know when,” I said, turned away, and walked to my car.

  * * *

  The truth is that my hometown is little more than a bedroom community for Nacogdoches, a small city of some thirty thousand inhabitants twenty-two miles to the south that is itself highly dependent on its large state university for its economic health. And if the collection of university pennants and memorabilia on the walls of the Sawmill Club was any indicator, its owner recognized the need to keep the college crowd happy.

  There were only two customers in the joint, and much to my relief the jukebox was silent. I walked over to the bar. The bartender was a tall, skinny, middle-aged blonde with a beehive hairdo and a face that reminded me of stale beer. She wore a pair of turquoise jeans that were too tight even for her meager frame and a beaded and fringed top that wiggled and squiggled like it had a life of its own. But when she removed the cigarette that dangled from one corner of her mouth and spoke, her voice was low and sultry and made her seem to look a whole lot better than she really did.

  “Well, hello, handsome,” she said. “What’ll you have?”

  I had to laugh a little. “If you really think I’m handsome you are either blind or certifiably insane.”

  “Weeeellll,” she drawled and gave me a careful head-to-heel examination. “You’re not exactly handsome, but you do have a kind of rough, country-boy appeal to you. Besides, can’t a girl get away with a little artful exaggeration?”

  “She might if she was willing to tell me how many grandchildren she has.”

  She held up three fingers and said, “And one on the way. How about you?”

  “Two. My only son is a surgeon over in Dallas. He and his wife have two little boys, and they are hellions.”

  “Well, if we’ve both got grandkids, then I reckon we’re too damn old to be flirting,” she said. “We ought to know better.”

  “Actually, I thought we were doing a pretty good job of it. But I need some information. I’m the sheriff up in Caddo County.”

  She leaned over the bar and peered at my badge for a few seconds, then picked up her cigarette and took a drag and let it back out with a sigh. “Lawmen,” she said and shook her head. “Here I am hoping to get the gun, and all you laws ever want are the facts.”

  That broke me up. I was beginning to like this woman. “I need to ask you a few questions, so let’s get back to business before we embarrass ourselves,” I said. “My name’s Bo Handel.”

  She stuck out her hand and said, “Parker Raynes.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Parker.”

  “The pleasure is mine, and you go ahead and ask away. Maybe one of your questions will sweep me off my feet.”

  “Okay. Do you know Emmet Zorn, by any chance? I hear he’s a regular customer.”

  “Yeah, I do, and that question ain’t gonna do it.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t know him in the biblical sense, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked, grinning in spite of myself.

  “He’s all meringue and no pie. And that’s a fact.”

  “Was he in here last night?”

  She nodded. “That’s why I really wasn’t too surprised to see somebody wearing a badge walk through the door. He came in with that Methodist minister’s wife that was killed.”

  This got my attention. “How did you know who she was?”

  “The news about the murder was on the radio a little while ago. And as for knowing who she was, neither one of them made any secret of it.”

  I sat down on a barstool. “I’ll take a Coke if you have one,” I said.

  “Sure. Ice?”

  “Please. Did she leave with Zorn?”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Hell no. She left with my no-good nephew, Doyle Raynes.”

  This was a new and unexpected wrinkle. “Your nephew?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about this boy?”

  “No, I don’t mind a bit. He’s just my nephew by marriage, anyhow. His dad was my husband’s brother, and they’re both dead. I sorta inherited Doyle and all his problems.”

  “So you’re a widow?” I asked.

  “Yeah, and I’m available. Are you looking?”

  I laughed again. “No, ma’am, I’m not.”

  “Didn’t figure you were,” she said with a sigh. “The good ones never are. Anyhow, Doyle is a doper and he’s got no backbone at all. He never really does anything. Too passive. He’s one of those guys that life just happens to. You know the kind I mean?”

  “Sure I do. The prisons are full of them.”

  “You ought to know him. He grew up here in town, but he’s lived up in Sequoya for a couple of years.”

  “If I remember right, my deputies have handled him a time or two for public intoxication. I’ve never heard his name in connection with drugs, but I’m not surprised. He’s got that look about him, and my chief deputy told me a while back that he’d gotten real thick with Scott Kimball before that little toad took off for Houston.”

  “You know Scott Kimball?” she asked. “He used to come in here a lot.”

  “I know Scott a whole lot better than I want to,” I said.

  “Didn’t somebody try to shoot him or something?”

  “Yeah. It was when his brother Hamilton was a senior here at the university. Scott burned some half-wit druggies up in Fillmore, and they came over here gunning for him. But since the two boys looked so much alike, they killed Hamilton instead.”

  “Now I remember. It was in the papers.”

  Before I could reply, the door opened and two middle-aged men came in. They were dressed in T-shirts and baggy denim work pants and had the hangdog expressions of the chronic failures of this world. Parker went over and set a Budweiser longneck in front of each of them and collected her money. When she came back down to my end of the bar, she said quietly, “That’s what a gal like me gets to pick from. It’s either tinhorn Casanovas like Emmet Zorn or guys like those two. They’re good ole boys, but life has leeched all the sap out of ’em.”

