Return

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘When you got here, after the sheriff’s people—’

  ‘And the Highway Patrol,’ broke in Maddox.

  The other man was mounting a defence against future criticism, Powell knew. ‘… and the Highway Patrol, what about tyre tracks beyond where Johnson had stopped, going to or coming from the disused shack over the hill?’

  ‘No-one said. It’s not in any Highway Patrol reports.’

  ‘Let’s get back to Jilly Joe’s, out of the sun,’ said Powell, careless of the despair evident in his voice.

  There were only three rigs and some cars strewn outside the stop and maybe ten men inside when they got back. It seemed very dark, in contrast to the white brightness outside, and they had to stop just inside the door to refocus. In the abrupt silence at the entry of two city-dressed strangers, even carrying their jackets, Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand by Your Man’ sounded harshly loud from the music selector. Maddox led the way across to where a black-waistcoated, black-aproned man stood behind a bar that ran half the length of one wall.

  ‘Joe Hickley,’ introduced the local man. ‘Owns the place. Wes is down from Washington.’

  ‘That important, eh?’ Hickley was almost as broad as he was tall, a barrel of a man. There was no stetson but Powell guessed there would be cowboy boots. There was a long snake tattoo curled around the man’s left arm and an insignia – an army or naval unit – on the other. There’d be a shotgun or a baseball bat beneath the bar and Hickley would probably be prepared to use either.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Powell. ‘Could do with your help. Like to hear what happened that day.’

  ‘I already told Budd all I can remember.’ The man was talking to them loudly, enjoying the attention, at the same time moving professionally up and down the bar, dispensing drinks.

  ‘Tell me again,’ encouraged Powell.

  Hickley smiled, extending both hands in front of him. ‘That gal had tits out to here. Halter top, no bra. Jeans cut into shorts right up to her pussy. Every guy in the place had a permanent boner. Couldn’t walk straight. She didn’t have any pants on under those shorts.’

  ‘She ever been in here before? Worked the place professionally?’

  ‘Definitely not. Against the law.’ Hickley poured himself a drink and said, ‘You guys want something?’

  ‘Miller Lite,’ accepted Powell.

  Maddox nodded for the same.

  As Hickley poured, a faded, tired-looking woman with straggled hair emerged from the rear of the bar. The man said, ‘About time. You take over the bar. I got business to talk.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said the woman, totally without feeling. She ignored Powell and Maddox, almost automatically starting to serve behind the bar.

  ‘Jilly,’ identified the owner.

  Powell wondered how she came to have her name in front of the man’s. Glad of the undivided attention, Powell said, ‘So the girl was here before Johnson came in?’

  ‘For a good half-hour.’

  ‘Doing what, apart from giving everyone a boner?’

  ‘At one of the window tables at first. Sat on one chair with her legs out on the other, showing her wares.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Eleven, eleven-thirty.’

  ‘What’d she drink?’

  ‘Wild Turkey.’

  ‘At eleven-thirty in the morning!’

  ‘I tell you, this was some piece.’

  ‘So it’s on offer?’

  ‘Two guys go over, one after the other. Chester Payne, from town, and another guy I don’t know at the time: turns out to be Sam Cummings. Start the business, how about drinking with me honey, that sort of thing. She blanks them. Chester, pissed off at her, says “What’s the rules here?” and she says “There aren’t any involving you. I’m waiting for someone …”’

  ‘That’s what she said! That she was waiting for someone?’ Powell pounced.

  ‘The precise words.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Gene comes in.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘He’s a regular, on the Wednesday LA run.’

  ‘Let’s wind back a little. From the time Johnson actually came in.’

  ‘Before then, even,’ insisted Hickley. ‘She’s on her second Wild Turkey, at the table. Suddenly she gets up and is at the bar, with the cheeks of the prettiest ass you’ve ever seen winking like little moons over the mountains, asking for a refill …’

  ‘Johnson hadn’t come in by then?’

  ‘Immediately after, before I’d had time to serve her.’

