The Long Count (9 page)

Blowing out his cheeks he gestured. ‘I’m sorry, but there’s no way
I believe that, despite the way he was.’ He paused for a moment then he added, ‘What I mean is – the thing with my dad, he was different after Mom left. I guess that was only natural. All my life he was a little distant, and maybe that’s how he was around her. Maybe that’s why she left. But after she did – after that it was just the three of us and he was even more distant then.’

‘How do you mean?’ Quarrie said.

‘I don’t know, I guess he never said a whole lot, and I wrote him all the time but he never once answered my letters.’

Pious was staring at him with his brows knit. ‘You wrote your old man and he never wrote back?’

Isaac nodded.

‘From Nam you talking about?’

Again Isaac nodded.

Quarrie shifted to the edge of his seat. ‘But why?’ he said. ‘He used to be a soldier. He must’ve known what it’s like to be in a combat zone and how important mail from home is.’

‘You’d think so,’ Isaac said. ‘He was a soldier all his life. Got wounded a couple times. When he was in Africa he took a bayonet in the gut and it almost killed him. The fact is I wrote all the time – I’m talking three full tours and he never once wrote back.’

He showed them the entrance to the storm shelter, Quarrie standing in the garage with Pious at his shoulder while Isaac lifted the trapdoor.

‘I think whoever it was shot him got in this way,’ Isaac said. ‘They must’ve been staking out the house from the woods.’

Quarrie looked doubtful, head to one side and his hands in his jacket pockets. ‘Mind if we take a look?’

Isaac told them about the panel leading to his father’s study and how to open it, then Quarrie and Pious climbed down. They walked the short passage to the storm shelter and took in the camp beds, sleeping bags, and the cans of food stacked on the shelves. From there they followed the second passage to the other door and the back side of the wood panelling. For a moment Quarrie considered it, then worked the tips of his fingers down the right-hand side as Isaac had suggested. Nothing happened. He sought another spot, pressed that and still nothing happened. Locating a third spot he tried again and still nothing happened. At the fourth attempt nothing happened but at the fifth they heard the faintest of clicks and finally the panel swung in. Quarrie cast a glance at Pious.

Inside the study they moved around the desk where Quarrie’s eye was drawn to the tiny spots of dried blood that still marked the floor. He studied the chair where it was pushed under the desk and he looked at the blotter and pen set, the empty wire in-tray.

Pious was at the gun cabinet where one of the hooks remained empty. He raised an eyebrow at the bayonet. ‘Do you figure that’s the blade he was talking about?’

Quarrie shrugged. He was considering the photographs on the
shelf where Ike Bowen, a good-looking man in his younger days, gazed rather proudly back.

‘Career soldier,’ Quarrie stated. ‘All his life in the service, must’ve been a shock to the system when they told him it was time to quit.’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ Pious moved alongside him and he too cast an eye across the photos. ‘John Q,’ he said, ‘what kind of father is it that don’t answer letters written him by his son?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Don’t make any sense.’

‘No, it don’t.’

‘So what about the brother, the hospital he was talking about?’

‘I don’t know,’ Quarrie said. ‘When he’s calmed down some I figure I’ll ask him.’

Pious looked back at the open panel. ‘Saw a few like him in Korea. Poor bastard, he’s just about holding it together.’

Crossing to the other door he looked the length of the basement corridor. ‘You got to feel for him, what with the sheriff’s detective telling him his old man took a gun to his head and you telling him that ain’t how it was.’

‘His daddy was murdered, Pious,’ Quarrie stated. ‘He was setting that chair yonder with powder burns on his head.’

‘So who’d want him dead, and how would they know about that passage?’

Quarrie shook his head. ‘They didn’t get in through the passage. When the gardener got here the kitchen door was open. I figure whoever it was they just showed up, knocked on the door and Ike Bowen answered. Could’ve been anybody – drifter, somebody watching the place as Isaac said – but whoever they were, Ike must’ve let them in.’

‘So Isaac – what’s his fixation with the passage?’

‘It’s like you said he’s just about holding it together. His old man is dead and he has no idea what happened to his brother. He ain’t
thinking straight, Pious. In his condition I don’t know many who would.’

