Resurrection Blues

by James, Harper

He only got ten feet before he skidded to a halt. Tomás and Henry’s van wasn’t in the clearing in front of the cabin. The van was equally as inappropriate as the Corvette for driving up the rutted track. He’d be blocked in. He needed the key.

  Henry was still out cold. His face was turned away as Evan approached, his arms outstretched, chest rising and falling steadily. With hindsight, Evan should have noticed the ball bat only inches away from his fingers. In his defence, it was the middle of the night and the porch light barely did any more than show you where the door was.

  Keeping the gun in his right hand, Evan patted Henry down, a watchful eye on the cabin door. It had gone very quiet in there. He felt the keys in Henry’s front pants pocket. He stuffed his hand in, got the keys between his fingers. Then Henry moved. He jack-knifed at the waist, sat bolt upright. Evan’s hand was trapped. It was only for a split second, but it was enough.

  By the time he jerked it free, keys gripped firmly in his fist, Henry had him by the ankle. He pulled sharply, dragging Evan down on top of him. He gasped in pain as Evan landed on his broken ribs, the back of Evan’s head butting his battered face. He didn’t care, the pain just fed his anger, made him more determined. His groping fingers found the baseball bat. He clamped it across Evan’s throat, tight up under his jaw, and squeezed Evan towards oblivion.

  Evan felt as if a car had run over his neck. He thrashed and writhed on top of Henry, Henry’s grunts of pain loud in his ear as he pulled him harder into his body. He only had seconds before he blacked out.

  He wasn’t thinking straight, all his concentration instinctively on the bat across his neck, on the dwindling supply of oxygen getting into his lungs. His head was about to explode, pounding, throbbing in time with his racing heart.

  He still had the gun.

  He forced his chin towards his chest, neck muscles pulsing, the pressure on his throat intensifying. Looking down his body, his vision blurring, he opened his legs wide. Between them, underneath him, were Henry’s legs. He didn’t hesitate. He blew Henry’s kneecap right off.

  Henry screamed, throwing Evan off his body, the ball bat cartwheeling away into the darkness. He rolled on the ground, hands cupped around his shattered knee, not touching it, protecting what was left of it.

  Evan picked himself up, swallowed painfully a couple times. He rolled his neck. Something clicked in there that didn’t used to. He looked down at Henry. He thought about Arturo, thought about driving the toe of his shoe into the mess where Henry’s knee used to be.

  Henry saw him looking, read his mind. He blanched, turned away from him, still shielding his knee. Evan pushed the barrel of the gun into the back of Henry’s neck. He held it there a long moment.

  ‘This is for Arturo.’

  ‘Nooo!’

  Evan fired into the ground between Henry’s legs. Henry shrieked, a big, violent man reduced by pain and fear to a pitiful creature with a wet stain spreading across the front of his pants.

  Evan turned and ran back towards his car. He laughed out loud when he saw the van bogged down, halfway up the track. They’d made things easy for him. It had all been for nothing. He doubted Henry would see the funny side of it.

  Chapter 48

  GUILLORY WOKE HIM at six-thirty the next morning. He was considering telling her that her invitation to Baltimore had been rescinded for anti-social behavior when she beat him to it.

  ‘I’m not going to be able to get the time off to come to Baltimore. Not after Arturo Rivera was murdered.’

  He wasn’t surprised, had almost been expecting it.

  ‘Even though I’ve already solved it for you?’

  She laughed and he thought what a lovely sound it was to start the morning off. If it hadn’t been for Arturo, he’d have gotten to hear it in person too, not just down the phone line. Who knows what other noises?

  ‘Yep. I’m afraid so.’

  The huskiness in her voice made him think the same thoughts were going through her mind.

  ‘And you couldn’t have told me this yesterday?’

  ‘You only invited me yesterday. I knew if I told you I couldn’t make it the same day, you’d sulk for a week.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Uh-huh. So, to make it up to you, I’ll buy you breakfast.’

