It all happens in a moment, yet it plays out in slow motion in his mind – swinging the gun, pulling the trigger, feeling the weapon recoil and his heart jump with each impact.
The shooting has stopped. Valdez stands frozen, guilty of panicking, guilty of overreaching. He wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist and tries to think clearly. Palmer was here. Where is he? What have I done?
Someone is running down the stairs. Valdez goes to the window and sees a shadowy figure running across the parking lot. Kicking open the connecting door, he sprints through the adjoining room, yelling, ‘STOP! POLICE! PUT YOUR WEAPON DOWN!’
He sprints along the breezeway, slipping his service revolver from its holster. Raising it above his head, he fires two shots in the air before leaping down the stairs and weaving between parked cars. He takes out his cell and hits 911.
‘Shots fired. Officer in pursuit of armed fugitive … Airline Drive. Star City Inn. A woman and child have been shot. Paramedics needed.’
He jumps over a wall and runs on across a freight yard until he reaches a wide concrete culvert with a fetid stream running down the centre of the drain. Swinging his weapon from side to side, he looks left and right, turning in a full circle, still on the phone. ‘I need backup and a chopper.’
‘Can you still see the offender?’
‘Affirmative. He’s heading east along the edge of the culvert. I got factories on my right. Trees on the left.’
‘Can you give us a description?’
‘I know who it is – Audie Palmer.’
‘What’s he wearing?’
‘It’s too dark to see.’
Cruisers are being sent to East Whitney Street, Oxford Street and Victoria Drive. Soon he’ll hear sirens.
Valdez slows and comes to a stop. He bends, hands on knees, panting. Moisture runs into his eyes and down the hollow of his back. His chest heaves and he spits bile onto the broken concrete beneath his shoes. Cursing. Shaking. He wipes his hand over his mouth again, trying to slow down his mind and keep things in perspective. He has to think. Breathe. Plan.
Using a handkerchief, he wipes his prints from the throw-down handgun. Barrel. Trigger. Guard. Safety. Holding it over the culvert, he lets go. The weapon bounces twice on the concrete and finds water.
He takes a falsetto gasp for breath and raises the phone.
‘I think I lost him.’
Audie follows the culvert south, splashing through stagnant pools where rats screech and scurry into holes and shopping carts have committed suicide by leaping off the bridges.
Unused to such an open battleground, he has to fight the pull of the empty space around him, feeling it try to rip him apart and scatter the pieces. For years he had walls around him, boundaries and razor wire; something braced against his back, so he didn’t have to fight on all sides.
How did the police know where he was? Cassie must have called someone. He doesn’t blame her. How was she to know? She’s young, already burnt out, no longer sure that she’ll live forever, trying to bluff on a weak hand.
Audie has to keep moving forward because there is no way to back up or to start again. He heard shots being fired. The thought of it makes him feel dizzy, as though somebody has been shouting in his ear for hours and left him with an awful buzzing sensation in his head. He jogs past black sacks of rubbish, ripe as body bags, and flat-roofed warehouses with metal doors. The gabled roofs of buildings stand out in sharp definition against the wispy fog and a moon that looks like a cut potato. Pausing beneath a railway bridge, he takes off his boots and empties the water. Freight tracks lead east and west. He climbs out of the culvert and follows the railway, stumbling over the rough scree, heading toward the brightening sky.
Cassie and Scarlett will be okay. They’ve done nothing wrong. They didn’t know he’d escaped from prison. He should never have asked for their help. He should never get close to anyone. Never make promises. That’s how this started. He made a promise to Belita. Then he made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t die in jail.
At the Kashmere Transit Centre, he catches a bus into downtown with the shift workers and early morning commuters, still half asleep, resting their heads against the windows. Nobody makes eye contact. Nobody speaks. It’s not so different from being in prison, he thinks. You try to blend in rather than stand out.
Audie isn’t particularly distinctive or unique or striking, so why is he somebody’s punching bag, somebody’s punch? Playing now at a screen near you – Honey, I Butt-Fucked Junior.
