Shoot the Moon (20 page)

“Mark.” Something in her voice told him bad news was on the way. “That was Hap on the phone. Kyle Leander just killed Arthur McFadden.”

September 8, 1969

Dear Diary,

Mrs. Dobbins, my art teacher, is encouraging me to devote more time to my sketch book, so I’ve promised myself to draw every day no matter how busy I am. Sometimes, when there’s nothing to do at the radio station, I work on my drawings.

Becky Allan quit the basketball team today. When she turned her suit in to Coach Dougless, she told her she’s too busy to play this year because she’s a senior, but the real reason is she’s pregnant. Everyone in school knows, I guess, because Danny told it just before he dumped her.

Spider Woman

Chapter Thirty

I
f the folks of DeClare thought they’d had enough of the deployment of the media’s forward units after word of Nick Harjo surfaced, then they were certainly ill prepared for the battalion that infiltrated town after Arthur McFadden’s murder.

An hour after the shooting, both sides of the street leading to Arthur’s condo were bumper to bumper with satellite trucks, vans and SUVs, all bearing logos of radio and TV stations as well as newspapers from cities and small towns.

The entrance to the grounds was closed, crime scene tape stretched between two granite towers topped with carriage lamps. Several of the TV stations had already set up with lights and cameras trained on the reporters being filmed, a guard pacing behind them.

The only other way to get into the Lakewood Garden Estates was to scale the six-foot rock fence surrounding the condos or know the Turtle Creek Road that ran half a mile away and would require a dark walk through rattlesnake-infested rock gullies and ridges.

Even so, the area was alive with the residents, a few fearless souls who’d walked from Turtle Creek Road and several young people who’d scaled the wall. They were all milling around Arthur’s condo, which was also cordoned off by yellow police tape.

When O Boy drove up to the gate, the guard lifted the yellow crime tape so the cruiser could drive beneath it, and even though O Boy had already investigated the crime scene, viewed the body and set up the crime units, he roared from the gate to Arthur’s place as if the killing had just been called in.

O Boy knew the technicians had finished dusting for fingerprints, the photographers had finished taking their shots and others in the units had collected fibers, hair and suspicious particles. Still, he drove like a fireman trying to save children from a blaze.

Mark wasn’t quite sure why he was riding in the front seat beside O Boy. He was clearly not a suspect in the murder, as Kyle had called the sheriff’s office to report the shooting minutes after Arthur died. And Kyle was waiting when the first deputies arrived and ordered him outside, their guns trained on him as he followed their instructions, walked across the narrow porch and down the steps with his fingers interlocked behind his head. When he reached the ground, he spread-eagled himself on the lawn as the younger deputy demanded; then, with their guns aimed at his head, they approached him and the young one forced his knee into Kyle’s back. As he clamped the handcuffs on, the flesh was torn on Kyle’s wrist, so that blood ran down his fingers and onto the cheap leather as he was placed into the back of the cruiser.

But Mark hadn’t seen any of this. He had just heard about Arthur’s death when O Boy and a deputy pulled into Teeve’s drive, siren wailing, lights flashing, O Boy telling Mark to come with him.

On the drive to Lakewood Garden, the radio crackled with static, but Mark could occasionally hear a woman’s voice, causing him to wonder if the dispatcher was Olene Turner, Amax Dawson’s old flame.

The overpowering odor of stale cigar smoke that met Mark at the door of Arthur’s condo gave him a sour taste at the back of his throat. But it was going to become worse.

The living room was comfortable looking. Not much clutter. Yesterday’s paper folded carefully, recent mail stacked orderly, ashtrays emptied and wiped clean.

The kitchen, open to the living room, was small, compact, neat. Bright blue canisters, a dish towel hanging from a hook, a washed coffee cup turned upside down in the dish drainer.

But as he passed down the hallway from the living room to the bedroom, Mark’s dread began to build. He followed O Boy past the bathroom—lights on, towels folded neatly on a shelf, shaving equipment lined up near the sink. The room smelled of scented soap.

But as he approached the next doorway, the smell of soap gave way to another smell, a familiar odor Mark had encountered many times in surgery after he’d cut into a dog’s abdomen to take out a ruptured spleen, or sliced into a cat to remove a cancerous tumor, or amputated the legs of an old and beloved pet whose hindquarters had been crushed beneath the wheels of a car.

Blood. The smell of warm blood.

Mark had known, of course, that O Boy was taking him to the place where the killing had occurred, but he had certainly
not
expected to see the body.

