“What kind of day do you think your wife is having?” Gretchen asked.
“I’ve had that kind of guilt heaped on me all my life, Ms. Horowitz. You still didn’t get the gist of my story, did you? I thought the Mob hired intelligent people to do the kind of work you do.”
“I got in through affirmative action,” she replied.
“My father got it all wrong. Wyatt Dixon is his bastard son. His girlfriend was here and told me. Dixon is my half brother. That’s a little hard to deal with. How would you like to find out your half sister is the bride of Dracula?”
“Bertha Phelps was here?” Gretchen said.
“An hour ago. I sent her down the road with a kick in her fat rump. I suspect she ran back to her cowboy.”
“You kicked Wyatt Dixon’s girlfriend in the butt?”
“I’m about to do it to you, too. And I’ll do it to him if he comes around here again.”
“You’re going to do a beat-down on Wyatt Dixon?”
“There’re ways,” he replied. “What are you doing?”
She stepped out on the patio. The girl in the bikini was sitting in a deck chair, taking a hit off a pair of roach clips. “What’s your name, honey?” Gretchen asked.
“Dora,” the girl said.
“You need to hit the road, Dora. My father beat the shit out of these two assholes. I may have to do the same. You don’t want to be here when that happens.”
The girl looked at Jack Boyd. He smiled and shook his head. “She’s a kidder,” he said.
“This guy was fired from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Department because he’s a dirty cop,” Gretchen said. “His bud was a geek named Bill Pepper who liked to tie up girls and rub his penis on them. A serial killer named Asa Surrette emasculated Pepper up at Swan Lake. Surrette is buds with Caspian Younger. That’s the kind of people you’re hanging out with.”
The girl looked at Jack Boyd again, this time clearly frightened.
“Don’t pay attention to her,” Boyd said. He was still smiling. “I was in a car accident. She makes movies. Ask her.”
“Good-bye, Dora,” Gretchen said.
Dora glanced at Jack Boyd, then at Gretchen. She pulled on a pair of sandals, picked up her beach bag, and walked hurriedly through the side yard to her car, her buttocks jiggling.
“Why don’t you give Caspian a break?” Boyd said.
“Where is Surrette?” Gretchen said.
“You think I know that?” Boyd said.
“I hope one of you does.”
“Or it’s going to get rough?” Boyd said.
“I’ll handle this, Jack,” Caspian said, stepping out on the patio, setting aside his wineglass. “Ms. Horowitz, I don’t want to be unkind, but would you please go away? You and your father and Mr. Robicheaux and his daughter have been a constant nuisance. Mr. Boyd and I could have had your father arrested for aggravated assault, but we didn’t. Know why? Because that’s not my way. With one phone call, I could have your father ground into fish chum. He would disappear without a trace, other than a bloody skim floating on Flathead Lake.”
“You’re connected in Vegas?”
“I know some of the same people you do. Except they listen to me because I have money,” he said. “You won’t change anything. I made some mistakes. There’s no way to undo them. What’s done is done.”
“You’re going to give me Surrette. On this one, there are no lines.”
His eyes shifted sideways, as though he were processing her words. “I’m sure that makes sense to you. It’s lost on me.”
She glanced at her watch. “Your window of opportunity is closing,” she said.
“I’ll walk you to your truck. You’re a filmmaker. Maybe I can help you later. I know a number of people in the industry.” He fitted his hand around her upper arm and squeezed it tentatively. “Nice. You lift weights?”
Jack Boyd was grinning lasciviously.
Gretchen wet her bottom lip before she spoke. “I was never good at communication skills. A psychologist told me that. He suggested I try what he called ‘massage therapy.’ He was going to do it for me in his off hours. For free.”
Caspian was standing beside her as he clutched her arm. Without removing his hand, he stepped in front of her, looking warmly into her face. His eyes were pale blue and didn’t seem to belong inside the graininess of his face, like blond hair on a Mexican. He had a weak chin and a nose that was both sharp and small. She had seen toy men like him on the French Riviera. They seemed like caricatures of nineteenth-century aristocracy whose bloodline had run out. Gretchen wondered what life would have been like for Caspian Younger in the kinds of public schools she had attended in Miami and Brooklyn.
“I told you I could read your thoughts,” he said, sinking his fingers a little deeper into her upper arm, a flicker of lust and anticipation lighting on his mouth. “Be a good girl. Don’t do something rash. If you’d like to stay and have a good time, I’d say all sins are forgiven, including your father’s.”
Jack Boyd’s grin would not go away. “I wouldn’t argue with sloppy seconds,” he said.
“You’re asking me to get it on?”
Caspian raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You can tell me about your documentaries.”
“Can I ask you a question before we go any further?” she said. “Do you really believe you can go up against a guy like Wyatt Dixon?”
“It’s what’s under the hood that counts,” he said. “I’ll let you have a test drive upstairs.”
He worked his thumb deeper into the muscle of her arm, inching his fingers up on her shoulder, kneading the flesh along her collarbone, his mouth coming closer to hers.
Her reaction was not emotional, nor could it be described as vengeful. She didn’t consider it of much consequence and wondered that either man could have expected a different outcome.
