by Rod Reynolds
All I could think to do was run. Highway 70 skirted the top of Stokes Creek and carried me west out of town, crossing the Ouachita River. Cold air rushed through the open windows as I drove, the highway in front of me desolate. I kept the panic at bay by planning, weighing up what the hell to do next.
A murder suspect. A fugitive from the law.
I drove with no destination, waiting for some respite in darkness. When evening fell, I pulled in at a truck stop that was little more than a slash of asphalt through a break in the pinewoods. The sky was a dark shade of purple, the moonlight filtered and refracted by low clouds. I got out and leaned on the car roof, the engine ticking and creaking as it cooled. I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of it all.
Barrett had been adamant it wasn’t him killed Robinson. Not two hours later, Clay Tucker was dead. It wasn’t proof, but it was damning as all hell.
Barrett had warned Clay Tucker the fire was going to happen. Had to be him that killed Tucker, for telling me as much. Play devil’s advocate for a second: say Barrett didn’t set the fire – how else would he come to know about it? And the follow-up to that: who else would have a better motive than Barrett to kill Robinson and Tucker?
I picked through it in my head. Robinson was reinvestigating the murders of three women – Jeannette Runnels, Elizabeth Prescott and an unknown third – presumably the woman in the photograph. I took it from my pocket without thinking, looked at it again, her features hard to make out in the dull light.
Just what the hell did you have, Jimmy?
I thought about the initials I’d cribbed from Robinson’s notes: J.R., E.P. and N.G. – the first two now identified, and decent odds that the woman in the picture was N.G. Yet no one seemed to know who she was. I lingered on that thought, getting the feeling I’d missed something. I’d shown the picture around plenty, got nowhere – although there was always the chance someone had lied to me—
That wasn’t it. It came to me then, the oversight. I’d made an assumption without recognising it before – that all the murders Robinson was investigating happened in Hot Springs. But Robinson’s note on the back said she was killed in April – long before he started travelling here. Maybe I was asking the right questions in the wrong place. Maybe Robinson had started out closer to home.
I climbed behind the wheel again, two bad options crystallising: stay in Hot Springs, lay low, try to clear my name; I made the cops as heavy favourites to catch up with me if I did. Or go back to the last place on Earth I’d want to be. But it felt right somehow that Robinson’s trail would start there, and the more I thought about it, the more I saw it was the only move that made sense.
I guided the car back onto the blacktop and realised my scattergun course had already taken me some distance towards where I had to go. Maybe it was inevitable all along; drawn back, like a desperate wolf to a rotting carcass. I drove south, heading cross-country until the road joined up with Highway 67. The road to Texarkana.
Chapter Twenty
The road was the same bleak highway mile after mile, lined by towering pines, but the sense of familiarity grew with my sense of discomfort. When I’d fled Texarkana before, I’d killed a man and was running for my life. I never imagined I’d go back. Here I was, under a different cloud, the fear just as real. I had the sense that I was still being battered by the waves set in motion all those months ago.
I arrived in the early hours, the roads deserted. Recognition made me recoil. The Hotel Mason; the Federal building; the Texarkana Chronicle offices. Innocuous edifices that nonetheless served as triggers for memories I’d done everything to bury. A dark expectation filled me, the fear that a cop would pull me over at any moment. I didn’t know if it was reasonable or not, whether the authorities even knew I’d been in Winfield Callaway’s house that night. There was a bleak irony in realising that, if they did, it would likely be because Jimmy Robinson had informed them.
Union Station was my first stop – enough people there, even at that hour, that I wouldn’t be conspicuous. I parked in the lot and went inside looking for a telephone kiosk. I was surprised to see GIs in uniform on the concourses – sleeping, smoking, waiting. Not in the numbers I’d seen before, but there all the same; the last stragglers making their way home from a war the rest of America was trying to forget.
