Half a Mind (The Kate Teague Mysteries)

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Half a Mind (The Kate Teague Mysteries) Page 25

by Wendy Hornsby


  “Reece took her to her class. Cooking, I believe she said it was. She told me what they were preparing, but it didn’t sound familiar.”

  “It won’t look familiar when she makes it, either.” He caught the eye of the officer. “I’m going in next door, and I want to go in alone. But I’d sure appreciate a little backup.”

  “Rigo?” Linda said with the same tone of voice she used to use the instant before he jumped out of a tree or dived into the wild surf at the jetty. “Have you thought through what you are about to do?”

  “I love you, Mom.” He kissed the top of her white head on his way out.

  Kate was leaning against the Rolls’s hood, watching Carl’s house. There was a crew of workmen putting in new window frames along the front.

  “Mike’s inside,” she said, her expression puzzled. “Working in the dining room.”

  “Thanks.” He motioned the uniform to come closer. “There’s scaffolding over the back, so if he comes out in a hurry, it’s going to be from the front.”

  Mike was, as Kate had said, in the dining room. He seemed absorbed in his work, putting up the moldings he had cast from the impressions taken at Kate’s on Friday. His concentration was unnerving because it made him seem so at peace. For a moment Tejeda wondered if he had taken a bigger shot to the head than he thought, and bollixed up the facts of the case.

  But Mike’s entire scenario played out in front of him like a good documentary film, each frame clear, each leading smoothly to the next.

  Who would have more inside information about Arty Silver than his younger brother? And maybe he’d had some help from Arty, maybe some from Don Kelley. He had condensed Arty’s eight-year killing spree into two victims, hitting the high points like a Reader’s Digest novel; a framework short on substance.

  Tejeda ran it down: A Marine lured from Clyde’s, beheaded at the shack, his head then gift-wrapped and left for Tejeda to find. A second boy somehow lured from the beach—certainly Sean had seen Mike around the grounds, he wouldn’t have his guard up—and left in Lou’s meat freezer for Tejeda to find. How much thought went into the selection of victims, he couldn’t guess. Maybe none, which made the loss even harder for families to accept; like the O’Shays, everyone wanted a reason, even if it was insane.

  Mike, in and out of the grounds all the time, certainly had access to the beach and the house. And as a workman, a degree of invisibility.

  Tejeda watched Mike work, impressed by his precision and skill. The moldings were nearly flawless reproductions. Looking at the lengths beside him on the floor, Tejeda could see and feel the difference from the originals. But when they were installed along the ceiling, ten feet up, they were indistinguishable from Kate’s.

  Talented, vulnerable Baby, he thought, always left to patch things up, from holes his father bashed in the walls to the chaos his brother had made of so many lives. What had this detour into horror done to his soul?

  “The moldings look great, Mike,” Tejeda said. “You must have put in a lot of hours over the weekend.”

  “I’m almost finished,” he said. “Have to be somewhere at ten-thirty and I want to get this done first.”

  “Take your time, Mike. You don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Mike made a noise somewhere between a cough and a sob. But he picked up the next three-foot length and fitted it into place without a pause.

  “You want to talk?” Tejeda asked.

  “No. I want to finish this.”

  “Have you finished the other job, the one you were doing for Arty?”

  “I can’t.” He brought his arms down and rubbed his shoulders. All vestiges of his former cockiness had vanished. “I really tried, but I couldn’t do it all.”

  “What about Lance?”

  “He kept getting in the way, you know? I had this definite plan of things to do, and he kept getting in the middle of it. He drove up yesterday afternoon, saying he had to find the shack. So I took him down. Tell your father I’ll pay him back for the gas.”

  “No sweat. I take it you don’t like interruptions.”

  “I think you should finish what you start.” Still holding his hammer, he turned to look at Tejeda. His eyes were like shiny licorice disks stuck on his flat white face. “I didn’t know the conductor was your father. I never put the names together.”

  “That makes a difference to you?”

  “He was nice to me once.” He shrugged. “I never met people like you. You really like each other, don’t you?”

  “We like you too, Mike.”

  “Maybe if you had met me before. But it’s too late now.”