‘So what’re you going to do?’ Pious said. ‘Swing by the sheriff’s department and tell them how they got this wrong?’

‘Not right away. Later maybe. Isaac said how the lieutenant is in Houston right now so I’ll probably just wait on the coroner.’

With a nod Pious returned his attention to Ike Bowen’s picture. ‘So whoever it was knocked on the door they had to have had a weapon. Old soldier like that, he would’ve been suspicious of anybody just showing up, so they had to be already holding.’

‘Yeah,’ Quarrie said. ‘What’s your point?’

Pious gestured. ‘Why bring the man down here? Why use his own piece and why make it look like he used it himself?’

‘Simple.’ Quarrie pointed to the chair. ‘If this is suicide then nobody’s looking for anybody else and the trail ends right where he was sat.’

Upstairs they found Isaac sitting out on the patio. Shaking a cigarette from his pack, Quarrie tapped it against the heel of his thumb then took a seat in a metal cane chair. He smiled encouragingly.

‘You OK?’ he said. ‘I guess this whole deal has you pretty hopped up.’

‘I’m OK,’ Isaac told him.

‘Listen,’ Quarrie went on. ‘That passageway, the storm shelter – there’s no way that’s how the intruder got in. It’s too intricate, too complicated. Whoever it was killed your daddy, I figure they just had him come to the door when they knocked.’

Isaac looked from him to Pious and back.

‘That’s how it happened,’ Quarrie assured him. ‘The gardener found the kitchen door open and I figure they left the same way they got in.’

Pious sat down and Quarrie laid his unlit cigarette on the table. ‘So anyway, I have to ask you some questions. Your father, did he
have any enemies you can think of? Anybody he might’ve had a beef with?’

Isaac did not answer right away. Sitting with his hands in his lap he shifted his weight in the chair. ‘I don’t know, I guess it’s hard to say with me being away all the time. You kind of lose touch with what’s going on.’ Again he glanced from Quarrie to Pious. ‘I guess he might’ve had enemies. Plenty of people do and it’s a fact he could be pretty ornery.’

‘How long had he been up here?’ Quarrie said. ‘This house I mean, all on its own like this with no near neighbors. I guess that’s how he liked it, but how long had he lived here?’

‘Seven years almost. This was my base when I was in the army but I never really lived here myself.’

‘What about your brother?’

‘Ishmael?’ Isaac worked his shoulders. ‘He was here some of the time I guess, but then he was in and out of the hospital.’

Quarrie nodded. ‘Yeah, you mentioned that. What was he doing in the hospital?’

Isaac tapped his temple. ‘He had issues; it’s a fact my brother’s got problems.’

‘What sort of problems?’

‘Hard to say really. I guess when he was younger he used to talk to himself, hold conversations, you know, when nobody else was with him.’

Quarrie reached for his cigarette. ‘Where’d you live at back then?’

‘Oklahoma City.’

‘And your mom was already gone?’ Pious said.

Isaac nodded. ‘Long gone. She took off when we were kids.’

‘Why’d she do that, leave out on her family?’

Isaac sat forward. ‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘Why does anybody leave anybody? Why do people get divorced? It’s not like Dad had to give her anything. Money, I mean. I don’t think she walked with a
dime. You’d have to ask her why she took off. I’d kind of like to find out myself.’

‘So do you have any idea where she is?’

Isaac shook his head. ‘She was never in contact, not with me or my brother, and my dad …’ He was struggling again. Shifting his gaze to the floor his voice seemed to fall away.

‘These hospitals,’ Quarrie said. ‘Your brother, you told us his troubles started when he was younger. How was it that kicked off?’

Eyes glassy, Isaac peered across the driveway towards the woodland that broke up the flatlands ahead of the lake. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess it started around the time Mom left. I asked Dad what it was set Ishmael off and he said he’d tell me when I was older.’ Lifting a hand he gestured. ‘I’m older now and I still don’t know so I guess he never did.’

Instead of going home, Quarrie had Pious fly him to a crop-dusting outfit just outside Winfield in Marion County. From the duster’s office he called Chief Billings and asked him to send someone out to pick him up. When he got into town Billings was on the phone and he waved Quarrie to the broken-down armchair.