  ‘We had breakfast yesterday.’

  ‘Some people have breakfast every day.’

  ‘What, with the same person?’

  ‘Seven o’clock sharp.’

  The call ended as it usually did with him holding a disconnected phone. He dropped it on the bed and lay staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, thinking how some things just weren’t meant to be. Then he jumped in the shower and despite cutting it short he missed the next call while he tried to scrub away some of the previous day’s aches and pains. He was running late by the time he’d finished. His phone was caught up in the bedcovers so he didn’t see the missed call. Forgot all about his phone, in fact, left it under the bedcovers in his hurry to get there on time.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said, as he took the stool next to her at the counter.

  He pretended he hadn’t heard while silently mouthing the words along with her as he waved for some coffee. He was aware of her staring at him. He was about to say if she’d given him a little more notice, he’d have had time to comb his hair. He half expected her to spit on her fingers and slick it down. Instead, she took hold of his chin and lifted it.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I was nearly choked to death with the bat that was used to kill Arturo Rivera.’

  He made it sound like these things happened to him every day. Then he described the location of the cabin, where they’d find the bat unless Tomás or Henry had the presence of mind to look for it in the dark which he doubted.

  ‘More of your work done for you. You want me to interview the suspects for you as well?’

  She grunted, not very appreciatively.

  ‘Welcome to my world. I think I’m still a long way ahead.’

  Then he ran through the rest of the events of the previous day, although he left out his fledgling theory that Lauren might have engineered the whole thing. He didn’t need her laughing in his face this early in the morning.

  ‘So,’ she said, stretching the word out, ‘seeing as you now know what happened to Kristina Kincade, you don’t need me to run around after you doing all your work . . .’

  ‘So Baltimore’s back on.’

  The smile she gave him made him wish it was true. He knew it wasn’t.

  ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t tease.’

  ‘Don’t worry about—’

  ‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘What?’

  He knew damn well what but he wasn’t going to admit it.

  ‘Don’t you dare say it’s okay, Gina can make it after all.’

  He was tempted to say you started it. Despite the early hour, he had the sense not to.

  ‘I was going to say I don’t even know if I’m going yet. I haven’t heard back.’

  It was true as far as he was aware. If he’d looked at his phone before rushing out things might have been different.

  ‘What are you going to do if you meet with her?’

  Their breakfasts arrived before he answered, the same order as the day before.

  ‘I don’t know how you can keep going all day if you don’t eat anything except rabbit food,’ he said.

  ‘And I explained what’ll happen to you if you keep on eating all the hormones in that bacon.’

  ‘Feeding hormones to pigs is against the law, everybody knows that.’

  ‘So’s killing people. Ask . . .’

  They both dug into their food for a minute to pretend neither of them had noticed she almost said ask Arturo. Then she asked him again what he planned to do if he met with Lauren.

  ‘Try to talk her out of killing Ira Waits for one.’

  ‘You think that’s what she’s got in mind?’

  He sucked in air through his teeth as if
it was a difficult one.

  ‘There’s a good chance. She might have killed his brother, Garrett. Spencer was about to tell me when we were interrupted last night. You told me she might be a person of interest, said I might get a call about her. I haven’t yet, by the way.’

  She took a sip of her coffee, looked at him over the rim of the cup. He knew something was on its way he wouldn’t like.

  ‘I think—’

  ‘Don’t. Nothing good ever came of it.’

  ‘—you should take somebody along when you go to Baltimore. You know, a grown-up. I’m going to make some calls, get the guys on the Garrett Waits case to give you a call. I’m sure one of them will be happy to go with you.’

  ‘A babysitter, you mean?’

  Momentarily, frustration and irritation tightened up her face, then she took a few seconds to warm up a smile. She rested a hand on his arm.

  ‘Some people, sensible people, would use a different word. It starts with the letter b as well.’

  She cocked her head at him like a teacher inviting little Evan Buckley hiding at the back of the class to speak up.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said as if he’d spoken. ‘Backup. Because I’m not going to be there to save your ass this time. Are you following this so far or should I talk slower?’

