Fatso found the right key and unlocked the door. He pushed it open, then stood back and gestured for Evan to go in first.
'Faulkner. You in there?' he called as he climbed the steps. He went in and looked left and then to the right. Everything looked exactly like it had the last time Evan was there apart from the fact that Faulkner was lying on the floor, half in and half out of the bedroom. There was a vicious looking gash on the side of his head, which was lying in a pool of congealing blood.
Evan ran across and knelt down next to him to feel for a pulse. It took him a while to find the right spot, but the pulse was there. He could feel it very faintly. He could also see Faulkner's chest rising and falling with each shallow breath.
'Get an ambulance,' he shouted at Fatso who had just entered the trailer.
'Oh shit. There's no way she's gonna sleep through all this.'
'I'm sure Faulkner will be touched by your concern for his welfare. Call an ambulance. Now!'
The guy's mouth was hanging open and his face had turned ashen. Even threw his cell phone to him.
'You don't have to live with her, buddy,' he said, catching the phone and fumbling with the keys.
Evan looked down at Faulkner helplessly while the guy gave the details to the 9-1-1 dispatcher. He had no idea what to do. It looked like he'd lost a lot of blood, and it wasn't good that he was still unconscious which could mean he was in shock. There was a gaping laceration where the skin had been split wide open, but he couldn't see any visible bone fragments or exposed brain. The bleeding had already stopped so all he could do was sit tight until the ambulance arrived.
It didn't take long for them to get there. When they arrived, the fat guy was back outside, sitting on the packing crate with his head in his hands. Some tough guy you turned out to be, Evan thought. He explained the situation to the paramedic in charge as his crew loaded Faulkner into the ambulance.
'Do you have any idea what time it might have happened?' the medic asked.
'It was sometime after seven p.m. last night. That's when I last saw him.'
'That's a twelve hour time frame. Do you know if anyone else saw him after that?'
'He had a visitor who was still here when I left. Apart from that I don't know. You should probably work on the basis that he's been out for twelve hours.'
Which in his opinion was exactly when it happened, down to the last quarter hour - between the time he left just after seven p.m. and precisely fifteen minutes later when Carl Hendricks blasted past him on the highway.
CHAPTER 28
He decided to give Guillory a call to put him in the picture. With any luck he could get the case assigned to him.
'Do you know what time it is? Do you even know what day it is?' he said, when he finally picked up.
'It might be the last day of Matt Faulkner's life,' Evan said. Maybe it was a little melodramatic but it sure got Guillory's attention.
'What the hell are you talking about?'
Evan took him through the morning's events but didn't say anything about his suspicions yet.
'Are you still at Faulkner's place?' Guillory asked when he'd finished.
'Yeah, I'm still here with the tub of lard that let me in.'
'Wait there. I'm on my way over. I'll call the department and let them know I've got it.'
He got there in under ten minutes. Evan was relieved to see that he didn't have his partner, Ryder, with him. The fat guy was still sitting on the packing crate, busy excavating the contents of his nose with his finger. Evan called him over and introduced him to Guillory. His name was Briggs. He'd got a bit of color back into his face and had stopped looking as if he was going to be sick any minute. Guillory asked him to tell him what he knew and Briggs ran through the morning's events.
'What about last night?' Guillory asked, when he'd finished.
'I was out having a couple of quick beers with some of the guys.'
'Good for you. Did you see anything unusual is what I meant?'
Evan reckoned Briggs would have been lucky to be able to see his trailer after the couple of quick beers he'd consumed. He certainly hadn't seen his dick in the last twenty years.
'No. Nothing. Sorry.'
'What time did you go out?'
He made a pretence of thinking about it. Evan would have bet dollars to donuts that he’d gone to the bar at the exact same time for the last twenty years.
'About six, I suppose.'
'When did you get back?
'About eleven.'
'As you say, just a couple of quick beers.’ Guillory said, nodding. ‘Lots of people see you in the bar?'
