Nights of the Red Moon

by Milton T. Burton

  We slid through a broad, sweeping turn and roared down a long grade, going deeper into the forest. Then a sign flashed by that said COUNTY ROAD 7, and I realized where we were. “Toby,” I said calmly, “get on the radio and tell those city boys to start slowing down. We’re coming up to a dead end.”

  He picked up the mike and spoke, and a moment later I saw the cruiser’s brake lights come on. “Then we’ve got him,” he said.

  “Nope. We’re going to lose him.”

  “How?”

  “Just watch.”

  Far ahead the motorcycle’s taillight bounced a time or two, then dwindled and vanished. The city police car pulled up into the intersection and stopped, and we swung in beside it. A few seconds later both highway patrol units arrived. We all climbed from our vehicles.

  “What the hell happened to him?” Toby asked.

  “See that?” I asked and pointed across CR 292 where CR 7 continued on into the woods as two narrow, overgrown, and rutted trails.

  “What on earth?” one young city patrolman said.

  “When CR 292 was built back in the 1930s, the county decided not to maintain Road Seven past this intersection. Hell, they were just old logging roads, and neither of them were even numbered back then. But they put in a culvert on the far side of 292 so timber company trucks could get across in wet weather.”

  “So where’s Kimball?” one of the DPS troopers asked.

  “Gone, my friends. This one got away.”

  “But where does that trail lead?” Toby asked.

  I laughed. “It leads to anywhere he wants to go. The damn thing crosses three more county roads and a half dozen other old logging trails that are in good enough shape for a motorcycle.”

  “Do you want us to call over to the prison unit for the dogs and horses?” one of the DPS troopers asked.

  “Lord, no,” I said. “He’ll be gone from these woods long before they could even get here. I don’t guess anybody got close enough to get the tag number on that motorcycle, did they?”

  The young city cop grinned. “I got it with my night binoculars.”

  “Great work,” I said. “Put it out on the radio, but I don’t really expect to catch him riding it. This kid is too smart for that. He’ll abandon that cycle and steal himself a car someplace.”

  “Where do you think he’s heading?” Toby asked.

  “Houston. He’s been living down there for several months, and no doubt he’s got contacts and people who will help him.”

  “Looks like this boy is trying to be the John Dillinger of Caddo County,” the older DPS trooper said.

  “As far as I’m concerned he’s done made it,” I said. “We exchanged a few words tonight inside that house, and from the tone of his voice it sounded like he was having the time of his life. What can you do with a guy like that?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  When we returned to the scene of the shootout, it looked like half the town had gathered in front of the house. Two of our cruisers sat out front, along with three city police cars and a pair of DPS units and an ambulance. We parked down the street and ducked under the crime scene tape. Inside the house Agent Hotchkiss was running the show and doing a good job of it.

  “First thing, how’s Linda?” I asked.

  “She’s not in danger,” Hotchkiss said. “Otis Tremmel talked to her for a couple of minutes before they took her cell phone away. They’re prepping her for emergency surgery in the hospital in Nacogdoches. No X-rays yet, but the ER doctor said the bullet broke a couple of bones.”

  “Have her parents been notified? I don’t want them to hear it on TV.”

  “They have. Tremmel called them, and they’re on their way to the hospital. They took it pretty good, he said.”

  “How about Bob Thornton?”

  “Sore and grumpy, but no permanent damage. And we’ve got the bullet that hit his flak vest. It’s a little distorted, but intact. If it matches the Twiller and Raynes murder weapon, we’ve got a bankable case on Kimball.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “How about the deceased? Have we got anything on them?”

  “Hoods out of Mississippi. Names are Robert Quest and Donald Eugene Weeks. The Bureau has files on both of them but it will take a while to get the works.”

  “We can assume they are both heavies, though?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I don’t suppose you found any cocaine, did you?”

  He grinned. “No, but we found a suitcase full of money with two forty-five-caliber holes in it. We also found an empty Uzi out in the alleyway.”

  “My age,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m getting to where I can’t see when it’s dark. I’m a good shot in the daytime, but my night vision is gone. How much was in the suitcase?”

  “We haven’t counted it down to the nickel, but it looks like a quarter million in hundred-dollar bills.”

  I looked around at the bullet-riddled living room. “Hotch, how do you figure this mess went down?”

  “I think that considering how quick it happened, Kimball must have started shooting almost as soon as they were inside and he was sure they had the money. One of the rednecks had the Uzi. We figure that when Kimball shot him, he sprayed the ceiling as he fell. That was the burst we heard right after the first two gunshots. Then Kimball grabbed the Uzi and used it to shoot his way out. We found two magazines for the thing, one that he discarded on the back porch and the other was still in the weapon. My thinking is that since we didn’t find any coke, this had to be a straight-up robbery. Quest and Weeks were lured here for what they thought was going to be a buy. Either Kimball and Arno together planned to take them out and steal the money, or Kimball planned to do all three of them from the first. Which do you think it was?”

