The Devil's Right Hand (16 page)

“
Where are you?” Angela’s voice sounded
tense. Keller fumbled over his answer, but she cut him off. “Never
mind,” she said. “The Highway Patrol found your car.”

Keller sat up. “Where?”

“
In a ditch in Bladen
County.”

“
Anybody in it?”

“
No,” Angela said. “But they did find a
gym bag full of bloody clothes.”

“
Damn,” he said.

“
Keller, they’ll be testing those.
They’re probably doing it now. And when they get a match on the
blood--”

“
They’ll know I was at the Puryear
house,” he said.

“
I’ve already gotten a call, Keller,”
she said. “They want you to come down to the station and talk to
them.”

“
Who’s they?”

“
A Fayetteville detective named
Stacy.”

“
Yeah,” Keller said. “I’ll bet he wants
to talk.”

“
What do I tell them, Jack?” she
said.

Keller looked around the room. He saw Marie’s
uniform cap on the top of the dresser. Her badge lay next to it,
glinting in the morning light that came through the blinds.

“
Tell them you don’t know where I am,”
he said. “It’s the truth. And call McCaskill.”

“
I already did,” she replied. “He’s in
court. I had to leave a message. Jack, if they think you’re
running...”

“
I’m not running,” he said. “I just
don’t want to talk to them right now. I’ll be fine.”

Marie’s voice came from the other room.
“Breakfast,” she called out. Keller gritted his teeth, wondering if
Angela could hear. Her tone when she finally spoke made it clear
that she had.

“
Yeah,” she said. “You’ll be fine.” He
started to say something, but she had hung up. Keller shook his
head and snapped the phone shut. He stood up and pulled his jeans
on.

Marie was seated at the table in the kitchen,
a bowl of cereal in front of her. There was another bowl across the
table from her. “It’s just corn flakes,” she said. “But the
strawberries are fresh.” She smiled, a little apologetically. “I’m
not much of a cook.”

“
This is good,” he said as he sat
down.

“
Who were you talking to?” she asked.
He started to say something, then he saw in his mind’s eye the
golden badge sitting on Marie’s dresser.

“
Just checking in at work,” he said.
“Seeing if there was anything new on DeWayne Puryear.”

“
Was there?”

“
No.”

Marie shook her head. “Don’t worry about him
anymore, Keller,” she said. “He’s our problem now. He shot a
cop.”

Keller cocked an eyebrow at her. “Our
problem? I thought you were suspended.”

She looked down at her cereal. “Yeah. Well.
You know how it is. Once a cop, always a cop.”

“
Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

She looked at him and sighed. “You’re not
going to give up on this, are you?” she said.

“
I need to find him,” he
said.

She got up and carried her cereal bowl to the
sink. “Okay,” she said, not looking at him. “It wasn’t like I had
anything to do in the next few days anyway.”

“
What do you mean?”

She turned back to him. She crossed her arms
across her chest and looked at him levelly. “I mean I’ll help.”

Keller was silent for a moment. The
words stirred an unaccountable feeling of dread in him.
I work alone
, he wanted to say. What
he did say was, “You don’t have to.”

Her mouth was set in a hard line. “That son
of a bitch shot my partner. I want his ass in custody as bad as you
do.”

Keller had no answer for that. “So where do
we start?” she said after a long pause.

He thought for a minute. “The sister,” he
said. “She’s the only family connection we have.”

Marie nodded. “She was held for a while,
charged with harboring a fugitive. I heard she made bail.”

Keller stood up and carried his bowl to the
sink. “We’ll start with her house, then.”

What this Debbie lacked in looks, DeWayne
thought, she made up in enthusiasm, at least once he had used some
of his dwindling money supply to get her a supply of rocks. He lay
back on the bed, feeling as if all of the fluid had been drained
from his body. Debbie sat at the other end of the bed, naked. She
was preparing another hit of the rock cocaine, using the pipe she
had constructed out of a beer can. She had punched a hole down at
one end and made a bowl out of tinfoil, taping the bowl in place
with electrical tape. She lit up with a disposable plastic lighter,
cranking the flame up all the way so it sputtered like a tiny
flamethrower. Debbie applied the flame to the bowl and drew deeply
on the smoke. She threw her head back, her eyes closed in ecstasy,
and held the smoke in her lungs. DeWayne looked away, feeling a
little queasy. He had never heard anyone say anything good about
crack. It seemed to keep Debbie happy and horny, though, so he put
up with it.