  ‘Where’d he park his rig?’

  ‘Right out front.’

  ‘So she saw him pull in?’

  ‘Couldn’t have missed him. That silver thing glowed in the sun like it was on fire.’

  ‘Did he come on to her right away?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Left quite a distance between them at the bar …’ Reminded, he gestured without asking to their beer. Both agents pushed their near-empty glasses forward. Powell put down $5 and left the change lying on the counter.

  ‘We talked for a moment, Gene and me,’ picked up the man. ‘It was her who hit on him. Looks along the bar while we’re talking and says, “Hi, how’ya doing?” Just like that. And he says he’s doing just fine but a whole lot better since seeing her and she suggests they go back to her table. Which they do. And quicker’n a rattler with jack rabbit she’s cosying up, rubbing her leg against his under the table and Gene’s looking around as if it’s all a dream, which for the rest of us it is and a damned wet one at that.’

  ‘You get any feeling that he knew her?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ insisted Hickley. ‘This was the first but she went for him big time.’

  Powell turned his back on the bar, to look out into the parking area. Over his shoulder he said, ‘They go back to the table she was at in the beginning?’

  ‘The one right in the middle,’ confirmed Hickley.

  ‘From here you’ve got a pretty good view of the draw-in. How’d she get here?’

  ‘I didn’t see her arrive outside. First I seen her was when she came through the door.’

  ‘What about buses?’

  ‘There’re Greyhounds but this isn’t a stop.’

  ‘From where you’re standing now, looking out over the park, did you see any car follow Johnson and the girl after they left?’

  ‘No,’ said Hickley.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Mister!’ said the man. ‘I looked after that ass till it disappeared over the horizon!’

  Powell moved away from the bar, orientating the place in his mind, going to the unoccupied table at which Billie Jean Kesby had waited, leaning forward on it to gauge the view she would have had. Without looking at the other FBI man he said, ‘I’ve got the picture here. You want to call the medical examiner? Tell him we’re on our way?’

  Maddox said, ‘What about the sheriff?’

  ‘My priority, not his,’ said Powell.

  Maddox made the call from the car. As they drove Powell said, ‘We got anything from the sheriff’s department to make this a proper investigation?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Maddox. ‘But everything Joe said back there I’ve already sent to Washington.’

  ‘I’m going to bring in our own forensic team,’ announced Powell. ‘I want the disused shack taken apart, shingle by shingle. I want the cab of Johnson’s rig stripped and examined for anything that might be in it or on it or around it. I want personally to interview Sam Cummings, tomorrow. And Johnson’s sister. And I want to go back through the history of the Johnson family from the time their ancestors first arrived in America and then, if possible, what the history was in whatever country they came from, before that. I want you to go up to El Paso, find out why Billie Jean had moved down here. What Vice here have on her. By tomorrow this time I’ll have from the sheriff every report and scientific analysis that’s been made, by everyone involved. And while we’re about it, I want the driver of every Greyhound
bus that came along this route, either way, from first light to midnight the day of the murder asked about anything they saw around where Johnson’s rig was found, particularly any other vehicle. You think of anything to add to that?’

  ‘No,’ said Maddox, even quieter than before.

  ‘You can start setting it up while I’m talking to Jamieson.’

  Kingsley Jamieson was an extremely fat, red-faced man in protestingly tight clothes – his shirt front gaped, between button places – who smelt of scented pipe tobacco and whom Powell guessed only just managed to stop short of calling Budd Maddox ‘boy’ before the resident FBI man left to start on Powell’s listed demands.

  The man took a bottle and two glasses from the bottom drawer of his desk and said, ‘You’d like a little sour mash? Helps against cholesterol.’

  ‘No,’ said Powell. ‘I’d like to see the bodies and discuss your findings.’

  The obese medical examiner frowned, disappointed. ‘Later, then.’