‘That was the highway patrol,’ he said when he finished his call. ‘They just found that stolen Buick a block from a Baptist mission cottage in Marshall, Texas.’

Quarrie sat for a moment without saying anything. He peered across the desk. ‘Why would he do that?’ he asked finally. ‘A town like Marshall. That ain’t anywhere to be at.’ He was quiet again, then he added, ‘He had to believe we wouldn’t know what he was driving, not with the way he drowned your cruiser. The fact we found it hasn’t been broadcast – the radio I’m talking about – has it?’

Billings shook his head. ‘No, it hasn’t.’

‘So why would he do that, Chief? Abandon the car he made such an effort getting hold of?’

The chief had no idea but he said he would find a vehicle for Quarrie to use then he opened a drawer and handed him two sets of phone records. One was for Mrs Perkins and the other Mary-Beth Gavin. Quarrie pored over them while Billings got back on the phone.

‘There are no long-distance calls here,’ Quarrie stated when the chief hung up. ‘Not from Mary-Beth’s phone anyway. In the six weeks she was here she didn’t make a long-distance phone call.’

Billings seemed to ponder that for a moment. ‘Six weeks isn’t very long,’ he said. ‘And maybe there was nobody to call. Or if
there was, maybe she called from work or a payphone.’

Quarrie turned his attention to the Perkins bill. There were numbers for Dallas and Houston, as well as Santa Fe, New Mexico. He found one call to an area code he did not recognize and it had been made around the time that Mary-Beth would have been staying. Perched on the edge of Billings’s desk, he picked up the phone and dialled the number. He had to wait for the connection and it took a moment before he heard the dial tone.

Nobody answered and he was about to hang up and try again later when the line clicked and a woman’s voice sounded. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘This is Carla.’

‘Afternoon, mam,’ Quarrie said, glancing at Billings where he walked around the desk and squatted on the arm of the chair. ‘I didn’t think anybody was picking up. I’m a police officer calling from Texas.’

‘Police officer?’ She sounded a little nervous.

‘Yes, mam. My name’s Quarrie. I’m a Texas Ranger.’

‘What do you want with me?’

‘Well, first off, if you don’t mind, I’d like to know who it is I’m talking to. You said your name was Carla? What’s your last name?’

She seemed to hesitate, the line went quiet and for a moment he thought the connection had been lost.

‘Mam, are you there?’

‘Yes, I’m here. It’s Simpson. My last name is Simpson.’

‘And where am I calling you exactly?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘No, I don’t. Like I say, I have the number not the address and I don’t recognize the area code.’

‘Tulsa, I’m in Tulsa, Oklahoma.’

‘Tulsa, right,’ Quarrie said. ‘Look, I’m sorry to bother you like this, but I need to ask about a woman named Mary-Beth Gavin.’

Again she was silent, the line so still this time he was sure he had lost the connection.

‘Mam, are you still there?’

‘Yes, I’m here, but I was on my way out. I’m late right now. Can you call back another time?’

‘Ms Simpson, I need to know about your relationship with Ms Gavin.’

‘There is no relationship. I don’t know her. I never heard the name.’

Quarrie was frowning. ‘But she called you. Six weeks back, your number is right here on the phone bill from the house where she was living at in Marion County, Texas.’

‘I don’t know her,’ the woman repeated. ‘I’ve never been to Marion County. I’m sorry. This has to be a mistake because I don’t know anyone called Mary-Beth … What did you say her last name was?’

‘Gavin. Mary-Beth Gavin. Are you married, Ms Simpson?’ Quarrie said. ‘Maybe your husband—’

‘No, I’m not married. Look, I’m sorry. This is all some mistake. It was probably a wrong number. Now,’ she was sounding flustered, ‘I really do have to go. I’m awfully late. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to help you.’

She hung up and Quarrie looked round at Billings where he was still sitting on the arm of the chair.

‘I guess you got most of that,’ Quarrie said, glancing once more at the phone number. ‘Told me how she doesn’t know Mary-Beth, said she doesn’t remember the call.’ He stood up. ‘She knows all right; the name at least – it was a bolt from the blue when I told her.’ Dialling again he called Austin. ‘This is Sergeant Quarrie,’ he said when headquarters answered. ‘Got a telephone number here for a Carla Simpson in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I need for you to get me the address.’

