by Jeff Abbott
I steered him toward my Blazer. “Let’s go sit in the car.
He followed me without a backward glance at the house. I got him into the passenger side and shut the door. When Junebug came up behind me, I nearly hollered. My hand, still damp, automatically went into my pocket, shoving the scrap of cloth as far down as possible. Junebug gestured at Mark, who didn’t seem to notice us on the other side of the window.
“Can you get him to the station? Can y’all talk to us now while the details are still fresh?”
“Yes.” I turned to face my friend.
Junebug’s mouth thinned. “Good. I know it’s hard, Jordy. I’m so, so sorry.”
I looked past his shoulder. Scott Kinnard lay in a fetal position, still crying, his Dallas Cowboys windbreaker looking too small on even his slight frame. My heart ached for him, but I could only handle one devastated boy at a time. Mark had to be my priority. Later I’d call and check on Scott. One of the Kinnards’ neighbors, a kind-faced old woman in a quilted nightdress who’d been watching the proceedings from her porch, hurried over to Scott, talking to him softly, rubbing his back.
“What about Scott? Can you find Nola?” I asked.
“I’ll get hold of his mama somehow. We’ll take care of him.” Junebug glanced back at the huddled boy, still sobbing on the wooden porch. “God, if this ain’t a real sow’s nest. Shit.”
“What in hell’s going on, Junebug?” My voice, usually strong, direct, and a shade raspy, quavered. I’d kept it under steely control with Mark, but Mark was in the car, where he couldn’t hear me. Anger and fear and sadness rose up in me, hard and uncompromising. “Someone shot him. Someone shot Clevey. Why don’t you know what’s going on here? Why is this happening?” I suddenly remembered the blood-smeared wallpaper. “‘Two down.’ What the hell did that mean?”
“Can you drive?” Junebug asked, ignoring my question. “Or do you need me to drive you to the station?”
“Can’t you take our statements at home?” I pleaded. I suddenly wanted the warm comfort of my house, a cup of coffee with a jolt of brandy in it, and my armchair. I wanted to talk to my sister, not just because her boy needed her, but because I wanted to ask her why material from her pants was stuck on a nail outside the house where her ex-husband died.
Of course she couldn’t commit murder, I told myself. She’s your sister, for God’s sake. But at the same time I gave myself that scant reassurance, I realized I did indeed presume she could have killed
Trey. Otherwise, I would have left that tatter on the nail. Wouldn’t I?
The selfish part of me wanted to hand Mark over to Sister so I could be alone with my grief. Grief! my mind cried out. I had to be kidding myself. Mourning over a man who I wanted out of town yesterday. A man I felt was worthless. A man who had cruelly abandoned my sister and my nephew. A man who’d once been my best friend.
I sagged against the car. Life plays you some odd hands, doesn’t it? I wasn’t going to grieve over someone as rotten as Trey Slocum. Not when Mark needed me to be strong.
“Jordan, are you listening to me?” Junebug’s voice was steel authority and I raised my head, submissive for once. “This is a murder investigation. I’d surely appreciate it if you and Mark would come down to the station. I’ll get Scott squared away, get my people started on this case, and we’ll leave in a few minutes. Please, get in the car and wait.”
I nodded. “Mark said he would talk to you, but I don’t know if he’s gonna be able to help-”
“He will. ’Cause I’m gonna find the son of a bitch who’s killing my friends.” He turned and stomped back toward Scott, who’d pulled himself up to a sitting position. I saw the boy fix me with an expression of utter misery, as if a specter of death had brushed his heart in taking its leave.
People should be where they’re supposed to be in times of great crisis. It’s only considerate.
Phoning Sister made my throat dry. I imagined the conversation: Hi, Sister, got some news for you. Your ex-husband is dead. Yes, shot to death, how did you know? Hope you don’t mind, but I ignored your wishes and took your son over to visit Trey. Mark got there just in time to see his father die. It’ll probably warp him for life. Oh, that’s okay, no need to thank me. Perhaps you’d care to tell me which pants you wore this morning? I made myself dial the phone, my finger trembling.