  He almost laughed until he saw the look in her eyes. The words were light-hearted but the concern in her eyes was real.

  ‘Things have gotten a lot more serious with Arturo Rivera’s murder. These people kill like it’s a reflex action. You want to spend some time in the back of that van with that crazy fingernail guy. What’s his name?’

  ‘Tomás.’

  Speaking the name reminded him he didn’t know what had happened inside the cabin the previous night. With any luck Tomás had been on the receiving end of the shotgun blast he’d heard.

  ‘I’m glad we got that settled,’ Guillory said, mistaking his silence as he thought back to the previous night as tacit acceptance of a chaperone.

  Evan shrugged unhappily, even if he knew it made sense. He’d have been a lot less unhappy if he’d known his phone was going to ring out unanswered, tangled in the bedcovers.

  Chapter 49

  ‘I’M VERY SORRY for your loss,’ Evan said.

  Eva Rivera stared at him standing on the doorstep, not sure what to say. Evan imagined a number of things that might be going through her mind. You should be, you’re responsible for it was right up there, head of the line.

  ‘I lost him a long time ago,’ was what she said instead. The other things were just Evan’s guilty conscience. ‘Thank you, anyway.’

  She stood to the side without being asked, inclined her head into the house as an invitation. He stepped past her. The first thing he noticed was that the group photograph wasn’t on the wall. It was on the floor. It looked as if it had been punched, the glass cracked. He glanced quickly at her right hand.

  ‘I’m left-handed,’ she said, holding it up. The middle knuckle was swollen, an adhesive bandage taped across it. She walked past him, led him into the kitchen as she had the last time he was there. Evan bent to pick up the photograph seeing as they were going to be talking about the people in it.

  ‘Leave it there,’ Eva said over her shoulder.

  Poor, dead Arturo would have recognized the tone of voice. Evan left the photograph where it was.

  ‘You’ve got it on your phone, anyway,’ came from over Eva’s shoulder.

  By the time he got into the kitchen she was pulling a pack of Gitanes out of her bag. Evan smiled to himself as he thought back to his last visit.

  ‘Your brother still going on at you about smoking? I met him. George Ivanovsky. Except I didn’t know he was your brother the first time, of course. You forgot to mention he performed the autopsy on Lauren. I’ve never . . .’

  He stopped mid-sentence, hoping she wasn’t interested enough in his accusations to notice.

  ‘You’ve never what?’

  He’d been on the verge of saying he’d never come across anyone so tight-lipped. The image of Arturo with his mouth sewn shut had stopped his tongue dead.

  ‘I’ve never come across anyone who changed their name from Ivanovsky to Johnson,’ he said, amazing himself at his quick-witted improvisation.

  Eva looked like she didn’t believe that for a minute. She went along with it nonetheless.

  ‘My parents changed it when they first came here. George changed his back again. Something to do with Dmitri Ivanovsky. He was a—’

  ‘Russian microbiologist.’

  ‘You’ve heard the story, huh?’

  She got her cigarette going and took a long drag. It struck him that dying of lung cancer was the least of the problems for someone in her family. Suck away with impunity. It looked as if she’d come to the same conclusion. He saw her phone poking out of the top of her bag, in one of those little pockets designed specifically with that in mind. She saw him looking.

  ‘They sent the same picture to me if that’s what you’re wondering.’

  He nodded vaguely, his mind full of the image, mixed with admiration—and he wasn’t sure that was the right word—at how well she was taking it all. She was one tough old bird.

  ‘I’m so—’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s not your fault. Arturo chose to talk to you, knowing what . . . they’re like.’

  Had she been about to say Valentine instead of they? Evan reckoned she had, thought better of it for some reason.

  Speak of the devil and he doth appear.

  ‘You told him not to speak to me.’

  ‘I did. But you’re like gum caught in someone’s hair. The more people try to prise you out, the more you get stuck in. If he’d listened to me, kept his mouth shut, maybe he’d still be alive.’

