Firebreak: A Mystery (27 page)

“How are you, Manny?”

“Fat and happy, like my daddy used to say. A glass of iced tea in one hand, the remote in the other. All in all, a good morning.”

“You got life figured out.”

He chuckled. “I’m just a lazy old man. What can I do for you?”

“Remind me what room number Brenda Nix is in.”

He pointed off to his left. “Room Five. I just delivered fresh towels. I know she’s home.”

“No problems here?” she asked.

“It’s all good. I appreciate you checking on me.”

*   *   *

Brenda answered the door and stepped back for Josie to enter. Her face was drawn, her eyes tired and red-rimmed. With no makeup and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Brenda had lost the playmaker image that Josie associated with her. She looked like a tired, grieving widow. Josie stepped inside and a woman with Brenda’s auburn hair and wide green eyes stood up from a reading chair by the window and offered her hand.

“Hi. I’m Patty Netham. We spoke on the phone a few days ago.”

“It’s good to meet you.”

“I appreciate you calling the way you did. Brenda needed family here to support her.” She glanced at her sister and the two women smiled slightly. “I’m going to go fill the tank up and grab us some lunch. We’re going to Alpine for the day, unless you think this will take a while?”

“No, this won’t take too long. I just have some follow-up questions.”

Patty hesitated and looked at her sister again. “Do you want me to call your lawyer? To let her know you’re speaking with the police?” Patty glanced at Josie apologetically, but Josie shrugged it off.

Brenda waved a hand in the air. “I’m too tired for lawyers. I just want this over with.”

After Patty left Josie took her place in the reading chair and Brenda sat in a matching chair at the writing desk across from the bed.

“Brenda, I’ve come to ask you some tough questions today. I want you to understand, I’m not asking them because I think you’re a suspect. I’m asking because I believe that Billy’s death and Ferris’s death are connected in some way. I need to understand their relationship.”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.” She seemed lost and overwhelmed and Josie wondered if she would be able to provide the honest answers needed.

“I want to understand why Ferris was attracted to Billy. I need to understand what Billy thought of Ferris. I need to know if their relationship was causing problems for other people, maybe other band members. I’d like for you to tell me their story so I can pull out the details that may help us make sense of their deaths.”

Brenda stood and walked to the coffeemaker by the TV. She took the carafe, filled it with water in the bathroom, and came back, busying herself as she began to talk.

“In a matter of days I’ve discovered that almost everything I think about myself and my family, everything that I believed in, was wrong,” she said. “It’s not just Billy, either. It’s my own family. Patty and I spent the last two days sitting in this hotel room telling the truth. Not what we thought needed to be said. Just the truth. It was the most revealing conversation of my life.”

Brenda took a deep breath and sat back down in her seat, looking at Josie now. “I left my family because I didn’t think they wanted me. I was twenty years old. I knew I couldn’t sing or play an instrument like the rest of them. I always felt like a misfit. Like they were ashamed of me, and they didn’t know what to do with me. Patty said she thought it was jealousy on my part. My sisters thought I was jealous of the rest of the family, and I put such a distance between us that they didn't know how to talk to me.” She was quiet for a moment. “Looking back on it, I think she’s right about the jealousy. I miss my family. I miss my sisters. And I think they miss me too.” Brenda shut her eyes as if she might cry again but no tears came. “All these years without my family.”

“What did your family think about Billy? Were they fans?” Josie asked.

She smiled a little. “Patty said the family used to joke about me coming back to manage them. They claimed if I could make Billy a star that I could manage anyone.”

Josie was taken aback that Brenda didn’t appear angry at the harsh opinion of Billy.

Brenda waved off Josie’s surprised expression. “Here’s what I’ve known for a long time, but never allowed myself to really acknowledge. I worked a lot harder at Billy’s career than he did. He was a country musician because it was a job. He had someone making his decisions for him: telling him when to show up, what to wear, where to be, and what songs to sing when he got there.” She was quiet a moment, her expression grim, as if she wasn’t sure if she should go on. “Billy wasn’t a thinker. He needed someone to do that for him. I don’t know if he really wanted a wife, but he needed a manager. And I came as a package deal.”

