Black Night Falling (20 page)

I ran until my lungs caught fire, and even then I kept staggering forward through the undergrowth. I could barely see what was in front of me, the moon all but obscured, but it was better that way, some protection in the darkness.

I stumbled up against the trunk of a red pine and clung on to keep myself upright, sucking down air as fast as I could. I looked back but the woods behind me were quiet, no sign of anyone. I couldn’t square what I’d seen and what I’d heard. Didn’t matter now; all I wanted was to get to a telephone before Tindall.

I took off again, Barrett’s gun still locked in my grip. Best guess, I’d headed south away from Coughlin’s house, and I kept going in that direction in the hope I’d come out on Park, the same road we’d taken out of town. Helped that the land sloped gently downwards – the path of least resistance.

It felt like I ran all night. Lizzie was with me all the way – but not how I wanted her to be; terrible images of hooded men seizing her in the dead of night, then of her body, snapped and broken like a discarded plaything. I remembered how Alice’s corpse looked on the railroad tracks in Texarkana, and saw it now with Lizzie in her place.

There was a noise ahead, and suddenly I passed through the tree line and was on a road. My feet went from under me on the new surface and I crashed to the asphalt. I pushed myself up and tried to get my bearings, but it was a road surrounded by the woods, could’ve been anywhere.

Seeing no cars in either direction, I gulped down some air and started running along the verge, hoping I was heading north, back to where I’d left Barrett’s LaSalle. One dread thought broke through my Lizzie nightmares: Layfield was in these woods somewhere. Running. Desperate. If he saw me first, I’d be dead before I even heard the shot.

I kept moving. After a half-mile or so, I came to the turnoff that led to Coughlin’s. There were no headlamps on the lane, nothing moving as I sprinted past it. I sped up, knowing I was close now, running on empty.

I almost fell to my knees with relief when I saw the LaSalle. I leaned against the chassis, gasping for air. I lifted my head to scan the area around me, but the road and the trees and the night were still.

I got in and checked the glove compartment. Layfield’s gun was still there, wrapped in my handkerchief. It felt like an empty victory; I wasn’t sure it even mattered any more. One way or another, I didn’t think Layfield would ever see the inside of a courtroom.

I redlined the engine heading back to town. The liquor store with the blinking sign was the first place I came across I thought might have a telephone. I burst through the door, startling the woman behind the counter. The blood on my shirt drew her eye as I approached. I pulled out my wallet and tossed a bill down in front of her. ‘I need to make a call, my wife is in danger.’ I looked over her shoulder, saw a telephone on a desk in a small room at the back.

‘What on— What manner of danger?’

‘Please, I don’t have time.’ I lifted the countertop to step inside, but she took hold of it to stop me.

‘You been drinking, mister?’

‘They’ll kill her. There are men coming to take her—’ I dipped my head, choking up. When I looked up again, my eyes were wet. ‘Please, ma’am. Please. This is my only chance . . .’

She looked shocked to see me dissolve in front of her. She eyed me a second longer, then lifted the countertop herself. ‘So you know, I keep a Winchester right here – case you was of a mind to take liberties.’ She pointed to the rifle stashed next to her stool.

I snatched up the receiver and asked the operator to place a call to our home line in Venice Beach. The woman at the desk stared at me openly as I waited for the connection. A clock on the wall ticked the minutes away, playing on my nerves.
Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up—

‘My apologies, sir, but there’s no answer on that line.’

My insides turned to liquid. ‘Try again.’

I counted off almost a minute. The operator came back, ‘I’m sorry, still no—’

‘Try the offices of the
Pacific Journal
. Please.’ I reeled off the number.

When the call went through, it was a voice I didn’t recognise that answered.

‘This is Charlie Yates calling for Lizzie Yates.’

‘I’m afraid she’s not here, Mr Yates.’

‘When did you see her last?’

‘I’m not sure I could say. I believe she’s off today.’

‘Is Acheson there?’

‘Mr Acheson is in his office.’

‘Go get him.’

‘Well, I don’t know—’

‘Go get him now. Tell him it’s urgent.’

She made a clucking sound, then said, ‘Very well.’

In my mind I saw them come for Lizzie, snatching her off the sidewalk as she arrived home. I told myself she was more use to them alive than dead. It was grim solace.

‘Charlie?’

‘Buck, I’m looking for Lizzie.’

‘What’s wrong, you sound frantic?’

‘Buck, have you seen her? This is serious.’

‘No, I haven’t seen her today. You’ve tried the house?’