The following morning Billings brought an unmarked Ford to his motel and gave him the keys.

‘I spoke to old man McIntyre,’ the chief said. ‘Told him how you wanted to talk to him about Mary-Beth and you’ll find him at the
shop down there, a block off Orchard and Main.’ He stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘What about the Buick? You want to go take a look?’

Quarrie made a face. ‘Not right now. In fact maybe you could do me a favor and have somebody load it onto a flatbed and ship it to Austin. We got pretty good forensics up there these days so maybe they can come up with something.’

Leaving the police department he drove through town, making the turn on Orchard and pulling up out front of McIntyre’s Farm Machinery. A workshop with an entrance twenty feet wide, a concrete floor with workbenches carrying both sides and beyond it, a couple of glass-fronted wood-grain offices. Showing his star to the man outside, Quarrie made his way past a couple of mechanics and went up to one of the offices where a thin-faced man was on the telephone. Next to that was a smaller office with room for little more than the secretary’s desk and a couple of metal file cabinets. A young woman with thick, dark hair and a lot of eye make-up was typing a letter as Quarrie went in.

‘Ranger,’ he told her. ‘I’m here to see Mr McIntyre.’

The young woman poked her head next door then she ushered Quarrie through. McIntyre was seated behind his desk, still on the phone; he indicated a chair directly across.

A minute later he hung up, looking a little flustered. It was hot and airless. Sweat seemed to drag at his shirt and his neck was rouge where the tie looked too tight at the collar.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Rushed off our feet right now, and since Mary-Beth …’ He broke off and glanced at the plywood door. ‘She tries hard that one, but it’s a fact she’s not used to typing more than a letter. Mary-Beth, now she really was something. Normally have them work a week’s trial, two weeks sometimes if I’m not sure, but she showed what she could do in about three days flat, and it was all I could do to move her into that house I own by the weekend.’ Pressing the air from his cheeks he sat back. ‘A feller trying to
run a tight little ship like this needs back-up and she was back-up, I promise you.’

‘She was more than just a secretary then?’ Quarrie suggested.

‘I’ll say she was. Started out that way, but by the end of the second week she was just about running this place. I’m talking book-keeping and records, invoicing, chasing up money owed from people who don’t want to pay. Then this creep comes along and ruins everything.’ He looked keenly at Quarrie. ‘You have any idea who it was done that to her? Strangled, the chief said, and in her own house – my house if anybody’s asking.’

Quarrie looked him in the eye. ‘Right now we don’t have much to go on.’

Grimly McIntyre nodded. ‘Billings said how it wasn’t just her. The sonofabitch killed a police officer.’

‘Yes, he did, as well as a salesman from Arkansas.’

The older man gawped now, he was shaking his head. Taking off his hat Quarrie rested it on his knee.

‘Mr McIntyre,’ he said, ‘I’m pretty sure Mary-Beth knew her killer. I’m pretty sure she had something of his or something he wanted, and when she couldn’t or wouldn’t give it up he killed her in a fit of anger. He was so mad he took a length of two-by-four, or a fire poker maybe, and left her just about unrecognizable.’

McIntyre’s features had lost all color.

‘I need to know who she was,’ Quarrie said. ‘I need to know where she came from. I’m going to need her Social Security number and anything else you got that might help me.’

‘I can give you her Social Security number.’ McIntyre pressed a finger to the buzzer on his phone. ‘That’s about all I’ve got, though. She didn’t tell us where she was from and if I asked where she worked before, which I might not have, I don’t remember what it was she told me.’ Quarrie looked at him a little sourly. ‘I know, I know. Hardly any way to run a business, but she was so damn capable I didn’t think it mattered.’

‘What about people coming by the shop to visit her?’ Quarrie asked. ‘Or calling on the phone. Did she ever mention anybody? A Carla Simpson maybe?’

McIntyre shook his head. ‘I don’t get involved in my employees’ personal lives, Sergeant, and she was only here six weeks. I’ve got enough trouble just trying to deal with the customers. So long as the folks work hard, are on time and don’t steal from me, that’s about as far as my interest stretches.’

