Jesse’s manner was always humble and his voice soft, but there was a cold fire in those strange, catlike eyes of his, and I resolved long ago that if I ever got on his fighting side I would be well armed and very alert when I did.
“Hello, Sheriff Bo,” he said.
“Hello, Jesse. You’re acquainted with Walter Durbin, aren’t you?”
“Yes suh, I know Lawyer Durbin.”
I reached in the truck and brought out the whiskey. “Could you use a drink, Jesse?” I asked.
“I need one pretty bad. Them men up them trees talked to me all night long last night.”
I twisted the cap off the bottle and handed it to him. He turned it up and drank five or six ounces of straight whiskey like it was water. “Are they saying anything now?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly and drank once again. “They only talks at night. It’s on account of the moon.”
“How’s that?”
“Why’s blood on that moon. I seen it myself.”
“That’s just dust in the air, Jesse,” I said.
“No suh,” he said firmly. “It’s blood. It’s in the Bible, in the book of Joel. The moon shall turn to blood, and then the great and terrible day of the Lord shall be at hand. I dreamed it too, and I seen that day in my dream. I seen the angels of the Lord coming with flaming swords in they hands. They gonna chastise the wicked, and it won’t be long now.”
He tipped the bottle up once again and drank, then handed it back to me. “I thank you,” he said.
“We need to talk to you, Jesse,” I said.
“I know you do. I reckon you come looking for that pistol too.”
I held up my hand to silence him. “I want you to listen to me carefully. Can you do that?”
He nodded placidly. “If that’s what you want me to do.”
“I have a warrant here that authorizes me to search your house for a certain handgun thought to be a forty-four or forty-five caliber. If I find it, I also will execute an arrest warrant on you signed by Judge MacGregor this afternoon. Do you understand me so far?”
“I do.”
“I brought Mr. Durbin here along with me to see to your rights. As of now, he’s your lawyer. He’s willing to represent you free of charge, and I strongly suggest you take him up on that offer.”
“I don’t need no rights, Sheriff Bo. I done it. I killed that boy. I would like another drink of that whiskey, though, if you don’t mind.…”
* * *
I lodged him first at the holding cell in the courthouse, and Dotty Fletcher came over and gave him a shot of Visceril and another of vitamins. What little medical attention he’d had in the last thirty years, he’d gotten from her, and he submitted to her care without complaint.
I didn’t even have to search for the gun. He showed me where it lay in the top drawer of an ancient dresser in his cabin. It was a beautiful old Smith & Wesson Triple Lock revolver made sometime between 1908 and 1915. The original purchaser of the piece could be traced through the company’s records, but that might take weeks and would mean little since the weapon could have had other owners before it came to Jesse.
One thing about the revolver puzzled me. It had seen very little use, and its condition was near factory original. It was well oiled and showed signs of having been owned by a shooter who gave his guns the best of care. Which was exactly what Jesse wasn’t. He squirrel hunted some in the fall. I had seen both his weapons—a Marlin bolt-action .22 and an old Stevens double-barrel sixteen-gauge—and both were disasters. I doubted that either had ever seen a cleaning rod or felt a drop of oil. So why would he own a ninety-plus-year-old Triple Lock that was in near mint condition?
Walter spent an hour with him and learned nothing beyond the fact that he claimed to have killed Scott. He came out of the cell and threw up his hands in exasperation. “He says he did it,” he said. “But he can’t tell me why, or where he got the gun, or why he and Scott were at the cemetery. He claims he doesn’t remember any of that, but he wants to plead out at the arraignment. I’ve never had a client like this before.”
“Can’t you stop him from doing that?”
“He has a right to enter a guilty plea if he wants to, Bo. The best I can do is to go over his head and ask for a sanity hearing prior to the arraignment. Which I damn sure intend to do if he doesn’t show some interest in saving his own hide.”
“Do you think he really did it?”
“Hell, I don’t know. He’s the most obstinate man I ever met.”
“He can’t go before the judge until Monday morning. Can you have another shot at him some time over the weekend?”
“Sure.”
“We’ll have to take him on out to the jail, but I’ll leave instructions that you can see him any time you want to.”
A few minutes later, as two of my deputies led Jesse off, he gave me a calm smile and thanked me for the whiskey. I left one of the night deputies to finish processing the paperwork and headed home. Just before I got in my truck, I looked up to see the moon where it hung red and foreboding in the eastern sky. I felt a tension across my shoulders, and for just a second the hackles on the back of my neck rose. I knew that something wasn’t right about Scott’s death, but I had no idea just how wrong it was.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Instead of going home, I decided to drive over to the hospital at Nacogdoches to see Linda Willis. On the way my cell phone buzzed. It was Hotchkiss. “I’ve got an update on Lester Sipes,” he said. “I wanted to let you know that he’s reserved that suite at the Fredonia again.”
“When is he due to check in?” I asked.
“He’s already there, and he’s got it booked for a week. It looks like he’s planning to spend a lot of time up in this neck of the woods.”
“Sounds like he’s determined to find his missing coke, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t you hate to be in Emmet Zorn’s boots at this stage of his life?”
“Indeed I would,” he said.