‘She’s not answering. I need you to send someone over there. I don’t know what I’ve done.’

‘Done to whom? Slow down and tell me—’

‘Send a man, right now. If she’s there, bring her back to the office and don’t let her out of your sight.’

He hesitated a moment, then I heard him press the receiver against his chest as he issued a muffled instruction to one of the staff. Then he came back on the line. ‘I’ve sent Bunny Edwards.’

It felt like I could breathe again for the first time in an hour. ‘Thank you. Tell him to be careful.’

‘Charlie, is this a matter for the police?’

‘No. No cops.’

‘Because if she’s in some kind of danger . . .’

‘I don’t trust them to do anything.’ The part I didn’t say:
I don’t know where this leads any more.
I asked the clerk for the liquor store’s number and recited it to Acheson. ‘Call me back on that line as soon as you hear from Edwards.’

‘What if she’s not there?’

I held my face in my hand. ‘Have him call you straightaway.’

It was a ten minute drive from the
Journal
to our apartment. I stood over the telephone, feeling like my nerves were being stripped away a fibre at a time. The clerk watched me, her curiosity obvious, but saying nothing.

I jumped when it rang. In the split second before I picked up, I tried to gauge if the time elapsed indicated good or bad news.

‘Yates.’

‘Charlie, it’s Buck. She’s not answering the door.’

I slammed my fist onto the desktop, making the clerk jump.

‘Edwards said the lock has been forced. He’s holding on the other line, he’s asking if he should go inside.’

I felt riven. ‘Yes. Tell him not to disturb anything.’

He went away and came back. ‘He’s doing it, he’s going to call right back. Charlie, what in god’s name is going on?’

‘The men I’m investigating here were behind the burglary. It was a warning shot. They wanted me gone, and now they’ve threatened Lizzie.’

‘How . . . how is that possible?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t— Jesus, Buck, what do I do?’

‘Keep your head. You don’t know anything yet.’

He was right, but I had the same feeling in my gut as when Alice disappeared all those months before. One you never forgot; the feeling that she was never coming back. ‘When did you see her last?’

‘She was at the paper yesterday. She seemed . . . she was fine.’

Something sudden. A bad sign.

He started talking away from the receiver and I closed my eyes, waiting, gripping a fistful of my hair.

I felt a touch on my forearm, opened my eyes and saw the clerk had laid her hand there in a gesture of concern.

A telephone rang on Acheson’s end. Someone shouted over to him, but I couldn’t make out the words. Then he called down the line. ‘There’s no one there. It’s empty.’ The relief in his voice was evident, but I didn’t feel any of it. ‘Bunny says the place is a wreck, though, Charlie. I’m going to call the police, it’s the only course. If someone’s taken her . . .’

I said nothing, my thoughts crowded out by a barrage of brutal images. He took my silence as agreement.

‘What are you going to do now?’

I put my hand on the wall, my arm trembling with adrenaline. ‘I’m going to find out if they have her. Then I’m going to get her back.’

‘Where can I reach you?’

‘You can’t. I’ll call you.’ I went to hang up, then thought again. ‘Wait. She’s got a cousin in Arizona. Phoenix.’ The place she ran to after Texarkana. A shot in the dark. ‘Get in touch with her, would you? Just in case. I don’t know her number but her name’s Clemence Anderson, she lives on Encanto Boulevard—’

‘We’ll track her down for you.’ He couldn’t hide the pity in his voice.

‘Thanks, Buck.’

‘Charlie?’

‘What is it?’

‘Try to stay calm. Don’t let your fears run away with you on this.’

‘It’s too late for that.’

I set the receiver down, clinging to the hope that Tindall might still make a deal to spare Lizzie: Layfield’s gun for her life. I didn’t like the chances; easier for him to lure me with her and kill us both. Except—

Except that he let Layfield escape without firing a shot. And the same for me – maybe. I was sure he’d seen me in the bushes; he could have put a bullet in me before I ran. Just maybe that meant Layfield – and therefore the murder weapon – still had value to him. Even after he’d taken that pot-shot at Coughlin.

I picked up the telephone one more time and called the Southern Club.

A man answered. His voice was partly drowned out by the band in the background, but I could hear enough to make out his accent wasn’t local – sounded more like Chicago.

‘This is Yates calling for William Tindall.’

The man paused, and I thought I heard him talking to someone. The music came over clearer. A slow number – Vaughan Monroe’s arrangement of ‘The Things We Did Last Summer’
.

‘Mr Tindall isn’t available for calls.’ Odds on: Tindall was there, told him to say it.

