The Branson Beauty (28 page)

“Nope,” Hank said. “At least not a friend like Gallagher. Any dinner left?”

“Yeah, there's casserole in the fridge. This one actually came out pretty good. Well, better than usual, at least.”

Hank pulled it out of the fridge and sniffed at it hesitantly. Duncan grumbled from his seat at the kitchen table. “You'll take a risk like ticking off Henry Gallagher, but you won't take a risk on my casserole? You are a pansy.”

“My odds are better with Gallagher,” Hank said as he put the dish back in the refrigerator. He pulled a jar of peanut butter out of the cupboard and started hunting around for the bread. Duncan finished with the newspaper and got up from the table.

“Oh, I almost forgot. I need you to figure this out for me.” Dunc pulled something out of his pocket that looked suspiciously like a piece of glass. Hank, his peanut butter sandwich halfway to his mouth, started laughing.

“Is that twenty-first-century technology I see you holding?” he asked. “Where the heck did you get an iPhone?”

Duncan snorted. “Your wife. Ordered it for me without even asking. Came in the mail yesterday. I've been poking at it and now all these little squares here on the screen are shaking, and I can't get 'em to stop.”

Hank put down his sandwich, took the phone from his father-in-law, and explained how pushing the device's one button would stop the shaking. “I thought all you had to do was touch the screen,” Dunc said. “Maggie didn't say anything about the button.”

Hank picked up his sandwich again and wished Maggie were home from the hospital so she could explain elegant technological design to a man who was jabbing at the thing like it had just bitten him.

“Now you got to put some music on here for me,” Dunc said in between jabs.

Hank opened the fridge and reached for the milk. “Maybe you should have waited to call me a pansy until after you asked for my help,” he said.

Dunc grinned. “Got me there.”

Hank's phone interrupted his next sandwich bite. He didn't recognize the number.

“Sir? Sir? It's Duane Shrum. I thought calling was better than the radio this time of night. Sir, he just woke up. Mr. Eberhardt did, sir. He's awake.”

*   *   *

Albert Eberhardt looked very tired and thoroughly confused as he sat, propped up by pillows, in the hospital bed that had been his home for the past five days. He blinked and tried to focus on Hank, who leaned forward and asked again.

“Do you remember your Sunday voyage?”

Blink.

“Al. What happened on your Sunday brunch cruise?”

“I don't know. I'm trying to think. Man, my head hurts. Um, let's see. We started off, same as always. We rounded Poverty Point, and brunch was over. The show in the main dining room had started—Tony told me that—and then … then my head started to hurt. The noises were so loud. The bombs were so loud … the bombs … and the screaming … I couldn't get away from it … I tried to leave…”

“What do you mean, Al? Tried to leave where? The pilothouse?”

The door had been locked from the outside, Albert said. He'd tried and tried the knob and then looked for his keys so he could open it from the inside. He had keys for everything on the boat, but they weren't in their usual spot up by the window. He'd started to search, but the bombs kept going off. And he could hear the villagers screaming. Over and over. The screaming. Then the room started to spin. His head felt like it was cracking open. The bombs got louder, and the helicopter started to go down. The crew chief grabbed him and shoved him away from the door. And then they crashed.

“I don't remember anything after that,” he said, slumping against the bed pillows and closing his eyes.

What the hell? A helicopter? A crew chief? Hank sat back in his seat and stared at the ceiling. His own head felt as if it were going to split open.

“Al,” he said, slowly bringing his gaze back down to the man lying in front of him. “Were you in a helicopter crash in Vietnam?”

Al did not open his eyes. “Yes.”

“And have you had flashbacks before?”

“Yes.”

“How often?”

“Not in years. I've been doing pretty good. I run, you know. Every morning. I go for a run. That's helped a lot.”

“Did you run on Sunday?”

Albert opened his eyes. “No. Actually, no. I didn't. I couldn't find my running shoes. And I woke up late. There was a dog barking all night long, it seemed like, which was weird, because I didn't think any of my neighbors had dogs. So I slept awful. And I didn't have time. I figured I'd run after I got back from work and had time to look for my shoes.”

