Don't Ever Get Old (24 page)

I think Buck can teach us all about discipline and about honesty. He reminds us that we can and should be better than we are. But he has a lot to learn about faith and forgiveness.

I am eternally grateful that, when I stumble, I have Jesus there to pick me up, but I fear that as Buck reaches his end, he will find himself facing the abyss alone.

 

38

Randall Jennings looked seriously pissed when he saw me stroll into the Criminal Justice Center with Felicia Kind.

“What's she doing here?” he demanded, pointing an angry finger at her.

“I didn't know it was improper for a victim's wife to visit the detective in charge of the murder investigation,” she said.

“Back in my day, we treated crime victims with a modicum of dignity and respect,” I added. “I assumed that was still the policy.”

“That's a bunch of shit and you know it,” Jennings said. “You came in with one of my suspects, just to fuck with me.”

Felicia gasped and put on the same wide-eyed expression of shock she'd shown me at the house. It was an extremely persuasive facsimile of surprise, and I would have been fooled if I hadn't known it was a lie. I wondered how much of what she'd told me was true. I didn't think she was the killer; I enjoyed looking at her, but she certainly wasn't my favorite suspect. I wasn't about to trust her, though.

“This nice church lady?” I asked Jennings, feigning confusion. “I had no idea you were thinking in that direction. Isn't Norris Feely under arrest for the murder?”

“Norris Feely is in custody because he is a person of interest,” Jennings said.

I scratched my head. “Is that a different thing from a suspect?”

His mustache seemed to bristle. “You know what you're doing to me, you mean old bastard.”

But I wasn't doing anything to him as far as I knew. I certainly had no intention of messing up his murder investigation if it was leading to an outcome other than a frame job on me or Tequila. Maybe he thought bringing her to the station could jeopardize the admissibility of some future confession she might make. I didn't see why it would, though. When I was working homicide, concerned spouses of victims routinely visited me at the police station to check in on my investigations. It had never caused any legal problems, even when I ended up having to arrest them. I said something that wasn't quite apologetic and veered the conversation back toward Feely.

“He hasn't said anything helpful,” Jennings said. “But he seems to like you. Maybe he trusts you. And I've heard people say you used to be pretty impressive in the interrogation room.”

I'd loosened a few tongues in my day, and I had a gift for coaxing admissions out of the weak-willed. But I couldn't imagine Feely cracking easily, and my technique for softening recalcitrant subjects had involved liberal use of a rolled-up phone book.

“I'll see him alone,” I said. I didn't want to have to spar with Jennings while I was trying to figure out what was going on with Feely.

The detective stayed outside with Felicia. The two of them had a lot to talk about. I stepped into the sweatbox.

This, at least, was a kind of place that hadn't changed much since I was working. Two steel chairs, bolted to a cement floor, on opposite sides of a steel table, and a door that opened only from the outside. On television, interrogation rooms usually had two-way mirrors so people could watch the questioning. They always had microphones and cameras to record any statements. And maybe interrogations looked like that in places like San Francisco. But Memphis still stuck to the old ways, and this facility was just four solid walls. The process of extracting a confession could be ugly, and nobody wanted witnesses to what happened in that room.

If there was a video or audio recording of the interrogation, the scumbag's defense lawyer was entitled to a copy. Then he could scrutinize the cops' behavior throughout the process, looking for a reason to move that his client's statement be excluded from the trial. So every cop worth his salt knows that the only record of what transpires in an interrogation room should be a signed confession.

I leaned against the table and felt very much at home.

Feely was sitting with his arms shackled behind him, and the handcuff chain threaded through the back of the chair. This pleased me; I didn't want to shake hands with him again.

The furniture had been arranged with a less generously proportioned occupant in mind, and Feely's gut was smushed up against the edge of the table.

“You look uncomfortable, Norris,” I said.

“Buck…” He smiled, relieved to see me. “Thank God you're here. I'm in a jam.”

I lit a cigarette and dropped the pack on the table. “Damn right you are.”

