“Speak up, detective. What do you need?” Jean Lindsey was as impatient as Maude remembered, with little time devoted to chitchat.
“I’m in your neighborhood. Can I come by for a minute? If you can’t see me, that’s okay, I’ll work it out myself.” Just drop it, doctor, she thought.
Never one to get the easy route, Maude heard Lindsey’s sudden interest. She insisted that Maude drive right to her office. Maybe she heard something in the detective’s voice, a note of helplessness or pain.
The smooth green walls hadn’t changed; neither had the calming effect of the soft pastels. When Maude entered the door, she immediately felt more relaxed. After a few minutes explaining to Lindsey about the alcohol and her body’s recent deprivation, the doctor stared through her, obviously considering whether to send her away or treat her condition.
“Detective, what you are doing, while admirable, is foolish and dangerous. You have made it through the worst time, but luck is what saved you from serious withdrawal symptoms. Bleeding, hallucinations, difficulty breathing; all those things and more were possible. I can help you, but I strongly suggest a trip to your regular doctor for follow-up.”
“Yes, doctor,” Maude said contritely. “Whatever you say.”
“I have some capsules for you, something to help you sleep. Also, help for the anxiety. Small doses, won’t interfere with the job,” Lindsey said, busy writing on her prescription pad. She passed them over to Maude, staring at her, a tiny smile in the corner of her mouth. “I wondered when you were going to address your addiction,” she said sympathetically. “You’re a strong woman, Maude Rogers. I hope you make it.”
Maude left the green walls, headed toward her own plain white ones. She stopped at the big-box grocer and filled the prescriptions. Afterward, the trip home seemed to take forever. She couldn’t wait to take one of the sleeping aids and hit the bed, hoping to get finally get some rest.
Her pillow was dry, with a new, clean cover on it, drawing her to the bed. The small white capsule was half the dosage, but her reluctance to swallow any drug held the line to one. In about twenty minutes, the bed came up to meet her, and Maude fell asleep, resting for the first time since her last drink. The anxiety over quitting her old friend Gilbey’s had added its part to the mix. Several hours later she awoke feeling better. Clearheaded, she searched the pantry for food and decided on a bowl of potato soup from a can, warmed but not hot. It filled her stomach and set aside hunger. The summer day was still full sun, lighting the backyard and the canopy of oaks that lined the property. A memory came hard then, of a similar day in August when Robert Dawson had violated her privacy and entered the backyard, intent upon showing his power. She shivered for a minute, remembering the bullet in her side.
“Best to shake that off; just a memory brought on by seeing that scum today. Think I’ll call my hero in Philly,” Maude said, to hear the sound of a voice. The only man besides Paul Rogers that she’d ever cared about was Bill Page, a homicide detective in Philadelphia. They had shared some good times over the past several months and hoped to share more when he moved to Texas. So far, his boss hadn’t found a replacement allowing Bill to retire. She knew it was a hard consideration to leave the work force, and gave him no difficulty over his decision. She did miss him, though. A telephone call later, Maude was less lonely. Bill had said he was retiring in the upcoming March, never mind whether the department was ready or not. He was leaving for Texas’s mild winters and Maude’s fiery temperament. She smiled at the thought of Bill showing up.
“Maybe I’ll get a dog, one not too old so he doesn’t die soon. A lovable pooch that doesn’t require much. Yeah, a dog, man’s best friend.” Her mind shifted to Wallace Avery and his friend from back when. What could produce murderous wrath in a law-abiding man? Maybe Phillip Mason wasn’t so clean, and for that matter, maybe Avery was hiding something. The shooting didn’t make sense. Why would a man come all the way from Detroit for revenge on an ex-partner, after a long cooling-off period? Maybe there was more to it than that.
She picked up the landline in her house and punched in the number for CID, hoping it was Alice’s turn to work Saturday. As luck would have it, she was at the cranky telex machine, receiving and sending fingerprint information. Maude was hopeful that soon Madison would come into the twenty-first century and replace all the old analog machines with digital. She had seen the results of their production in Philadelphia.