  “The latter,” I said. “From what I’ve seen of this kid lately, I don’t think he would have planned to kill two people for a fifty-fifty split when he could kill all three and keep the whole thing.”

  “We’ve got fugitive alerts out all over the state and western Louisiana too. Do you think we should stake out his mother’s house?”

  “No. That’s the last place he’ll go because he knows she won’t hide him. I would bet anything that he’s swiped a car and is already on his way to Houston.”

  * * *

  We were there until well after midnight. The mobile news unit from the Lufkin network affiliate arrived along with a half dozen print reporters, including Sheila, who showed up in shorts and with her hair still damp from the shower. I was pressured into holding an impromptu press conference on the scene wherein I spread a little creative disinformation. I said that as the result of a reliable informant’s tip, a multiagency task force had raided the house in an effort to apprehend a murder suspect and in the process interrupted a drug buy that had gone bad. I revealed that two people had died in the raid, and that their names would be withheld pending notification of the next of kin. I named the officers involved and praised them all, and gave them the details of Linda’s injury. Then I said I would answer any questions I could without jeopardizing an ongoing investigation.

  “Were either of the deceased killed by police officers, Sheriff Handel?” asked Emma Waters, the pretty blond coanchor for the Lufkin station.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You mentioned a murder suspect,” another reporter said. “Was this in relation to the Amanda Twiller homicide?”

  “It was, but I can’t give you the suspect’s name at the moment.”

  “Why haven’t you released the name of the man killed in yesterday’s shootout?” asked Dan Ryder, a congenital smart-ass who served as the wire service stringer in central East Texas.

  “I had my reasons, but I’ll be happy to do that right now. He was a mob-connected figure from New Orleans named Paul Arno. They called him Big Paul.”

  “What was he doing here in Sequoya?” he asked.

  “We think it had something to do with this drug deal.”

  “Were any dru
gs found?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know it was a drug buy?”

  “Informants, and from the amount of money that was found at the scene it could have hardly been anything else.”

  “Money?” he asked. “How much?”

  “We’re not sure yet, but it was certainly enough to get the attention of a struggling scribbler like yourself.”

  He didn’t like that answer. “Maybe it was a peaceful poker game you raided. Did you ever consider that?”

  “Dan, even you should know that people don’t bring Uzis to friendly neighborhood card games. But I will admit that in a sense they were gambling, and it looks like they lost.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I had a mountain of paperwork to contend with the next morning. In addition to ordering the medical records on Linda for our group insurance, I had to collect and summarize reports from each officer involved. Document, document, document—all at the insistence of the county’s attorneys, who were ever mindful of potential lawsuits.

  Because of the Arno killing the day before and the involvement of two well-known Mississippi hoods, the shootout had made the national news, and a CNN stringer out of Houston called and wanted to do a profile on me and my department. I told him I couldn’t stop him, but that I wouldn’t help him either. He got a little argumentative and I had fun hanging up on him. The big national media boys are always so surprised when they run up on somebody who isn’t foaming at the mouth to get his fifteen minutes of fame. As an elected official, I have sense enough to cultivate the local press. Which meant Armand Fiske, owner of the Sequoya Gazette, Sheila and the rest of the people at the Sentinel, and the reporters from the Lufkin TV station. For them I made time. The press folks from surrounding counties got time when I could give it, but the rest could go hang.

  The door opened and Carla eased into the room wearing jeans and a well-worn Stephen F. Austin sweatshirt. She latched the door behind her and came over and stood beside me. As soon as she leaned down to kiss me on the cheek, she asked, “Who was that on the phone?”

  “CNN.”

  “And you wouldn’t give them the time of day, would you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re hopeless, Bo Handel,” she said with a laugh.

  “Yep.”

  “But you are okay, aren’t you? I mean after last night?”

  I sighed a deep sigh. “Yeah, but I don’t want another chase like that for a while. This job has gotten awful lively here lately.”

  “Well, it may get even more busy. You’re about to be short a deputy because I’m giving notice.”

  I felt a sinking in the pit of my stomach and it must have showed on my face.

  “It’s not like that, Bo. It’s something I’ve been planning for months, and I’m doing it so we won’t have to skulk around in the shadows anymore.”

  “But what are you going to do for a living?”

  “I’m buying Nite-Flite Security Company over in Nacogdoches. Plus I’m going to hang out my shingle as a private investigator. I’ve got some money saved up, and Walter Durbin is going to lend me the rest. As you probably know, Walter’s in a situation of his own that he can’t really be open about, which meant he was sympathetic to my plight.”

  “So you’re going into business?”

  “Yep.”

  “How do the books look?”

  “It’s making money, and there is plenty of room for expansion. Walter and Dud will give me their investigative work, and I’ve got a contract pending with a big drilling company out of Tyler to investigate oil field theft.”

  I got to my feet. “So this means … what, exactly?”

  “That we can come out of the closet as a couple. If that’s what you want.”

