The Last Kind Words (9 page)

“None of them was robbed, Collie. You didn’t even take anything from the register at the gas station.”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“There is no answer. I just did it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I didn’t say it did.”

Gramp Shepherd had called it going down into the underneath. That moment when desperation, rage, or momentary madness drove you out of your head and forced you to do something stupid and terrible. He’d always warned us. He told us to be aware of it, to watch for it, to know that when that trapped feeling hit, you couldn’t let it make you lose control.

“What made it happen? What provoked you?”

“There was no provocation, it just happened.”

“You went mad dog for nothing?”

“It just happened.”

“Suzy Coleman. The girl in the mobile home—”

“Why are you hung up on the girl? Not the old lady? Nobody else? Only the girl, huh?”

Saying it like I should be ashamed.

“You told me you were making ghosts. What’s that mean?”

“Don’t talk about them. Don’t think about them. That’s not what you’re here for.”

“Don’t think about them?”

“No. It’ll just be distracting for you. There’s only one person you need to wonder about, that you need to ask about. Rebecca Clarke.”

“Why only her?”

“Because I didn’t kill her.”

I rubbed my eyes. I made a scoffing sound.

“So why didn’t you say anything about it before now?” I asked.

Collie looked at me with a mischievous expression, almost wearing a sad grin. He said nothing.

“What? You thought maybe you didn’t remember strangling a teenager?”

He said, “I wasn’t sure.”

“Then how can you be sure now?”

“There have been more.”

“More?”

“More young women who look an awful lot like Rebecca Clarke have been killed.”

I couldn’t look at him anymore. I stared over his shoulder at the wearisome white stone walls and tried to make sense of what he was saying. “How do you know that?”

“Lin’s been doing research. There have been other women murdered in similar ways since I’ve been in here. And at least one that happened about six months before I—”

“Tell the cops.”

“They don’t believe me.”

“I don’t either.”

He paused and the pause lengthened into a heavy silence, and finally he snapped his fingers to get my attention again. “I want you to look into it.”

“Look into what?”

“Becky’s murder. And the others.”

“Becky?”

He pursed his lips and turned away to say something to his audience. His stony eyes focused on me again. His tongue prodded the inside of his cheek. He cleared his throat.

“Talk to Lin, she has notes for you. She’s been investigating.”

“Oh, Christ, Collie.”

He started getting excited. The jazzy bop rhythm worked back into his voice. “Young women strangled around the island. Some even near the park, like Becky was.”

“Stop calling her Becky as if you were friends.”

“There’s been at least three more since I’ve been in here.”

“Collie, what the hell are you saying?”

“Someone else murdered Rebecca Clarke. And it looks like he’s been snuffing others. As many as five in the last six or seven years, maybe more, I don’t know. But the others, they all looked like her. Brunettes, pretty.”

I couldn’t hold back a bark of laughter. “That’s the description? Pretty brunettes? Someone’s killing pretty brunette teenagers?”

“They weren’t all teenagers. But they all looked similar, from what they tell me.”

“From what who tells you?”

“Lin.”

The new wife. The new psycho wife. If it was true and other women were being murdered, I figured that maybe she would be doing it. Trying to put the whole case in doubt. Strangling young girls because she’d always been turned on by the thought of murder. It was why she married a murderer. And now she had the perfect reason. She was killing for love.

“Fuck this,” I said.

“Listen to me, Terry. You’ve got to listen.” He pawed at his face but he wasn’t sweating. I was. “Someone’s out there snuffing women.”

“What do the cops say about all this?”

“They still think I did her.”

“So do I.”

“Check with Lin.”

“Check with Lin?”

“Stop repeating everything I say, Terry. Just do it.”

“Why? Why should I?”

“Because I’m asking you to.”

I slumped back. “You haven’t actually asked me anything, Collie. And that’s how I know you’re bullshitting. You’re giving orders, you’re pushing me around the way you always do. Fuck this nonsense.”

“Please, Terry. Please. I’m begging you.”

“You’re not begging me. You’re simply saying that you’re begging me. But why? Why do you care so much?”

Collie leaped up in frustration and I slipped out of the chair, put some space between us, got my fists up. My brother could be a fearsome sight, the way he moved like a caged beast waiting for the proper moment to strike. His eyes settled on me and he frowned, like I was an idiot to be afraid of him. He was detached from the horror of his own crimes. He had no idea how intimidating it might be for me to sit across from him, from those hands. They were powerful and menacing. They could strangle a young woman easily. They could do the same thing to me.

“Why wouldn’t I care?” he asked.

“Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”

“I did. But no one believed me. Look, you’ve got to trust me on this.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “Wait. Wait.” I mouthed the word again but nothing came out. Then there was a trickle of sound that turned into a chuckle thick with revulsion. “I have to trust you? And what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“Ask questions.”

“Ask questions? That’s what you’re telling me to do? What does that even mean?”

“Find out who did it. Stop them.”

“Why do you care? What difference does it make now? Five years later?”

“I’ve been thinking about it a long time.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense. You iced one young girl but you want to see justice for another you claim you didn’t kill?”

“It’s not a claim, Terry. I didn’t kill her. I man up for my own crimes.”

“You’re not even sure!”

“I am sure now. Find Gilmore. You remember Gilmore?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I remember Gilmore.”

“He still hangs around the house. He can probably put you in touch with the dicks who handled my case and the cases involving the other girls.”

“Why the hell would I want to surround myself with cops?”

“Because they think I’m lying.”

“I think you’re lying too.”

“No, you don’t. You think I was wrecked out of my mind and can’t remember, but you don’t think I’m lying.”