“What do you say, babycakes?” Caspian asked.
“Say about what?”
“Going upstairs. You’ve got beautiful arms,” he said. “If the Venus de Milo had arms, they’d look like yours.”
“That’s a great come-on line. If I ever go trans, I think I’ll give it a try.”
“Are we on or not?” Jack Boyd said.
“You sure you guys want to do this?” she asked.
“Say the word,” Caspian said.
“What the fuck,” she replied.
“You won’t regret it,” Caspian said.
“But you will,” she said.
She ripped her elbow into Jack Boyd’s face and drove her fist between Caspian’s eyes. Then she pulled her blackjack from her side pocket and whipped it across the back of Boyd’s head and backstroked it across Caspian’s jaw, knocking the spittle from his mouth. She hit him on the collarbone and the points of his shoulders and shoved him through the open French doors onto the floor. Behind her, she heard Jack Boyd trying to rise to his feet. “Run,” she said.
“Do what?” Jack Boyd replied, barely supporting himself on the back of a chair. She brought the blackjack down on top of his hand. He cradled his arm against his chest, the color draining from his face.
“Run! Don’t come back. You’re finished here.”
She stepped toward him. He bolted through the yard, looking back once, knocking the concrete bowl of a birdbath off its pedestal. She turned to Caspian Younger and slid a pair of needle-nosed pliers from her back pocket. He was sitting up on the floor, pressing his palm against his mouth, looking at the thick red smear on his hand. She got down on one knee. “Do you know what I’m about to do to you?” she asked.
“I don’t know where Surrette is,” he said.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“Start what?”
“Pulling off your parts.”
“Please. I didn’t have a choice. He’s not human. You may think he is, but he’s not. He’s what he says he is.”
“So what is he?”
“I don’t know.”
She bent down closer to h
im, the pliers extended in front of her. His eyes were tightly shut. There are always lines, she heard a voice say.
He was probably telling the truth, she told herself. If he gave up Surrette, the feds would take him off the board, and no matter how the legal implications played out, Caspian Younger would be free of the man who had probably extorted him for years.
There was a problem, and it didn’t have to do with Surrette. Caspian had said he didn’t know where his father was. This was after his father had left him a note of endearment, one that should have made him conclude he was of some value to someone. Would he have brought a teenage girl onto the property, with the intent of debauching her, if he had no idea of his father’s whereabouts or the approximate time of his return?
She touched the point of the pliers to his cheek, just below his eye. “Where did your father go? You do not want to give me the wrong answer.”
“He has a place on Sweathouse Creek. He goes there because it reminds him of growing up in East Kentucky. Clouds of fog in the hollows and all that hillbilly crap he’s so fond of.”
“You brought the girl here and didn’t worry about him coming back unexpectedly?”
“She just came here to swim.”
“You told Bertha Phelps where he was, didn’t you?”
“No,” he replied, clearly forcing himself not to blink.
“You know what a professional liar never does?” she said. “Blink. His eyelids stay stitched to his forehead. It’s a sure tell every time.”
“I survived, just like you. You know the edge I got on Wyatt Dixon? I don’t care whether I live or die.”
“Dixon is like your father. He’s a self-made man. I don’t think you’re anything at all. You’re a condition, not a man. I feel sorry for you.”
“Tell me that when I take a shit on your chest, because that’s what I’m going to do when I get out of here.”
She tapped him lightly on the tip of the nose with the pliers, then stood up. “Go wash your face. Come around me again for any reason, and I’ll blow your head off.”
She went out the front door and left it open behind her. There were squirrels playing overhead in the trees. She watched them for a moment, then started her pickup and drove away. She tried to think of all the things he had just said to her. Two words stood out in bold relief and were not in harmony with his self-congratulatory statements about being mobbed up in Vegas. What were the words?
Flathead Lake? Why that choice of location for his metaphor about getting rid of Clete Purcel?
Chapter 34
It was 4:48 P.M. when Clete and I starting knocking on doors at the end of the hollow, up the road from Albert’s ranch. The first place we stopped was a remodeled barn that a young couple from California had rented for the summer. They said they taught at Berkeley and knew Albert and his work and sometimes hiked along the ridge above his house but hadn’t seen any other hikers there. They were nice people and invited us in for coffee. I did not want to tell them that Surrette was somewhere in the neighborhood. “Do you all have children?” I asked.
“No, we don’t,” the husband replied, trying not to show offense at the personal nature of the question. “Can you tell me what you guys are looking for?”
“A man named Asa Surrette has been around here. He’s a serial killer who escaped from a prison van in Kansas,” I said. “He may be long gone, or he may be close by. Have you seen any vehicles that don’t belong here? Or somebody up in the rocks above your house?”
The wife looked at the husband, then they both shook their heads. “This is a little disturbing,” the husband said. “Nobody else has told us about a serial killer.”
“He’s the guy who abducted the waitress up by Lookout Pass,” Clete said.
“There’s a minister who lives in that two-story house with the cedar trees in front,” the wife said. “He has his congregation there on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. His name is Ralph, I think.”