“Why don’t we go over there and jerk his chain a little tonight? What do you say?”
“Fine with me,” he said. “I’m in Nacogdoches right now, as a matter of fact.”
“Good. I’m going to the hospital to see Linda. Where do you want to get together?”
He hemmed and hawed for a few seconds, then said, “Uhhh … actually, that’s where I am at the moment.”
I laughed. “That’s fine, Hotch. She’s a pretty young woman. You’re a nice young guy. It sounds good to me.”
“I assure you it’s just concern for a wounded fellow officer.”
“If that’s all there is to it, then you ain’t got the sense God gave a goose,” I said and broke the connection.
* * *
I found Linda propped up in bed with her foot in a cast and Hotchkiss sitting in a chair beside her. She claimed to be on some heavy painkillers, which may have been true. But they certainly hadn’t taken the edge off her personality. She started complaining the second I walked in the door. The room was full of flowers, and when she finally wound down I asked who they were from.
“The guys at work, Bob Thornton, the highway patrol, the city PD, Maylene, Mom and Dad. And Don here brought the one on the nightstand. The one with the yellow roses is from you. Did you pick it out yourself?”
“No. I would have if I could, but as the day worked out I didn’t have time. I just called Tim Formby’s flower shop and told him your favorite color is yellow and that he could stick it to me good.”
“Thanks. They’re beautiful.”
I quickly filled her in on what had happened the night before, and on Jesse’s arrest. We only stayed a few more minutes. Despite her griping, she obviously needed rest. When we rose to leave I leaned over the bed and kissed her on the forehead.
“Bo, when can I come back to work?” she asked.
“What does the doctor say?”
“Six weeks to two months until he fully releases me. I’m gonna be bored to death.”
“Take two weeks
and then you can start coming in part-time and helping out with the clerical stuff.”
She sighed. “That’s better than nothing, I guess. I miss everybody already.”
“We miss you too. Nobody has tried to kick me all day long.”
* * *
Much to our surprise, Sipes agreed to see us without my having to resort to threatening him with arrest. His two goons were hatless, and he himself was wrapped up in a rust-colored silk bathrobe with a cream-colored satin scarf tucked around his neck like an ascot. Once again he was planted in the center of the sofa with one of his big cigars, his feet propped up on the coffee table.
“I don’t know why I keep talking to you, Sheriff,” he said. “You strike me as a very unpleasant man.”
“You keep talking to me because you’re just a little bit afraid not to, that’s why. You’re curious as to how much I know about your business.”
“There’s nothing secret about the banking business.”
“That’s not true,” Hotchkiss said. “There’s a lot that’s secret in banking, but it’s your drug business we’re interested in.”
“And who are you? Another of Sheriff Handel’s deputies?”
“Special Agent Don Hotchkiss of the FBI. Do you need to see my ID?”
Sipes shook his head.
“Got problems, haven’t you?” I asked.
“Everybody’s got a few problems. So what?”
“Most people don’t have problems like yours,” I said. “You’re out six hundred thousand dollars for some coke that your good friend Emmet Zorn filched from you. I don’t know if you were just fronting for your South American people, or if you were doing business with them on credit, but either way they’re not very happy with you at the moment. So you’re up here to try to recover your merchandise while you still don’t know how long you’re going to be able to keep your head on your shoulders. Not a position I’d want to be in.”
“I told you before that I don’t know anything about any cocaine.”
“Sipes, if you had any sense at all you’d forget all about this mess, go back home, run your banks and pray the Feds haven’t already got enough on you to make a case. But you won’t. You’ll never stay straight because you don’t understand the value of staying straight.”
He stared off across the room and puffed his big cigar in silence for a few moments. Then he laughed a laugh that was harsh and grating and void of real mirth. “I will admit that there have been times when I wished I was free of the curse of ambition. Have you ever felt that way, Sheriff?”
Then he answered his own question. “No, of course you haven’t. You were born into comfortable circumstances and you’ve been content to maintain that. I was raised on the very edge of poverty and had a hoodlum for a father. I wanted more.”
“So you’re telling us that you became a drug dealer and a killer because you grew up poor?” Hotchkiss asked. “That’s a little lame, isn’t it?”
“I don’t really think you’re in a position to judge me, kid,” Sipes said.
“Someone is going to eventually,” I said. “You can count on that.”
“Maybe, and maybe not. Who can know the future? But why in hell did you come here tonight? Just to get on my nerves?”
“Partly,” I said. “And partly to let you know I don’t have any illusions about why you’re in town. You’re here to get that damned coke back, and I know it. I’ve already got three people dead, and I don’t need any more. Watch your step.”
He nodded. “You’ve had your say, so why don’t we talk about something more pleasant? I’ve heard you have an interest in quarter horses. I’m a breeder myself. What bloodline are yours?”
I rose to my feet. “Won’t work, Sipes. I couldn’t sit here and make casual chitchat with a man like you if I tried. And I don’t intend to try.”
He looked straight at me, and, once again, his eyes were lifeless rubber knobs at the bottom of deep, dark wells. “Then I don’t see that we have anything more to say to each other.”
