Nights of the Red Moon
Page 26
“Hell, no,” I said in my normal voice. “I brought Toby Parsons. Now cut out the secret agent crap and let us in.”
He fumbled around with the chain for a few seconds, and then the door swung open. After Linda’s description, I was curious to see the inner sanctum of a small-town playboy with half a foot of taxidermied hair and what had to be one of the world’s largest collection of bolo ties. The furniture was too modern for the architecture, but it was of decent quality, and the fabrics weren’t gaudy. The room could have used a smaller pair of speakers than the giant corner Klipsch Horns that went with the overpowered McIntosh stereo. The nudes she’d mentioned were outsize airbrushed numbers that looked like they’d been copied from some men’s magazine centerfold. One hung over the sofa and the other was mounted above the entertainment center. Then I glanced down the hall and into the bedroom and saw that round waterbed with its red satin coverlet and black pillows. I couldn’t tell if there was a mirror on the ceiling over the bed, but it wouldn’t have surprised me a bit. Unbidden, the image strayed into my mind of Willa Hathaway in that bed, and I turned away, a little ashamed of being human.
“Where in the hell have you been?” I asked.
“Out of town. But that doesn’t matter. You’ve got to get me out of here.”
“Why did you come back?”
“My bank account’s been frozen and all my credit cards have been cut off. It has to be Sipes.”
No doubt it was the Feds rather than Sipes, and I could see where they were going with the move. It meant they were within weeks or maybe even days of making their move on Sipes and they wanted Zorn to roll over on him. I didn’t fault Hotchkiss for having his own agenda, but it wasn’t mine.
“What do you expect me to do about it?” I asked.
“They’re gonna kill me.”
“For stealing Sipes’s cocaine?”
“That’s what he thinks, anyway.”
“And he’s right. He knows you stole it just like he knows you were going to sell to another buyer. But Scott Kimball filched it from you before your customer got here. What I don’t understand is why you let that boy know you had the damn stuff in the first place. What were you trying to do? Impress him with what a big wheel you are?”
He gave me a sick smile and shrugged.
“Why don’t you just get in your car and leave again?” Toby said.
Zorn shook his head. “I can’t do that. With all my credit cards cut off I barely had enough gas to get home. And my phone line’s been cut. Here, listen…” He picked up the receiver.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I said.
“And I get a recording telling me that my cell phone account’s been terminated. I can’t get through to nobody. Yours was the last call I was able to make.”
“I don’t see how he could cut off your cell phone account,” I said.
“He’s a banker. Damn bankers can do anything they want to. I know he’s still here in town.”
“I would be too,” Toby said. “After all, you snatched about a million dollars’ worth of his property.”
“And there’s more to it than that,” I said. “I think by now Sipes knows that Paul Arno was planning to kill him the same night Amanda Twiller was killed. You and Arno were going to sell the coke and split the money. In fact, Arno is the guy that put you on to the St. Louis buyer in the first place, wasn’t he?”
His eyes widened in surprise.
“You didn’t have any idea we’d figured that out, did you? If we did, then so will Sipes.”
“But I can find the coke for you if you give me a little time,” he said. “Then I’ll roll over on Sipes. I’ll testify against him. You’ll have a big bust under your belt. Lots of good publicity.”
“What makes you think you can find it?” I asked.
“Something Scott said after he took it made me think he left it with that old nigger that lives out there on his mother’s farm.”
“Nigger?” Toby said.
Zorn was so scared he was oblivious. “Yeah, you know, Kemp. That crazy vet you’ve got in jail.”
“I’ve already got the cocaine, you idiot,” I said.
“You’ve already got it?” he asked, his voice tinged with wonder.
“Hell, yes. It’s locked in the vault down at the courthouse. You were right about Scott leaving it with Jesse Kemp. I turned him loose yesterday, and he didn’t even know what the damn stuff was until I mentioned it. It was in the same beat-up old dresser where he stored the gun. If I’d done a thorough search the day I arrested him I would have found it then. Scott asked him to keep it for him because he knew Jesse was loyal to Willa and her kids. So now you’ve got nothing left to bargain with but Amanda Twiller’s murder.”
“Amanda?… But I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. Scott’s dead, Zorn. We found him with two bullet holes in his chest two days ago out at the cemetery. If you’d been in town you would have known about it.”
“Dead? But who—”
“Who killed him isn’t important right now. What is important is that you were the cause of him killing Amanda Twiller and we both know it. My guess is that she’d threatened to rat you out to Sipes on the cocaine because you were trying to dump her. There could have been other reasons, but they don’t matter. You needed to get rid of her, so you hired that little freak to kill her for you. I can’t prove it, but I know you did. So don’t piss me off any more by lying about it. If you won’t confess, then don’t say anything.”
He acted like he hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “You’ve got to get me out of here. They’re going to kill me. You admitted it yourself.”
I nodded. “They probably will.”