  Just as when he’d gone to pick up the photograph, her tone suggested that there were no other alternatives. It was Eva’s way or the highway. Another fragment from his conversation with her brother came back to him.

  Eva doesn’t always know what’s best for everyone.

  She was right in this case, but there was obviously something in the past, some incident where she’d got it wrong. And it had to be connected. Everything was.

  ‘Your brother said you don’t always know what’s best for everyone. Do you know what he meant? I don’t think he was talking about your difference of opinion over smoking either.’

  After watching her stoic reaction when discussing Arturo’s fate and the matter-of-fact way she’d told him she received a picture of his mutilated face, he was shocked to see her go suddenly pale. She knew exactly what her brother meant. Her hand shook so badly she nearly missed her mouth with her cigarette. One last desperate drag finished it off and then she was fishing another one out of the packet. She lit it from the stub of the first one, then pulled out a wooden chair.

  A wooden chair with a lot of history as it turned out.

  ‘Don’t think I’m scared of them doing the same to me as they did to Arturo,’ she said.

  He didn’t think it for a moment, pitied the guys who tried to.

  ‘I already know everything,’ he said, ‘except for what happened to Jake Kincade.’

  She stared at the tip of her cigarette as she held it between her fingers. The expression on her face said she’d like to poke it in somebody’s eye. Evan kept his own eyes on it in case the nearest target would do.

  ‘The last time I was here you said Lauren came to stay for the weekend. You got a phone call, presumably from Jake, and she never got to go home. That’s not what happened, is it?’

  ‘I can’t believe George said that.’

  He realized she was responding to Ivanovsky’s accusation that she didn’t always know best.

  ‘I told Jake he wouldn’t do it,’ she carried on.

  ‘He?’

  ‘Valentine Waits. I told Jake he was bluffing, said he’d never do anything to a woman he’d been married to, who’d had his child. Not even the man Valentine Waits had become would d
o something like that, I told him. He believed me too. Idiot.’

  It wasn’t clear who the idiot was, Jake for believing her or herself for saying it in the first place.

  ‘David Eckert said Kristina thought the same.’

  Eva nodded, the attempt at making her feel better about herself washing over her as if he hadn’t spoken.

  ‘We both did. Kristina thought she knew him. Maybe she did back when they were together. But that was ten years before this happened. People can change a lot in ten years. Valentine Waits did. The end result’s the same. We were both wrong. And Kristina paid the price for it.’

  She suddenly stood up, needing the help of the kitchen table to push herself to her feet. She moved the chair a foot to the left, nodded to herself and sat down again. Evan tried to look like it was the most natural thing in the world to do, he’d been about to suggest it himself.

  ‘Jake blamed himself,’ Eva said. ‘Almost as much as he blamed me.’

  ‘So he ran away. Has he come back? Is that what all this is about? He killed Garrett Waits five years ago and now he’s back again to finish the job, to kill Ira now that he’s out of prison.’

  Eva’s mouth dropped open. For the briefest of moments Evan thought it was amazement at his deductions. That thought bit the dust as soon as she started laughing. It reminded him of Spencer and Eckert laughing when he said he’d followed Spencer thinking he might be Jake Kincade.

  He’s in the wind.

  The laughing stopped as abruptly as it started before Evan felt the need to shake her.

  ‘Jake wanted to punish himself. And he wanted to punish me.’

  She jumped out of the chair, adrenalin fueling the remarkable change from a minute ago.

  ‘He let himself into the house using the key I gave Kristina.’

  She turned an imaginary key in a lock visible only in her mind. Evan was there, he was Jake, creeping into her house, his mind filled with thoughts of retribution.

  ‘Then he sat in this chair. In this exact spot.’

  She put a bony hand on the back of the chair and shook it so the legs rattled on the floor, the reason for shifting it now clear.

  Evan held his breath, felt the hard, wooden chair under him.