Nights of the Red Moon

by Milton T. Burton

  “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to prove it in court, but yes, I do. And I feel even more certain of it now that I know for sure that he’s been back in town.”

  “They were nice folks. They treated me decent.”

  “The Twillers, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How on earth did you meet them?”

  “Well, don’t let your damn teeth fall out of your head, but sometimes I go to them Thursday night community suppers they have there at the Methodist Church.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I get lonesome every now and then. I don’t like people, but I can’t wean myself off of them altogether.”

  “There are times when I feel the same way, Lew.”

  “Mrs. Twiller was a sad lady, wasn’t she?” he said. “I’d heard about the dope and all that business.”

  “It’s not just her that I’m concerned about. I think Scott killed Doyle Raynes too, and he was another sad case. Just a pitiful little old gay boy.”

  “Doyle was queer?”

  “According to his aunt he was.”

  Lew Feemster might have been grumpy as hell, but he was no fool. “That explains a lot,” he said.

  “It’s what got me onto Scott in the first place. So I can expect you to call around noon, right?”

  He sighed and nodded. Then he reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out the money I’d given him and laid the bills carefully on the table. “I can’t take no pay for helping you get a guy like that out of circulation.”

  My face must have shown considerable surprise. “What about your source?”

  “I’ll take care of him. Hell, he owes me money, anyhow.”

  “That’s awful decent of you, Lew.”

  “Now don’t go getting sentimental on me,” he snapped.

  I laughed. “You’re the one that’s sentimental, you old buzzard, telling me how nice the Twillers were. You keep on like this and I’m going to have to put you up for membership in the Rotary Club.”

  “Screw you, Bo Handel,” he said without conviction and took a long pull at his beer.

  “You be sure to call me tomorrow,” I said.

  He nodded. “It’ll probably be some time between noon and two.”

  At the door I turned and looked back where he still sat at the corner table, carefully rolling another cigarette. I stepped outside into the hot night air. The ghostly green glow of the ancient sign on the roof turned the cracked and buckled asphalt of the parking lot into an eerie island surrounded by dark, towering walls of silent forest. Just before I rounded the first turn down the road, I looked in the rearview mirror and caught a quick glimpse of the moon where it hung, red and baleful, just above the dilapidated old tavern.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  As I was having my coffee the next morning the weatherman on the radio said the area had been without rain for sixty-seven straight days. I hadn’t counted, but I was willing to take his word for it. I knew it was drier than I ever remembered. Reservoirs across the state were reporting record low levels, and there had been almost a dozen weather-related deaths since the drought began, the last two coming during the previous week.

  I got to the office and read the sheet from the night before. Domestic squabbles and car wrecks and more of the same. I whiled away the rest of the morning on paperwork and administrative duties. Since I had skipped breakfast, I called the café across the street for a hamburger as soon as it opened.

  I finished my lunch, and finally Lew Feemster phoned a little after one and gave me the address. “He’s supposed to be waiting there,” he said. “He told my friend to come by about two and bring the cash for the money orders.”

  I thanked him and hung up and found myself faced with a logistical problem. Calls had been coming in so thick and fast that day that I fretted all morning long about having a backup available for the raid. Now the time had come and I didn’t. The curse of small departments is that we have to cover too much territory with too few people. Linda was at the doctor’s office, Billy Don and Otis were on calls at the north end of the county, and Toby was working a big wreck out on Route 9 South where a tank truck carrying hazardous waste had turned over when it swerved to miss an old man on a tractor.

  I called the city PD and found them in much the same shape. Every day-shift patrol officer they had was on a critical call and couldn’t be pulled in except for extreme emergencies.

  That left Bubba Cates. Bubba had been with me from the start of my law enforcement career, and back when he was younger he’d been my best deputy. Now almost seventy, half deaf, and with eyes dimmed by incipient cataracts, he only worked part-time. The last two years I’d kept him assigned to guard the district court when it was in session because Judge MacGregor preferred him to anybody else. Both men were pipe smokers with large collections of pipes from around the world. During long recesses and jury deliberations, the two of them smoked and played chess and argued about everything under the sun. Three years earlier the commissioner’s court, responding to the nationwide lemming effect, had instituted a smoking ban on all county property. This was done, of course, with considerable publicity meant to assure the voters that their elected officials were doing their duty as guardians of Caddo County’s health and morals. Then they quietly overlooked the fact that the town’s most popular officeholder was quietly ignoring their smoking ban. Just as they overlooked the bottle of forbidden whisky in my desk drawer.

  I hated the idea of putting Bubba back into the line of fire, but I could see no other choice. I threw two flak vests over my shoulder and grabbed a Remington riot gun and a bandoleer of three-inch Magnum buckshot. After passing up the elevator as too slow, I vaulted up the rotunda stairway to the third floor and was almost to the door of the district courtroom when Charlie Morton emerged from the commissioners’ office.

  “What’s going on,” he asked. “Why all the hardware?”

  “I’m going to get Bubba to back me up in a raid.”

  “He’s not up to it, Bo.”