“What’cha need, Maude?” Alice was busy, but never too distracted to help her friend.
“Hey, Alice, glad I caught you. Could I get you to run a criminal history on Wallace Avery, around fifty years old? Previously lived in Michigan.” Maude tried to remember the man’s identifiers, but could only guess at his height and weight. “Hang on and I’ll get a sure thing on his DOB.”
Her small blue book was on the dresser. Leafing through the pages, she found Wallace Avery, DOB April 24, 1960. After repeating the numbers to Alice and disconnecting the phone, the restlessness started in with the kind of jumpiness a gin and tonic once cured, but that solution was no longer available. She remembered the five o’clock meeting at the church and went to her car before thinking any more dangerous thoughts. Later she was glad, for the people who spoke in the small circle addressed some of her issues. She had a cup of coffee and felt peace come over her as the speakers talked of turning things over to a higher power. Afterward, she left the meeting with new resolve and gratitude for sobriety.
Returning home, she found a message from Alice on the small fax machine near the landline. A few months earlier Maude had purchased the machine and had never been sorry. Email was nice, but having the copy come directly from her source gave credence to many types of evidentiary information. Using the parameters she had given Alice, a report came back that eight years prior, Wallace Ervine Avery had been arrested for felony theft, but later charges were dismissed. There was little to go on. Avery’s record was basically clear except for that. Maude took note of the arresting agency and decided to put in a call, hoping to find the officer who’d placed cuffs on the man. A further investigation of Phillip Mason’s past showed the same type of arrest and results. Charges against him were dismissed as well.
Coincidences always sparked a question, especially when two men were arrested for the same crime, yet neither was tried. Maude hoped the burg outside Detroit where the two men were arrested still kept records after eight years. The police report had originated in Woodsboro, a medium-sized town with a medium-sized population. Avery’s address at the time of his arrest had been 443 South Street, Woodsboro. That should make it easier to find the truth. A quick phone call to the Woodsboro Police gave her the names of two detectives, one a Jason Barton, who had been employed there for at least four years, and the other, Kyle Blanton, the older of the two and possibly the longest employed. They were both off on the weekend, but the dispatcher gave Maude numbers to voice mails.
“Hello, this is Maude Rogers, homicide detective from Madison, Texas.” She went on to give her cell phone and instructions and that she was looking into the history of an ex-resident of Woodsboro. “Appreciate a callback,” she finished. Knowing Monday would probably be the soonest she would hear back from the detective, she put it out of her mind and decided to sit out on the porch and smoke her third unfiltered of the day. The evening sun was in the low part of the sky, reddening the horizon across a few clouds, reminding her of the adage “red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” A Texas sunset is glorious, she thought. She remembered her mother, and how much time the older woman had utilized the wooden rocking chair during toward the end of her illness, staring across the stand of small oaks as she rocked quietly in her pain. Life is a helluva thing, Maude thought. I cling to mine just as most everyone does. Mama wanted to live on, but she didn’t get the chance once cancer came to stay.
Darkness came late as usual, the heat of the day finally dissipating somewhat, leaving a large white moon rising high in the sky. A few stars were barely visible
, their pinpoints awed by the greater light. She sat and dozed for a while until mosquitoes became a nuisance, buzzing her naked arms and face. That time of the night was always lonely, flanked by old memories of family and friends gathered, playing forty-two with dominoes that clicked hard as trumps were played, of her brother Leonard’s young voice interrupting the older crowd with pleas for Grace’s attention, and their long-dead neighbors, the Williams, sitting across from one another at Grace’s wooden table. Her mother had loved entertaining, and did it often. Her sweet smile would register contentment when folks asked for seconds of pecan pie or apple cake.
