Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond (12 page)

Chapter 32

“T
hanks,” I said.

Harry and I were standing out in front of the station. It was late afternoon, the sun starting its final drastic descent, the temperature dropping, shop lights, streetlights, and headlights more pronounced now. The heavy traffic on Harrison moved slowly. Horns honked. Breaks squealed. Gears grinded.

“Let me tell you something, fella,” Harry said. “I realize how much I owe you. And not just for helping me realize my lifelong dream to serve the public, but … well, Lauren left me a letter. The priest who was killed brought it to me. I know what you meant to her, what all you did for her.”

“But—”

“Look. You don’t have to say anything. I’m not foolish. I know the nature of your relationship. You’re okay. She was more like a daughter to me than anything else.”

I nodded, not sure what to say.

The sidewalks were crowded. People everywhere. Wainwright shipyard employees cashing their checks. Servicemen socializing with girls. Men in trousers and shirt sleeves. Women in dresses. Babies in strollers. Kids trailing behind parents. In and out of shops, restaurants, motels. On the balcony of the Tennessee House, coming and going from the Ritz theater, every other person in some type of uniform—army, navy, marines, and outnumbering them all, air force and Red Cross nurses.

“Now,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll have any more problems with the police. So let’s find those responsible for her death and make things right. Starting with Frank Howell. I know others were involved, but it begins and ends with him.”

“It does and I will start with him or end with him, but I saw Cliff Walton and I have a lead on him.”

“Really? Good. Double-crossin’ bastard.”

For all the power Harry had, for all the influence he wielded, he looked old and feeble. His drooping skin was whiskey-reddened, broken blood vessels webbed the puffy area around his nose, and the blackish bags beneath his blue eyes were enormous.

He reached into his pocket and handed me a set of keys and a hundred dollar bill, then another to keep the first from getting lonely.

“This’ll help with expenses,” he said.

“It certainly will.”

“And don’t spare any. There’s plenty more where those came from. And the keys are to that Ford over there. It’s yours. Just find these people and punish them as quickly as possible. Understood?”

I nodded that it was.

When Harry had gone, I went back in and found Henry Folsom in his office.

“Be careful Jimmy,” he said.

“Always am.”

His eyes drifted over to the spot where my right arm should be.

“Well, almost always.”

He was taken aback a bit, and I could tell that him looking at my stump had been unconscious, involuntary.

“Sorry.”

“Everything I said in there was true,” I said. “Just wanted you to know.”

“I never doubted it was, but two things. One, you left a lot out. And two, there’s a way to do things and this ain’t it.”

“That’s why I’m here. I had nothing to do with what the mayor just did. I’m telling the truth. Frank Howell was behind everything. He used Ann Everett, Payton Rainer, and the guy I mentioned to you—Cliff Walton. And another thing, the others may have blown town, but Walt didn’t. I saw him just a couple of streets over from here a few nights ago. Keep an eye out for him. He walks with a limp now.”

“Don’t we all.”

I thought about just how true that statement was.

“Any word on De Grasse?”

“Who?”

“The artist connected to the killings.”

“That’s his name?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

We were quiet a minute.

“Who killed Ray?” he asked.

I turned around and closed the door.

Before I spoke, I started to say something about this being off the record, but knew there was no such thing for a cop— particularly one like Folsom.

“I did.”

“You better sit down.”

I did.

“Let’s have it,” he said.

I gave it to him.

“He killed July, our secretary. She stumbled upon records that showed he was secretly following someone he was obsessed with.”

“A woman?”

“Of course.”

“The Lewis dame?”

“He said he didn’t mean to kill July and I half believed him. And that’s not why I shot him. It was in self-defense. This gut shot I got—” I indicated my abdomen, “—he did that. It’s what I got treated for in Tallahassee. You can verify it. I was trying to get to Lauren—Mrs. Lewis—to get her some help. Had to shoot Ray to do it. He stood in the way. He fired first. It’s a clean shoot, Captain.”

When I had mentioned getting treated in Tallahassee, something flared in a dark corner of my mind. What was it? What was it about Tallahassee or treatment or … There was something there, but I just couldn’t get at it.

He thought about what I had said for a long moment. “I appreciate you coming back and telling me, Jimmy. I do. You’re okay.”

“I wanna find Pete,” I said. “You have any idea where he is or what happened to him?”

He shook his head. “Hell, son, I knew a lot less before you told me what you did tonight.”

“C
an you get my medical records?” I asked.

“I’m a nurse, fella,” Ruth Ann said. “Whatta you think?”

I was at a pay phone on Harrison. I had started to borrow a phone inside the station, but didn’t want anyone to overhear our conversation.