  “You’re a nice kid. How did you get talked into murder?”

  “Do you love your son?”

  “Very much.”

  “Would you kill someone to save his life?”

  “Not the way you did.”

  “I guess we do things a little differently in our family. We protect each other.”

  “Mike, you know I have to take you in.”

  He looked at the stretch of ceiling that still had no molding. “I can finish in half an hour.”

  Tejeda leaned against the door frame and crossed his arms. “I’ll wait.”

  Mike turned back to his work.

  “I talked to William Tyler the other day,” Tejeda said. “He says he never killed anybody. What do you think?”

  “He didn’t. I helped this other guy do it, to help Arty. They just let Willie take the fall. He was so much in love with this other guy, he would have done anything for him.”

  “This other guy wouldn’t be Don Kelley, would he?”

  “I won’t say.”

  “If it was Don Kelley, I think he tried to set you up. He sent me down to the Marine base where you killed Wally Morrow.”

  “Don did?” His hammer stopped. “Why would he do that?”

  Tejeda shrugged. “Get you in, get Arty out.”

  “Arty wouldn’t let him do that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Tejeda felt the air stir behind him; then a thick arm vised his neck in its crook while another slipped the revolver from the small of his back. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the blue tattoo—USDA Prime—and the extended barrel of his own gun.

  “You motherfucker, Baby.” Pricks of Don Kelley’s cold spit landed on Tejeda’s ear, and he braced himself because the end of his revolver was nearly as close. “I been waiting to hear you had finished your task. But here you are spilling your guts. You were supposed to do one more. Today, before Arty goes up.”

  “No more.” Mike looked into the barrel of the gun and raised his hammer in a useless defensive move. “I’m through, Don. I fixed the others up the best I could and gave them back. Didn’t I, Lieutenant? They looked real nice. Don, tell Arty, no more.”

  Tejeda saw the muscles tighten on Kelley’s trigger finger. He didn’t have much slack to maneuver in, but he got his head forward a few inches, then rammed it back into Kelley’s face. He wasn’t sure whether the explosion was the gun going off or his stitches exploding. The arm was gone and he sat on the floor, deafened, with lights dancing around his head like cartoon stars.

  When he could focus his eyes again, Kate’s face was in front of his. Her lips were moving, but he couldn’t hear anything she said. There was a big blue-gray blob of brains on her arm. He touched his head to make sure they weren’t his. Then he saw the mess all over the freshly sanded floor and up the walls. Don Kelley lay behind him, with his head popped like a firecracker in a cantaloupe.

  The uniformed backup officer still held his .38 Magnum poised in the firing position, his face bloodless.

  “Thanks,” Tejeda said. His own voice sounded incredibly loud, but the ringing in his ears was settling down. “Where’s Mike?”

  Kate pointed. Mike had fallen off his ladder and lay in a heap on the floor. Not ready to trust his own height yet, Tejeda crawled to him and rolled him over.

  Mike’s eyes were fixed, as dead-looking as Sean O�
�Shay’s. There was no blood, no visible hole. Not even a bump on his head. Mike’s pulse was as quick as a bird’s, his breath hot and shallow, as if he couldn’t expand his chest.

  “Is he hurt?” Kate asked, taking Mike’s hand and rubbing it. A flicker of light crossed his face; then his lids closed. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’ll be okay. Stay with him. Talk to him. He just got an overload of stuff he didn’t want to know.”

  “You saved his life.”

  Tejeda shook his head. “I only postponed his death.”

  A group of workers in grubby coveralls had come in to gawk. Over their heads a camera appeared, its flash dazzling him for a moment. Then Craig Hardy stepped away from the crowd.

  Tejeda got to his feet, testing his equilibrium before he walked as far as the door.

  “How’d you get in here, Hardy?”

  “I thought since you were in the hospital, Kate might want someone to go to the trial with. What happened?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  Tejeda took a rag from a carpenter’s pocket and wiped Don Kelley’s brains off Kate’s sleeve.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “Don’t ask.” He took her hand. “Feel up to going to the trial?”

  “You’re asking me? If you can make it, I certainly can.”

  “I’ve got us an escort through the press mob at the courthouse.”