“The rumors about Billy and Ferris. Had you heard them?”

“Please.” She made a dismissive face. “People are so cruel. They love to humiliate. Better yet, they love to knock you down a notch. One of the waitresses at the Hell-Bent pulled me aside one night when the band was onstage. She actually had me follow her outside behind the kitchen. It was dark out. I could hear the band pounding out a Waylon Jennings song inside. The crowd was crazy—it was a good night. And she stands right next to me and puts her hand on my shoulder and says, ‘Honey, I’m telling you this as a friend. For your own good.’” Brenda tipped her head down and looked at Josie to make sure she knew the truth.

“She was no friend,” Josie said.

“Exactly. She tells me that Billy and Ferris are lovers. That was the term she used. I could have thrown up right there. Until that moment I had known Ferris had a thing for Billy, like a fan thing, but nothing more. I knocked the woman’s hand off my shoulder and went back inside.”

“Do you think there was any truth to the rumors?”

Brenda shrugged, almost imperceptibly, and took a moment to continue. “I don’t know if they actually were lovers, like she suggested. But I know Billy went to Presidio to visit Ferris on several occasions, and then lied to me about it. He called Ferris daily when he wasn’t around. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the attraction was. I found Ferris to be obnoxious and not terribly good-looking.”

“I’ve heard Ferris stroked Billy’s ego, told him how wonderful he was. Did you see that?”

She choked out a laugh. “It was disgusting. All the time. Billy was so gifted. An incredible performer. Ferris would tell him he was going to be a megastar. He’d be top ten on CMT.” Brenda shook her head. “You know what pissed me off? Ferris and I both knew Billy wasn’t gifted. He was good. And he looked the part. And he had a good band to back him up. With the right set of circumstances Billy could have made it in Nashville. But Ferris’s fawning all over him was not helpful.”

“Do you have any idea who could have killed Ferris?”

Brenda looked at her for a long moment. “I could have killed him, but I didn’t. As far as who else hated him as much as I did? I can’t answer that.”

“Do you have any idea why he would have been at your home the night of the evacuation?”

“I don’t know. He knew we were leaving. Billy told him. I honestly don’t know why he would have come to our home.”

Josie noted that this was new information—she hadn’t known that Billy had told Ferris they were leaving—but she saw no benefit to questioning Brenda about the omission at this point. “Could he have been looking for something?”

Brenda made a face as if the question was ridiculous. “We don’t have anything worth looking for! The guitars and amps were headed with us to Austin.”

Josie paused, dreading the rest of the conversation. “I received some troubling news from the coroner. Are you aware that Ferris was HIV positive?”

Her eyes widened and she put a hand to her chest. “What?”

“The coroner tested him. He confirmed the results with a second test.”

Brenda’s hand moved up to her mouth, her expression filled with dread. “Billy?”

“His test came back negative. Just to be sure though, the coroner said you’ll still want to test now and then test again in a few months.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You weren’t aware of this?” asked Josie, keeping her voice kind in light of the harsh questions.

“No. Did Billy know?” Brenda whispered the words, her expression bereft. “Is that why he committed suicide? Because he was afraid he had AIDS too?”

“I can’t answer those questions,” Josie said. “There were rumors about the relationship, but no one I’ve talked with knew that Ferris was HIV positive.”

“The humiliation just never ends.”

“I know this is hard on you, and I’m sorry to bring all of this up again. I just have a few more questions. Are you okay to keep going?”

She sighed and nodded. “How could it get much worse?”

“You mentioned that Billy called both Hank and Slim Jim the night he died. Can you remind me how you knew that?”

She frowned then, and seemed to be thinking back. “I know because Hank called the next morning to check on Billy. That’s when I discovered Billy hadn’t come home. Hank told me that Billy had been really drunk and he wanted to check on him. He also said Billy told him he’d talked to Slim, and that he’d told Billy to go back to the hotel too.”

Josie nodded and they listened as the coffeemaker popped and sputtered as the last of the water dripped into the pot. Brenda stood to pour coffee and Josie decided to change her line of questioning somewhat.