“Sit-a-Spell Cafe, what can I do you for?” The hoarse voice of Suzie Tumpfer, one of the waitresses, blasted in my ear.
I asked to speak to Sister.
“Arlene ain’t been in this morning, Jordy.”
My throat felt coated with coarseness. I coughed. “Is Candace there?”
“Naw, she’s run over to the restaurant supply store in Bavary. You wanna leave a message for either one?”
“There’s-” What could I say? “Would you have them phone the police station if they get back in the next hour or so?”
“You’re at the police station?” Suzie’s voice softened. “You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, and so is Mark. But they need to come down to the station, all right? Please don’t forget, Suzie.”
“Naw, I won’t.” I didn’t think she would, since she’d be broadcasting it to the rest of the Sit-a-Spell staff in short order. I hung up the phone and went into the men’s room.
I washed my hands and my face. I returned to Junebug’s office. Mark hadn’t asked for his mother; he faced Junebug like he was a plague to be suffered. I did not mention that Sister wasn’t at the Sit-a-Spell. My heart stumbled again at thoughts I couldn’t permit myself to have. You cannot think this of her. You cannot think this of her… but you are. Admit that you’re wondering where she is and why she’s not at work.
Children have an uncommon bravery that we adults don’t always appreciate. Mark, although still shocked and savaged by what he’d witnessed, managed to answer Junebug’s questions completely. I wondered if it was because, once the initial shock was over, Trey was still a stranger to him. Or perhaps maybe because Mark was such an extraordinary young man.
Watching him holding up his head, keeping his voice steady, I suddenly came aware, with a surprising tightness in my heart, of how much I loved this boy. Before I returned to Mirabeau, I probably loved Mark in an abstract way; he was my sister’s child, so of course I loved him. You’re supposed to. But when you share a house, share the terrible responsibility and knowledge of a loved one losing her mind, share the struggle of barely getting by without fraying each other’s nerves, those abstractions turn into solids.
Mark bowed his head when Junebug asked if he’d seen his father before today, and for the first time since we got to the station, tears brimmed in his night-dark eyes. I swore to myself right then, right there, that nothing else was going to ever harm this boy, not while I drew breath.
“No, I hadn’t seen my father. I knew he was in town, but my mom didn’t want me near him. I asked Uncle Jordy to take me over to see him, if he would. I mean, if Dad was willing to see me.”
“And was your father willing?”
“Yes. I didn’t talk to him, but Uncle Jordy did. He asked us over to that house he-he was staying in.”
Junebug glanced at me with cop’s eyes. “But you yourself, Mark, you didn’t speak to your dad.”
Mark shook his head. “I thought I would when we got there. Talking on the phone seemed kind of funny. We never did that before.”
The questioning went on in the same vein. Another police officer stuck his head in the door to say that they’d found Nola and her uncle, Dwight Kinnard.
“You want her? She’s mighty upset right now.”
“I’m sure she is. Show her into the interrogation room and I’ll be there presently.” The officer nodded and withdrew.
A moment later I could hear Nola’s voice coming down the hall, shrill and ragged: “I can tell you stupid bastards who you need to go after! His goddamned whore of an ex-wife! She’s crazy! You gotta-” And the noise died as a door was slammed. Mark’s face might have be
en made of marble. I felt an itch on my thigh, right where a ribbon of batik rested.
“Can we please go home? Mark needs some rest.”
Junebug nodded. “Listen, Mark, could you wait in the dispatcher’s office for a minute? I know you want to get home, son, but I need to talk a second with your uncle Jordan. Is that okay, buddy?”
Mark stood. “Yeah.” He moved slowly, like a puppet on guided strings. I could not believe that he was so calm, not after the violent surge of emotion he’d shown. It made me uneasy. What was normal for Mark under these circumstances? The door clicked shut behind him.
“Jordy, where the hell is Arlene?” Junebug didn’t waste time on preliminaries.
My tongue dabbed at my dry lips. All I had to say was what I knew for sure, and even that wasn’t appealing. “I don’t know. Suzie at the caff said she hadn’t been in.”