“Would you?” I asked.

“Already
did
.”

“You did?”

“You thought I’ve been taking care of you blind, fella? Say, whatta ya think I am, brainless?”

“You got the ones from Tallahassee?”

“I got ’em all. All I could find that is. I’m a very thorough girl. Why?”

“I need to see them.”

“They’re right here. You can see ’em when you get home.”

Her use of the word home wasn’t lost on me. I had unwittingly been playing house with her. And I had to stop. I cared very deeply for her, owed her so much, but it was no good. I wasn’t in love with her, and I could never be. I had my one great love and had fucked it up forever. Didn’t matter how much Ruth Ann dressed or talked or looked like Lauren. She wasn’t Lauren. And could never be.

As I hung up the phone, a car pulled up to the curb. It was Miki Matsumoto’s uncle.

He motioned for me to get in. I did.

“Good evening, Mr. Rirey.”

“Evening.”

The driver pulled away from the curb and continued down Harrison very slowly in the fray.

“I ah wisha to thank you for the ah safe return ofa my niece.”

“How is she?”

“Improving. It willa take ah rong time fora minda to ah heal, but she is strong. Will be okay.”

I nodded. “That’s good.”

“Ita concern me thata youa spending so mucha time ata porice station.”

“It’s unrelated,” I said. “I’ll never say anything to anyone. No matter what. You have my word.”

“Whya they reta you goa?”

“The mayor made them.”

“We ah will be watching youa very crosrey. Ifa we evena think youa going to talk, we willa be forced ah to takah you outa.”

At that, the driver pulled over to the curb and I got out.

We had driven several blocks down Harrison, so I started walking back in the opposite direction toward the new Ford Harry had provided for me.

The sun was down and the temperature had fallen, a cold breeze blowing between the buildings, winding around the traffic and through the pedestrians.

I had no overcoat on, only an insufficient suit coat. I gathered it around me, hunched into the wind, head down, dodging the stream of sidewalkers.

I had walked less than two blocks when Clip pulled up in a no doubt stolen black Packard.
“Nice night for a walk,” he said through the open passenger window.

“Bracing.”

“I’d offer you a ride, but somebody might think I your butler.”

I smiled and got in the car. “That true if you don’t offer but I get in anyway?”

“No. Then you just a white man doin’ what white men do.”

“Which is?”

“Whatever the hell they wants.”

“You been on Butch?”

He nodded. “Was when I saw you get in the car with the Jap. He had just come back to the station. Broke off him to see if you’s ’bout to get your ass shot again.”

“He was thanking me for my help getting his niece back.”

“Thanking you? Didn’t look like no kind of thank you I ever seen. Why’d he drop your ass off where he did if he was all grateful and shit?”

“Anything on Butch?”

“He ain’t okay and he don’t do much police work. Hell, he don’t do much of nothin’, but I ain’t caught him doin’ much of anything too illegal either.”

I thought about it.

“He a bully and he ain’t none too bright, but he ain’t into too much. Not sayin’ he not dangerous. He’s bent, that’s for sure, but he mostly bumblin’.”

“Bumbling?” I asked, shooting him a look.

He nodded and smiled.

We were quiet a moment, his car still idling at the curb.

“You gonna give me a ride back to my car?” I asked.

“What? I your butler now?”

“Just wondered why we still sitting here.”

“We talkin’. Enjoying the sights and sounds of Harrison in the warmth of my
au-to-mo-bile
as we confer about a case.”

“Oh.”

“’Sides, you ain’t gonna be wantin’ to go back to your car after you aks me about that other big bitch.”

“Walt?” I said. “You seen him.”

“I have.”

“And?”

“And he close by.”

“How close?”

“The trunk.”

Chapter 33

“H
ow’s the leg?” I asked.

“Improving,” Walt said. “Which is more than can be said for your arm.”

We were in a small clearing in the woods near Bayou George we had used before for this same thing.

We had Walt sitting on the base of a tree stump, his legs tied to it, his upper body tied to the tree behind it. Both had splatters of dried blood on them from our previous visits to the woods.

Above us, the starless sky was dark. Around us, the deep woods were even darker, the headlights from the idling Packard some fifteen feet behind us the only illumination in the area.

Beyond the clearing in every direction for miles and miles there was only the dense dark forest.
Unlike previous visits, the woods were eerily quiet. The only sounds besides those we were making were the whisper of a thin wind snaking through the trees and the hum of the engine.

“I’m not going to make a lot of threats,” I said.