'Yeah, everyone knows me.'
'I bet. How come you've got a key?'
'Because I'm his neighbor and that's what neighbors are for.' He was getting indignant again. 'You're as bad as him,' he said, jabbing a none-too-clean thumb in Evan's direction. At least it wasn’t the finger most recently seen buried in his nose.
‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of other people live here. They’re all neighbors too.’
‘Probably because I’ve been here the longest, then.’
'Okay, Mr Briggs, I think we're done here. Someone will be round to take a statement later. I think your wife wants a word.' He nodded towards Briggs' trailer.
Briggs turned and looked at the diminutive woman standing in the open doorway to the trailer with her hands on her hips. His face dropped.
'Sure you don't want me to hang around? Something might come to me.'
'Well if it does, you be sure to let us know.'
Guillory turned to face Evan. Behind him Briggs gave him the finger and then walked unhappily back to his trailer.
'Okay Peeper, what have you got for me. I can see you're fit to burst with something.'
'I'm pretty sure I can tell you exactly when it happened and who did it.'
Guillory made a show of looking at his watch. 'And it's not even eight o'clock yet. Not bad. How about motive? Or do I have to wait until eight thirty for that?'
Evan ignored the sarcasm. 'I was here around seven last night. That's when I arranged to go fishing with Faulkner.'
'Fishing?'
Too good to pass. 'Yes, you know - you go out in a boat with a rod and a reel and catch fish. Millions of people do it every day. It's called a hobby.'
Guillory gave him a look but didn't say anything. Evan was sure he wanted to laugh.
'Anyway, when I got here, Faulkner had a visitor. There was a Dodge Ram in the driveway.'
'A Dodge Ram.’ He shook his head in mock amazement. ‘You know, I don’t think I’ve seen one of those for I don’t know how long…must be two or three minutes at least. I don't suppose there can be more than two hundred thousand of them in this state.’ He raised his finger as if something had just come to him. ‘That's okay though, if you took down the license number.' He raised his eyebrows in anticipation of a positive response.
Evan shook his head. Guillory nodded. 'Maybe next time. Did you see who the visitor was?'
Evan shook his head again. 'Faulkner shut the door so I couldn't see in.'
'Uh huh. Does this get any better? I don't exactly feel like I'm drowning in a sea of hard facts.'
Evan ignored him. 'When I was driving home I had to stop on the shoulder to make an urgent phone call. While I was sitting there, the same Dodge Ram went past me, going like a bat out of hell.'
'You're sure it was the same one? Even though you didn't have the license number.'
'It was the same color. I'm pretty sure it was the same one.’ He could hear how weak it sounded as he said it. ‘I can’t be one hundred percent certain,’ he admitted.
'Shame. That's what license plates are for I suppose. Okay, what happened next?'
Evan was starting to feel like Guillory wasn't taking him seriously. He'd soon change his tune.
'I followed it.'
'Any particular reason?'
'Nothing I can put my finger on, but that doesn't matter.
What matters is who was driving it...'
'For Christ's sake Buckley, just spit it out.'
'Carl Hendricks. I followed the pickup to his farm and saw him get out of it.'
He was disappointed with Guillory's reaction. He didn't get the Hallelujah he was hoping for. Guillory didn’t even whip off his hat and toss it in the air. Instead he folded his arms across his body and cradled his chin in his hand.
'Let me get this straight - your theory is that Carl Hendricks was the man in Faulkner's trailer and shortly after seven last night he brained him with some unidentified heavy object and then hightailed it back to his farmhouse. And this theory is based on the possibility that the two Dodge Rams you saw were one and the same.'
Despite Guillory's sceptical tone, Evan was sure that was exactly what had happened. 'Yes, that's exactly what I think.'
'Any ideas about why he might have done it?'
'No, but I heard Faulkner and the other man arguing.'
'You didn't mention that. Did you hear what it was about?' Luckily he didn't give Evan a chance to say no, he didn't know that either.