  With that, she slapped her towel down on the bar with a loud splat that got everybody’s attention and announced loudly to the world, “And I need a man with some sap in him, damn it!” Then she looked at me and whispered, “You sure you’re not looking?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m not.”

  “You married?

  “Not anymore,” I said. We were straying far afield from Amanda Twiller, but I’m a patient fellow, and it is a fact of life that in my part of the world you can often get more information by having a conversation than you can by conducting an interrogation. “My wife died five years ago. We were childhood sweethearts.”

  “Awwww, gee. That’s so sweet,” she said and reached over and patted my hand. “Damn! Why does somebody else always get the good ones?”

  “Ma’am, I couldn’t begin to answer a question like that. Let’s get back to Doyle Raynes and Amanda Twiller. Were they alone or was there somebody with them?”

  “As far as I know, they were alone, but I guess maybe they could have hooked up with somebody else after they went out in the parking lot. Doyle borrowed twenty dollars from me. He said he wanted to stop and get some whisky because they were going back to his place. He claimed Zorn needed to get back to Sequoya b
ecause his business partner was coming into town late that night.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About ten.”

  “What time did Zorn leave?”

  “About the same time they did.”

  “Was he sober?”

  “Very. I don’t think he drank but one beer the whole night.”

  “What kind of car does Doyle drive?” I asked.

  “A piece of junk.”

  I laughed again at her blunt, deadpan way of talking. “I figured that,” I said. “But it must have a brand name. Ford, Chevy, what?”

  “It sure as hell ain’t no Ferrari, so you can scratch that one off your list!”

  “Think, now,” I urged.

  “Well, it’s bunged up and tan all over except for one front fender that’s gray with that primer shit. Say! You ever notice how many of them old dopers got one gray fender on their cars? Maybe it’s some kind of lodge deal, like the Masons.”

  That had me with my head down on the bar trying to get my breath.

  “I remember now! It’s one of them Oldsmobile Cutlasses. A girlfriend of mine called ’em Cut-asses on account of how much her and her boyfriend canoodled in the backseat of the damn thing.”

  I managed to get one of my cards out. “Here,” I said. “My cell number and office number are both on there. Please call me if you remember anything else.”

  When I rose to leave, she said, “What’s your hurry?”

  I turned back to her, still laughing. “I want to get out of here before the guilt sets in for laughing this much during a murder investigation.”

  “You must be Presbyterian,” she said sympathetically. “My folks were Baptists and my daddy always did say Presbyterians are awful tight-assed. I mean, when a Baptist says something like that about you, then you know you’re really in a fix!”

  * * *

  Reverend Bobby Joe Twiller was a graduate of Perkins School of Theology in Dallas who frequently wore brown shoes with blue suits and ended each sentence with the rising inflection of an unspoken question mark. The one time I’d visited with him at length was when the sign out in front of his church had been vandalized. I’d found him wandering around his own office with the distracted intensity of some recent arrival who was determined to get the lay of the land before he committed himself. The problem was that he had been in town almost a year when the incident happened.

  But there was nothing vague or indefinite about him this morning in the hospital. He was in the pit of misery, and it was written on his face. After I offered my condolences, I gently asked him to tell me what had happened that morning.

  “I just went out to get the paper, and there she was. I don’t really read the paper anymore, but I bring them in and put them in the trash to keep them from collecting on the lawn.”

  “I see,” I said. “And you didn’t hear anything earlier, did you? A car peeling out or anything like that? Any unusual noises?”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep at all the first week she was gone, but Dr. Fletcher gave me some pills that knocked me out. I never wake up until the alarm rings at five in the morning.”

  “What about your son?”

  “Tommy? I doubt he heard anything. He was still asleep.”

  “Okay, what did you do after you found the body? Did you touch it?”

  “Of course I did. She was my wife, for heaven’s sake. I lifted her head up and held it in my arms, and just sat there for a few minutes. Then I came inside and called nine-one-one. Then I called Miss Boscombe to come over and get Tommy. After that I just caved in. She was the one who called the ambulance to come get me.”

  “You must mean Mary Beth Boscombe.” I knew she was the church organist. She and Dotty Fletcher had been handling the music program at the Methodist Church for years.

  He nodded. “Yes. She’s coming down this afternoon to get me and take me home.”

  “That’s real fine,” I said. The lady in question was thirty-five and still single, though she wasn’t at all bad-looking. All her suitors eventually fled in terror because nobody wants to be married to a Wermacht panzer division. “Excessively organized and relentless” is the way a psychologist friend of mine described her.

  “You let her take care of you,” I said. “She’s a very capable young lady. Let some of the other ladies in the church help you too. And take one of your stewards with you when you go to make the arrangements.”