  “I know that, but I’ve got no choice.”

  He gave me an ironic grin. “Hell, you’d be better off with me.”

  Something in the tone of his voice got my attention. “You were in the army, weren’t you, Charlie?”

  He shook his head. “Second Marine Division, Tenth Regiment, Desert Storm.”

  “You’ve been in combat?”

  “You bet I have.”

  “Would you be willing to cover a back door with this shotgun, or were you just joking?”

  “Sure. Who’re you raiding?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way. You are now officially deputized.”

  I handed him the shotgun and one vest, and once we were in the car I filled him in on Scott Kimball and the tip I’d gotten. “At this point I’m pretty sure that he killed Amanda Twiller,” I said. “And the Raynes kid too.”

  He shook his head sadly. “That damn boy’s never been any count. I feel sorry for his mother if it’s true. I feel sorry for her anyway.”

  “I hope you don’t get hurt today, Charlie,” I said. “I called the city police, and all their people were tied up too.”

  “I expect I can handle myself under fire better than any of those kids could, Bo. I don’t think a single one of them has ever been in a shooting scrape, and I’ve been in a bunch.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “Hell yes, I was. I’m scared right now. Aren’t you?”

  “You better believe I am.”

  The house was a small cottage that had been built in the 1930s only a few blocks from the garage apartment where Doyle Raynes had been arrested. I drove around the block and dropped Charlie off to cover the back door, then I parked around the corner from the front and walked slowly up the sidewalk.

  I slipped my .45 auto from its holster as I went up the steps. When I knocked on the door, I heard heavy feet running somewhere inside. It was no time to stand on etiquette. I took one step back and kicked the do
or in, then plunged into a cluttered living room that held a fancy flat-screen TV and a sprung and battered sofa that held a young woman with a toddler clutched in her arms. The kid was howling and the woman’s eyes were full of panic. “Stay put,” I told her.

  A pair of open double doors led to a messy dining room. The silhouette of a big man in a fancy wind suit appeared on the other side of the dining table and sprinted across the room. I ran after him just as he disappeared through an open doorway. A moment later I heard a screen door slam. Then I heard Charlie shout something I couldn’t make out. I raced through the kitchen and out on the back porch and kicked the screen door completely off its hinges.

  Paul Arno stood in the middle of the backyard, a pistol in his hand. Charlie crouched behind an old-fashioned picket fence to the left side of the yard, the riot gun at his shoulder. “I said, drop the gun!” he yelled.

  “You heard him,” I shouted. “Drop it!”

  Arno appeared confused for a split second, then turned my way. I saw eyes that were coke-bright and crazy and a hand that was pointing a pistol in my direction. A tiny flash of light appeared at the pistol’s muzzle, and splinters flew off the door facing a foot from my head. That’s when I decided it was checkout time for Big Paul. My 230-grain Norma hollow-point caught him in the center of his chest just as Charlie’s charge of Magnum buckshot slammed into the right side of his head from a distance of no more than thirty feet. The two shots came so close together that we would never be able to decide who fired first. Not that it mattered.

  A half a minute later the shakes hit us both, then came the laughs. We trembled and laughed and slapped each other on the back and congratulated ourselves for being alive. It’s not pretty to watch, but it often happens at such times. Not everybody can be John Wayne. If fact, John Wayne wasn’t really John Wayne.

  The whole incident took less than a minute from the time I kicked in the door. The aftermath took the rest of the afternoon. Hours later Charlie and I were back at my office enjoying a drink from that bottle of whiskey Maylene disapproves of so strongly. The body had been sent off for autopsy, which was getting to be a habit, and the house was being thoroughly searched by my deputies and a DPS forensics team, which was also becoming habitual. I had called Bob Thornton, the local Texas Ranger, and he’d taken a statement from each of us, which is a mandatory procedure I’d set years ago for my department in such incidents. But I knew there would be no problems for either of us. It was a justifiable shooting if ever there was one, and I thanked Charlie profusely.

  “Does this get me off the hook, Bo?” he asked.

  “Why, hell no, it doesn’t. You ought to know me better than that.”

  “I didn’t figure it did.”

  “But I will tell you something that might make you feel better when you go to bat for me. When I was first elected, the department had three riot guns, and all three were Winchester model ninety-seven trench guns from the First World War. Fine old guns in their day, but they were pretty well worn out when the county bought them as military surplus back in the 1930s, so you can imagine what they were like forty years later. Think about that a minute. How would you have liked to have been standing behind that house this afternoon with one of those babies instead of that nice Remington you were holding? Which, by the way, I had to fight like hell to get the commissioners to buy.”

  He nodded and gulped down the remainder of his drink and held out his glass for a refill. “I see your point.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The search of the house turned up a half ounce of cocaine. Arno had already been facing one possession charge, which was a possible explanation why a normally level-headed hoodlum like him might have fled. I personally confiscated his identification and ordered his name withheld pending notification of the next of kin. I really wasn’t all that concerned about his relatives, but at the time it seemed like a good idea to play my cards close to my vest.