Apparently Arthur, wearing pajamas, had been in bed when Kyle walked in; the covers of the bed had been disturbed, and a small TV was still on. But the shots that killed Arthur had not come as he was sleeping, had not come from a shotgun at the back of his head. He had not enjoyed the luxury of a quick death, that one final instant of knowing. Then not knowing.

No, that would have been too easy, too swift, to satisfy Kyle.

Having lived a life of sweet compassion, a sometimes drug-induced sense of love for his fellow creatures, Kyle couldn’t stand to see suffering. If a fly was struck but not killed by the slap of a swatter, if a wasp was living in agony from the poison of a fogger, Kyle would give them the gift of death.

But that was not his intention when he killed Arthur. No, from the looks of the scene, Arthur had been in bed watching TV when Kyle came into the room with the shotgun. He had then, most likely, confronted Arthur with what he’d learned about Gaylene’s ride from jail, a ride that detoured by the cabin and led to her rape and humiliation.

Arthur, certain by then that Kyle was going to pull the trigger, had jumped out of bed to wrestle for the weapon. But he was too late.

Kyle, who’d never handled a shotgun before, fired one round into Arthur’s belly. A shot that tore open his flesh, freed his intestines from their confinement of skin, muscle and bone, causing him to cradle his guts in his arms as he slipped off the bed, onto the floor, more or less sitting up, his back resting against the mattress.

Finally, perhaps because Kyle had said all he had come to say, or because of his compassion, he found he couldn’t watch Arthur suffer anymore, so he’d ended it with another blast, this one to Arthur’s head, a shot that had blown away most of his face.

After Mark had retched for the second time, he went to a hose connected to a faucet at the side of the condo, washed his face, doused his head, then drank deeply.

“You gonna puke again?” O Boy yelled from across the yard, where he was leaning against the door of his patrol car, smoking a cigar from a box of Roi-Tan he’d found in Arthur’s bedside table.

“You finished with me yet?” Mark asked, making sure to stay upwind of the cigar smoke.

“Hell, no. I want to hear the rest of this fucking story of yours. It’s just now getting good. Let’s see. You hooked up with Lantana Mitchell, then she drove you to the nuthouse, where you got Kyle all riled up about Arthur slipping Gaylene a bit of the old sausage. Then you came back to town, went to the radio station and confronted Arthur, accusing him of raping Gaylene.”

O Boy spit, took another drag on the cigar. “How am I doing so far, Nicky Jack? I got all the facts straight here?”

Mark said nothing.

“Now, let’s assume that Arthur and Gaylene played a little in and out, whether she wanted to or not. Either way, if he was your daddy, you just got him killed. Now, tell me something. How does that make you feel?”

Mark choked back the bile he tasted at the back of his throat, fighting not to throw up again, which was exactly what O Boy was going for.

“What I can’t understand is why. You came here, so you said, to find your mama, but you discovered she was dead. Then you went to a hell of a lot of trouble to find out who your daddy is. But once you thought you’d figured it out, you set him up to die.”

“I didn’t set up a goddamn thing, and you know it,” Mark said. “Kyle was locked in that hospital, under guard. How could I know he’d get loose, kill Arthur? And by the way, how did Kyle get out?”

“That’s my job to find out. Not yours. But let’s get back to the business of Arthur picking Gaylene up at the jail just so we’ll be clear on that. In case you didn’t know it, he was doing her a favor; and so was I. She was drunk out of her mind when I stopped her on the highway. Wonder she didn’t kill somebody. So I had the car towed, gave Rowena a ride home and took Gaylene to jail.

“But a few cups of coffee and an hour or so later, she had the jailer call me back to her cell. She was still in bad shape, but aware enough to know she was in trouble. She cried, said if her folks found out, it would kill them.

“Well, I couldn’t see much to be gained by holding her over for arraignment, charging her with DUI. She’d never been in trouble before, so when she asked me to call Arthur, see if he’d pick her up, take her to Rowena’s, I said sure. Why not? She worked for him, and I figured he wouldn’t mind helping the kid out. He showed up fifteen, twenty minutes later and we let her go with him.

“If anything happened between the two of them after they left the jail, I never heard about it. But Gaylene had a problem keeping her drawers pulled up, so it’s not beyond reason. He might’ve been porking her all along. ’Course, you probably don’t want to hear that, you being so bound and determined to prove she was your mama. Now, anything else you want to know?”