  “Arrangements?”

  I could tell he hadn’t thought very far ahead. “The funeral. And you might think about taking Tommy along and letting him have some say in matters. She’s the only mother he’ll ever have, and this could be a good way for the two of you to start putting your lives back together.”

  “Putting our lives…?” he began. “You’re saying I should be with Tommy, aren’t you?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. You’ve got to get a grip on yourself because that boy needs you now more than he ever has before.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I guess you don’t think I’m much of a man, do you, Sheriff? To just collapse like this, I mean.”

  “I think you’re a fine man. If I’d been through what you’ve been through I’d probably be in worse shape than you are. But right now you’ve got to suck it up and do your duty.”

  “You’re right,” he said, his voice a little more assertive.

  “I’m not going to question you at length right now, but I am going to have to search your wife’s things, though. I’d prefer to do it with your permission rather than get a warrant.”

  He nodded. “Of course. You don’t need a warrant, Sheriff. Before she left, Amanda had been using the guest bedroom at the end of the hall.”

  I didn’t ask him to enlarge on the implications of that statement. Instead I said, “How about your wife’s prescription drug problem? Did you know about that?”

  He sighed deeply. “I’m afraid so.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “She was going to at least four doctors that I know of. It was eating us up financially.”

  “What kind of drugs was she getting?”

  “Painkillers, mostly. Some tranquilizers.”

  “One last question. I hate to pry into your marital affairs, but I have to ask it. Do you have any idea why a respectable preacher’s wife like her would just pick up and run off with a man like Emmet Zorn?”

  “I think—” he began, then broke off and let his eyes wander around the room, his face hopelessly sad. “I’m convinced that her various doctors were cutting her off, and he could provide her with drugs,” he said at last. “I’m sure he could get them. Men like him can always get anything they want, can’t they?”

  “Sometimes they get more than they bargained for.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Just inside the city limits of Sequoya I found myself behind Sheila’s little Datsun. Then, out of the blue, I got one of my bright ideas. I sometimes use ordinary citizens to get information of the sort that a lawman has trouble getting. I don’t see these folks as actual informants. Instead, I view them more as concerned members of the community who are willing to donate a little time and effort in the interests of law enforcement. I think of them as “helpers,” but Sheila, who has been conscripted into such service several times, refers to herself and her fellow victims as my “serfs.” I guess it depends on your perspective. But that afternoon it occurred to me that I needed her help as soon as I saw her car.

  I blinked my lights several times and honked my horn, all to no avail. With no other options left, I switched on the flashers and gave her a blast on the siren. When she had pulled over and saw it was me, she launched out of her car with fire in her eyes. “Bo, you asshole!” she yelled. “You scared me half to death.”

  “Now you settle down and quit cussing,” I said with a laugh as I exited from my big Ford Crown Victoria. “That’s the second time you’ve used that word today.”

  “I may take up cussing full-time. What on
earth do you want?”

  “I need you to help me with something.”

  “Now? I’m on my way to the library to file my story. My Internet is out at home for some reason.”

  “You got it on disc?”

  “Yeah…”

  “I’ll file it for you. I want you to go over to Mary Beth Boscombe’s house and talk to the Twiller boy for me. Find out if he heard or saw anything last night.”

  “Mary Beth’s?” she asked.

  “Right. That’s where he’s staying until his dad gets out of the hospital this afternoon. In fact, Mary Beth is the one who’s going to pick Reverend Twiller up and bring him home.”

  She stared up at my face for a moment, then gave me a sly smile. “Ahhh … I get it. But why do you want me to talk to Tommy?”

  “I think it would be a whole lot better for a woman to do it than some man wearing a badge. Especially a woman that he knows. You are acquainted with the kid, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, sure. I taught his Sunday school class last year.”

  “Then you’re perfect,” I said. “And a brilliant young journalist like you will certainly know what to ask and how to ask it.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” she said dryly. “Let me get my disc out of the car and jot down the email address. But just promise me you’ll do it first thing when you get to the office. Please?”

  “Darlin’, if A-rab terrorists have firebombed the place, I’ll duck in under the flames and get this story filed for you. My word of honor.”

  * * *

  When I got to my office in the basement of the courthouse, I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. It was shaping up to be another hot day, with the air full of dust. The city had imposed water rationing a month earlier, and lawns all over town were suffering.

  I’d just finished sending Sheila’s story to the Sentinel when my secretary, Maylene Chambers, stuck her head in the door. “Some waitress from the Sawmill Club called for you. You been over there to that Sawmill Club, Bo?”

  Maylene was a Baptist who viewed my occasional duty-born forays into the area’s nightclubs with considerable disdain, as she did the bottle of whiskey I kept in my bottom desk drawer in violation of the idiotic ordinance that forbade the imbibing of “spirituous beverages” on county property. Nevertheless, she’d been with me from the beginning, and barring death or dismemberment, we both expected her to be with me to the end.