He focused on the TV behind her. It was
another one of the things about Debbie that DeWayne found
disquieting. She always had to have something playing:, radio, CD
player, TV. It was as if she was afraid of silence. Even when they
were doing it, she had to have the TV on. He was sure she wasn’t
watching it as they did it, though. Pretty sure.

Debbie reached the end of her lungs’
endurance and blew a long stream of smoke out her nostrils. She
lowered her head and looked at DeWayne. Her eyes were bright and
glassy. “Meeee-ow,” she leered at him. She started crawling up the
bed towards him, her small breasts swinging beneath her.

“
Aww, c’mon, honey,” DeWayne said,
trying not to make it sound like a whine. ”I’m spent.”

She stuck out her lower lip. “You ought to
try you one of these rocks,” she said. “It’d put lead in your
pencil.” She began rubbing her cheek against his thigh, just above
the knee. DeWayne closed his eyes. She was starting to get to him
again. Suddenly, the TV caught his attention.

“
Hey,” he said, “turn that
up.”

“
Huh?” she replied, but he was crawling
past her. She squealed in protest as he almost knocked her off the
bed. The room was so small that DeWayne could lean off the end of
the bed and reach the volume control.

The 11:00 o’clock news was on. Over the
shoulder of the pretty young anchorwoman, DeWayne could see a
little box. In the box was the face of the guy who had stuffed him
in the trunk.“...in connection with a shootout in Fayetteville that
left two men dead, another critically wounded, and which may have
been connected with the later shooting of a Fayetteville police
officer.” The newscaster’s face dissolved to a videotape of the
Crown Vic being pulled out of the ditch by a wrecker. Everything in
the picture was lit up in the fluorescent green glow of a
night-vision camera. “Police now say they have located a vehicle
belonging to Jackson Keller, a bail bondsman operating out of
Wilmington. Clothing found in the vehicle bore traces of blood that
matched up to one of the victims, one Leonard Puryear.” The car
vanished off the screen and was replaced by an old photograph of
Leonard. Quick tears stung DeWayne’s eyes as he looked into his
cousin’s face.

“
Hey,” Debbie said, leaning into him
from behind. “Ain’t that your name?”

“
Shut up,” DeWayne said.

The newscaster went on. “Also killed in the
gun battle was John Lee Oxendine of Robeson County.” Leonard’s face
slid to one side of the screen. The other side was filled with a
face that DeWayne didn’t know. “ Authorities state that Oxendine
was unarmed at the time and was most likely an innocent
bystander.”

“
Bullshit,” DeWayne
muttered.

Both faces vanished to be replaced by the
pretty newscaster, her face a study in vapid concern. Keller’s face
was back in the box looking over her shoulder.  "Police also
say Keller is wanted for questioning in the deaths of Puryear’s
elderly parents a few days ago.”

DeWayne’s mouth dropped open. He felt a sick
feeling in the pit of his stomach. “What the...” he whispered.

“
Keller had reportedly been searching
for another member of Puryear’s family in connection with a bail
violation. When asked if Keller was a suspect in the deaths, police
had no comment, other than to say that anyone sighting Keller
should immediately notify the Fayetteville Police Department.” The
camera pulled back to reveal the second anchor, a distinguished
looking man with grey hair. He was shaking his head with a look of
grim resolution on his craggy face.

“
These so-called ‘bounty hunters’,” he
said in a deep measured tone. “They’re loose cannons. Something
needs to be done.”

The female anchor matched his serious
expression and nodded in unison with him. “You’re certainly right,
Tom.”

The camera panned to the man. The serious
expression melted away to be replaced by a smile that must have
cost a fortune. “Coming up, will this warm weather give way to some
much-needed rain? Stay tuned, as the news continues.”