‘He’ll want to talk to me.’

‘Then he’ll talk to you when he’s good and ready.’ The inflection in his voice said he knew all about my business.

‘Listen, you son of a bitch, you tell him—’

The line went dead.

I dropped the receiver and slumped against the wall.

The clerk was looking at me, wringing her hands. She looked scared and sympathetic all at the same time. I nodded to say thanks and made my way to the door, thinking about going straight to the Southern Club to speak to Tindall. It felt like the worst play I could make, but I couldn’t see an alternative.

Then another thought: get the message delivered in person. An insider. Someone who could walk right up to Tindall without suspicion. Someone who owed me.

I opened the door to a night that was bleaker than any I could remember. I felt the pull of Barrett’s gun in my pocket, started shaking when I thought about what I’d done already, and the lengths I was willing to go to before the sun rose again.

It was only a few hours since I’d left Ella Borland’s house in the back of Layfield’s car, but everything looked different now. I felt like I could tear it apart with my bare hands. I stopped the car in front of her yard, jumped out and ran up to her door.

I knocked once. As before, she opened it a little way to peek out, and the second it moved, I barged through. She jumped backwards, screaming. I caught the door as it rebounded on its hinges and slammed it shut. I pointed to one of the easy chairs. ‘Sit down.’

She backed away from me, her eyes wide, taking in the blood and dirt all over my clothes. ‘Before you do anything—’

‘I said,
sit
.’

She lowered herself slowly into the chair, never taking her eyes off me, ragged breaths coming fast and hard. ‘I’m sorry, I’m—’

‘Where’s my wife?’

She squinted at me, thrown by the question. ‘What?’

‘Tindall threatened my wife and now she’s disappeared.’

She covered her mouth with her hand. The nail on her little finger was chewed to nothing. ‘I don’t know—’

‘Where is she, goddamn you?’

‘I swear, I don’t know anything about that.’

I took Barrett’s gun from my pocket. She threw her hands out in front of her. ‘Wait—’

I pointed it at the floor. ‘Layfield. Tindall. You set me up.’

‘I had no choice. You don’t understand . . .’ She started to sob.

‘Can the tears. Spill.’

She covered her face.

I stood over her, my head pounding. I realised that the clicking sound I could hear was my thumbnail flicking against the hammer.

‘I had to. This town— This godforsaken . . .’ She rubbed the tears away and looked up at me. ‘There are things I haven’t told you. I’m sorry.’ She glanced at the pack of Chesterfields, still on the table. ‘May I?’

There were two left in the pack. I took one and tossed it in her lap. She lit it, taking it from her mouth with trembling fingers. ‘What happened to you?’

‘He tried to kill me. But you knew that already.’

She shook her head violently. ‘No, I swear. I hoped . . .’

‘You hoped what?’

She took a drag of her smoke and exhaled a jagged plume. I could see her chest shaking as it rose and fell. ‘I suppose I hoped he was here to arrest you.’

‘Enough. You made a fool of me once already today. You knew what was going down when you called him here—’

‘I never called him.’

‘He just stopped by? Talk straight—’

‘Mr Tindall sent him. After he saw us together earlier.’

That slowed me down. ‘How did Tindall know who I was?’

‘He owns this town, he knows everything that goes on.’

‘You lured me here. You could have warned me.’

‘How?’ She leapt out of her seat. ‘Layfield was standing right next to me when you called, what else could I do?’ She was leaning in close, inches from my face. She spun away in frustration. ‘After I left you earlier, Pete Swinney called me—’ She saw me blank on the name. ‘He’s one of Mr Tindall’s men. He called right when I got home. He wanted to know what you said and where you went after I left you. I told him I didn’t know, but he didn’t believe me and he said he was sending someone over then, don’t move. I was terrified, I smoked my throat raw – I thought they were coming to kill me. That’s when Layfield came to the door and said I was to draw you out.’

She collapsed back into her seat and flopped her head back, aimed empty eyes at the ceiling.

I took a wooden chair from the table and set it in front of her. I sat down, the gun pressed against my thigh and pointing downward, starting to feel like I was taking my anger out on the wrong person. I looked at her again. ‘What’s Tindall’s interest in me?’

‘It’s because of Jimmy. It’s all because of Jimmy.’

‘Talk. Everything now.’

She shook her head. ‘Please. Please . . .’

I kept staring.

‘Don’t make me do this,’ she said. ‘If you go now, if you run—’

‘They’ve got my wife, I can’t run. Tell me, goddammit.’