I called home to check on Lizzie. It was close to midnight in LA, but I knew she’d be awake, a little needle of guilt pricking at my neck as I waited for her to pick up – the thought of her scared and alone, me not being there. It coloured my thinking, made me resolve not to tell her about Tucker’s murder, or coming to Texarkana – another retreat from my promise to always be honest with her.
‘I didn’t know if you’d call,’ she said. ‘It must be so late there.’
‘Are you bearing up?’
‘I’ve turned on every light in the house. The neighbours will think I’m a crank.’
‘Did the locksmith come?’
‘He came. I had the windows boarded up too. It looks like . . . my god, our home looks like a derelict. Why would someone want to do this to us—’ She stopped abruptly after she said it, trying not to let me hear her distress.
‘Did the police turn up anything?’
She took a breath, her voice thick with emotion when she spoke. ‘They said they’re investigating. I don’t think they’ve got anything much to go on.’
‘They’ll keep a file open and never look at it again. Burglaries don’t rate.’
‘I got that impression. Charlie, what are we going to do?’
I rubbed my eyes. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can—’
‘I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. I meant what I said earlier.’
‘I know.’ I looked up and checked around the station concourse, annoyed I’d forgotten where I was and let my guard down. ‘Did you figure out if anything’s missing?’
‘Some. I’m still sorting through the mess. They took the twenty you kept behind the coffee jar, a few pieces of jewellery – nothing worthwhile for all this. I keep thinking they can’t have satisfied themselves with twenty dollars and some trinkets and they might come back because of it.’
‘Don’t think like that. These kind of lowlifes just move on.’
She was silent a beat too long – not reassured. Or maybe sensing my doubt. ‘Are you any closer to being finished there?’
I wanted to come clean about everything, have her tell me that things would turn out all right. But I knew it wouldn’t go that way; that she’d tell me to get away while I still could and catch a flight home – and I wasn’t sure I had the resolve to tell her no this time. ‘I know the fire wasn’t an accident. The proprietor was warned before it happened.’
And now he’s dead too.
‘What? Who was he warned by?’
‘The sheriff I told you about before.’
‘The man you think Robinson was suspicious of?’
‘The same.’
‘How can that be? I mean, if he knew . . .’
‘I don’t know. That’s what I’m working on.’
She drew a deep breath. ‘Are you safe there, Charlie?’
I eyed the group of GIs nearest me, three of them slumped back to back against their tote bags. ‘Safe enough. Try to get some sleep, I’ll call you in the morning. I love you.’
I set the receiver down and rubbed my neck, the needle there now a spike. How could it be that a man’s best intentions led him to betray his own promises?
I dropped another nickel and called the Texarkana Chronicle, catching a break when the voice on the other end said Hansen was working the night shift. He came onto the line.
‘No one had spoken with Jimmy’s sister.’ His opening shot reminded me that this was still a fresh wound, and the hurt in his voice was plain. ‘First she knew of it was when I talked with her. Hardest goddamn conversation I’ve ever had to have. The woman was torn up.’
‘I’m sorry, Sid. That’s a tough gig to have put on you.’
> ‘You’re damn straight it is.’
‘I gave the detective in charge your name as a way to reach the family. Harlan Layfield – you didn’t get a call from him?’
‘Ain’t no one called me. You tell those jackals up there that they ain’t fit to call themselves men.’
‘You’re more right than you know.’ I pulled my collar loose, tiredness advancing on me, surprised Layfield hadn’t been in touch. ‘Sid, did you manage to speak to anyone there about Jimmy? What he was working on?’
‘We ain’t barely talked about nothing else but Jimmy, it’s a goddamn miracle we got a newspaper out these last days gone.’ He sounded spent. ‘I don’t know what to tell you. No one I spoke to knew he was in Hot Springs. He was filing stories like normal right up until he went away. I checked and the last couple was about a liquor store hold-up at a place near State Line, and a spate of robberies at the new subdivision out on Washington Street. Routine stuff. Hold on—’ There was a sound like he was spitting tobacco juice into a cup, then he spoke again. ‘Only thing came up was that apparently he kept disappearing on his days off. Far as I knew, Jimmy spent his free time drinking in Hamblyn’s or Finnigan’s. He ain’t never had much of what you’d call a personal life, but the talk is, these last few months he ain’t been seen at neither. No one knows where he was at instead. You think maybe he was taking off for Hot Springs?’