“Good. ’Cause I wouldn’t believe them anyway. ’Sides, I—”

Clip stepped forward and punched him in the face, breaking his nose and banging his head back into the trunk of the tree behind him.

“Now the time for you to be listenin’,” he said.

Our bodies were blocking most of the light from reaching Walt and I wondered how Clip was able to tag him so well with the use of only one eye.

“Why exactly wouldn’t you believe my threats?”

He laughed. “You’re a lover, not a fighter.”

I smiled as I thought about it.

“You shot me in the leg, sure,” he said. “So yeah, you’re a leg shooter. Ain’t sayin’ you ain’t tough and can’t dish out some pain and punishment, just that you won’t kill a man in cold blood.”

“You think that true of me too?” Clip asked.

“I don’t, actually, but it applies to you ’cause you workin’ for him.”

“Like I was saying, I’m not going to make a lot of threats,” I said again. “You know how this works. Answer my questions honestly and this’ll go a hell of a lot easier for you.”

“Ask whatever you like,” he said. “I ain’t singin’.”

“What happened after I left Howell’s the night I shot you in the leg?”

He didn’t say anything.

Clip went to work on him—first his body, then his head, then back to his body—giving him one hell of a beating.

“What happened after I left?” I asked.

He turned and spit, a long string of blood trailing after it. He then shook his head. “Tol’ ya. I don’t sing.”

I remembered how much he sang after I shot him at Howell’s that night.

“Why didn’t you leave town?”

“Work to do. ’Sides, this is my town.”

“Pretty sure the town don’t know that,” Clip said.

“Did the others?”

He didn’t respond.

“Did the others leave town?” I said.

I reached inside my coat beneath what was left of my right arm and withdrew my revolver.

He seemed not to notice.

Placing the barrel near the spot where the other round had gone in, I squeezed the trigger.

He let out a shriek and a long string of threats and profanity.

“What happened that night?” I said. “Where is everybody?”

“Leg shooter,” he said. “All you’ll ever be.”

I smiled. Then shot him in the arm.

Clip laughed.

Walt let out more shrieks, more cries, more curses, more threats.

“So there’s nothing I can do to convince you to talk?” I asked. “Handing you over to Henry Folsom is my only play?”

“You give me to the cops and everyone—and I do mean
everyone
—will know what a filthy whore that slut was.”

His words set off something inside me so feral I didn’t recognize it—mostly by reminding me Lauren was dead in large part due to him.

Awkwardly thumbing back the hammer with my anger and adrenaline-jittery left hand, I stepped forward and pressed the barrel of the gun into the crease just above his eyes.

“If you don’t think I’ll put your lights out after what you did to her, you greatly mistake me. Now, you answer my goddamn questions right now or I will fuckin’ flip your switch off permanently. And if you ever say anything about her again, it will be the last thing you ever say. I swear it.”

He didn’t respond, but there seemed to be something different in his demeanor.

“Now, tell me what the fuck happened after I left.”

“We left too. Right after you.”

“Where are the others now?”

“In the shallow graves where I put them.”

“Pete too?”

“Who?”

“Pete Mitchell. Cop. My old partner.”

“Nothing to do with him. Why would you think I—”

“He went over there that night to arrest y’all.”

“Well he got there too late I guess. Never saw him.”

“Why kill your boss and coconspirators?”

“You have no idea what’s really going on,” he said.

“Enlighten me.”

“Some detective,” he said, then nodding at Clip, “The one-eyed jig can see better than you.”

“Where’d you bury them?”

He started laughing. “I put them in the whore’s grave.”

I hit him hard across the face, the gun in my hand tearing into his flesh, leaving a flap of skin dangling from his cheek.

“Where are they buried?”

“What’re you gonna do, shoot my other arm and leg?”

“Yes,” I said, and did.

It took a while for him to regain composure, and even then he was breathing heavily, crying, and wincing in pain.

“Goddamn I’m gonna enjoy all that happens to you,” he said.

“Happens to me?”

“You have no idea the pain and misery in store for you. One hell of a goddamn storm of it’s gonna rain down on your head.”

I thought about all I had been through and how nothing that had ever happened or could ever happen could compare to losing Lauren.

“You haven’t begun to suffer,” he said.

“Where did you bury them?”

He shook his head.

Clip moved in front of him and placed the barrel of his revolver in Walt’s crotch.

“One chance to save your little dick,” Clip said. “Only one.

Think long and hard before you answer. You only gets one chance.”

“Where did you bury them?”

When he hesitated, Clip jammed the gun down even harder and pulled back the hammer.

“Okay. Okay. It’s actually not far from here. Little further up on 231. Close to a lake. I can show you.”