“Did you see anybody unusual over there?” I asked.
They shook their heads again. “Sometimes after their services, they throw a football back and forth in the yard,” the wife said. “I saw Ralph chopping wood earlier. I think his church friends come and go. This serial killer is probably gone by now, isn’t he?”
“Probably,” I replied.
“By the way, I saw the girls’ car pull into the driveway earlier. I’m pretty sure somebody’s home,” she said.
I wrote my cell number on the back of my departmental business card and left it with the couple.
Clete and I knocked on the doors of two more houses in the hollow with the same results. The four houses in the natural cul-de-sac were spaced a considerable distance apart, all of them set in the shadows of the mountains, and the people in the houses apparently had amiable but not close relationships. In effect, it was a community where insularity came with the property deed.
Our last stop was at the minister’s house. An old Toyota Corolla was parked in the driveway and a Bronco in the garage. The window shades were down, the front door shut. The glider on the porch rotated slightly on its chains in a mild breeze blowing down the canyon.
“It doesn’t look like anybody is home,” Clete said.
I looked at my watch. “Maybe they’re eating dinner,” I said.
I tapped on the door. I could hear no sound inside. I tried again. Nothing. I tried to turn the doorknob. It was locked. “Let’s walk around back,” I said.
We went through the side yard. The shades on the dining room windows were pulled halfway down. There were no place settings on the table or any sign of movement in the house. In the backyard, there was a pole shed attached to the side of an old barn where firewood had been stacked neatly against the barn wall. The grass was scattered with freshly split chunks of pinewood; the woodcutter’s ax had been left embedded on the rim of the chopping stump, the handle at a stiff forty-five-degree angle. Clete looked up at the sky. A bank of thunderheads had moved across the sun. “You’d think a guy this neat would want to get his wood under the shed before it rained,” he said.
He went up the back steps and banged on the door. No response. He held up one hand to keep the reflection off the glass and attempted to see inside. Then he went up the rear stairs to the second floor and tried the door and pressed his ear against the glass. “I can’t hear a thing,” he said. He went around the side of the house and came back. “Maybe they went off somewhere.”
I wished I had asked one of the neighbors how many vehicles the minister’s family owned. “Could be. But the Bronco is in the garage. This doesn’t look like a three-car family.”
“What do you want to do?” Clete said.
I glanced at my cell phone. No service. A cat walked around the corner of the house and watched us. Its water and food bowls were empty. I stared at the house. Its quiet and dark interior was of such intensity that I could hear a ringing sound in my head. “There’s something wrong in that house,” I said. “Break the glass.”
Clete knocked out a pane in the kitchen door with a brick and reached inside and opened the door, his shoes crunching on top of the shattered glass. I followed him through the mudroom into the kitchen. The oven had been left on, and the heat was enough to peel the wallpaper. Clete turned off the propane and took his .38 snub from his shoulder holster, letting it hang from his right hand, the muzzle pointed at the floor. The only sound in the house was the scraping of a tree limb on the eave.
“This is Clete Purcel and Dave Robicheaux,” he called into the dining room. “I’m a private investigator, and Dave is a sheriff’s detective from Louisiana. We’re visiting at Albert Hollister’s place down the road. We think there might be a problem in this house.”
His words echoed through the downstairs. We started moving through the house, Clete in front, his .38 held up at a right angle. We opened the closet doors and the door to a bedroom and the door to a pantry and a laundry room. Nothing appeared to be disturbed. Clete started up the stairs one step
at a time, his gaze fastened on the landing, his left hand on the banister. His back looked as wide as a whale’s, the fabric of his coat stretching across his spine.
On the left side of the landing was another bedroom, its door open, the bed made, raindrops clicking on the windowpane. I went inside the bedroom and looked in the closet. It was full of clothes that probably belonged to a teenage girl. I came back out on the landing. Neither Clete nor I spoke. He opened the bathroom door and winced. I could smell the fecal odor without going inside. If I hadn’t known better, I would have concluded someone had just used the toilet.
There were no towels on the racks, no toilet paper on the spindle. An incense bowl rested on top of a dirty-clothes hamper. Clete felt the bathroom walls and rubbed his fingertips with his thumb. It was obvious someone had used adhesive tape of some kind to hang up pictures or pieces of paper all over the walls. I tried the door on the right side of the landing. It swung back from the jamb, revealing a small room furnished with a chest of drawers and a narrow bed without sheets or a mattress cover. On the floor was a dust-free rectangle where a footlocker might have rested. Clete turned in a circle and lifted his arms to show his puzzlement.
We left the bedroom and closed the door behind us. Clete flicked on the light above the landing. The oak floor had been wiped clean in the center, but there were tiny hairlike traces of a dark substance between two boards. I squatted down and rubbed my handkerchief along the grain, then held up the handkerchief for Clete to see. I returned to the bathroom, holding my breath against the odor, removed the incense bowl, and opened the hamper. I had found the towels that were pulled off the racks. I tilted the hamper so Clete could see inside. He silently mouthed, The basement.
Light of the World dr-20 Page 48