“As far as I know, Billy never left the area downtown where he bought the liquor and ended up at the little park behind the trauma center,” Josie said. “You told me that Billy didn’t have any pills in the hotel room with him.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you think Hank or Slim Jim could have taken the pills to Billy that night? Because I’m not sure who else would have known where he was.”

Brenda looked worried, as if she’d not thought about that possibility before then. “Why would Hank or Slim Jim do that? They loved Billy. Both of them. Neither one of them would have helped him end his life. I’m sure of that.”

Josie nodded slowly, trying to make the pieces fit.

“Besides, he could have bought pills off of someone downtown.”

Josie tilted her head, acknowledging the idea. “This is what I’m trying to understand. I’m no mental health expert, but Billy didn’t strike me as a man who was suffering from severe depression. The only reason I can imagine him committing suicide is that he had a terrible sense of guilt or shame over Ferris’s death.”

Brenda’s shoulders were slumped forward and her hands were clasped loosely in her lap, as if she no longer had the strength to move.

“When Billy found out that it was Ferris who died in your home, did he give you any indication that he knew what happened? Can you talk about his reaction?”

“He was inconsolable.” She barely whispered the words. “That’s when I knew how much Ferris meant to Billy.” She shut her eyes for a moment and when she opened them, Josie could see they were glassy with tears. “When we found out my stun gun had been discharged? Billy actually asked me if I had used it on Ferris. He thought I was capable of killing Ferris. I could see it in his face. Even if it was only for an instant, he still thought it.”

Josie asked a few additional questions about the band members so that she didn’t leave Brenda in such a devastated frame of mind. When her sister returned from her errands Josie thanked Brenda for her time and left.

She walked back to the department thinking about the change in Brenda’s appearance from the day Josie had met her and Billy at the police department until just now. Brenda looked raw, as if the realizations that she had come to over the last few days had stripped away everything, leaving her completely vulnerable, waiting for the next battering. In a way, Josie was relieved for this sad woman. Maybe she would reconnect with her family and begin a new life based on honesty.

Josie’s mind strayed to her own relationship with Dillon, and their inability to talk honestly with each other before he left her. Their conversations were little more than polite exchanges. Then she thought about Nick, a man completely the opposite of Dillon in every way, from his career to his abrupt manner and sense of humor.
“I like you, Josie.”
She heard the words in her head and the thought of him made her smile. Two screwed-up people with no expectations.

TWENTY-ONE

When Josie arrived back at the police department Otto told her he’d arranged for the two of them to speak with Hank at his home at 1:00. They stopped at the gas station for a quick lunch and ordered chicken strips and fried mushrooms. They ate in one of the two booths located on the restaurant side of the building and agreed that the food was greasy and satisfying. On their way to Hank’s house, as Otto drove Josie filled him in on Brenda’s summation of her husband and his relationship with Ferris.

“I’m stuck on the idea that Hank and Slim Jim were the only two that talked to Billy the night he committed suicide,” she said.

“What’s your issue?”

“Somebody provided Billy the pills he used to commit suicide. Who else makes sense but Hank or Slim Jim?”

“He could have bought it from someone else,” he said.

“It’s not like drug dealers hang out by the trauma center selling prescription pills by the baggie. There’s no one around that area late at night.”

“But he could have called someone easy enough. Someone could have delivered pills to him,” he said. “I just filed the subpoena on Friday. We should get the court approval for Billy’s phone records tomorrow.”

Josie nodded. “The phone records are key. From the various people we’ve talked to, no one has mentioned Billy taking drugs. Alcohol yes, but not drugs. I’ll be surprised if we find he called someone for pills. Assuming Brenda’s not lying, Slim Jim and Hank were the only people who knew Billy was on the path to self-destruction that night. I feel like one of them provided the pills.”

Josie drove in silence for a while, thinking about the questions she wanted to ask Hank. “You know what else sticks in my mind? The day after the evacuation, when I went to the Hell-Bent to see if I could track down Billy and Brenda?”