“Goddamn it, goddamn it,” Junebug fumed at the floor.
“What the hell am I gupposed to do, Jordy? Ignore that she’s conveniently disappeared while Trey’s shot dead?”
“Wait a second! You can’t think she did this!” Hypocrite. Don’t pretend the thought didn’t cross your mind.
“Look. I have to consider every suspect. Arlene’s his ex-wife and she’d publicly feuded with him. I can’t cross her off the list just because you and I know she couldn’t do it.”
I turned away from him. What kind of sorry brother was I, thinking even for a nanosecond that my sister could be a killer? Of course it was ridiculous. I took solace in that thought. The shock of seeing Trey dead had made me imagine the worst. Of course Sister was incapable of killing a man in cold blood. There had to be a reasonable explanation for both her absence and the cloth. Perhaps the cloth came from someone else’s pants, although I thought that unlikely. I’d ordered the trousers from a store in Boston I’d frequented during my publishing career and I didn’t think it likely another pair of trousers with that unusual fabric was haunting Mirabeau. Perhaps she’d gone over to see Trey again this morning-why? To apologize for hitting him? Possible but unlikely. To warn him off her son again? Probable. To kill him? I made myself turn back to Junebug. Not telling was lying, wasn’t it? I knew it was.
I kept my voice calm. “Someone wrote ‘two down’ in Trey’s blood. Clevey’s murdered the day before. Do the math, dummy. Don’t you think you ought to follow that angle instead of worrying about where my sister is?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Junebug sank into a chair. “Clevey and Trey hadn’t been in touch for years. What could they have in common? Why’d anyone want to kill them both?”
“We don’t know that they hadn’t been in touch,” I said slowly. “I don’t think Clevey would have told me if he’d been talking to Trey. I would not have taken that news well.”
“He had all those clippings on Rennie Clifton’s death,” Junebug said. “Clevey was there when we found her body.
So was Trey. Maybe he had been in touch with Trey, researching an article on Rennie.”
“And found something worth getting himself and Trey killed over? Where the hell does that leave you and me? And Ed and Davis? This is idiotic, Junebug. Rennie Clifton’s death was an accident. She got killed by flying debris.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Can’t you find three other words to overuse?” I snapped.
“Don’t get mad at me, Jordy,” Junebug said. “Okay, let’s say that those hidden notes Clevey had about Rennie Clifton had nothing to do with his death. Or maybe there’s no connection between Clevey’s murder and Trey’s murder. But someone still wrote that message. Maybe there’s been another murder we don’t even know about yet.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Junebug said, just to irritate me. “Take your nephew home, Jordy, and if I were you, I’d lock the doors. Call me if Arlene shows up. Or I’ll call you when we find her.”
It was a horrible end to a horrible conversation.
7
What do you do with evidence in a murder case-when you’ve decided turning it in to the police isn’t an option? And here I always considered myself a good citizen. By the time I got a silent Mark home, that scrap of batik was searing a hole in my drawers, and if those fibers had a voice, they were whispering in my ear: You should give this to the police. You know you should. Those mystery shows, where the town busybody doesn’t tell the police what he knows, you hate them. So why aren’t you telling?
And my answer was: Because she’s my sister.
I pulled the car into the driveway. The rain had ceased, leaving a wet, cool day in its wake. Clouds lingered overhead, gray with weight, promising more inclement weather. Mark had been silent all the way home.
“Mark”-my voice sounded raspier than usual-“I want you to know something. I love you. I love you very much, and if you want to talk to me about any of this, if you want to cry, if you want to get mad, whatever, I’m here for you.” I reached out and touched his shoulder. I’m not a huggy person by nature, but I felt his need for human contact.
Or so I imagined. Mark shrugged off my hand. “Thanks, but I don’t need any help. I’m fine. I got a history test on Monday to study for.”
“A test?”
“Yeah. American history.” He opened the car door. “Not my best subject, you know. Who cares about all those dates and stuff?” Unbelievably, he grinned at me. “I guess you care about it, since you used to edit those history textbooks. You don’t got any pointers for me, do you, Uncle Jordy?”