  But the raid had created more questions than it answered. For example, why did I find Paul Arno in that house when I was expecting Scott Kimball? What was their connection? And where the hell was Kimball and why hadn’t he been there? The girl almost certainly knew the answers, but so far she’d proven unwilling to talk. I had lodged her and her kid temporarily in one of the holding cells off the outer office.

  Her name was Trina Newland, and the two minutes I’d spent with her back at the house convinced me that while she might be blessed with a body that wouldn’t quit, she was also cursed with a brain that wouldn’t start. From the slight swelling of her belly it was also obvious that she was going to have another child.

  She was about five foot five with short, honey-colored hair and a face that would have been very pretty if it hadn’t been marred by her perpetually sullen expression. I told Linda to bring her and her child in.

  “I want to go home,” she said in a whiny voice as soon as she was ushered into my office. “I need to feed my baby.”

  “You’re not going anywhere for a while,” I said. “We can get him something from the café across the street.”

  “He likes Tater Tots. With ketchup. And real sweet iced tea.”

  “How about a little protein?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Fried starch and sugar water aren’t very good for him.”

  “It’s what he likes. I don’t see nothing wrong with Tater Tots.”

  I had Maylene order the Tater Tots and a broiled chicken breast. Then I turned to the girl and asked, “How far along are you?”

  “Along what?”

  “You’re pregnant, right? So how many months?”

  “Three and a half.”

  “Is Scott Kimball the father?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Is he?”

  If looks could kill, I would have been in my grave. “Yeah. So what?”

  “Lovely,” I muttered. “And is he the father of this child here?”

  “Why are you asking me all these nosy questions?”

  “I need to know who to notify about your baby when I lock you up for cocaine possession.”

  “What? I didn’t possess nothing. I was just there in that house waiting for Scott to get back.”

  “By the letter of the law you’re guilty,” I said. “Now is the father the same man?”

  “No.”

  “Does this little boy’s daddy pay you any child support?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Were you married to him, by any chance?”

  “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  “Were you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you currently living with Scott Kimball?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where have you been staying here in town?” I asked. “At that house where we found you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’s Scott?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Why wasn’t he there this afternoon?”

  “He said he had to go get something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, young lady,” I said, trying to sound as fatherly as I could. “You can get some serious time in the penitentiary for cocaine possession. You tell me what I need to know, and you can walk out of here today, and we’ll forget all about that dope we found.”

  “I’m not saying nothing against Scott. He takes care of me.”

  I laughed and shook my head. “Scott Kimball has never taken care of anybody except himself in his whole life. He treats his mother like a cur dog, and his brother is dead because of his damn foolishness.”

  “I don’t believe any of that. Scott told me about his brother, and he said it wasn’t like that at all.”

  “Then tell me if he’s so concerned about you why he left you and your baby in the house with a coked-up Mafia hit man?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know he was a hit man, even if he was. All I got is your say-so on that, anyway.”

 
I was getting nowhere. I decided to use a little pressure from another direction. “Don’t you realize you will probably lose custody of this child if you’re charged with cocaine possession? To say nothing of the possibility of going to prison and losing him permanently? Does any of that mean anything to you?”

  “I told you I’m not saying nothing to hurt Scott. I love him.”

  “I would guess you loved the other one who got you knocked up and then deserted you. Did you ever think that maybe you’re not too good at picking men?”

  She stared at me with eyes that were burning with resentment and hostility. “Kiss my ass, Mr. Smarty.”

  I motioned to Linda and Maylene. “Call Child Protective Services and have them come get this baby. Then take this little gal out to the jail and book her in for reckless endangerment of a child. That will hold her until I can get the paperwork done on the drug possession charges. And be sure to tell the jailers to put her in the female felony tank. Maybe a night with the big girls will get her heart right.”

  “I told you I didn’t have no drugs,” the girl said.

  I didn’t bother to reply. Maylene took the baby from Trina Newland’s arms, and Linda cuffed her and pushed her gently toward the door. “Keep your hands to yourself, you dyke bitch,” the girl snarled.

  After they left, I turned to Maylene. “It’s above and beyond, but would you feed that poor child when the food gets here?”

  “Sure, Bo.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart. You’re worth a million dollars.”

  * * *

  After weighing my options for a while, I grabbed the phone book and looked up Lulu Wilson’s number.

  I’m a peace officer, not a social worker. Yet there have been a few times over the years when I’ve taken flyers on people based on nothing more than a gut instinct that told me they were redeemable. Lulu was one such individual. She was about five-eight, slim, wiry and tough, with creamy chocolate skin and a face that could have made the cover of Vogue if she’d gotten a few breaks. She landed in Sequoya a decade earlier badly strung out on heroin and under the thrall of a pimp named Titus Nash who had a long criminal record and a short memory. By that I mean he’d forgotten how much he’d hated the Texas prison system the first time he’d gone down behind two dozen caps of Mexican Brown and an illegal handgun. Which is about what I caught him with after the desk clerk at a local motel called late one evening to report a disturbance that turned out to be Titus beating Lulu half to death.