'Doesn't matter. I'll allow for the possibility that the man in the trailer was the one who attacked Faulkner. But you've still got a problem connecting the two pickup trucks.'
Evan felt completely deflated. 'Don't you even think it's worth looking into?'
'Did I say it's not worth looking into? Did I?' He gave Evan an exasperated look. 'I'm just not going to go jumping to conclusions before I've even started - unlike some people I could mention.’
He put a hand on Evan’s shoulder and steered him towards his car. ‘If it was up to you, Hendricks would be in prison already. You ought to forget this detective stuff and get a job as a hanging judge.'
CHAPTER 29
Evan realized he was actually quite disappointed that he wasn't going to spend the day afloat, catching fish and drinking cold beers with Faulkner. Apart from anything else, he now had an empty day to try to fill. Whilst most people spend Monday to Friday wishing their life away and don't want the weekend to end, Evan couldn't wait for the working week to start again. Sadly, he was going to have to. He decided to give Jacobson a call to see if he had any news.
'Didn't you get my text?' Jacobson asked him.
Evan checked his phone. 'No, there's nothing.' It reminded him it was time he bought a new one.
'I spoke to the person I told you about.' Jacobson said.
'That's good.'
'I told her what a nice young man you are. She can't wait to meet you - and fill you in on five, ten, twenty years of local gossip, whatever you want.' Evan could feel Jacobson's smile on the other end of the line. 'I'd allow three to four hours if I were you. You didn't have any plans did you?'
Evan told him about his aborted fishing trip.
'So what do you think's going on? Do you think Hendricks, or whoever it was, is trying to shut Faulkner up?'
It suddenly struck Evan that he didn't know what he thought. He'd told Guillory that he'd overheard an argument, but he had no idea what it meant, or even if it had any bearing on anything he was doing. They could have been arguing about football for all he knew.
'I'm not sure. I don't really know what I think.'
'You sound a bit despondent. Go and talk to Audrey Aubrey. Hell of a name, eh? Maybe some of the pieces will fall into place.'
Jacobson gave him the address and a phone number. As soon as he'd finished with Jacobson, Evan called her and she said he could drop in any time.
If he was expecting Audrey Aubrey to be a matronly old lady with a blue rinse, he couldn't have been more wrong. Her hair was cut short and it was gray, not blue. It would have been called distinguished in a man. He didn’t know how old she was but he was sure she didn’t look it.
No doubt she was in huge demand with the pension industry advertisers who targeted active seniors and put full page adverts in the Sunday supplements - the ones with the seniors freewheeling downhill on their bicycles with their legs sticking out and huge grins plastered on their faces.
She invited him in and got him settled in the living room and went off to make some coffee.
'I hope you don't want decaf,' she called from the kitchen. 'I wouldn't have that crap in the house. What a complete waste of time that is. I like a good dose of caffeine to keep me regular.'
That was a little more information than Evan felt was appropriate in the first two minutes of their acquaintance, but he liked his coffee strong too, so he said that would be just fine. She brought it in with a piece of cake about the size of a shoebox.
'This is my maple-pecan danish coffee cake,' she said proudly as she put it down on the side table. He was sure the table dipped under the weight. 'You look like you need feeding up.'
He noticed she didn't take a piece for herself but he tucked in just the same.
'I don't eat it myself,' she said. Looking at her still-trim figure, he could believe it. 'Tom Jacobson says it rots your teeth. Sugar, not just my cake, of course.' Evan was sure that if he listened closely enough he would actually hear the decay eating into the enamel of his teeth.
'I had a lot of dental work done,' she carried on. 'Look at this.'
She did what people always do when they're telling you about their teeth. She put as many fingers in her mouth as she could comfortably fit and then pulled it wide open and put her head back so that Evan got the best possible view. It was very impressive too. He made a mental note to compliment Jacobson on his work.