I managed to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “No, Mark, I don’t. Look, let’s not worry about your exam right now, I don’t think you’ll be going to school on Monday anyway.”
He swallowed. “Why wouldn’t I go?”
“Mark-”
“Look, I was upset at first about Dad, it was pretty awful seeing him shot like that, but you know, I like hardly knew him. He didn’t even look the same, all thin and with that stupid beard and being in a wheelchair. It wasn’t like he cared enough about me to call me, or to be a part of my life.”
“But you begged me to take you to him-”
“I gotta study, Uncle Jordy.” He got out of the car and loped along to the house. I turned off the engine and sat quietly for a moment. Well, I’d decided Trey wasn’t worth mourning over; apparently so had Mark. But Trey was his father, and considering the avalanche of emotion Mark had shown, this sudden freeze didn’t bode well. It was as if the Do Not Disturb sign had been hung out on Mark’s face while his mind’s room was being tidied up.
I went inside. Mama’s nurse, Clo Butterfield, was reading a two-day-old newspaper to Mama, who rocked back and forth, humming tunelessly with a smile on her face. Clo folded the paper with a snap.
“Mark didn’t say how it went with his daddy.”
I went to the phone, not answering her, and dialed the cafe. Neither Sister nor Candace had returned. I asked Suzie to tell them to come straight to the house when they got back.
Mama was once again exploring the unnavigable frontier of her own mind, so I briefly told Clo what had happened. I omitted the bloody score painted on Trey’s wall and the remnant of Sister’s clothing I’d found at the scene.
Horror filled her dark face. “My God. That poor child. But he seems a lot calmer than I thought he’d be.”
“He was wailing like a banshee an hour ago. Now he’s acting like nothing’s happened. Mark’s always been a kid who showed what he felt.”
“Uncle Jordy?” Mark peered at me from upstairs, just glancing above the railing. “You’re right, I don’t feel much like studying. Can I ask Bradley over to watch TV?”
“Sure, Mark. But let me call the Foradorys.” He smiled vacantly and went back upstairs.
I turned back to Clo. “Well, that’s a good sign. At least he’s not doing schoolwork like it’s a normal day. Maybe seeing Bradley will help.”
“Quit deluding yourself, Jordy.” Clo coughed. “He was smiling like a game-show contestant who don’t know
the answers. He shouldn’t be smiling. He should be crying. He’s not.”
“People grieve in different ways, Clo. He hadn’t seen his father in six years. Maybe this is normal.” I wasn’t doing a good job of convincing myself.
She touched my arm with the same gentleness she used on Mama. “It’s not just that his daddy died, Jordy. His daddy died in front of him. His dying words to Mark were ‘I love you.’ I think Mark’s just not wanting to deal with any of this. You got to get him some counseling.”
I remembered Steven Teague. He would know about grief counseling. I’d call my friends to tell them of Trey’s death first, then call Steven. “That’s an excellent idea, Clo. Thank you.”
She patted my arm again. “I tell you what. I’ll stay and help you, okay?”
I would have kissed her, but she would have hated that; so I didn’t. Clo was innately kind, but she kept nearly everyone at an arm’s length. Life hadn’t always been kind back to her. “What about the funeral arrangements?”
“I don’t know who’s supposed to be making those. Us? Nola Kinnard?”
“And where’s Arlene at?”
“She’s running errands or something for the cafe,” I said, perhaps a little too brightly. Clo watched me, her dark eyes surveying the twitchy territory of my face, and then she pushed the phone along the kitchen counter toward me.
“I think you better make them calls now, Jordy.”
I picked up the receiver and dialed Davis Foradory’s house.
When Davis answered his voice sounded broken, like a pane of glass starred and cracked by a blow. “Huh- hello?”
“Davis?”
I heard the noise of flesh on flesh-a long, slow drag of his finger across his lip. “Yeah, Jordan, hey, how are you?”
For a moment I wondered if Davis had been drinking-he sounded dulled. I told him briefly what had happened, excluding again the blood-scribed words on the wall; I didn’t think that I should jump to any conclusions about what 2 DOWN meant.