  The bodies of Gene Stanley Johnson and Billie Jean Kesby were uniformly grey, from refrigeration and blood loss. The heads were bagged individually and on their respective trolleys. Johnson’s penis had been removed from the woman’s mouth and was bagged, beside the man. The woman’s breasts were beside her. At Powell’s request the medical examiner took the heads from the specimen bags. Both victims were blond. With stiff, offended formality Dr Jamieson said the bodies were of a male and female Caucasian. Both were well nourished, with no evidence whatsoever of any organic illness. Neither had there been any evidence of brain abnormality or disease, although both had suffered severe trauma to the eye sockets. The left eye of each victim had been in its socket, although burst and forced back almost to the optic nerve from violent pressure. The right eyes had been missing. The woman had been genitally disfigured, although not extensively. Cause of death in both cases was most likely a single puncture, directly into the heart, by a rounded instrument so thin, less than a quarter of an inch at its thickest, that the wounds had virtually sealed themselves and only been found after a minute, magnified examination of the upper torsos. There were no trunk injuries apart from to the neck and the genital areas.

  ‘Have you sectioned the penis, for semen traces? And taken vaginal swabs?’

  The fat doctor frowned, affronted, and Powell knew at once that he hadn’t. Jamieson said, ‘Why should I have done that?’

  ‘If there had been sexual intercourse there would probably have been semen residue.’

  ‘Johnson was naked when he was found! It’s obvious there was sexual intercourse.’

  ‘It isn’t obvious at all,’ challenged Powell. ‘He’s a trucker with a long journey ahead of him who’s picked up a whore in a truck stop. He wouldn’t have got completely undressed to screw her. They wouldn’t have neatly folded their clothes. It would have been a short time, just dropped his trousers …’ Powell moved the sheet further off the bodies, bending close to the legs and arms. ‘You examine the knees, forearms and hands for sand grazes …?’

  The examiner’s condescension was going. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Or their backs or buttocks?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If they had done it outside his cab, either he on top of her or she on top of him, there’d have been sand grazes.’

  ‘I could re-examine,’ offered the doctor.

  Powell didn’t respond. Instead he bent over Johnson’s body again, examining the ankles and wrists. ‘Don’t you think these are restraint bruises?’

  ‘That’s what I described them as in my report to the sheriff,’ said Jamieson.

  ‘What about fingernail debris? Any hair, skin, blood – sand again – where he tried to fight off an assailant?’

  ‘No.’

  Powell wasn’t sure the man had even checked. ‘What was there?’

  ‘Sump oil. Indeterminate dirt. The nails were chipped but from neglect, not from resisting an assailant. Certainly no skin or hair. Nothing like that.’

  The chest cavities had been entered from the side. There were no incisions around the heart wound, which really was extremely small, even under magnification, very close to Johnson’s left nipple and just below where the girl’s left breast would have been. Powell said, ‘You haven’t sectioned the entry wounds.’

  ‘I followed them from my incision to the sides of the chests.’

  ‘I want the precise lines. Whether they are upward or downward or came more from the left or from the right. And whether they were clean or struck a rib.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded the man, truculently.

  ‘To know if the killer was right or left handed. And how big or small he was. And where he stood when he was killing them …’ He bent even closer over the chest wound, adjusting the magnification. ‘What about the amputation of the penis and the breasts? Were they hacked off? Or could there be an element of medical knowledge?’

  ‘The amputations were very clean.’

  ‘And the necks?’

  ‘Clean again. But there is some sawing.’

  Powell straightened from the body, his back cramped. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll carry out a second autopsy, to cover the points you’ve raised,’ offered Jamieson.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ dismissed Powell. ‘I’m including a forensic pathologist in the team I’m bringing from Washington.’

  Dr Jamieson’s face blazed. ‘I am a forensic pathologist, sir!’

  ‘So I was led to believe,’ said Powell.

  Budd Maddox had obviously heard of the confrontation with the medical examiner when he telephoned Powell at the hotel but didn’t try to discuss it and Powell said nothing, either. The meeting with Johnson’s unmarried sister, Barbara, was fixed for nine the following morning. Sam Cummings was due from El Paso by midday. Greyhound had promised the names and addresses of all their drivers by then, too. The sheriff had called the local Bureau office demanding to know why Powell hadn’t contacted him yet.