Ella Borland had told me as much. ‘Yeah. I got a source says he’d been showing up there since August.’
‘You any the wiser about what he was doing there yet?’
‘Did anyone mention murders Jimmy might’ve been working?’
‘Murders? Ain’t been nothing like that since . . .’ He trailed off, the killings that past spring still raw.
‘Listen, Sid, there’s something I want to show you.’ I was nervous about telling Hansen I was in Texarkana, unsure how much he knew and if he could be trusted – and who else might be interested to know I was back. But I had no choice. ‘When do you get off?’
‘What is it?’
‘A photograph. It belonged to Jimmy.’
‘Of what?’
‘A woman.’
‘If I’m reading between the lines right, you gonna tell me this a dead woman.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who is she?’
‘That’s what I want you to tell me.’
He grunted. ‘All right, I get off at six this morning. What time can you be here?’
‘I’ll meet you at six. The coffee shop opposite Union Station – you know the one?’
‘Course I know it.’
*
I managed three hours of broken shuteye in the backseat of Robinson’s car, woke up feeling like I’d slept in a suitcase. It all came back in a violent onslaught – Tucker, his brother, Barrett, running. A state of hyper-alert that made it feel like I’d never slept at all.
It was still dark as the clock approached six. I moved the car to the other side of the station’s parking lot to get a better view of the coffee shop, and waited.
Hansen showed at ten past. He walked alone. I strained to see as he arrived, looking for him to signal or glance around at someone, but he kept his head down and went straight inside. I waited a few more minutes, but no one appeared to follow him in.
I pulled my hat low, crossed over and went inside. I saw him first but he recognised me quickly and waved me over, stood to greet me when I reached his booth.
‘You look like you been driving all night.’
‘I didn’t want to lose any time.’ I sat down and he did the same.
He raised his arm to signal someone. I whipped around, feet planted to run, but saw he was just hailing the waitress.
‘Didn’t never expect to see you round these parts again,’ he said.
I turned back slowly, wondering if he was testing me. ‘Makes two of us.’
The waitress came over. She wore a faded pink uniform. She placed a coffee cup in front of me and filled it, then topped Hansen’s up. Neither of us said anything while she poured.
When she was gone, he leaned on the table and swiped his palm over his face. ‘What the hell happened to him, Charlie?’
‘I don’t know.’ I moved the coffee aside and linked my fingers on the chequered tablecloth. ‘I want to know.’
‘What’s these murders you was asking me about?’
I held his gaze, trying to get a read on him. ‘I think that’s what took him there. Dead women.’ It felt like there was danger in every grain of truth I gave up.
He took a dip of tobacco from his pouch and wedged it in his lip. ‘In all the years we worked together, I never heard him mention Hot Springs once. Who are they? The women.’
I ducked the question. ‘I can’t make sense of it. That’s why I came here.’
‘Let me see it then.’
I took the photograph from my pocket and held it in front of his eyes, watching his expression.
He took it from me and examined it, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You say you have no idea who she is?’
I shook my head.
He turned it over and saw the inscription. ‘Answers my next question – how you knew she was dead if you don’t know who she is.’ Then he placed it on the table in front of him. ‘You said this was Jimmy’s?’
I nodded.
‘How’d it come to you?’
On a better day I’d have seen the question coming and had an answer ready. I took a sip of coffee, stalling. ‘He left it for me. With a friend.’
Hansen said nothing at first, recognising the lie for what it was. To my surprise, he let it pass. ‘Hate to tell you, but I think you done wasted a trip.’
I closed my eyes and felt my heart sink.
