The Last Death of Jack Harbin

by Terry Shames

  Marybeth staggers in carrying a cardboard box. “Wait, let me get that,” I say. I grab it from her and set it on the kitchen table.

  “This is stuff Jackie brought back from the army.” She fishes out a fistful of papers clipped together that look like official documents. “His discharge papers. Bob had to use these to get Jack’s disability payments. It was a nightmare.” She sets them down on the table, shaking her head. “You’d think the government would fall all over themselves to help out somebody who was injured in the service of his country. But no. They made it really hard. It was like he was trying to cheat somebody.”

  She opens a manila envelope, spilling photographs out onto the table. “Photos he couldn’t even see.” Her hand lingers over them for a moment, like a benediction. She sits down and begins to shuffle through them slowly. “I remember seeing pictures from when my daddy was in World War II. The pictures looked the same as these.” She hands them to me. She’s right. Young men with rifles mugging for the camera, one with them posing on a Humvee, looking like they are ready to go out on the town.

  I pause at one of the pictures. It’s a picture of three boys, arms around each other, grinning. One of them is Jack, and what has me puzzled is that I recognize one of the other two. Even though in the picture he’s twenty years younger, I’m sure it’s Walter Dunn, wearing a medical corps T-shirt. He still wears his hair in a buzz cut like in the picture. The thing is, Dunn told me he met Jack at a vet meeting in Bryan. But obviously he knew him in Kuwait.

  “You mind if I make a copy of this?”

  “Go ahead. It’s a good one, isn’t it? Jackie looks like he’s happy.”

  I mumble assent, although that’s not why I want it. I tuck the picture into my shirt pocket.

  Marybeth puts the photos aside and stands up so she can finish going through the box. She brings out a bunch of brochures, frowning. “I wonder where all this came from . . .”

  The brochures are from California—San Francisco, to be exact. There’s one with a cable car on the front, another with the Golden Gate Bridge. Some ticket stubs fall out of them onto the table. She picks them up and frowns at them. “This is so strange. As far as I know, Jackie was never in California. Why does he have these?”

  I’m suddenly reminded of an incident that happened right after Jack was wounded. I was chief of police at the time, and one day Bob came to see me, saying he needed my help. “I can’t find Jack,” he said.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find him?” Everybody knew by then that Jack had been gravely injured and was in a VA hospital in Washington, DC. Bob had flown up there to see him as soon as Jack arrived at the hospital from overseas and had come back in despair. They had told him it would be a few weeks before Jack would be ready to come home.

  “I called to find out when they were going to release him so I could go bring him home, and they said he had already gone.”

  “Did they say who picked him up?”

  “Some guy I never heard of. And they didn’t know where he’d gone. I’m wondering if maybe, you being a lawman, you could find out more for me. They weren’t particularly forthcoming, if you know what I mean.”

  There was nothing I could do, and I suggested he call the local VFW in Bobtail. I never heard another thing about it. And eventually Jack came home. Now I’m wondering if Jack had somehow made his way to California. But if so, what did he do there, and why had he never talked about it? I wonder if Marybeth knows anything about it and am thinking how to pose the question, when suddenly she cries out.

  “Oh, no!” Her face crumples. Until now she has been calm, even weirdly cheerful going through Jack’s belongings. But now she pulls Jack’s uniform from the bottom of the box and buries her face in it and sobs.

  I put my arm around her and sit her down in a chair. In a way it’s a relief to see the dam finally break. Marybeth has held herself aloof from this horror for too long. She keens over the uniform, the symbol of the promise her son had as a boy.

  Eventually she stands up and throws the uniform back in the box with as much violence as I’ve ever seen from her. “I’ve got to get out of here. What’s the use of crying? The Jackie I knew was gone a long time ago.”

  I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it before, but I wonder if Marybeth knew Jack was going to marry Lurleen. “Sit down a minute longer. I have something to talk to you about.” And I tell her about Jack and Lurleen.

