Dust Devil (52 page)

Attempt
the end, and never stand to doubt;

Nothing’s
so hard but search will find it out.

Hesperides:
Seek and Find

—
Robert
Herrick

“
What
did you find out, Virgil?” Renzo asked, glancing up from his
desk at the young black man who had entered his office at the
newspaper. Virgil Bodine was a journalism major at the university.
After Renzo had taken over the Trib, he had given Virgil a job as a
summer intern.

Virgil
flipped open his small notepad, reading back the notes he had made to
himself during the investigation Renzo had instructed him to
undertake. “One Lamar Rollins, black, aged seventeen. Mother,
Tonette Rollins, current whereabouts unknown. Father, unknown. Lamar
lived with his grandmother, Mabel Rollins, in a rundown cottage
outside the town limits, in what’s commonly
referred
to by a name that isn’t any nicer than what your part of town
is called, Boss. I have the address and a telephone number. Mrs.
Rollins may or may not have a phone currently, however, as it’s
periodically disconnected due to her inability to pay the bill. Other
members of the Rollins family include Thaddeus Rollins, Mrs.
Rollins’s brother-in-law, and Keisha Rollins, the deceased’s
mentally retarded little sister. Mrs. Rollins used to be employed at
the dog-food factory but was forced to quit work some years back, due
to ill health. She currently receives government assistance. Mr.
Rollins has been employed at Field-Yield, Inc. for a number of years,
as the head janitor, and lives with his dead brother’s wife.

“
After
dropping out of Lincoln High School at age sixteen, Lamar was
employed at FYI, as well, as a janitorial assistant. In his daylight
hours, he was known to have grown and marketed marijuana. Some of his
more major customers are rumored to have been friends from your side
of the tracks, Boss.

“
When
he wasn’t engaged in peddling pot, Lamar spent most of his
spare time hanging with various and assorted homeys at Zeke Folsom’s
pool hall and Porkchop Isley’s pawn shop, from whom—it is
gossiped—Lamar purchased the cheap Saturday-night special he
was carrying the night he was killed. Also in his possession that
unfortunate evening was a pair of night-vision binoculars he had
apparently heisted from Drucker’s Sporting Goods.

“
His
gun had not been fired. Autopsy report showed he was shot twice from
long range—both times in the chest— with a hunting rifle,
definitely a thirty-aught-six, as shell casings were recovered at the
crime scene. Said shots were,
in
fact, the cause of death. It had been speculated, however, that Lamar
might have drowned in the mud puddle in which he was found facedown
alongside his clunker, but there was no edema of the lungs or foam
present in the airway. A number of partial prints were recovered from
Lamar’s old car. But it is not known whether these will
ultimately prove of any use, as the killer may have worn gloves.”

“
Virgil,
I’m
very
impressed!”
Renzo grinned broadly. “If you keep on like this, you’ll
be a fine investigative reporter by the time you’ve graduated
from college.”

“
Thanks,
Boss.” Virgil beamed with pride, reminding Renzo of himself as
a young man who had worked eagerly on his first big assignment.

“
Now,
give me Mrs. Rollins’s address and telephone number. Then get
on one of the computers and get those notes of yours typed up neatly
for me, please.” Renzo was sure that Virgil had his own form of
shorthand, as he himself did. Most journalists did, and usually,
nobody could read or understand it except themselves. Sometimes it
was even indecipherable to the reporter who had written it. “After
that, check in with Morse to find out what’s doing.”

“
Right,
Boss.”

“
Oh,
and, Virgil, close the door for me on your way out, will you?”

The
young black man nodded. Once Renzo was alone, he picked up the
receiver on his telephone to place a call to his grandfather. They
had a fairly lengthy and rather heated discussion, which ended with
Papa Nick snorting skeptically and growling, “Renzo, getta
real. That Rollins boy’s death may well be drag related, I
donna know and I donna care. But I will tell you this. Nobody in the
business hadda it outta for him. I mean, when was the last time you
ever hearda anybody in the business making a hit with a
thirty-aught-six, for Christ’s sake? No, for this, they woulda
used a handgun, a twenty-two... two shots to the backa the head—and
dumped him in a quarry afterward. But of course, I can’t speak
for alla these new boys on the block. They donna got the same kinda
rules we hadda in my day. So far as I can tell, they donna got no
rules whaddasoever! Be that as it may, however, your brain’s
still backa in Washington. So you’re barking uppa the wrong
tree. Looka someplace else... someplace closer to home.”

With
those mysterious words, before Renzo could even thank him, Papa Nick
hung up on him. As he had come to believe about the conversation that
had taken place between them in his grandfather’s sleek black
car that long-ago summer’s day, out on the old town road, Renzo
now suspected Papa Nick had again been trying to tell him something.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t a clue as to what it was, and before
he could ponder the matter further, Sarah knocked upon the window in
his office door, then stepped inside.

“
Are
we still going to lunch together?” she asked, smiling.

“
Hmm.
I don’t know.” Renzo’s dark eyes traveled
appreciatively over her French braid, the simple sundress she wore,
her bare legs and sandals. She looked just as she had that summer’s
day he had first made love to her, he thought. “Maybe I’ll
just close the blinds here in my office, and we’ll think of
some other way to entertain ourselves.” He stood as he spoke,
and stalked her, pressing her up against the door and kissing her
lingeringly.