Maude had never entertained her neighbors, and the few family members left seldom came to her home. She always put it down to her inadequacy in the chitchat department, but someone had suggested cops visit cops. After some reflections, the idea had taken root. It was true that her stories were not the kind that made for good conversation with people unaccustomed to violence. Still, the loneliness visited sometimes. Maybe that was one more trigger for drinking, she finished thinking. Another reason to go to meetings.
Early to bed after watching the news on television sent her into a pill-induced sleep where little permeated her consciousness. She woke once during the night but fell back into dream-filled sleep after a trip to the bathroom. Sometime around four in the morning she awoke, wide-eyed from being startled by a sound outside her bedroom window, her heart pounding from the effect of waking. The Glock she carried during the day was close by, a small reach away from her pillow. She quietly wrapped her fingers around its reassuring breadth. Maude slithered off the bed onto the floor, crawled to the window, and stared through the lowest wooden slat against the glass. The blinds were the darkening kind, shutting out light for day sleepers and those sensitive to light. She had installed them during a week of night shift years earlier.
The noise outside was steady, a pounding effect resembling a jackhammer against rock. Nothing was visible through the window except her open backyard and the garden shed beyond. Being a target had never appealed to Maude Rogers, and she wasn’t about to start being one in her dotage. If that meant crawling to keep from being seen by an intruder, then crawl she would. The second bedroom served as an office and was several feet down the hall, across from the spare bathroom. Ignoring the aches in her knees, she made her way into the dark room, searching for a different view than that from her own larger bedroom. The noise outside continued, its rhythmical drone a hateful presence in the normal still night. She pulled the edge of the blind up and waited for the moonlight to show her the backside of the tool shed. The large peach tree bordering her rent house next door shone with August ripening peaches, shadowy blobs in the pale light.
Maude’s pajamas were thin but she was sweating from the heat, a rage against the violation of her privacy beginning low in her gut. She moved toward the closet where her shoes were stored and found a pair of water shoes in the darkness. After slipping them on, she arose from the floor and stood, easing the muscle cramps in her upper thighs, gaining strength from standing. The small emergency flashlight from the closet shelf went into her pocket for later.
Shadows covered the front door of her house, for the light from the moon shone upon the backside of the property, leaving the rest to darkness. Knowing the lay of the land intimately, she began to move silently under the eave, headed toward the gable end of the house. The sound of hammering, louder with each step she took, made Maude wonder if her renter was disturbed by the noise. The driveway in front of the house was empty. She had parked the city car in the garage and locked the door, not against paranoia, but against the reality that burglaries happen, for life had taught her harsh lessons. After her niece Lilly Ann was kidnapped from home, Maude had decided to protect herself against criminal intentions.
The peach tree in sight, she continued toward the tool shed and the land beyond, nearer the sound of iron pounding rock. Lights were on across the southern fence line, a curious neighbor whose sleep had been disturbed, or an early riser brewing his first cup of the day. The sight of lights confused her concentration; whatever was happening behind her shed might threaten others besides herself. Keeping in the shadows, Maude made her way, her weapon in hand. The early morning dew on the grass had wet the cloth part of her shoes, allowing dampness against her toes. Thankfully the temperature was still in the early eighties, another hot Texas morning. Directly behind the shed Maude saw movement, and a high shadow against the light.
“Stop right there,” she said, pointing the Glock toward the shadow. The movement continued, as did the sound. A hollow ringing began, the tones higher than before. She walked toward it, determined to find the source, whatever the cost. Suddenly her foot slipped and she fell, body sliding downward into a depression, stopping at waist deep when the ground met her water shoes.
“What the heck is this?” Maude yelled. The pain in her knees was monumental. Not caring who heard, she yelled again, turning in a circle, using the flashlight to highlight the rocky ground inside a large rectangular hole. At the opposite end of the hole, a jackhammer stood tall, wrapped tight against a metal stake with a cotton rope, the power switch depressed by duct tape. Beneath the hammer, a Texas-sized rock buried in the soil was thrumming with each beat of the metal tip.