  He said, ‘There’s a lot of catching up to do, isn’t there?’

  ‘Too much,’ said Powell. There was a danger of it being yet another fucked-up investigation, he thought. When he telephoned Washington Amy Halliday said she was assembling what was available but that she needed more. Powell said he knew that already.

  He’d watched Marcus Carr and made his plans eight months earlier, so it was obviously necessary to check everything again and Harold Taylor was glad he did. It had been quite immaterial that the wife would have to die as well – he’d even been looking forward to a bigger audience for the facial change – but by following the old man that first day in Pittsburgh he’d discovered she was hospitalized after a heart attack and wouldn’t be in the apartment after all. The shock of having her husband murdered would probably kill her now. The best thing, to put her out of her misery.

  It wasn’t a problem, having to reorganize everything: he’d made allowances for setbacks and this hardly qualified. He’d have it all rescheduled in a week. Would the connection have been made by then, between Texas and Alabama? He hoped so. He’d become quite determined to create a sensation. Killing Carr would probably cause one, all by itself. The three so far were low life. Carr was a retired army general and retired army generals didn’t go around getting their heads and their dicks cut off.

  Taylor stirred as Carr emerged from his apartment block, a diminutive man striding briskly upright, despite his age, and cautiously fell into step a good twenty yards behind. According to the newly established routine, now that there was no-one to fix his breakfast, Carr should stop at the hotel coffee shop four blocks down the street. It was the return timing that Taylor wanted to get firmly established.

  Chapter Four

  The Bureau pathologist from whom the only real progress came that day was a startlingly attractive black girl named Lucille Hooper in whom Powell almost at once detected a no-shit mindset so he didn’t warn her of the attitude she’d encounter from Dr Kingsley Jamieson, confident she’d handle it well enough by herself. During
the 7 a.m. conference he did, however, give the forensic group a general caution of the local resentment and when Barry Westmore, the forensic team leader, asked how bad it was, Powell said, ‘As bad as it can get.’

  ‘We starting from scratch?’ demanded Westmore.

  ‘Worse than that,’ said Powell, conscious of Budd Maddox’s discomfort, beside him in the San Antonio FBI office. ‘I’m going to kick ass today but I’m not sure what good it’ll do.’

  Barbara Johnson was ten years older than her brother and looked it. She wore jeans and a check shirt and moccasins instead of boots. Her hair was strained back in a band and there was no make-up. There wasn’t any obvious grief but then, Powell reflected, grief affected people in different ways.

  It was more a man’s than a woman’s office, with no attempt to pretty it up with plants or pictures. Powell guessed the empty desk on the other side of the room from hers had belonged to Gene Johnson. It hadn’t been tidied. The huge yard beyond the darkened glass windows, between the two hangar-sized storage sheds, was deserted: the rig Johnson had been driving was still in the police pound – at that moment, Powell hoped, being swarmed over by the Washington scientists he’d just finished briefing.

  Barbara Johnson cut off his hopefully sympathetic apologies for bothering her by saying, ‘Why don’t you just get on with it by telling me what you want?’ The Texas accent was very pronounced.

  ‘You close to your brother?’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘You talked to each other? Confided?’

  ‘To a point.’ She lighted a cigarette with a Zippo she held almost awkwardly by its case top. Her fingers were stained brown by nicotine.

  ‘He talk to you about girlfriends?’

  ‘There was no-one regular.’

  ‘He talk about anyone recently? A blonde?’

  ‘I know about the hooker in Jilly Joe’s. And no, he didn’t.’

  ‘She told people there she was waiting for someone. And made a play for him the moment he walked in.’

  ‘He was a good-looking guy. If he knew her he didn’t say anything to me about it.’

  ‘Would he have done?’

  ‘If she was a hooker, you mean? Maybe not. It wouldn’t have meant much, would it? Just a fuck.’