“Yeah. I want to know who killed her. And I don’t buy that Joe Dawson story. Not for a minute.”

“Oh, is that right? Well, Mr. Detective,” O Boy said, “I would certainly be happy to deputize you, put you on the case, but unfortunately that case was closed. Almost thirty years ago. Joe Dawson killed Gaylene Harjo,” he said. “End of story.”

“No, not quite the end.”

“Really? Then where do we go next?”

“How about California,” Mark said.

“What the hell you talking about?”

“If Dawson killed her, then how did I get to California? Who took me? Who arranged for my adoption?”

“I wouldn’t know a thing about that.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would, since you accused Joe Dawson of not one, but two killings. You even had most of the people around here believing he buried me someplace on his own land.”

“And how many believe
you
? Huh?” O Boy asked. “How many believe you’re really Nick Harjo and not just a fucking punk trying to get some publicity that might earn you some big bucks for one of them TV movies? Or maybe a book.”

“It was a woman who showed up at the lawyer’s office in Los Angeles,” Mark said. “She had a baby in her arms and my birth certificate in her purse. Said her name was Gaylene Harjo. But that would have been quite a trick, wouldn’t it, since my mother was already dead right here in DeClare.”

O Boy pushed away from the patrol car, crushed the cigar beneath his boot and stomped across the narrow strip of grass that separated Arthur’s condo from the one next to it, the area where two of his deputies were studying their shoe tops.

“You boys don’t have no goddamn work to do? No reports to file? No follow-ups to those burglaries? If not, then maybe you better be thinking about applying for unemployment ’cause your county paychecks might not be coming in next month.”

The deputies got into a vehicle and created an exit from the trailer park that would have made a good scene in a bad movie.

“You got any proof of what you just said about some woman claiming to be Gaylene?”

“I do.”

“Then you best tell me what you know or I’ll charge you with withholding evidence.”

“How could I withhold evidence in a case that was closed thirty years ago?”

“Listen here, you son of a bitch, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

“It’s a little late for you to be threatening me, Sheriff Daniels. Way too late. Because I’m already into it.”

O Boy said, “And you think I’m not? That’s my brother in there.”

Mark reached Teeve’s after two, but even at that late hour, he’d had to shoulder his way past the crowd gathered in front of her house. All but a couple of reporters could tell he was not in the mood to chat, but finally even the two of them backed off when they sensed he was furious, confused and exhausted.

O Boy had driven away from Arthur’s condo alone, leaving Mark to walk, but he’d hitched a ride with a couple returning home from a late night of bingo at the VFW.

Ivy, who’d been waiting up, ran to the back door when she heard him knock, yanked him inside and into her embrace.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“No. I’m not okay.”

“Here, sit down.”

She pulled out a chair for him at the kitchen table.

“Can I fix you something to eat?” she asked. “We have some split pea soup or some leftover meat loaf and—”

Before she finished her list of possibilities, Mark was heading for the bathroom with the dry heaves.

When he returned to the table, Ivy had fixed him a cup of hot tea, but he pushed it away.

“Where did O Boy take you?” Ivy asked. “I went to the courthouse, even made them take me down to the jail. Thought they might be hiding you, but—”

“Jail? No, that would have seemed like a luxury spa compared to what I saw. He took me to Arthur’s condo.”

“Oh, my God. You mean you saw . . .”

“You don’t want to know what I saw. Trust me. It was horrible. Kyle must have been out of his head. And I caused it, Ivy. If I hadn’t gone to see Kyle today, hadn’t planted the idea in his head that Arthur was the one who got Gaylene pregnant . . .”

“You can’t take responsibility for that. You couldn’t have known what Kyle was going to do.”

“But here’s the thing. I don’t even know if it’s true that Arthur got her pregnant. For all I know, it could have been O Boy, one of the deputies, a boyfriend, a stranger from the bar.”

“You can’t let guilt kick your ass, Mark.”

“Listen, I know you want to help, but I don’t really feel like talking about this tonight. I’m beat.”

“Sure you are.”

“I’d like to take a shower, then try to get a few hours’ sleep.”

“Okay,” Ivy said. “But if you need anything in the night, what’s left of it, don’t hesitate to call me. I’m a pretty light sleeper.”

Mark stayed in the shower as long as he could stand it, trying not to let the scene from Arthur’s bedroom replay in his head. Every time a fragment of that picture nudged its way into his thoughts, he’d turn the water hotter until, when he finally stepped out of the stall, his skin was more red than brown.