  “Who is this girl? This waitress! Somebody who wanted a meal ticket?”

  “Now hold on a minute. If that’s what she had in mind, she would have agreed to marry Jack a long time ago. He asked her, but she wanted to take things slow. But when Bob died, she knew Jack would need somebody to take care of him. I saw the two of them together. She really cared for Jack. She made him happy.”

  Marybeth is quiet for several minutes and I keep still, letting her absorb this new information. When she finally does speak, she says something I don’t expect. “Did Curtis know about this?”

  “Somehow I can’t see Jack telling him, and I don’t know how else he would have known. They only decided after Bob died.”

  Marybeth goes over to the sink and splashes water on her face. She leans against the counter as she mops her face with a paper towel, and when she speaks it’s as if she’s talking to herself. “I wonder how it would be if I talked to her?”

  “I think you’d like her. She’s a sweet girl. She has three kids. Good kids.”

  Marybeth nods. “I’ll have to think about whether I should meet her.”

  She finds a paper sack to hold the few things she wants to take with her—photos and a signed football and other mementos from Jack’s childhood. She doesn’t even glance at the box with the uniform or the papers on the table. After she’s gone, I find a plastic bag and place the uniform in it. She may want it later. I put the papers in with the uniform to take the whole lot home with me. I suspect if I left it to Curtis, he’d pitch them in the trash.

  I take another look around Jack’s bedroom. Even though Marybeth has been through Jack’s things, I won’t feel like I’m off to a steady start on the investigation until I go back to the beginning, where Jack died.

  I try to lock all the doors so that I can hear Curtis when he comes in and I won’t be surprised, but the back door leading from the kitchen into the backyard won’t lock. The mechanism is jammed. I wonder if whoever killed Jack jimmied the lock to make sure he’d be able to get in, or if it’s been that way a long time. I remember Dottie Gant saying Jack never locked up after Bob died. But I wonder if they did before. If so, then it must have been broken since then.

  Jack’s bed has a cover thrown over it to hide the stains. His clothes have been taken out of the closet and piled onto the bed. My guess is that’s Curtis’s doing. There isn’t much in the way of clothing. I rummage through the pockets for oddities, but they’re all cleaned out.

  The smell in the room is a sickening blend of stale cigarette smoke, rancid blood, and bleach. Unless some realtor has sense enough to get rid of the bed and air the place out, Curtis may find it harder than he thinks to sell the house.

  The closet is bare. The pills have disappeared from the bedside stand. I peek into a big plastic bag sitting next to the clothes, and the vials of pills are there. The top drawer of the bedside stand is empty. Curtis hasn’t wasted any time.

  But he hasn’t gotten to the chest of drawers yet. The big drawers yield nothing but T-shirts and underwear. The clothes are so neatly arranged that I figure Jack probably never opened them. He wouldn’t be able to see the things anyway. I feel around under the clothes for anything that would yield a clue, but come up empty.

  I don’t know a man who doesn’t keep oddities in the top drawer of his chest, and Jack is no exception. There’s a cracked old leather wallet, empty, a hard leather case containing medals, and a collection of items that look to be from his teenage years, before he went off to the army. This includes a number of yellowing articles clipped together from the
weekly Jarrett Creek newspaper that was alive and well back then, but has since folded. The articles are all about the football games Jack was in. I’m surprised Marybeth didn’t take them. I lay them on the bed to take home with the other things she left. Finally I come to a zippered pouch. Inside there’s a rabbit’s foot, a faded photo of Taylor from high school, Jack’s army dog tags, and a cross on a silver chain.

  I almost neglect to look in the bottom drawer of the bedside table. The knob is missing from it, and it looks like a false front. Inside, there’s another wallet. It contains Jack’s military ID, his social security card, a long-expired credit card, and a photo of Taylor and Woody in their wedding regalia. Inside, where money would be carried, is a newspaper clipping two paragraphs long about a homeless man found dead in a dumpster—in San Francisco. The bizarre thing is that someone has drawn a smiley face in the upper right hand corner of the clipping.