She screwed her eyes shut. ‘Jimmy came to me – remember that. If he’d been truthful with me from the beginning, I maybe could have done something more. Just keep that in mind.’

‘What the hell did you do?’

She started in on her story and once she got going, it developed a momentum of its own – a penitent freed by the catharsis of confession. ‘The first time he approached me was in the summer, asking about Jeannie’s murder – he said he’d had a tip we were friends and could help with background for a story he was writing. I was still cut up about it, but I agreed to talk to him because he seemed like he gave a damn. I didn’t understand what he was trying to accomplish because, at the time, I believed the story the way the papers told it – Walter Glover and all that bunk – but I didn’t think anything of it.

‘Jimmy kept coming by, but only at weekends, and I was fond of him. He was just . . . a whirlwind. He never seemed to stop. He knew what I did to get by, and he didn’t care. He was troubled by something – anyone could see that – but he kept that part to himself. As though it was walled off. So I knew better than to ask – and so did he.

‘Then, a few weeks back, he turns up where I’m working out of the blue and says he’s come to town for good. The way he said it, I could tell he thought I’d be delighted. I had a clue he was soft on me, but this was the last thing I would have expected. I mean he was always talking about his work at the newspaper, back in Texarkana.

‘He took that room at Duke’s, and he’d keep coming by to see me – to talk. I saw a different side to him then because his mood depended on how much he’d had to drink. Sometimes he acted like we were courting – he was . . . crazy. Impossible. I got tired of him asking me about Jeannie, but he’d never let it go. He asked me the same questions over and over.

‘Then just after he moved into Duke’s, Pete Swinney showed up at my door. He made me a proposition – if I stuck close to Jimmy, kept them wise to what he got up to, he’d arrange a job for me at the Southern. A dancer—’

‘You were spying on Jimmy? Do I have it straight?’

She flushed red and cast her eyes to the floor, two small piles of ash by her feet where her cigarette had burned away in her hand. ‘I had to. It was a proposition in name only – you don’t turn Mr Tindall down. I didn’t see what harm it could do, it was just telling Pete where Jimmy went and who he spoke to. No great shakes.

‘But then Pete started calling me every day and then it was twice a day, and oftentimes more. He came down so hard, he kept telling me to get closer to Jimmy – “
I want every word
.” I got suspicious then, because Jimmy was like a dog with a bone when it came to Jeannie and the Prescott girl, and I’m not a fool, there’s no other reason why Mr Tindall would be interested in him. Or me. And I know what they’re capable of.

‘It went on like that for a couple weeks, and I was about ready to crack up because I was more and more certain they were involved in Jeannie’s killing, but there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it. I was scared to death – I could barely answer the telephone. Then one night Jimmy came by and he was mad and he was drunk. I wouldn’t let him in the door. I asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t go – everyone along the street was looking. He started pleading, said he’d made a mistake.’

My skin prickled.

‘He said he’d been by Cole Barrett’s house. He called him every name under the sun. I never saw him like that before – like he could kill someone. I let him in and tried to get him to tell me what had him upset that way, but he climbed inside a bottle and clammed up.’

It chimed with what Barrett had told me – Robinson going to his place and only leaving when Barrett set the dog on him. ‘You reported that back to Tindall?’

‘The next day.’ She was nodding. ‘I had to. Everyone knows Barrett runs bag for Teddy Coughlin. It was going to get back to them anyway.’

I saw it then. Jimmy died thinking his
mistake
was confronting Barrett; in reality, it was putting his trust in the wrong woman. ‘What was their response to that?’

She looked at the floor. ‘I don’t know. Swinney never said much of anything to what I told him.’

‘Now’s the time to come clean, Ella.’

‘Have you heard a word I said? They never clued me into anything, and it’s not as though I was about to ask.’ She brought her hands to her mouth and clamped her eyes shut, took a breath. ‘But the day after, Jimmy came to me saying he was in danger. He said they’d threatened him and told him to get out of town.’

‘Who had?’ The answer was obvious but I wanted to hear it from her lips.

She was already shaking her head. ‘He didn’t say, but . . .’

‘Doesn’t take a lot of thinking to figure out.’

She looked down, her eyes hooded. ‘Jimmy said he had help coming, someone to finish the job for him if he couldn’t do it himself.’

I felt that hot feeling in my throat again, guilt filling my chest like a spurt of fresh blood. He knew they were going to come for him and he stayed anyway. If I’d have just believed him. If I’d come quicker. If—

‘How in the hell could you look at him with a straight face after that?’