The bus drops him in the shadows of Minute Maid Park. Exhausted, he wants to stop moving, but his mind can’t slow down. Lying down in a doorway he rests his head on his rucksack and closes his eyes.
30
Desiree Furness walks through the motel room, stepping over the body of a little girl, whose eyes are open in surprise. Strands of her blonde hair are clotted with blood and a raggedy doll with woollen hair is lying an inch from her open palm. Desiree has to fight the urge to pick up the doll and tuck it under the girl’s arm.
The mother is lying between the bed and the wall. Naked. A slight beer pouch bulges low on her belly and a swirling tattoo is inked into the small of her back. Blonde. Freckles. Pretty. Arc lights have bleached everything in brightness, but can’t remove the smell of bowels evacuated in the moment of death or the bloodstain on the wall above her head.
The forensic technicians still have to work to do. Three men and a woman, dressed in crisp white boiler suits, hairnets and plastic bootees, are setting up UV lamps to test the mattress for semen stains. Desiree gazes down at the two beds. Both have been used. The woman was shot as she tried to rise, but why was the little girl near the bathroom?
In a corner between the desk and TV she notices a wastepaper bin crammed full of fast food wrappings and magazines. There are brochures, Q-tips and wads of Kleenex; a box of breakfast cereal and an empty can of roach spray. A child’s drawing is stuck beneath the edge of the mirror. Different coloured crayons were used to spell out the girl’s name, Scarlett.
Outside, flashing lights are illuminating the motel in beats of colour. Onlookers have gathered in the parking lot, craning to get a better view of the police cruisers and ambulances. Some are taking photographs with iPhones. Others hunker down over the screens in texting position. A few of the local cops are peering into the room, wanting a glimpse of the dead and then wishing they’d kept away.
Desiree had been woken just after 5 a.m. and had driven halfway across the city to this cheap motel full of itinerants, pimps, prostitutes and the mentally defective – anyone who could produce a photo ID and pay forty-nine bucks a night. There are some field agents who dream about a case like this, an opportunity to investigate a multiple homicide, to catch the perpetrator and lock him in a cage. Desiree wants to go back to bed.
Other agents have partners, children and lives that approach normality. Desiree hasn’t had a boyfriend since she dumped Skeeter, real name Justin, a year ago because he used funny voices and gave her pet names and talked to her like she was seven years old, even when she begged him to be serious. Eventually she wanted to scream at him, shake him, show him scenes like this one, but instead she told him to pack his things.
Crouching beside the girl’s body, she notices several bloody boot prints on the carpet and examines the busted lock on the adjoining door, trying to recreate what happened in the room, but none of it makes sense.
She pushes a lock of hair from the child’s eyes, wishing she could ask Scarlett questions, wishing the little girl could answer.
She peels off her gloves and goes in search of fresher air. More technicians are outside at the dead woman’s car and dusting for prints along the breezeway, swapping small talk like this is just another day at the office. The man in charge is in his mid-thirties with a fleshy face and dark rings beneath his eyes. Desiree introduces herself but doesn’t shake his gloved hand.
‘What have you got?’
‘Three, maybe four shots – two in
the mother, one in the girl.’
‘The weapon?’
‘Possibly a .22 handgun, semi-automatic.’
‘Where was the shooter standing?’
‘Too early to say.’
‘Speculate?’
‘The mother was on the bed. The daughter came out of the bathroom. The shooter was probably standing in the middle of the room, closer to the window than the bathroom.’
Desiree turns away and runs her fingers through her hair. ‘I want to see the ballistics report as soon as you’re done.’
The spotlight from a TV camera blinds her momentarily. Reporters are yelling questions from the parking lot. There are news crews from local TV and radio stations. A chopper circles above, filming for the morning bulletins. One camera team is attached to the local homicide squad filming a reality TV show for a cable channel, turning cops into celebrities and spooking the public into buying more guns and burglar alarms.