  I check Bob’s bedroom, but one look tells me that Curtis has been thorough in ridding the room of all vestiges of his dad. Drawers and closets are all empty. A single suitcase sits on a chair. Curtis’s suitcase. I expect if I looked in it, I’d find at least one gun, but I don’t look.

  What interests me most is what I don’t find—like any of Bob’s or Jack’s financial papers. No stack of bills paid or outstanding, no medical or insurance records, no bank statements. I look everywhere, but they aren’t to be found.

  Tonight’s football game would be away, but the opponent’s town is so small they can’t afford a stadium. The players’ parents carpool to bring the team because they don’t have a school bus. But they’re a scrappy bunch that always gives a good game, even if they don’t win often, so a crowd has shown up.

  I’ve brought Jenny with me. She’s not big on football, but says she’s had a hell of a week and needs some diversion. She’s from Bobtail, but she’s got sense enough to wear a Jarrett Creek Panthers T-shirt, the one with Gabe LoPresto’s advertising on the back. I don’t get a chance to pay much attention to the game because she bends my ear about a woman client who is driving her crazy. She can’t name names, but I know exactly who she’s talking about and I get a kick out of her description of the problems that the woman has brought on herself by her stinginess and sharp tongue.

  At halftime, there’s a hastily arranged memorial tribute for Jack. They trot out Jack’s old coach, who now has a cushy job at Blinn Junior College. It’s clear that he doesn’t remember much about Jack, but he does his best with platitudes. Coach Eldridge also speaks, talking about Jack’s love for the game and his special place as a booster for the team. He gets emotional, which strikes me as crocodile tears, since he was never Jack’s coach and they had some differences of opinion about the way the team ought to be run.

  The event wouldn’t be complete without Gabe LoPresto horning in, but at least he keeps his remarks short.

  I see Taylor in the stands with her mother and a few of her friends, so I go over to say hello. When I start back to my seat, Taylor says, “I’ll walk over with you.”

  I introduce her to Jenny, who is friendly enough, but suddenly reserved. “I’ll be right back,” she says. “You want anything?” She includes Taylor in her question.

  As soon as she leaves, Taylor says, “Curtis called me this morning.”

  “How did that go?”

  “I wish you could have heard him. He couldn’t have been sweeter.” She rolls her eyes. “He apologized for snapping at me at Bob’s reception. He said he hadn’t realized how worried I was about Sarah until he found out you and I went to the compound.” She narrows her eyes. “He could have charmed the wings off a butterfly—a stupid butterfly.”

  “So you’re not buying the apology?”

  “Hell, no! Listen to this. He said as soon as Jack’s funeral is over, he’ll see to it that I get to spend an afternoon with Sarah and the girls.” Her voice is prissy.

  I laugh. “I’m guessing you acted like you were going along with it.”

  “I can charm the wings off a butterfly as well as he can.”

  “Did he say whether Sarah was coming down for Jack’s funeral?”

  “He said he’d have to see about that.”

  I expect it will be a cold day in hell before Curtis lets his wife and children see Taylor.

  “I know what he’s thinking,” Taylor says. “He probably thinks that if he sweet-talks me, I’ll sit around and wait for him to arrange a meeting, and then I’ll forget about it.”

  “If that’s what he’s thinking, he doesn’t know you.”

  Jenny is back with popcorn. She eases past us and I suddenly have an idea.

  “Taylor, Jenny and I are going to have a glass of wine at my place after the game. Why don’t you come by? Jenny’s a lawyer. Maybe she has some thoughts about how to help your sister.”

  Jenny gives me the dead eye, but Taylor jumps up and grabs Jenny’s hand. “Oh, it would be so great if you could help. Do you mind? I don’t want to butt in.” She shoots a glance between Jenny and me.

  “I don’t know that I have any advice, but I’ll be glad to talk to you.” Taylor doesn’t know that Jenny has her formal voice on.

