Blood Moon

by Ed Gorman

  4. He had plans to possibly enter the Republican primary next spring and was afraid that "Nora Conners" had been hired to discredit him in some way. Politics had become a very rough game. Thus far he had heard whispers that (a) his main corporation was facing bankruptcy; (b) that he frequented houses where girls as young as twelve could be had; and (c) that he had once bought his way out of a drunken hit-and-run accident.

  5. He wanted to retain me to find out who "Nora Conners" was and why she had claimed to be his daughter. And what had led to her murder.

  The place was small and made even smaller by the lunchtime crowd that had at least a dozen people standing and waiting for booths. It was one of those blissful oases of ignorance that had not yet heard that smoking causes lung cancer. Everybody, it seemed, had a cigarette going, even as he or she chewed his or her food. There were a couple three- and four-year-olds in the booth across from us. I was waiting for them to light up, too.

  He shook his very white head. "No, not as fast. And not as cheaply, either. The press will be able to learn whatever the police learn but if you could find out who she really was and what she was up to—well, I could practice a little political damage control before all this hits the press."

  "Won't you look like a victim to people? Why would they blame you for a woman who pretended she was your daughter?"

  He smiled. He was a trim man, neatly shaved, manicured, crisply dressed, all of which left just the faintest hint of priggishness. Maybe it was his thin mouth and its constant implication of displeasure.

  Before he answered, our waitress came around again, filling our coffee, taking away the plates from the chips and tuna sandwich I'd had, and the Egg Beaters and toast he'd had.

  "People don't remember things clearly," he said. "By the time this story filters through the public consciousness, a lot of people will remember that I'd had an affair with this Nora, and maybe even that I'd been a suspect in her death." He paused and raised his head a little. His neck was the only thing on him that looked his real age. "This morning I took the liberty of depositing ten thousand dollars in your bank account."

  This was my week for strange people wanting to give me a great deal of money. First Nora, now him.

  "I'm not sure I buy your story."

  "Oh?" he said, his blue eyes hard.

  "No, I think you're interested in Nora and Vic for some other reason."

  "What other reason?"

  "I'm not sure yet."

  He laughed. "Maybe you should investigate me first and then if you're satisfied with what you find, start on Nora and Vic."

  "You say you had a son?"

  "Yes. He died a long time ago, just as I told you."

  "What about your wife?"

  "She's dead, too. Nearly ten years ago."

  "Do you have a lady friend now?"

  "No one special. I'm not sure I see the relevance of that."

  "Maybe Nora was angling for some kind of blackmail setup. Sometimes that works best with somebody close to the person being blackmailed. A girlfriend who decides to cash in on her rich boyfriend tells an accomplice the boyfriend's darkest secret. And the blackmailer takes it from there, after agreeing to split fifty-fifty with the girlfriend."

  "They sound like nice people, your girlfriend and blackmailer."

  "So nobody's blackmailing you?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "And you don't have anything they can blackmail you for?"

  He smiled. "Do you know the Balzac quote that behind every great fortune is a scandal?"

  I nodded.

  "Well, I didn't make our fortune, my father did. The trucking business made him a millionaire many, many times over. All I did was inherit the fortune. My father had to cheat and swindle a lot of people to make his money. All I had to do was be the dutiful son—get at least a B average at Yale and not do anything publicly excessive that would embarrass him—and I became a very wealthy man on the day he died, twelve years ago. If there are any family secrets they belong to my father, and he took them with him to his grave."

  "And you want to run for office?"

  "As I said, I'm considering it. I think I'm what the state and the country need."

  "What's that?"

  "A conservative without an ideology. It's frustrating being a conservative these days—you always have to sit next to some lunatic who wants creationism taught in public schools or something like that."

  "Think you have a chance?"

  "I have the money, anyway. That's a big part of the battle. I won't have to depend on PACs."

  I looked at his ridiculously young face and his brilliant white hair and the quirky but stone-hard blue eyes. I didn't trust him, didn't believe anything he was telling me, but I didn't know why. He just seemed dishonest.

  "You're going back to Des Moines?"

  "Not right away. Thought I might stay here a few days and see what you find out."

  "Assuming I take the job."

  "Assuming you take the job. Of course."

  "I guess I'll do it."

  "I'm very pleased."

  "But when I do find out anything concrete, I turn it over to the local police chief."

  "After you tell me. That's all I ask. Tell me first. I'll contact my press aide, and she can start to prepare our response."

  I stood up, dropped a dollar on the table for a tip, picked up the ticket.

  He took it from my hand, then picked up the dollar and handed it back to me. "I invited you, Mr. Hokanson. I'm the one who should pay."

  Out on the street, in the fresh air and sunshine, he said, "A friend of mine has a summer cottage here. You can reach me there." He gave me the address. "When your father was the biggest trucker in the state, you have friends everywhere."

  He put forth his firm but civil hand, and we shook again.

  I went east, he went west.

  10

  "You screwed your own daughter. You hear that, guys, he screwed his own daughter?"

  "That's enough. Spence," the counselor says. "This isn't funny."