That would have made him plenty frazzled, Hank thought. Albert had apparently arrived at the same conclusion, because he turned to look Hank directly in the eye. “I know that makes it sound like I just fell apart. Just went nuts or something. But I didn't. It was real. Those bombs weren't just in my head. I swear, Sheriff. It was real.”

The result of his flip-out was certainly real. “Would you have any reason to want to not have to work on the
Beauty
anymore?” Hank asked.

“Huh? No. I like my job. Why would you ask that?”

“Would you have any reason to want to harm the
Beauty
? Any reason to destroy it?”

Albert sat up straight in bed. “What happened to my boat? Did something happen to my boat?”

“How do you feel about Gallagher Enterprises?”

Albert clutched the bed sheets. “What happened to my boat?” he shouted.

Hank watched him very carefully. “It ran aground. Two and a third hours into your cruise. They had to hack the paddlewheel off to get it unstuck and then tow it back to shore.”

Albert looked shocked. “Oh, God. Did I do that? How could I have done that? I didn't touch the wheel.… Is she okay? They'll be able to fix her, won't they?”

“No,” Hank said. “The boat caught fire more than three days ago. Sank to the bottom of the lake. Total loss.”

Albert slumped back onto his pillows.

“Did you leave the pilothouse at all? At any time?”

Albert shook his head. “Not at all. I went straight up there when I came aboard. Never left.”

“Did you know Mandy Bryson was on the boat?”

Now Albert went from shocked to puzzled. His hands still clutched the bed sheets. “Who? Mandy? From my track team? Why would she be on board? Isn't she away at school? She was on the boat?”

“You sure you didn't leave the pilothouse?”

“Why the hell is that important? No. I didn't. What, did Mandy get hurt or something? She didn't get hurt during the crash, did she?”

Go for broke, Hank thought. He made sure Albert was looking directly at him.

“Mandy was murdered in the private dining room. She was strangled to death. Did you kill her?”

Albert's throat made a kind of rattling sound as he sucked in all of the surrounding air. He opened and closed his mouth several times before he spoke.

“Who would do that? Do you know who did it? My God. Mandy.”

Hank watched him carefully. He just couldn't get a handle on this guy. He looked to be telling the gospel truth. But he could so easily be saying everything he thought Hank wanted to hear. Everything to give himself an alibi—for the boat, and for Mandy.

“How are her friends taking it? All the other girls on the track team?” Albert rattled on. “Her boyfriend—didn't she have a boyfriend? And Tony? I always suspected he had a little bit of a crush on those track girls. And her parents? Oh, Lord, her poor parents…”

Hank stopped him there. A bit of a crush? On all of them? Well, Albert said, not really. There was his sister, of course. Tony'd always acted as though that was why he was there—to pick up Alyssa or some such thing. He'd arrive early and sit and watch, trying not to let on that he was focused on Mandy. He'd never said anything to Tony, Albert went on, because—well, heck, he had been a teenager once, too, and weren't we all supposed to have impossible crushes at that age? Tony had never said anything to him about Mandy, and he hadn't been around nearly as much this past fall for the cross-country season. Of course, Mandy was off at college then.

Tony had been a pretty good employee. He'd worked on the boat for about two years. Very conscientious, obedient. But anytime he had a spare minute, he'd pull out his phone and start fiddling with it.

“Wait … I thought there was no cell service along stretches of the
Beauty
's route?” Hank said.

“Oh, there's not. He could download stuff to the phone, like a TV show or something, at home and then play it back on the boat. He was showing Roy and me how to do it. Had one of those
Hangover
movies on there. I don't know how he could see anything—it was all way too small for me to focus on.”

Hank leaned forward. “Tell me about Roy. He said you two were friends.”