Desiree finds Sheriff Ryan Valdez waiting in a spare motel room that has been commandeered by the homicide squad. He’s lying on a bed with the brim of his Stetson pulled down like he’s catching some shut-eye. He’s surrendered his service revolver and his hands are wrapped in plastic bags, but somebody has brought him a coffee.
Although she has never met the sheriff, Desiree has already formed an opinion, which is heavily influenced by what she’s just seen in the motel room. Valdez sits up and tilts his hat back.
‘Why didn’t you call for backup?’ she asks.
‘Nice to make your acquaintance,’ he says. ‘I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.’
‘Answer my question.’
‘I didn’t know if Audie Palmer was here.’
‘The night manager identified him from the photograph you showed him.’
‘He said he hadn’t seen Palmer in two days.’
‘So you decided to bust in?’
‘I tried to make an arrest.’
Desiree stares at him, gripping her fists so tightly her fingernails cut into her palms. She produces her badge. Valdez doesn’t appear to take any notice. He blinks at her with red-rimmed eyes, but his gaze seems to be summing her up and dismissing her without a second thought.
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘I announced myself, a woman screamed and I heard shooting. I came through the door, but they were already dead. He shot them in cold blood. Gunned them down. The man has no conscience.’
Desiree takes a chair and pulls it in front of the sheriff. He’s bleeding a little from the corner of his mouth.
‘What happened?’ She points at his face.
‘Must have been a tree branch.’
She sniffs and tastes something in her saliva, wanting to spit. ‘What were you doing here, Sheriff?’
‘A woman called Crime Stoppers asking if there was a reward out on Audie Palmer.’
‘And you know this because?’
‘A dispatcher told me.’
‘This isn’t your jurisdiction. You’re the sheriff in Dreyfus County.’
‘I asked to be kept informed. Palmer was outside my house. He talked to my wife and son. I have a right to protect my family.’
‘So you decided to go all Charles Bronson on his ass?’
The corners of Valdez’s mouth curl upward. ‘Since you seem to know all the answers, Special Agent, why do you think Audie Palmer came looking for me? Maybe he’s brain-damaged. Maybe he wants payback. I don’t know what goes on inside the fucked-up head of a killer. I followed up a lead that the FBI failed to follow.’
‘The FBI hadn’t been informed. Now two people are dead and their blood is on your hands.’
‘Not mine. His.’
Desiree feels a tension band pressing around her forehead. She doesn’t like this man. Maybe he’s telling the truth, but every time he opens his mouth, she sees a hole in a woman’s forehead and a little girl lying in a pool of blood.
‘Tell me the story again,’ she says, wanting to know the exact sequence of events. Where was he standing when he heard shots fired? When did he open the door? What did he see?
Valdez gives the same account, describing how he announced himself and heard shots. ‘I came through the door and saw the bodies. He’d gone through the connecting room so I went after him. I yelled for him to stop. Squeezed off a couple of shots, but he went over the top of the fence like he had wings.’
‘Did you have your weapon drawn when you came through the door?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘When you were chasing Palmer, how many shots did you fire?’
‘Two, maybe three.’
‘Did you hit him?’
‘Might have done. Like I said, that boy can flat out haul ass.’
‘Where did you lose sight of him?’
‘He crossed the canal. I think I saw him drop something.’
‘Where.’
‘Near the bridge.’
‘How far away was he?’
‘Eighty, maybe ninety yards.’
‘But you could see him in the dark?’
‘I heard the splash.’
‘And then you lost him.’
‘I came back here and tried to help the woman and her little girl.’
‘Did you move the bodies?’
‘I think I turned the girl over to check her heartbeat.’
‘Did you wash your hands?’
‘I had blood on them.’
Valdez squeezes his eyes shut. A tear emerges and hovers in the wrinkles. He wipes it away. ‘I didn’t know Palmer was going to shoot them.’
A sheriff’s deputy knocks on the door. Young. Fresh-faced. Grinning.
‘Look what I found,’ he says, holding a muddy pistol between his thumb and forefinger.