I didn’t like being corrected. “Actually, Collie, I do think you’re lying and I think you’re setting me up to take some kind of fall here. I don’t think you want to go out of the game alone.”

My brother didn’t have the capacity to look hurt. It wasn’t in his nature. I wasn’t sure if it was in his nature to even
be hurt
. But the look that crossed his eyes came as close as I’d ever seen.

I knew every muscle and vein and scar in my brother’s face. I’d seen him with a 106-degree fever and his eyes rolling back and showing only white from the agony of sepsis. I’d walked in on him more than once while he was
in flagrante delicto
, usually with one of my girls. I knew every twitch and tell he had.

I got in close. “Say it again.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

Maybe it was the truth. I just didn’t understand why he was bothering to tell it now. It earned him nothing. He couldn’t buy his freedom or his life for it. And a mass murderer couldn’t possibly care about justice for a victim that wasn’t even his own.

The exhaustion and miles and edginess caught up to me in that moment. I slumped into the seat and dropped my chin to my chest, and before I knew it I felt tears on my face.

“Are you crying?” he asked.

“No.”

“You are. For me?”

“Fuck no. I want to know what set you off.”

“Nothing.”

He’d spent the evening drinking at the Elbow Room. He’d gone on his spree and then returned to the bar, ordered a beer, and casually informed the bartender and patrons that he’d just murdered several people. He’d cracked open the .38 and unloaded the weapon. His knuckles were bruised but not bloodied or torn. It didn’t take much to beat an old woman to death. He waited without incident for the cops to show up. He confessed on the spot to what he had done.

I lifted my shirt and wiped my face. I breathed deep. I tried to calm myself. I could be cool and steady burgling the house of a cop while he slept six feet away from me. But my own brother made me a heaving mess.

“Something had to,” I insisted.

“No.”

“You had no drugs in your system. You’d only had a few beers.”

“Yeah.”

“So you were sitting in the Elbow Room, minding your own business, having a pilsner by yourself—”

“A Corona.”

“—having a Corona by yourself, and you decided,
Hey, I need to go out and kill a bunch of people
.”

“It wasn’t a decision,” he said. “It just … happened. I’m not lying. I haven’t lied to you yet, Terry.”

“You told me you were making ghosts. Why did you do it?”

“Stop asking.”

“Was it because of a woman?” I asked.

“What woman?”

“How the fuck do I know what woman? Any woman.”

“Why would a woman make me—”

“How the fuck do I know why? For any reason.”

“No, it wasn’t a woman, Terry. Listen to me.”

“Listen to you!” I jumped out of the chair. His voice, or my own, was
too loud inside my head, and I couldn’t hear myself anymore. “You listen to me!” I shouted. “Are you …?” The words caught in my throat. I tried to cough them free. I couldn’t catch any air. I tried again, my voice sounding nothing like me, sounding, in fact, more like him. He stood and reached for me. I backed away. “I mean, I know you’re crazy, you had to be, you have to be … but man, Jesus, Collie, really, just … just … 
are you fucking insane
?”

“No.”

I stumbled toward the door while he continued to plead with me. He said her name again. Becky Clarke. It’s all he cared about. Not the other kills on his conscience, not what he was doing to our family. I hammered at the door like a terrified child. It brought the screws running. I was so pale that they checked me for shiv wounds.

My Christ, I thought, I have the same blood running through my veins.

You
walk into a department store and there are security cameras and undercover employees everywhere. You try to creep an apartment building and you have to get past a front door, a security door with an automatic lock, closed-circuit television, and a doorman who gets paid by the pound. You want to score a warehouse and you’ve got a couple of twenty-year-old fuckup minimum-wage rent-a-cops patrolling the grounds just waiting to pull their revolvers, dive and roll, snap off six wild shots, and blow somebody’s face away.

But if you want to slip in somewhere that’s full of people, action, money, drugs, weapons, where no one even looks at you much less questions you, then try a police station about six
P.M.
, dinnertime.

Cops are hungry and tired and wanting to get home. They’re sloppy and sign out early. The ones left around figure that if you’re in the squad room you must have a good reason. You’re a victim, you’re waiting to make a complaint, look at mug shots, sign a statement. If they don’t recognize you and you’re not part of their caseloads then they don’t want anything to do with you. They’re already burdened with unsolved crimes and vics and pains in the ass of every stripe. They pretend to be busy and refuse to meet your eye. They don’t check up on you. They hope the next cop down the line will take care of you instead.

First thing I did when I walked into the squad room was scan the on-call board. Gilmore had the late shift and wouldn’t be on until midnight. I went looking for his desk.

I recognized the framed photo of his two daughters, Maggie and Melanie. It was an old picture. No snapshots of his wife. A happily married man always puts a photo of his wife on his desk. He changes the pictures of his kids and keeps them up-to-date, unless they no longer
live at home with him. Like my father had said, Phyllis had finally walked out and taken their daughters with her.

I sat in his chair and went through his desk hoping I might find Collie’s jacket or files on the case. It was a long shot and I came up empty. I did find an old rent receipt that gave me Gilmore’s new address. I knew the apartment house. The neighborhood was good, but he wasn’t paying much. Police discount.

Cops walked past me by the boatload. They dragged in suspects who whined and complained and tried to look menacing. They threatened to sue, wanted their lawyers, proclaimed their innocence. The cops ignored them. So did I.

Under Gilmore’s phone was a directory sheet of extension numbers. I called the archives room and asked them to bring up Collie Rand’s file. Some old-timer gave me static about proper channels.