  Taylor leans down and kisses my cheek. “I have to go back to Mamma. I’ll take her home after the game and then come over to your place.”

  After the second half of the game starts, and we’ve got a comfortable lead, LoPresto finds me. He’s heard that I’m investigating Jack’s murder, and he wants in on the action. Or, at least, he wants to give me instructions on how I ought to proceed. I wiggle the conversation around so that it seems like I’m asking his advice, which he is only too happy to oblige with.

  “Seems to me you’re looking for somebody with a grudge against Jack.”

  “I expect you’re right.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. “You talked to Jack a lot. You ever hear anything I ought to look into?”

  “Well, there’s Woody. I hear he and Jack got together last week. Maybe Jack said something he didn’t like.”

  “I don’t know what that might have been. It’s hard for me to see Woody killing Jack.”

  “Well, you know best.” We pause while the crowd hollers about a touchdown that seals the game. After things have quieted down, he says, “Maybe it’s somebody from way back when, like somebody he played football against who’s still mad because they lost the game.”

  That’s the silliest idea I can imagine. Jenny pokes me and makes a small, strangled sound. I have to force myself to keep a straight face. “If that were the case, why now?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” LoPresto says in a testy voice. “That’s what you need to find out.”

  “I do have a question for you, Gabe. You remember last week those two fellows I pointed out to you at the game? The ones you said might be scouts?”

  LoPresto nods, and his expression brightens. “I never heard any more about that. Maybe you ought to ask Boone Eldridge. If they weren’t scouts, it’d be good to know what those strangers were doing here.”

  Like me, LoPresto would love to pin Jack’s death on somebody we don’t know.

  I’m glad Taylor won’t be at my house right away. It gives me time to settle Jenny down. “I knew I wouldn’t like her,” she says.

  “You haven’t said three words to her. Give her a chance. Anyway, you don’t have to like her. But she does have a sticky problem and it would be nice if you could at least listen to her.”

  “Well, that won’t kill me,” she grumbles.

  “I’ll sweeten the deal for you. I was going to drag this out on a special occasion, but maybe now is a good time.” I go into the cabinet and bring out a good bottle of Cabernet that I bought last time I was in Houston. Jenny and I have a friendly competition about who buys the best wine without spending too much.

  “You’re at least singing the right song,” she says.

  I didn’t eat before the game, so I bring out sausage and cheese and crackers and the good wine glasses.

  By the time we sit d
own, I hear Taylor’s footsteps coming up to the door. I notice the way Taylor breezes in as if she lives here.

  I jump up to greet her. “Would you rather have a beer or some wine?”

  “Oh, fancy,” she says. She grins at Jenny. “This has to be your influence.”

  “Samuel isn’t lacking some of the graces,” Jenny says dryly.

  I’m embarrassed because Taylor assumes something is going on between Jenny and me, but I don’t know any good way to set her straight.

  “I hope this wine is as good as the man who sold it to me said it was.” I pour the wine, and notice I’m bustling around like a nervous hen so I sit down abruptly and take a sip.

  “This is nice,” Jenny says, sipping the wine. I guess it makes her feel magnanimous because she says to Taylor, “Why don’t you tell me what you two have gotten yourselves into.”

  Taylor describes our foray to the Marcus compound. When Taylor says she wants a court order to see her sister privately, Jenny gives a regretful shake of her head. “I wish I could be more encouraging, but the courts haven’t been too inclined to rein in folks like them. The law is on their side. Unless you have proof that your sister is being held against her will or that she or the children are being physically or sexually abused, there isn’t much you can do.”

  “My sister used our old signal to let me know things aren’t right there.” Taylor beats her fist into her palm. “I know she meant it. Why can’t she and her children at least be given protective custody while the police figure it out?”

  Jenny shakes her head. “It’s all about religion. Most courts bend over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt. You remember the Yearning for Zion thing from a while back?”