“Of the ridiculous stunts I’ve ever been part of, this beats all,” she said, climbing out of the hole. Through it all, she hadn’t lost her weapon, and now held it firmly as she reached the surface. Her cell phone was back at the house where she left it, a mistake she didn’t usually make, but there was no one around the big hole in the ground except her. Using the flashlight, she walked around the four sides, no longer noticing the noise from the hammer. From the house, she called the local police, and asked for an officer and a technician to print the hammer, even though the chance of finding prints was slim. Before long, a county car arrived, as well as a van from the county crime lab. Maude had already cut the tape on the jackhammer to shut down the noise, but her ears kept ringing for several hours afterward.
Bright lights, uniformed officers, and civilian staff were on hands and knees, searching for footprints or small pieces of evidence for identifying the culprits who’d set up the hammer after digging a grave in Maude’s yard. She stood along the side, watching, knowing there were no clues. As to the culprit, she knew who had controlled the jackhammer from a distance. Seeing the monster in his lair that day had upset his self-control. The raw, crude threat was overstated. She knew he wanted her dead, but he’d had chances before, unless the injury to his brain could have made him even more murderous.
She was almost cheerful, realizing that her contact with Dawson had provoked the incident in her yard. He had risen to the bait. However long it took for the killer to show himself fully, Maude was determined his days of violating women were coming to an end. A flick of fear touched her for a moment. She knew the terrible things the man had done, and would do over and over again, given the slightest edge.
After crime scene techs and county deputies had moved on, Maude looked at the empty grave in the early morning light, wondering why anyone would go to such extremes. More would come; the now silent hole in the rocky ground was not the end to the man’s madness, and she wondered what was next. Meanwhile, the crew had been called from a local grounds service to refill the hole and plant grass over it. CID took the jackhammer in for evidence after Maude wrote down the model and serial number. She had little hope of tracing it back to anyone. In her mind, young Buzzcut had set up the digging, paying the way with Dawson’s enormous fortune. Money seemed to buy as much loyalty as fear, with even greater rewards. For the present time, she had more important concerns than Robert Dawson, maniac.
Sunday was a day for worship at the small Baptist church five miles from her home. The preacher was an enthusiastic man who believed what he taught. She was pleased to be in the hard seat, listening to a message about peace and goodwill on Earth. Leaving the church, she drove over to her friend Alice’s house for breakfast. The t
hree of them, Maude, Alice, and her husband Sydney, often shared brunch and a few hands of cards together. It was called mild recreation. During a recess from the game, Maude talked to Alice about the incident at her house, and the drinking issue she had been living with lately. Sydney was a good friend but sensed Maude would find it easier to talk to Alice alone. He left the room to make more coffee while the women talked.
Going back to the house was difficult, not because of fear, but because of her anger. Each time the sight of the newly turned soil near the fence line came into view, she began to get a little angrier at the perpetrator, vowing to turn the tables on those who had trespassed into her private life. If Robert Dawson hoped to scare her away, he was dead wrong. She was pissed off and getting madder by the minute. Seeing the closed grave and the new squares of sod planted across it caused Maude to feel violated. The only person she knew who might understand was Lilly Ann. Her life had been turned upside down for several hours when she was forcibly taken from her home. Resisting temptation to call her niece and rant, Maude sat down at her table with a cup of herb tea and began making further notes on the murder at the pawnshop.
Wallace Avery’s phone listing was not published, but she had the number in her book.
“Mr. Avery, this is Detective Rogers. I hope I’m not disturbing anything important,” she said when Avery answered. “I wonder if you might have a few minutes. I can drive over there within the half-hour.”
“What do you want, detective? I thought I had answered all your questions?” Avery seemed upset she had called. She hoped he wasn’t in the middle of some “afternoon delight.”
“Well, you did, sir, but I have just a couple of things bothering me and thought you might help. I know today is Sunday, but it won’t take long.”
Avery sighed. “All right, detective, I’ll be here. You have my address.”
The 6:10 To Murder (The Maude Rogers Crime Novels Book 3) Page 13