‘How do you think I felt? I could see what was going on. They killed Jeannie.’ Tears streamed from her eyes again. ‘It had to be them. They killed her, and no one cared.’ She doubled over, holding her face.

‘Except Jimmy. And you helped them get away with it.’

She didn’t reply, just sat sobbing in the chair, gasping every time she stopped long enough to draw breath.

I went to the kitchen and found a glass, filled it with water and offered it to her.

She wouldn’t take it. She was muttering words now, into her hands, too quiet to hear.

‘What did you say?’

‘I had no choice. I never had a choice.’

‘You could have told Jimmy what was going on.’

She sat up at that, her face and eyes red, couldn’t look at me. ‘I did tell him. I had to.’

‘Told him when?’

‘Right before the fire.’ She picked up the glass and dropped the stub of her cigarette into it – a hiss, then the water turning dirty grey and a smell of wet ash. She set it back on the floor. ‘He told me he was in love with me.’

Lovesick Jimmy; Lizzie on the money as always. ‘And in return you told him you were spying on him.’

‘No. Not right away.’ She reached for the pack of Chesterfields. I pushed them away and she shot me a look. ‘I told him he was being foolish, but he wouldn’t drop it. He kept on telling me he loved me, and he knew I felt the same. And then he asked me to marry him.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I blurted it out then – told him I had no feelings for him, that Mr Tindall made me get with him.’ She was all cried out, her voice shredded. ‘I never meant to hurt him, but you can’t blame me for how he was. He wouldn’t listen to reason.’

‘That was the day of the fire, wasn’t it?’

She nodded.

The day Robinson told the barman at the Keystone he wanted to die. I finally got hip – raging bull Jimmy brought to his knees not by lowlifes he was chasing but by the woman who cut his heart out. I wondered if that was what sent him charging out to Barrett’s the second time – and prompted Tindall and Coughlin to decide he had to be silenced for good. ‘That’s why you were scared he took his own life. You knew what you did to him.’

‘I never asked for his affection. I never led him on. I told him to run – begged him. I said that if they’d threatened him like I figured they had, he ought to take it seriously. That’s when he told me that Walter Glover didn’t kill Jeannie. I think he was looking for a way to hurt me.’

I stood up, paced over to the window and back.

‘I never had a choice,’ she said. ‘These men kill women like me without a second thought – you
know
that to be true. If I’d lied, or if I’d run, or if I’d said no, I’d have wound up the same way as Jeannie and Bess Prescott. That’s why I kept quiet when you showed up – to protect us both. And now it doesn’t matter, because they’ll kill me anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Because of you and Layfield and Jimmy. On account of what I know. Maybe not till after the election, but soon enough for sure.’

I wanted to say something to reassure her, but what she was saying made sense. ‘Why did they kill Runnels and Prescott?’

‘I don’t know.’

I stopped in front of her and said nothing. She looked up at me through her eyebrows. ‘I have no reason to lie to you now.’

I tightened my grip on the gun, but it was for show; I wouldn’t admit it, but my fury was already subsiding. My feelings didn’t run as far as pity, but I could recognise a woman caught in a crossfire.

‘It makes me ill thinking about what I had to do, and the people I’ve helped, but if Jimmy had told me from the start what he suspected about Jeannie, and what he was doing, I might’ve been able to warn him. Or do something different.’ She stood up and made a point of looking me in the eye as she took the last Chesterfield from the pack. ‘I never sought any of this out.’

‘Did Tindall tell you to spy on me too?’

She took the cigarette from her mouth, unlit, and turned away from me.

A tacit admission. It left me unmoved, no surprise any more. I thought about what I needed her to do, and what it would mean. She was right; chances were they’d kill her because she knew about Layfield, and if they thought she was helping me as well, it would only make it more certain. A choice: sacrifice this woman for a shot at saving my wife. It felt like my skull was contracting around my brain.

I stood up and started across the room. ‘I need to use your telephone.’

She nodded without facing me, opening her hand to indicate where it stood.

I asked the operator to place a call to the
Journal
. It would be futile, and I knew it, but I wanted to exhaust all the other options before making a decision.

Acheson came on the line. ‘Charlie?’

‘Buck, any word?’

‘I spoke to the police. They’re dispatching a car to take a look at your house, on account of the burglary before . . .’

‘You’re sitting on something, what is it?’

He grunted. ‘They said it’s too soon to start searching for her. That she’s an adult, so she could have just taken off somewhere of her own volition. Without a specific threat against her person—’