I offered him a smoke, but he just sat there looking indignant.

I pulled my memory notebook out of my pocket and laid it next to the Luckys, open to a clean page. I took my .357 out of the shoulder holster and set it next to the notebook, where Feely could get a good look at it.

“You have to help me,” he said. “Randall Jennings is trying to set me up for murdering Lawrence Kind.”

“That's one way of looking at it,” I said. “But maybe he fingered you because you're the one who killed that poor guy.”

His face slackened into what I didn't think was an expression of genuine disbelief. “You can't be serious.”

“I can be, sometimes, I reckon.” I picked up the .357 and spun the cylinder. “My friend here, though, is serious all the time.”

Feely smirked. “Come on, Buck, you're not going to scare me. We're friends. I had dinner at your house.”

“Larry Kind also had dinner at my house,” I said. “I had dinner with that poor Israeli girl.”

“What Israeli girl?”

If a suspect is left to sweat long enough in an interrogation room, some police believe they can actually smell a lie on him. Feely was giving me a nose full of it. He knew something; I was pretty sure. I decided to press him.

“We can place you in St. Louis at the time of the killing. We've got the records. Every place you go is recorded by the GHB.”

“The what?” His greasy features arranged themselves in a way that suggested real confusion.

I'd lost the name of the thing, got it wrong. I tried to look nonchalant as I flipped through the memory notebook.

“The GED.”

“Buck, I don't know what that means,” Feely said.

“The goddamn navigation computer.”

“You mean a GPS? I haven't got one of those in my car.”

I eyeballed him hard, trying to gauge whether he was telling a lie. If he wasn't, I supposed I'd bungled the bluff pretty well. It served me right for trying to bullshit about things I didn't understand.

“Don't give me that,” I said. “I know you were in St. Louis.”

Feely squirmed in his chair. “I didn't kill anybody.”

That response surprised me. I had expected him to deny leaving Memphis.

“What were you doing there, then?”

“I don't have to tell you that.”

Confirmation. He had been in St. Louis. I didn't let surprise register on my face; if he realized he was giving me information I didn't already know, he would clam up. So I sat there looking at him, drumming my fingers on the steel table.

“Look, I'm not your enemy here,” Feely said. “If you get me out of here, we can help each other.”

“Let's say I was willing or able to do that. What can you do for me?”

Feely didn't have an answer. He looked down at the table and carefully avoided my gaze.

“Norris,” I said after a long pause, “the best thing right now is to admit what you did.”

“I didn't do anything,” he insisted. “Jennings is trying to frame me.”

I couldn't totally dismiss the idea that Jennings might be up to something fishy. I had suspected him of trying to frame me and Tequila, and I still didn't understand what he was trying to accomplish by putting me and Norris in a room together.

“Why would Jennings frame you?”

“I can't explain here. He might be listening.”

“Nobody's listening to anything, Norris.”

“Yes, he is. It's a trap.”

It made no sense to trust Feely over Jennings. Despite my misgivings and my personal animus for the detective, he hadn't done anything that seemed wrong. I knew my grandson couldn't be a killer, but Jennings's suspicions about Tequila were objectively valid. And Feely had been on my short list of suspects even before he admitted he'd been in St. Louis when Yael was murdered. I wasn't ready to let my guard down around the detective; couldn't rule out the possibility that he'd tie Tequila up into some bogus bust. But I couldn't see any proof he was running the case dishonestly, and he seemed to be at least a couple of steps ahead of me on the killer's trail.

“I just wanted to do something for Jim, and to take care of Emily,” said Feely. “It isn't fair.”

I frowned at him. “If you want my help, you're going to have to come clean about what you were up to in St. Louis.”

“The same thing as you, I suppose.”

“How did you know Ziegler was there?”

He gave a full-body shudder when I spoke the Nazi's name, and his gaze flitted toward an air-conditioning vent in the ceiling. The guy watched too many movies. “I'm not as dumb as you seem to think I am.”