Then, just like everyone else, she carried on talking with all her fingers jammed in her stretched-open mouth, so that he couldn't understand a word she was saying. He never understood why people did that. Luckily, in his experience, they didn't suffer from the same compulsion to show-don't-tell when they were describing their hemorrhoids.
The maple-pecan danish coffee cake was heavy going so he just let her prattle on about her dental work for a while longer while he worked on it.
'Tom tells me you're the go-to person for local knowledge around here,' he said, feeling pleased with the adroit way he segued from Tom the dental maestro to Tom the flatterer-of-old-ladies.
She smiled indulgently. 'Tom's full of shit, but he's right, up to a point. I worked on the local paper for twenty-five years. There wasn't much went on I didn't hear about. But that was back then. Now I'm retired and I don't really get out so much.'
'That’s not a problem. It's the background information that I'm interested in.'
She leaned forward with her hands resting on her knees. 'What is it you need to know? Tom wouldn't tell me what this is about.'
'I'm sure it's nothing, really. Just something that's been bugging me. There's a farm a few miles out of town called Beau Terre...'
'The Saunders place.'
'That's it. So you know it?'
'I've been out to the house a few times. I knew Mary Saunders fairly well, and her husband George. Before they moved away.'
'Did they have a son?'
The question seemed to throw her. She stood up and walked through to the kitchen. 'Do you want any more coffee?'
He was afraid it would come with another couple of pounds of cake so he said no. She came back carrying a refill for herself. He wasn't sure whether she was buying time to marshal her thoughts, or whether she was just committed to her caffeine-keeps-you-regular routine.
'There was a son,' she said carefully, 'called Jason.' The look on her face suggested the memories of Jason Saunders weren't all good. Either that or the caffeine was starting to kick in ahead of time.
'What was he like?'
'He was a little shit when he was growing up,' she said with unexpected force, 'and made his parents' lives a complete misery. I don't think he was actually kicked out of school but it came pretty close. And he was no better when he grew up.'
She leaned back and crossed her legs. Evan was treated to a view of her still-shapely calves. He was thankful she was far too old for there to be any risk of a repeat of the previ
ous day’s events.
'What happened to him?'
'Luckily for everyone around here, he got a totally uncharacteristic attack of patriotic fervor and joined the army. Unluckily, he didn't get blown to pieces in some godforsaken hell hole.' She looked down and started picking imaginary pieces of lint from her white blouse.
Evan was shocked at the intensity of her dislike for him. He wondered if there was any personal animosity but didn't push it.
'So he came back?'
She looked back up at him. 'No, he didn't come back. Not so far as I know. He left the army with a dishonorable discharge and drifted around.'
'What did he do to get a dishonorable discharge? That's got to be pretty serious.'
'I don't know for certain. All I heard were rumors and I don't want to spread them around - despite what Tom Jacobson thinks.' She seemed keen to be able to claim some of the moral high ground from Jacobson. ‘Do you know, he told me that if patients start gossiping in the chair he drills a bit deeper?’
Evan smiled. He made a mental note to look up the sort of offences that could result in a dishonorable discharge. He had no idea whether records of specific cases were in the public domain or not. Probably not, as the U.S. Army weren't known for washing their dirty linen in public.
'What happened after he left the army?'
'It gets better and better.’ She let out a short, harsh laugh. ‘He really was a son to be proud of! I know he spent some time in prison down in Texas. That much is fact. Again, I only heard rumors about why he was in there.'
Evan would have loved to push her into disclosing the rumors she'd heard. It would have been interesting to find out if the crimes inside and outside the military were the same. Unfortunately, he could tell there was no way she was going to tell him. She desperately wanted him to go back to Jacobson and tell him that she wasn't an idle gossip.
'It completely destroyed George and Mary,' she went on. 'There were all these awful rumors flying around.' Her face darkened and she fell silent as she thought back. 'It got so they couldn't bear to go out.'
Cruel Comfort (Evan Buckley Thrillers Book 1) Page 15