  “Of course, but I hate to see you have to—”

  “It’s not just us,” she said. “I’ve always wanted my own business.”

  She hugged me and she gave me a quick kiss. “I wanted to tell you before the fact, but now I’ve got to hurry over to Walter’s office. We’re signing the papers in a little while, then I need to go home and get dressed. I’m on duty at one this afternoon.”

  “Well, don’t let me get in your way,” I said with a laugh as she left in a whirlwind. Where was this all headed? I wondered.

  * * *

  Three hours later I met Sheila for lunch at the Caravan. Just as the waitress arrived with our tea, my cell phone rang. It was Hotchkiss with the particulars on the deceased.

  “Quest and Weeks both had long rap sheets,” he said. “Various heavy charges including auto theft, armed robbery, interstate gambling, and some drug trafficking. A couple of convictions each for middling offenses, but most of the big stuff failed to stick.”

  “I wonder why?”

  “Several times witnesses have either gone missing or changed their stories.”

  “Were either of them mobbed up?”

  “That depends on what you mean. Back in their younger days both of them had some connections with that old bunch of cracker thugs the newspapers called the Dixie Mafia. And according to our notes, in the last few years Quest has been associated with several organized crime figures, including Big Paul Arno.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” I said.

  After we hung up, I filled Sheila in on the previous night. “Why were they selling the cocaine for only a quarter of a million dollars?” she asked once I’d finished the whole story. “After all, it’s supposed to be worth closer to a million.”

  “There are several possible reasons that I can see. For one thing, they weren’t in a seller’s market any longer after we caught Peet and the St. Louis connection fell through. The logic may have been just to grab what they could and be done with it. Or maybe they’d just made a deal to sell part of it. Then it might be that Scott and Arno planned to rob Quest and Weeks from the start, and Scott decided to go through with it after Arno got killed. I don’t think we’ll ever really know. Even if we catch the kid alive, we can’t afford to believe anything he says.”

  “Do you think you’ll get him?”

  “Somebody will. Either that, or he’ll get wasted resisting arrest.”

  “Do you really think he was having fun during that shootout last night, Bo?”

  I gave her a tired smile. “I can’t swear that he was, but he sure sounded like he was making the best of a bad situation. As for me, I can promise you I damn sure wasn’t enjoying the proceedings.”

  She laughed a little, and we finished our breakfast in the near-silence of people who are comfortable enough with each other not to feel obliged to fill every minute of their time together with pointless chatter. I paid the check and was walking her to her car when my cell phone beeped again.

  “Bo here,” I said.

  I listened for a few seconds and said, “Thank you and try to settle down, Miss Bess. I’ll take care of it.” Then I closed my eyes and shook my head and leaned against somebody’s car.

  “Bo, what’s wrong?”

  “This damn thing doesn’t seem to ever end.”

  “What?”

  “You know Lucy and Bess Porter, don’t you? Those two old maid sisters who used to run that little dress shop down on the square?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “That was Bess. She was almost hysterical, and Maylene gave her my cell number because she wouldn’t talk to anybody but me. She and Lucy decided to drive out to Sycamore Ridge Cemetery a little while ago and visit their parents’ graves. They found a body out there.”

  “Oh my God. Who was it?”

  “Scott Kimball.”

  * * *

  The boy was easy to find. Dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, he lay on his back, his glazed and lifeless eyes staring upward at nothing at all. I squatted down beside the body.

  “I think we can be sure that he wasn’t killed with his own gun,” I said as I peered closely at his chest.

  “How can you tell?” Sheila asked.

  “The entry holes are
too big for a nine-millimeter.”

  There were two wounds in his chest, one in the center of the breastbone and one a couple of inches to the left. I looked up at her from where I was squatting beside the body. “Have you got that little digital camera of yours?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s right here in my purse.”

  “Good. Get me a dozen or so shots of this body from a bunch of angles.”

  “Okay. What are you going to do?”

  “Procedures be damned. I’m going to turn him over when you get through taking those pictures. I want to see something.”

  As soon as she finished, I rolled the body over to one side. I was looking for exit wounds, and I found one. “Look at this,” I said. “One bullet went all the way through, but the one in the breastbone must have hit the spine. At least we’ll have something to start with if it isn’t too deformed.”

  I stood up again and looked around. Then I pointed at the tombstone at the boy’s feet. “Right at his granddaddy’s grave. I wonder if that means anything.”

  “He’s not armed, is he?”

  “No. Whoever killed him must have taken his gun.”

  A few moments later one of our department cars swung into the cemetery, followed by a highway patrol unit. I knew it would take the ambulance a little longer. The cruiser pulled up beside us and Billy Don Smith and Carla climbed out. I gave orders while Carla took notes. Billy Don chewed tobacco and tried to look useful while Sheila just looked out of place. Once I had the process of dealing with the case started, I turned to Sheila. “I’ve got to go tell his mama,” I said. “She only lives a quarter mile down the road. Why don’t you come with me? You can stay in the car if you want to.”