“
Renzo!”
she gasped against his mouth. “Your employees can see us!”

“
Well,
if they don’t like it, they’re fired. Come on. I’ve
changed my mind about going out to lunch. We’ll eat upstairs in
the loft. I’ll make us a couple of salami sandwiches.”

“
Dining
in today, are we, Boss?” Morse called casually, smirking as
Renzo led Sarah down the hall to the stairs that would take them up
to the loft.

“
I’d
dine in, too, Boss, if I had me a woman as pretty as that one,”
Virgil added.

Sarah
flushed crimson with embarrassment at their teasing, but Renzo only
grinned, knowing how much Morse and Virgil liked her and that they
didn’t mean anything disrespectful.

“
I
am just mortified!” Sarah hissed, once she and Renzo had
reached the loft.

“
Oh,
they didn’t mean any harm, baby,” he insisted. “Besides,
I’ll bet you ate with big, bad Bubba in
his
office
more than once.”

“
He
didn’t have a bed in his!”

“
Well,
I always did say he was a damned fool.” Catching her in his
arms, Renzo tossed her down on his bed. “But I’m not. And
that’s precisely why I plan to keep the loft just as it is,
sweetheart—at least until we decide what furniture we do and
don’t want.” He had her pressed into the mattress now and
was kissing, caressing and undressing her as he spoke, his hands
deftly unbraiding her hair, tangling and spreading it about her.
Presently, they were
both
naked and Sarah was moaning softly with desire and need, drawing him
down to her urgently.

“
No...like
this....” Renzo rolled her over, positioning her on her knees,
so her face was against the big, fluffy pillows. “Because I
know you don’t want my employees to hear your cries of delight,
my love,” he whispered impudently in her ear before he thrust
into the warm core of her from behind, one hand wrapped in her mass
of hair, the other upon her mound, rubbing, stroking as he drove into
her, drove them both to mindless, breathless excitement and
fulfillment.

Afterward,
in the loft’s small bathroom, he made love to her once more
against the shower wall, while the water sprayed endlessly upon them.
“Probably driving old Cooper Northrup’s water-treatment
plant nuts,” Renzo murmured, laughing softly against Sarah’s
sweet, pliant mouth, her slender, bared throat. Then, when they had
dressed, he actually did fix her a salami sandwich.

“
You
want to take a ride with me?” he asked as they ate.

“
Wasn’t
that what I just did?” she inquired archly.

“
You
keep on like that, and we’ll be taking that kind of ride again
before we leave here.” His gleaming eyes roamed over her
insolently. A smug, arrogant smile curved his lips, letting her know
he was well pleased with himself. And with her. “No, I mean a
ride in my car, baby. I’m going out to talk to Lamar Rollins’s
grandmother—and she might talk easier to you than to me.”

“
Why
do you want to talk to her at all?” The happy light in Sarah’s
eyes darkened abruptly. “Oh, Renzo, why? I don’t
understand why you’re mixing yourself up in all this. You know
Hoag still thinks you’re guilty of murdering
Lamar,
that I lied for you that day in his office. So, why?”

“
Because,
for whatever reason, Lamar trusted me, Sary—and I don’t
imagine there were ever too many people he trusted in his entire
young life. Because he counted on me to do the right thing if he were
killed. Because if not for the strange twists of fate, if not for my
parents taking me in all those years ago, I might have wound up just
like poor Lamar. You know I might have,
cara.
Maybe
I owe the Lamar Rollinses of the world something for that—because
I got out, and they didn’t. Besides, you know that damned fool
Hoag isn’t out there beating the bushes, trying to find the
real killer, that he isn’t going to be satisfied with pinning
Lamar’s murder on anybody but me. Don’t you grasp what
that means, Sarah? It means there’s a killer on the loose
somewhere in this town, walking around scot-free, probably laughing
up his sleeve at all of us! A killer who may kill again!”

That
thought had not previously occurred to Sarah, and now, as it did, she
shivered. “All right,” she said quietly. “I’ll
go with you.”

Lamar
Rollins had lived in what was contemptuously referred to by some in
town as “Niggerville.” It huddled just beyond the town
limits, in a cluster of small, old, derelict houses that formed the
community’s only real slum. There were, of course, other
lower-class sections, like Miners’ Row and Dagotown, composed
principally of blue-collar workers, both white and Italian. But those
who lived in the black ghetto were, for the most part, truly poor,
the majority subsisting on welfare and food stamps.

The
Rollinses’ house was no different from its neighbors, a
two-bedroom cottage that hadn’t seen better days for at least a
couple of decades. The once-white paint was grimy and flaking so
badly that the worn wood showed through in big patches. The front
porch had settled, so the overhanging roof sagged at one end,
shingles loose or gone entirely. Shutters hung askew or were missing
altogether. Windows were cracked and shattered, boarded up in places.
The tiny yard was overgrown with weeds where there had once, long
ago, been flower beds, and what had once been lawn was now gravel and
dirt, home to discarded beer cans, empty cigarette packages, old
newspapers and other trash.

Before
coming out here, Renzo had taken his automatic pistol out of the
Jaguar’s glove compartment, tucking it into his belt at the
back so it was concealed by his suit jacket. Sarah had been horrified
by his action. But now, as they got slowly out of the roadster, she
knew why he had wanted the gun, and she realized this was not the
first time he had ever had cause to come into a neighborhood such as
this one.