‘Do you mind if I talk to your people?’ Quarrie asked him. ‘See if there was anything anybody noticed?’

‘Be my guest. Talk to who you want, anything I can do to help catch this sumbitch, you got it. I tell you what,’ he added, looking beyond Quarrie now through the window. ‘There is one thing you might want to check out. Yonder is the grocery store and there’s a colored girl makes sandwiches over there with home-made chillies and pickles. One of my boys told me that come lunchtime Mary-Beth would sit out back with that colored girl. It’s the kind of thing gets noticed in these parts, but it was nothing to do with me so I never said anything about it.’ Sitting back he pursed his lips. ‘Maybe I should have, but she kept herself to herself and if she wanted to make friends with a Negro, what was that to me?’

Nobody in the workshop had heard of Carla Simpson and the new girl in the office had never met Mary-Beth. Leaving his car where it was Quarrie crossed to the store where a young black woman had a queue of people waiting for sandwiches. Making his way to the front Quarrie showed her his badge. Another girl took over and Quarrie and the young woman went out back of the store where a tiny courtyard was set with a narrow bench. Taking a seat the woman looked at him with her eyes darting.

‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘You haven’t done anything. I just want to talk to you about Ms Gavin.’

The woman said her name was Patty and when he spoke about the murder her eyes brimmed with tears. She fished in her apron
pocket for a tissue and Quarrie waited while she blew her nose.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m reaching out here, Patty; looking for any kind of detail that might help me find who killed her.’

Hands clasped tightly, Patty nodded.

‘Mr McIntyre across the street there told me that she liked to eat lunch out here at the back of the store.’

‘That’s right, sir: sometimes she did.’

Quarrie smiled. ‘Looks like you build a hell of a sandwich. Queuing out the door like that, I guess you got yourself quite the reputation.’

Patty returned his smile but it did not seem to hold much humor.

‘Patty,’ he said, ‘I guess the two of you would’ve been out here together and I need to know what you talked about.’

Patty seemed to think about that. ‘Well, I don’t really know,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t that we ate our lunch together so much as Ms Gavin liked to eat out here. She told me it was too far to go home and she didn’t want to set at her desk. I was out here just getting a little air is all, and black folks don’t say a whole lot to white folks – not in this part of the country.’

‘No, I get that,’ Quarrie said. ‘But, right now the fact that she did talk to you is all I have. I can’t seem to find another person in town Mary-Beth was friends with and by all accounts she was a nice lady. I know she was only here six weeks, but to not have any friends, no family visiting – it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.’ He smiled now. ‘I’m a police officer and I guess people like me we’re kind of suspicious. When I see a situation like that, when somebody new comes to town and nobody knows anything about them, I wonder if they’re not hiding or running away from something.’ He looked squarely at her then. ‘You saw her most every day: did she look to you like she was hiding?’

Patty shook her head. ‘I can’t say as I noticed anything like that, sir. She was nice to me is all and I never figured it any more than
that.’ She looked across the alley to the rear of the buildings opposite where a black man was folding sheets of cardboard into a dumpster. ‘She talked to me like I was her equal and that ain’t like anybody else; not with white folks anyhow.’ She gestured to the door of the store. ‘White folks they just want what they want and they tell you what it is and you go get it for them.’

‘But Mary-Beth was different?’ Quarrie said. ‘So what did the two of you talk about?’

‘Oh, not much. I guess she asked if I was going to get married, if I wanted to have any kids. She was an older lady and she talked to me kind of like my momma. She heard me humming one time and said I had a nice voice. She asked if I went to church, if I liked to sing in the choir. I told her I was Catholic so come Sundays I’d be at Holy Trinity and there wasn’t any choir there.’ Breaking off Patty narrowed her eyes. ‘That’s something, maybe. She told me she used to know a place called Trinity.’

‘She did? A town was that? Did she say whether it was in Texas?’

‘No sir, she never did.’

Back at the station house Quarrie called the ranch and asked Eunice to go and find Pious. A minute or so later the phone was picked up.

‘John Q,’ his friend said. ‘I’m underneath that old wreck of a feed truck again and she’s leaking oil all over.’

‘Then I guess I better make it snappy. Isaac Bowen.’

‘What about him?’