  “Who?”

  He grabbed Hardy’s arm. “Why, the press, of course.”

  29

  The courtroom was eerily quiet in spite of the enormous crowd. Tejeda found two seats near the jury box and sat down to wait for Kate to get in through the civilian crowd backed up behind the metal detector at the door.

  Like all policemen, Tejeda had spent a lot of time in court. It was rarely as much fun or as orderly as Perry Mason. There were frequent delays and recesses for flu epidemics, judges’ vacations, and jurors who gave birth. Even when the court sat through an entire day, most of it was pretty boring—the telling of facts in no particular order. Still, the beginning of a trial was usually interesting.

  Tejeda watched the official cast gather behind the bar. The court clerk came in with an armload of papers, deep in conversation with the court reporter, who carried an Avon catalog. They both wore new-looking outfits, maybe in case they appeared in a shot on the six o’clock news, or, more likely, because they wouldn’t have much time to shop until the trial was over.

  Hymie Osawa came in from the judge’s chambers wheeling a two-drawer filing cabinet. He parked this behind the prosecution table and began laying his notes, handwritten on yellow legal pads, in ranks in front of his chair. He cased the house, waved to familiar faces, gave Channel 5 a good profile.

  The Silver Threads families must have come early, Tejeda thought, and saved prime seats for each other. They sat in a block at the front, the first row less than six feet from the defendant’s chair. All of them had passed through the metal detector, but the bailiff seemed to be keeping a watchful eye on their ranks anyway.

  There was a good deal of weeping, sharing of tissue packs, hugging among the victims’ families. A cluster to the side stood and locked arms to form a circle. Tejeda could hear their whispered prayers over the whir of video cameras; this was prime time drama. Real emotion as opposed to the celluloid variety. As such, it had a higher market value.

  He recognized a good number of faces among the families. At some point in the investigation, either he or Eddie had interviewed most of them. Talking to parents was always the hardest part of his job.

  He had been spotted coming in, and a few of the more brazen reporters pushed cameras or notebooks in his face. What did he think about it all? No comment. No comment later, either. No, he wouldn’t be testifying. He didn’t bother to tell them that Hymie Osawa was nervous about his faulty memory and would rely on Eddie Green unless he got desperate.

  Kate had managed to get through the crowd and locate him. She sighed as she sat down.

  “It’s over now, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Except for the shouting, and that will take about a year in court.”

  “I was watching the people outside. You know what I think this trial opening is?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a mass funeral. These people have come to lay their children to rest and to get on with their lives.” There was a catch in her voice. “If only Lance could have waited.”

  “Do you want to stay?” he asked.

  “Not particularly. There is so much sadness.”

  He took her hand and looked for the path of least resistance to get out through the mob. In the elevator down, they were alone. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

  She slid her hand into his. “You told me once that this was all about family. But I didn’t understand that until I saw them all together in there, trying to patch up the holes in their families the way poor Mike patched up holes in the walls. Keeping emotional drafts out.”

  They went out into the hazy morning sunshine, holding hands.

  “Do you ever think about being a parent?” he asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  “How do you feel about you and me having a baby?”

  “Right now?”

  “I thought maybe we would be traditional and wait nine months.”

  “The way things are between Richie and Jena, you may have children that aren’t much older than your grandchildren.”

  “Think how much fun Christmas would be.”

  “What brought this on?”

  “It’s been in the back of my mind for a while. Did you notice when Theresa got out of the car this morning, she didn’t even kiss me good-bye? I’m not ready for that. I like kissing sticky kid faces.”

  “You didn’t just think this up because you’re bored staying home?”

  “Bored?” He laughed. “When have we had time to be bored?”

  “Maybe you’ll feel differently when you go back to work.”

  “I’m taking your advice. I’m retiring. Thought maybe I would stay home, maybe do the Wambaugh thing and try a book, play with the kids and the little woman.”

  “Is this a proposal?”

  “Consider it a proposition.”

  She kissed him, hard, on the lips. “Proposition accepted.”

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1990 by Wendy Hornsby

  cover design by Kathleen Lynch

  This edition published in 2011 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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