“
That son of a
bitch
!” DeWayne exploded. He leaped up from the
bed.

“
What’s going on?” Debbie said
frantically.

DeWayne paced back and forth in the narrow
confines of the bedroom like a tiger in a too-small cage. “Son of a
bitch,” he snarled. “Son of a bitch.”

“
Hey. Lenny. Or whatever,” Debbie said
pleadingly. “You’re scaring me. What happened? Please, just tell me
what happened.”

DeWayne stopped and looked at her. His eyes
were wild. “That son of a bitch,” he repeated. “That guy Keller.
They just said he killed my folks. The folks who raised me. ”

She looked puzzled. “Did they say that? I
didn’t hear..”

“
Oh, they didn’t come right out and say
it,” DeWayne said. “They won’t till they catch him and charge him.
But he did it. He did it to try to get to me.”

She pondered that for a moment. “Wow,” she
said finally. “That sucks. What an asshole. ”She reached for the
pipe again. “You sure you don’t want a hit?” she said. “It might
make you feel better.”

He briefly considered backhanding her to shut
her stupid mouth. But she seemed to be looking at him with real
concern as she held the improvised pipe out. And he could surely
use something right now to make all this hurt go away.

“
Yeah,” he said, reaching for the pipe.
“Okay.”

In the daylight, Crystal Puryear’s house
seemed sad and worn. The sunlight revealed the dirt-caked windows,
the warping trim, and the peeling paint that had never been applied
all that well to start with. It was nearly noon, but the shades
were still drawn. Only the Corvette in the driveway gave any sign
that anyone even lived there. There was still a ragged shred of
yellow crime-scene tape knotted around one of the posts of the
porch.

They had come in Marie’s car, but it was
Keller who led the way up the walk. He slowed as he approached the
doorway, tensing as he recalled the gun battle in the yard. He
glanced over at the ground by the door where John Lee Oxendine had
lain with his chest blown apart by Keller’s shotgun. He thought he
could see a reddish tinge of bloodstain on the paint, but it might
have been his imagination. He stopped for a moment, causing Marie
to almost bump into the back of him.

“
Jack?” she said. “You
okay?”

“
Yeah,” he said. He took a deep breath
and stepped to the door. The plastic button of the doorbell was
gone, leaving only a pair of rusty wires sticking out of the jamb.
Keller knocked. There was no answer, no movement within the house.
He knocked again and waited. There was no response. Keller tried
the knob.

“
Hey,” Marie said. “We don’t have a
warrant.”

“
That’s okay,” he said. “I’m not a
cop.” He turned the knob. The door was unlocked.

“
Who the hell leaves a door unlocked in
this neighborhood?” Marie said.

“
Someone who doesn’t care what happens
to them,” Keller said grimly. He drew his gun and
entered.

The hallway was dim, but he could see a
flicker of light from the living room at the end. There was a tinny
bubbling of canned laughter and a woman’s voice, high-pitched and
strident. The TV was on. Keller advanced down the hallway, the
pistol held in a two-handed grip in front of him. He reached the
end of the hallway and the gun fell to his side.

Crystal Puryear lay on the couch, dressed in
a flimsy silk bathrobe that had fallen open to reveal her nude
body. Her limbs were splayed in a parody of invitation made
grotesque by her utter limpness. Her head lolled against the back
of the couch, her mouth open. A thin line of drool ran down her
chin.

Keller holstered the gun and strode over to
her. He took in the objects on the coffee table: a silver cellular
phone. A black pager. An empty plastic envelope. A burned out
candle. A soot-covered spoon. He looked around for the syringe.
Finally he located it. It was still lodged in her arm.

“
Holy shit,” Marie said. She sprang to
the couch and placed her right index and middle fingers against
Crystal’s throat. “I’ve got a pulse, but it’s weak,” she said
briskly. “Call 911.”

Keller moved towards the phone, then stopped.
911 would bring paramedics, but it would most likely also bring
police. He turned back to Marie. She had belted Crystal’s robe shut
and was gently removing the syringe from the girl’s arm. A bright
red bead of blood formed, turned to a rivulet that inched its way
down the pale flesh.