  "He put the pork to his own daughter."

  This is group therapy. Meets twice a week in a big, echoing room near the prison library. Pistol-hot in summer, blue-balls cold in winter.

  Standard number is the counselor and six cons, one of whom is this rather prim fellow named Dodsworth.

  Past couple weeks the cons have been kind of ganging up on Dodsworth. Few sessions back he told—they were playing this nasty game called True Life, where you tell the group the worst thing you ever did—he told the group that one night when he was really bombed his fourteen-year-old daughter gave him this big sloppy kiss and he got this killer erection and then walked around for the next six weeks impotent because he was so ashamed of what he'd felt for his daughter.

  You could tell when he raised his eyes and started looking around at everybody that he'd messed up real bad.

  Should never have admitted something like that.

  Because everybody knows it's the truth.

  See, the way to play the game is, you make stuff up. Like, Well, I guess the worst thing I ever did was after I robbed this guy, you know, I found this dynamite out in the back and I blew up his entire house. Boards 'n' bricks 'n' stuff flyin' everywhere. It was great, man.

  And everybody laughs.

  Because it's crap and you know they know it's crap and that's half the fun.

  Other thing is, tell only stories that reflect well on you.

  For instance, to a con, blowing up somebody's house can be a pretty cool thing.

  That reflects well on you.

  But plugging your own daughter?

  Or even having the thought?

  Bastard's worse than a child molester.

  "I don't want to be in here no more," Dodsworth says to the counselor. "Spence knows damn good and well I never touched Bonnie. I wouldn't do nothin' like that."

  "That ain't what you said couple weeks ago," Spence says. And winks. And everybody laughs again. "Maybe
since Bonnie ain't around you'd like to put the pork to one of us. Lesee now—who'd ole Dodsworth like to put the pork to—"

  Another wink.

  "Why, Mr. Haines!"

  Haines is the counselor.

  "I bet that's who Dodsworth has the hots for. Mr. Haines!"

  Lots of laughter now. Mr. Haines and Dodsworth both blushing.

  Spence is a mean but very clever guy. You might not think so him being such a grungy fat-ass with enough faded tattoos to start an art gallery. But he's got great cunning, Spence does, no brains, no power—but cunning. And that's what it takes to be important in here.

  He tunes out.

  Sits there seeing it all but not seeing anything, hearing it all but not hearing.

  And has the thought for the second time: I need to escape. I've been here too long.

  Couple days later, on the yard, he gets his protector Servic alone and says, "You ever think about just walking out of here some time?"

  "You gettin' a little crazy."

  "Yeah, I guess so, anyway."

  "It comes and goes, kid. You just gotta ride it is all."

  "So you never thought about it?"

  "Sure I thought about it. Who ain't thought about it? But see those guys?"

  He points to the towers located at either end of the yard. The guards in them are armed with rifles and legend has it that they're damned good shots.

  "You figure out a way to get past them guards, kid, you let me know."

  "Maybe there's another way."

  "Maybe. But if there is, I ain't never heard of it." He pauses, looks at him. "Somethin' happen?"

  "Just all the crap. I got this group therapy session every week with Spence and—"

  "Spence. Screw Spence. Don't let him get you down, kid. He's just mad 'cause his old lady's sleepin' with some coon back in Milwaukee."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah."

  "No wonder, then."

  "Bein' mean's the only thing he's got left."

  Servic, who's been a lot nicer of late, looks up at the guard towers again. "You ever figure out how to get past them towers, kid, you let me know."

  He laughs. "I will. I promise." They walk back to the rest of the cons.

  11

  There was a muffled cry and the scrape of furniture legs across a hardwood floor following my knock. Then there was just silence.

  I stood on the McNallys' front porch watching a cardinal perched on a bird feeder in a nearby oak tree. He bobbed and pecked relentlessly, red and vivid and sleek in this afternoon of graceful white butterflies and cute quick squirrels bouncing across the side lawn. It was springtime, and I wanted to be up on the Iowa River, standing in my waders and casting my line.

  I knocked again.

  Half a minute later, Eve McNally came to the door. Her forehead and left cheek showed red from where something had slammed hard against her—a fist, most likely. She wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt and a pair of red shorts. Her legs were shaped nicely, but she was already having problems with varicose veins.

  "I didn't invite you here," she said. "Go away."

  "I want to talk to your husband."

  "He's not here."

  "He's inside, Eve, and I know it."

  "He don't want to talk to you."

  "You haven't got your daughter back yet, have you?"

  She glanced over her shoulder. If I hadn't known for sure that her husband was home, I knew now.

  He appeared in the doorway, a big beefy man with hair so black it looked dyed, a blue panther tattoo running down the meaty biceps of his right arm. He wore a white sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of dungarees that hung precariously on the slope of his considerable belly. The panther looked angry, on the prowl. Presumably that's how his master looked most of the time, too.

  "What do you want?"

  "I want to help you get your daughter back."

  "You get off my property," he said. I thought of angry Sam throwing me off his property a little earlier today. This wasn't my day for making friends.