“We are, I guess. I'm not, you know, a real friendly guy. But Roy sure is persistent. He just wore me out with all his talking. So eventually, I had to start talking back, you know? He'd been in 'Nam, too, so that made it easier. Not that we talked about that much, just a couple of times. Told him things I hadn't talked about in years … decades, really. But mostly we just shot the shit. And boy, is Roy full of it.” Albert shook his head. “Very dramatic. Always full of plans about how he is going to break out, become a ‘true star.' He has this idea for a huge stage show on the Strip. It would be patriotic and salute the veterans and have magic acts for the kids and be full of country music and maybe a little bit of Shakespeare or somebody like that. And he would be the star—the one who takes the audience on its ‘transforming journey.' He repeats that description a lot. I just nod and listen. Listening's a lot easier than talking, you know.”

Actually, Hank had found that for most people, the opposite was true.

“He'll talk and talk,” Albert continued. “That's all he's ever been able to do. He's gotten turned down by just about everybody in town. Poor guy. And he says he won't go to New York and try out there because they don't have the proper respect for veterans. I think it's because big cities scare him. Don't blame him on that score. Damn frightening, those places.”

Hank was about to reply when a doctor walked in and immediately told him to get out. Unless his patient was under arrest, the law had no business being there for a physical exam. He sighed and was halfway to the door when Albert spoke again.

“You know, I wasn't really a believer before. But I've been living down here for a while now, and I've done a bit of thinking. You kind of have to, surrounded by these hills. So I run, and I paint, and it's quiet. Makes you think there might be a God out there. And my boat, too, on the lake. You wouldn't think that would be a blessing—such a silly thing as the quiet—but it is. Quiet, like you're being granted a bit of peace you don't quite deserve. I know I don't. I did things over there. I followed orders like a good soldier. I did it to stay alive, and I've wished I were dead ever since. So I know what you're thinking, and I know it makes sense to you in your investigation, but there is no way that I would ever cause anyone harm ever again. And I would never … never have hurt Mandy Bryson.”

 

CHAPTER

26

The house was completely dark. Hank drove by twice, but there was no sign that the Brysons were up again at this late hour. He turned the car around and started down the winding road out of the development, back to his own house. He drove slowly, cautious of the probable black ice that had formed on the insides of the curves. He rounded one and his headlights bounced off a ghost.

All white, it staggered along the edge of the road like an exhausted marathon runner. He was so tired he was starting to see things.

He shook his head, but the apparition continued along with its half jog-half stumble. He carefully pulled up alongside and realized the white was a nightgown and it was occupied by an almost-as-pale Gina Bryson. Jesus. He slammed the car into park and leapt out, calling her name. She turned to look and stumbled. Hank barely reached her in time to keep her from falling into the snow.

“What are you doing? Good God, are you all right?”

She clutched his arms to keep herself upright as her knees started to buckle. She had no coat, no gloves, no hat. Just the nightgown. And running shoes.

“Mrs. Bryson,” he said very quietly, “I'm going to take you home now.”

She shook her head frantically. “No, no. I'm going for a run. A run. It will help. It will help. It will make me feel free. I've never run, but that's what she always said. ‘It makes me feel free.' I don't know why I didn't think of it before. It's so simple, really. Just go for a run. So I need to finish my run.”

She sank lower as her knees gave out. Hank scooped her up and carried her to the car. She weighed next to nothing and shook as if the cold originated deep inside her bones rather than from the outside air. “No. Please. I have to finish my run. Please…”

*   *   *

Hank arrived at the office the next morning to find that Gallagher had canceled his rescheduled appointment.

“Why do you look like that makes you happy?” Sheila asked him.

“Because now I get to be impolite,” he said. “Let's get a warrant for his business records. But first, you want to come with me? I'm going to haul that Cummings guy in for questioning.”

Sheila chortled. “Your timing might end up being perfect. The reason that damn lawyer gave me when he called to cancel was that Gallagher had to ‘work through the weekend' on very pressing business matters. I heard a couple other voices in the background. Might be Cummings. It'd be damn fun to take him in front of his boss.”

“You are a cop after my own heart,” Hank said.