‘What makes you think she’s from Texarkana?’ he said.
‘It’s guesswork.’
He stabbed at Robinson’s scrawl. ‘See the date? Right around the Phantom killings. Ain’t no way I’d forget another gal got killed around then.’
I spun it towards me and stared, couldn’t believe I hadn’t made the connection. I thought back; April 8th was two days after I’d left Texarkana; I was still running west then. I rested my head on the leather seatback and stared at the motionless fan blades above me.
‘Level with me, Charlie: what was Jimmy doing up there?’
I sat up and studied him again. Was he pumping me for information? On his own behalf or someone else’s? Nothing in his bearing hinted at it. His face was criss-crossed with deep worry lines; he looked like a man who’d lost a friend and was desperate for answers. ‘He was investigating the murder of two dead working girls. I don’t know why.’
He tapped the photograph, eyes still on me. ‘She one of them?’
‘No. When we talked, he told me there were three dead women. I don’t know where she fits in. I don’t know anything about her.’
He turned his mouth down, thinking about it. ‘Don’t make a lick of sense to me. Jimmy got no business being up there.’ He folded his arms. ‘What you said the first time you telephoned me, about the fire being suspicious – you of the same mind now?’
I looked off to the side, torn between protecting myself and wanting to assuage his grief with the truth. I backed away at the last moment. ‘The police have closed it. They’re satisfied it was an accident.’
‘Why’re you dodging the question?’
I spread my hands. ‘I don’t know what else to tell you.’
‘You always believe the cops?’ He’d sat forward and was staring at me, unblinking.
My chest tightened and suddenly all I could hear was his voice, his question, no sounds around me. It felt like he was daring me to ask him about Robinson and the cover-up in the aftermath of the Phantom murders. ‘You know of a reason someone might want Jimmy dead?’
He held my stare a second or two, my pulse racing, time stretching. Then he shook his head once and dropped his eyes to the table. We sat in silence, my legs jittery, until, finally, he said, ‘
All the bodies we had this year . . . Jimmy ain’t deserve to be one of them. Not for a second. He could drive you crazy, but that’s just because his heart was bigger than his brain.’
‘It took me a while, but I worked that much out.’
‘That why you’re doing this?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Trying to figure what happened to Jimmy. Lot of folk would’ve just packed up and gone home. You figure you owe it to him?’
‘He helped me, before. At the end. This is my last chance to pay him back.’
‘“The end . . .”’ He pulled his mug towards him and stared into it. ‘You sure took off kinda sudden.’
‘The story was over.’
‘When Richard Davis died?’ He looked up.
I nodded, mind racing. ‘What was it like afterwards?’ I said.
‘At the Chronicle, you mean?’
‘All of it. Texarkana.’
He twisted his cup through a half-turn. ‘It was the only story for weeks when it was all over, but it died down after a time, same way it always does. Folk started getting back to normal. The Greenbeck people put a new editor in after Gaffy . . .’ He swallowed, his eyes clouding over. Too many dead. ‘They dropped in some hotshot out of Austin. Put a lot of noses out of joint, but that ain’t all his own fault.’
‘I read what happened to Horace Bailey and Jack Sherman. Out at Winfield Callaway’s place.’
‘A tragedy.’ His voice was flat as he said it.
‘They ever catch anyone for it?’
‘No one. Supposedly some nigger bandit.’
‘Who led the investigation?’
‘Ward Mills, the Texas-side police chief.’ Sherman’s old boss and Bailey’s partner in crime. All along, the man I considered most likely to have initiated the cover-up. ‘What you ask for?’
‘Just filling in the blanks.’
He fixed me with a look and broke it again just as quickly. I wondered if he was trying to coax me into an admission, or maybe himself. All the truth lay in things unsaid.
Then he slid the picture back to his side of the table. ‘Let me show this to some of the others at the paper. I wouldn’t hold your breath, but maybe someone else’ll know something.’