* * *
“I noticed you didn’t tell him Scott Kimball had stolen the coke from Zorn,” Hotchkiss said as we walked down the hall.
“I didn’t, did I?” I said with a smile. “Awfully forgetful of me, wasn’t it?”
“I know you had a reason, but I can’t figure out what it was.”
“The minute Sipes finds out he can’t get that coke, Zorn is a dead man. I don’t want him dead. I want him to answer for the Twiller killing, and the only leverage I have is that I can protect him from Sipes if he comes clean.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
I sighed and pulled off my hat and ran my fingers through my hair. “Why don’t we forget about all this mess for a while? I’ll make you the same offer I made Toby earlier this week standing in this very hall. Let me buy you a beer. Or even better, follow me back to my place and we’ll have a drink or two of some good whisky.”
“Sound great to me.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Back in the early part of the summer, Sheila had gotten in the habit of coming by my house for coffee on Saturday mornings after she dropped Mindy off for an eight o’clock swimming class at the municipal pool. Until it got too hot in mid-July, we would pick her up at the pool when her lesson ended, and the three of us would go riding out at my dad’s old farm where I kept my horses. Sheila was a skilled horsewoman, and I would saddle up my big dun quarter horse for her while I rode a gentle gray with Mindy perched in front of me, holding on to the saddle horn.
After the swimming program ended in August, the two of us continued to get together for coffee most Saturday mornings. A couple of days before I’d stopped at the new boutique bakery that opened a month earlier on the square and bought a pecan coffee cake. We were just finishing a simple but rich breakfast when the front doorbell rang. I went up the hall and opened the door to find Willa Kimball standing on the porch.
“I need to talk to you,” she said.
“Of course, Willa. Come on back to the kitchen. Sheila’s here. We were just having breakfast. Are you hungry?”
She shook her head and I ushered her to the back of the house and held a chair at the table for her. “Coffee?” I asked.
“I’d rather have a little whiskey, if you’ve got some.”
I took the bottle of V.O. out of the cabinet and poured a couple of inches into a coffee mug. “Do you want ice?” I asked.
“No,” she said and took the cup and downed a healthy swig. “One of the girls I work with at the Caravan called me last night. Two city cops were in for supper, and they claimed you’d arrested Jesse for shooting Scott. Is that true?”
I nodded solemnly.
“He didn’t do it.”
“You sound pretty certain.”
“That’s because I’m the one that did it,” she said. Then she reached in her purse and pulled out a small paper sack and laid it on the table. “That’s Scott’s gun. I took it from him after I shot him out at the cemetery yesterday morning.”
“Willa—”
“I’m going to tell you the whole story, and then I want you to turn Jesse loose. He didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Please don’t say anything more,” I said. “I need to get Walter Durbin or Dud Malone to come down here and represent you before you tell me anything else.”
“I don’t want a damned lawyer. I just want to tell you what happened.”
“Then at least let me read you your Miranda warn—”
“Bo Handel, shut up! I want you to stop being a lawman for once in your life and just be my friend. Can you do that?”
Defeated, I shrugged and nodded. “You know I can, Willa,”
Sheila reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I’ll leave if you want me to,” she said.
“I’d rather you stayed, if you don’t mind,” Willa said. “I think maybe it will seem easier with another woman here.” She raised her mug to her lips and finished off the drink. I poured more into
the cup and set the bottle where she could reach it.
“You just take all the time you want,” I said. “When you get finished, we’ll see what we have to work with.”
She took a deep breath and began, “Scott was at the house when I came home from work a little after midnight the night of that big shootout that was in the papers. He’d broken in. He had to because I’d changed the locks when he left for Houston. He told me he came through the back way on a motorcycle and left it up in the woods at the edge of the pasture. I guess he walked right by Jesse’s cabin, and Jesse must have seen him and known something was wrong.
“He was too wound up to sleep, and so was I. We argued all night long. I think maybe he was taking something because his eyes were funny, and he went in the bathroom every so often as the night wore on. Every time he came back his eyes would seem even brighter. He was mean too. He wasn’t trying to wheedle or manipulate me any longer. The time for that was past. He just laid it all out on the table and showed me what he really was. When I told him you were looking for him, he said of course you were because he’d killed Amanda Twiller and that Raynes kid. I asked him how he could do such a thing, and he said Amanda was nothing but a slut and a dopehead and the Raynes boy was a worthless little faggot, and that neither of them had any reason to live.
“Then I started crying because I knew for certain that my son was a murderer. He laughed at me, Bo. He laughed and he told me he’d killed two more people that same night. He said he was going to make me take him to Houston. He said we’d just stay at the house for a couple of days to let things cool down, and then he’d get on the back floorboard of my car and I’d just whisk him right on out of town after midnight. I’d never seen anybody so arrogant and cocksure in my life. He seemed to think he could get away with anything.
“He asked me how much money I had. I told him about fifteen hundred dollars in my checking account. He said when we got to Houston I was going to go to an ATM and take it all out and give it to him. I pointed out that I’d need a little money to get home on. Do you know what he did then? He slapped me. My own child. He reached over and slapped me hard. ‘You’ve got credit cards, you lying old bitch.’
Nights of the Red Moon Page 24