‘Wow! Did you also find your brain?’
The deputy frowns, his smile gone.
Desiree opens a plastic Ziploc bag. ‘It’s evidence, you moron!’ The muddy pistol is dropped inside. ‘Show me where you found it.’
She follows him outside, walking between squad cars and ambulances, past the grief tourists, bystanders and rubberneckers. She can’t hear the comments but she knows they’re marvelling at her diminutiveness, telling jokes or making cooing sounds about the cute little FBI agent. Every day she has to contend with this, but Desiree knows that no amount of wishing will rearrange her DNA or take inches from her hips and put them on her legs.
The deputy leads her along the storm-water culvert behind a factory and a warehouse until they reach a concrete bridge. He shines a flashlight into the drain, revealing an oily puddle. Snapping on polyethylene gloves, Desiree slides down the sloped side and searches through the weeds, gravel, broken glass, discarded rubbers, beer cans, wine bottles and hamburger wrappers.
Her first station boss told her that most agents make the mistake of looking at events from the top down, when they should be doing the opposite. ‘You got to think like a criminal,’ he said. ‘Get down in the gutter and look at the world through their eyes.’
Right now she’s wading through putrid water in a stinking drain. The only way to look is up.
31
Audie hears a metal shutter being unlocked and rolled upward. Opening his eyes he sees a mobile taco stand painted in primary colours with a cartoon picture of a mouse with big ears and an oversized yellow sombrero. As a kid Audie used to watch cartoons with Speedy Gonzales, the fastest mouse in Mexico, who would always outwit stupid cats and save his village from the gringos.
‘Rough night,’ says the cook, who is opening plastic containers of sliced onions, peppers, jalapenos and cheese. He fires up the grill and wipes it down. ‘You want me to fix you sumpin’?’
Audie shakes his head.
‘How about a drink?’
Audie accepts a bottle of water. The cook is short and squat with an unkempt moustache and a soiled apron. He’s still talking as he splashes water on the hotplate and scrubs it with a wire brush. A TV is bracketed to the wall above his head. It’s showing Fox News �
�� fair and balanced for those who like falling over. A woman reporter is doing a piece to camera, standing in front of crime-scene tape. In the background there are technicians in coveralls searching a Honda CRV.
‘Houston police are this morning hunting a dangerous fugitive following a double homicide at a city motel in the early hours. A mother and daughter were shot dead in an upstairs room at the Star City Inn on Airline Drive. Crime Scene Investigators are at the scene and the bodies are still inside.
The drama began just before five a.m. when guests heard several shots fired and police demanding that the gunman surrender…’
Vomit rises into Audie’s oesophagus and fills his mouth. He swallows, tasting whatever he ate yesterday. The bottle of water has dropped from his fingers and the contents are spilling into the gutter. Meanwhile, the footage switches to an eyewitness – a large white guy in a plaid shirt.
‘I heard these shots and someone shouting, “Stop or I’ll shoot!” and then more shots. There were bullets flying everywhere.’
‘Did you see the gunman?’
‘Nope, I kept my head down.’
‘Do you know anything about the victims?’
‘A woman and her little girl: I seen ’em having breakfast yesterday. The girl was eating waffles, a sweet little thing, missing her front tooth.’
Audie can’t look at the screen any more. Cassie and Scarlett are alive in his mind, breathing not bleeding, and he doesn’t want to believe differently. He wants to run. No, he wants to fight. He wants someone to explain.
‘The police have released the name and photograph of a man they wish to question…’
He glances up at the screen and sees his police mugshot, which is soon replaced by an image from his high school yearbook. It’s like he’s aging backwards, his skin growing smoother, hair longer, eyes brighter …
The camera shot changes again to the exterior of the motel. Audie recognises someone in the foreground – the short frizzy-haired FBI agent who once visited him in prison. She had wanted to talk about the money, but they had finished up chatting about books and writers like Steinbeck and Faulkner. She told him he should read Alice Walker and Toni Morrison to get a female perspective on poverty.
Life or Death Page 17