“You can’t let that happen.”
“Oh yes, I can, and I will too, unless you come clean. Do that and I’ll take you out of here right now, safe and sound. It’s the only choice you’ve got.”
Zorn took a couple of quick, fitful drags off his cigarillo. “Murder for hire is capital murder,” he said.
“You can make a deal with the DA. If you confess and plead out, he won’t go for the death penalty. I guarantee it.”
He was near panic. A fine dew of sweat beaded his forehead, and the hand that held his cigarillo trembled while his eyes zipped back and forth like rats in a cage. But still he shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Then that’s where we’ll have to leave it. Let’s go, Toby.”
“Please,” Zorn pleaded. “Don’t do this to me.”
“I’m not. You’re doing it to yourself.”
As we went to the door I glanced around and took a final look at his bachelor pad with its fancy stereo and its satin-covered waterbed and gaudy nudes and felt a wave of nausea rise in me. For a few dreadful seconds I thought I was going to throw up, but then I stepped out onto the porch with relief and drew in a deep breath of the clean night air. I tossed Toby the keys and told him to drive. Just before we climbed into the truck, I turned and looked back. The living room light had been switched off, and I could see Zorn peering nervously out the porch window, his face pasty and ghostlike where it hung framed in the narrow gap of the curtains. Then the window shade descended and I saw him no more.
His house was at the very edge of town. Half a block farther down, the street turned into a narrow county road that stretched away through a stand of dark forest. As soon as Toby cranked my truck, the parking lights of a car came on just beyond where the woods began. He slowed down as we passed, and inside the car I could make out the silhouettes of three men, two in the front and one in the rear. For a moment a cigarette flared on the passenger side, and I caught a glimpse of a lean, hard hand and a bushy mustache.
“It’s a black Marquis,” Toby said once we’d rolled past. “Shouldn’t we go back?”
“Drive on.”
“But I thought you were just bluffing him, trying to make him come across…”
I shook my head. “Without Scott Kimball we’ll never nail Zorn. So we either let him w
alk, or we stand aside and let the dead bury the dead.”
“The dead bury … I don’t get it.”
“I’m talking about Sipes. One way or another his days are numbered. If not the Feds, then the Colombians.”
He nodded in understanding, and we said no more. On the way I had him pull in at a liquor store, and I went inside and bought a bottle of V.O. He turned onto South Main and drove slowly until we reached the courthouse. I climbed from the truck and came around to the driver’s side.
“Are you sure you feel up to driving home?” he asked as he handed me my keys.
“I can make it. How about you? Are you okay with this?”
“I trust your judgment, Bo.”
“Yes, but are you okay with it?”
“There’s no other way to make it right for that poor woman, is there?”
I shook my head and quickly told him about Quinn and the deal Hotchkiss had cut him. “It had to be the Feds who froze Zorn’s finances. They’re fixated on Sipes, and I think they’re hurrying things along so they can grab him before the Colombians take his head off. They want Sipes so bad that I have no doubt they’ve already made the decision to offer Zorn the witness protection program in return for his testimony about the coke dealings. Besides, he confessed in an offhand way. Did you notice?”
He nodded. “Yeah, by mentioning murder for hire. Neither of us had said anything about that.”
“Right,” I said.
His face was hard under the cold white light of the street lamp. “Then I guess I can live with it and not lose too much sleep. You did surprise me, though.”
“Sometimes I surprise myself, Toby.”
We shook hands and I drove slowly home. After I pulled into the carriage house and locked the truck, I lingered on the patio I’d built many years earlier. A few seconds later Carla came out of the house. “I thought I’d come over and see how your day went,” she said, peering intently at my face.
I motioned for her to sit in one of the deck chairs and took the other one myself. “It went,” I said tiredly. “That’s about all I can say for it.”
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I will be. Want a drink?”
“Maybe later.”
I nodded and uncapped the bottle and took a long pull. Carla reached over and took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. It wasn’t long before I felt the whiskey light a comforting fire in my belly. The town was strangely quiet. For a moment a dog barked somewhere off in the distance, but it soon quit and a hush fell back on the world. We sat there under the towering oaks, aware of nothing beyond the rich, brooding silence of the late summer night and the great red orb of the Blood Moon where it loomed just above the horizon.
Also by Milton T. Burton
The Sweet and the Dead
The Rogues’ Game
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOOK FOR MINOTAUR BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
NIGHTS OF THE RED MOON. Copyright © 2010 by Milton T. Burton. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burton, Milton T.
Nights of the red moon / Milton T. Burton.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Thomas Dunne book.”
ISBN 978-0-312-64800-8
1. Sheriffs—Fiction. 2. Spouses of clergy—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Texas—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.U77N54 2010
813'.6—dc22
2010035346
First Edition: December 2010
eISBN 978-1-4299-2781-9
First Thomas Dunne Book eBook Edition: December 2010