  "Tell him I'm trying to help you," I said to Eve.

  "He don't listen to me."

  "Out," he said. And suddenly he was out the door and pushing me backward off his porch.

  "Don't hurt him," Eve said. "He's tryin' to help us."

  I grabbed the railing to keep from falling down the four steps. I had just managed to get a grip on it when he hit me with a hard roundhouse right.

  I suppose tough guys don't mind much getting hit but personally I've never cared for it a whole lot. For one thing, it almost invariably hurts. For another, it oftentimes inhibits your vision. And, for a final thing, it makes you feel like a helpless child.

  Unless, of course, you hit back.

  He was still p'd, meaning he wanted to hit me some more despite his wife's screams.

  I stumbled down the final three stairs, losing my grip on the railing. But by then I knew just what I wanted to do.

  And I did it.

  When he was on the bottom step, I kicked him directly in the crotch. He made a lot of frightening noise, but then he did what I'd hoped he would do: sort of crumpled into himself, holding his crotch as he did so.

  I hit him three times in the side of the head, hard. I wanted to hit him a fourth time, but my knuckles were starting to hurt.

  I grabbed him by his nice black hair and half-dragged him back up the stairs and inside. He took a swing at me once, but missed. I returned the favor by slamming home an especially vicious kidney shot. I didn't miss.

  In the living room, I pushed him on to the couch and stood over him. I had my Ruger out and was pointing it in his face.

  "Oh, God, mister, don't shoot him."

  "I just want to talk to him without him trying to hit me."

  "You sonofabitch, I won't just hit you, I'll kill you."

  "You were out at the Brindle farm this afternoon. Why?"

  He looked surprised, fear and curiosity blooming in his beady little gaze. He composed himself before speaking, sitting up straighter on the couch, tugging his T-shirt down over his little middle-aged male titties.

  A grandfather clock tocked peacefully, measuring out the centuries in the sudden peaceful silence, and in the kitchen the refrigerator motor thrummed on. It was a nice modest home, this, a home where husband and wife should live happily ever after and children should be raised in safety and love and not get kidnapped—no, never get kidnapped at all. Nor should two grown men, both with blood on their mouths, be in the living room sweaty and enraged and wanting to kill each other.

  "You dumb bastard, even if you don't believe me or your wife, I am trying to help you find your daughter."

  But he was scared. His eyes kept blinking, and he kept licking his lips. He daubed blood from his lower lip with the back of his hand. "What's my daughter to you?"

  "Well, for one thing, believe it or not, I really don't like to see little kids get kidnapped. And for another thing, I think she figures into a case I'm working on. By helping you, I'm probably going to help myself."

  "I don't know who took her."

  "I think you do. And I think you know why. And I think that's why you went to the Brindle farm this afternoon."

  He sat up even straighter, daubed at his split lip some more.

  "Tell me about the farm, McNally. Who did you meet there?"

  His gaze shifted subtly to the right. I instinctively understood the significance of that—he was watching somebody, namely his wife, do something behind my back—but by then there wasn't much I could do. I guess because she'd sort of taken my part with her husband, I'd figured she wouldn't help him hurt me in anyway. But you never know about husbands and wives. You just never know.

  I started to turn to the right, and that's when she hit me on the crown of the head.

  I had no idea what her weapon of choice happened to be, but whatever it was, it was damned effective.

  I felt my head start to split open, felt a dark cold rush up my nostrils and start to spread thr
ough my respiratory system, and felt my knees go. And that was it; then I didn't feel anything at all.

  12

  "Let me help you up."

  "I'd appreciate that."

  "Maybe I hit you a little too hard."

  "I think you did."

  "Here. Just sit down here right on the couch. I'll get you a couple of aspirin. I mean, I'll bet your head hurts."

  "I suppose your husband's gone?"

  "He's afraid—I've never seen him like this. Somebody's trying to kill him, I think."

  "Who?"

  She just shook her head.

  "I want you to tell me who was out at the Brindle farm with your husband this afternoon."

  "I don't know."

  She put her hand out as if to touch me, then stopped herself. "I'll get you those aspirin."

  The dog lapped my face all the time Eve McNally was gone, big slurpy dog kisses and hard killer dog breath. When Eve returned, she handed me a glass of water, then dropped two aspirin tablets into my palm and then shooed Sara away.

  "I'm sorry, mister," she said, "I really don't know who he met at the Brindle farm this afternoon, and I really am sorry I hit you so hard."

  And just what was I supposed to say to that?

  13

  I took another break and looked over more of Peary's notes for the second or third time.

  "Killings abruptly stopped," he noted in pencil. "I doubt this was because the killer lost his passion for the hunt. More likely, he found a better way of disposing of bodies."

  I found a pay phone and called one of my friends at Quantico, asking him to run a search through the FBI computers. I wanted to know if there were a precedence for a case where a killer abruptly changed the way he was disposing of his victims. The computer would search through tens of thousands of cases, checking patterns to see if this abrupt change had been noted before.

  I told him that this was real urgent. He told me to try back in a couple of hours.

  14