Maybe not. But I had three million dollars' worth of gold in my attic, and he was handcuffed to a chair, so he couldn't be all that smart, either.

He bared his teeth; scrunched up his little ferret face. “You've got it, don't you? I want my share.”

I wrinkled my forehead in mock sympathy and slid the pack of cigarettes across the table.

“Where you're going, those are as good as currency,” I said.

“Buck, all games aside, you know I got a raw deal here. Help me, please. I want to go home.”

But I didn't know how I could help him, even if I had wanted to. And what I wanted to do was let Randall Jennings do his job, at least insofar as he was doing it to Norris Feely.

“I saw you threaten Kind, and you were in St. Louis when Yael was murdered. You're as good a suspect as anybody, and if the detective said you did it, I don't know any different.”

“Don't leave me in this place.” He was sobbing a little, realizing nobody was coming to rescue him. “Think of my wife. She just lost her father.”

“I'll look in on her for you.” I had a feeling Emily would be better off without him in the long run anyway. Of course, I might have thought the same thing about Felicia Kind, and she seemed to be having a rough time since her husband's death. But I remembered Kind's father, weeping at the funeral. I had no sympathy for Norris Feely.

“You son of a bitch, you've been setting me up all along,” he shouted. “I swear to Christ, I'll get you for this.”

“Maybe you should speak to a neurologist,” I said. “My doctor tells me paranoia is an early symptom of dementia.”

“You're in cahoots, you bastards. I'm not your patsy.” His eyes turned upward, toward the vent. “Do you hear?” he shouted at it. “I'm not your fucking patsy.”

I stood, scooped up the rest of my belongings, and banged on the door. Jennings opened it from the outside, and I left Norris to scream at the ceiling.

“Did you learn anything?” the detective asked.

“No,” I said, looking at Felicia. Her expression was hard to read. “Did you?”

Jennings gave a diffident shrug. “Suppose not.”

I sighed. “Guess I'll just collect my pretty blond lady and take my leave, then.”

 

39

“Norris Fucking Feely.”

Tequila had been growling about what he was going to do to Feely ever since I'd told him what I learned at the police station. I'd expected him to be angry, but I figured he'd cool down after he'd fumed a bit and gone off to bed; he stayed in my house and slept in his father's old room.

The next morning, though, he was still muttering darkly, and he spent the whole day stomping around the house and inflicting streams of colorful invective on anyone within earshot.

I heard about how he wanted to pop Feely's fat head like a zit and about how he wanted to punch Feely in the belly until the tubby little fucker puked blood. I heard about how he could beat Feely to death with a shovel and then use the shovel to bury the body in the woods. I heard about how he wanted to take things slow; put in some quality work with a fish scaler and a screwdriver on the motherfucker's fingers and toes and then cut some things off the face before moving in toward the vital bits.

Rose and Fran had been around to hear some of these things, and they'd found it all very upsetting, but Tequila wasn't paying any attention.

“That's not the kind of stuff you should be saying when you are a suspected psycho killer,” I told him.

He couldn't take the hint. “Feely is the psycho killer. That's why I am going to peel his fucking face off, shove a candle up his ass, and turn his skinless head into a macabre jack-o'-lantern.”

“He's not under arrest for the killings. He's merely detained as a person of interest.”

Tequila scratched his head. “What the fuck is a person of interest?”

I sighed and dropped myself down on the sofa. “It means nobody is sure whether he did it or not. I don't know what the hell is going on, Billy. We have three million dollars' worth of gold in the attic, there's a killer who may still be on the loose, and the only thing keeping Feely from telling the police about the treasure is the fact that he still thinks he can take it from us.”

Tequila told me some things he'd like to do with meat hooks and acetylene torches. He told me what a razor blade could do to a human eyeball.

I felt sorry for everyone who hadn't been blessed with grandchildren.

“Can you help me work this out?” I asked. “I thought you were supposed to be helping me, and I feel like I'm alone with it now.”