The Last Kind Words: A Novel Page 10

  I shut the folders and shoved them away from me. I sat back and listened to the juke crooning and droning. I kept seeing Scooter bolting across Kimmy’s front lawn. I thought about Chub playing it on the straight and narrow, running a completely legit garage. I saw my brother press his lips to the old woman’s brow an instant before he beat her to death.

  No matter how I tried, that night didn’t piece together right. Where had Collie gotten the S&W .38 and the knife? He was a Rand. Rands didn’t use guns. It had been a clean drop. No serial numbers. Had he already been armed in the Elbow Room? I tried to picture it. If he’d been on the verge of going mad dog, why not start here, in this kind of crowd? Why drive around first? It seemed to me that he would’ve been cooling off then. Or had he run into one of his cronies and purchased the weapons then? There didn’t seem to be enough time. Collie had left the Elbow Room at eleven P.M., and the murders began about twenty minutes later. He returned before closing at two A.M. and announced he was a murderer and someone should call the cops.

  I didn’t see him rushing around looking to buy a piece. It wasn’t his way. But neither was knifing an old woman. Not until that night.

  Where and when had he picked up the weapons? If it had been days or weeks before, then how could anyone consider his rampage a spur-of-the-moment occurrence? There were at least a couple of names I was familiar with who might have sold Collie an untraceable piece. I decided I’d pay them a visit.

  A shadow crossed my table. I looked up and Flo was standing there, watching me.

  The whiskey-and-hamburger smell had given way to tequila and bland salsa. Her lips appeared to be even more unnatural as she hit a pose beneath the weak barroom lighting. She had on a pair of diamond stud earrings that looked like the real thing.

  “I know who you are,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded. “You look just like your brother. With that same white streak in your hair.”

  That got my attention. I drew the files back toward me in a display of something like protection. Then I took a final pull of my drink. When I finished I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stared at her. “What do you know about my brother?”

  “It’s a compliment. He’s a nice-looking man. Looks like your uncle. That Grey. He still comes in here sometimes. Handsome. A touch of class. He knows how to treat a woman.” Without any invitation she slid into the other side of the booth. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little company? I can see that you’re lonely. A young man like you, hurting so bad.”

  “I don’t know where you’re getting that, lady.” I held the file close, like it contained a catalog of all my own sins. “I’m merry. I’m full of mirth.”

  “You’re melancholy and you’re pining for an old girlfriend, right? The one that got away. The one that you’d give anything to be with.”

  “That’s not a bold guess, Flo. Everybody in here is pining for the losses of his youth. Including you.”

  “Not me, hon. I’ve got no sentiment left in me.”

  “You were going to talk about my brother,” I said.

  “Was I?”

  “Yes. Did you know him? Collie Rand?”

  “Everyone knew Collie.”

  I sat up straighter. “Were you here that night?”

  “Which night?”

  “The night he was arrested.”

  “Why don’t you buy me a dirty martini?”

  “Why don’t you answer my question first, Flo?” I grinned at her. I hoped it looked like a john’s drunken smile. The pulse in my throat began to burn. I leaned toward her as if she was beginning to arouse me.

  “I can make you forget, you know,” she said.

  “Let’s stay on topic, Flo. Collie, my brother. The night he was arrested.”

  “You won’t even remember her name after me.”

  She reached for my wrist and held on. I didn’t want to be touched. I wondered about these people who thought they had some kind of a right to put their hands on you, to pull and pluck at you. I felt a surge of anger. “How about if you quit working me like I’m a lonely-hearts drunk with a wife who won’t suck my pud and answer my fucking question, right?”

  She pulled her hand back. “You’re an abrasive son of a bitch, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I know that.”

  I pulled a twenty out and slapped it down in front of her. She snatched it away and tucked it into her bra.

  “You got a bad temper,” she said. “Just like the other one. We can’t even sit here and have a friendly talk?”

  It was a cheap shot but it hit home. I tried to let the tension out of me but it was a losing game. The waitress appeared and I downshifted to beer. Flo watched me expectantly. Jesus Christ, the corners you could get backed into.

  I said, “Fine. And you can have a dirty martini.”

  The waitress nodded and went to get our drinks.

  “Look, about my brother—”

  “I was here,” she said.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “He was around, then he left, then he came back and he said for somebody to call the police. The cops came and they busted him. Didn’t even have to wrestle him, he just laid flat on his face on the floor.”

  “Think you can go into deeper detail than that?”

  I’d shown too much interest. She thought if I started getting the answers I needed then she could hold out on the rest of the facts and reel in more cash. Her greasy eyes were full of hunger. She repeated the story and tried to flesh out the scene with minor specifics, but she couldn’t remember much. I got the feeling she had been bored. Collie hadn’t done much that was noteworthy. He put the gun on the bar, drank his Corona, and laid down. It was barely a ripple in her night.

  She finally realized I wasn’t going to turn over any serious cash, and she slipped back to the bar and found herself a new guy to hang on to.

  I was too swilled to be disappointed that I hadn’t gotten more out of her. I opened the file again, then closed it, then opened it. I hissed, shut it, and got to my feet. My stomach twisted with the alcohol. I headed for the door. I wanted to go home to my bed.

  Why did it matter to Collie now five years too late, and why the hell should it matter to me?

  Maybe it was in the blood, this thing that made us so bent, so wrong. The veins in my wrist ticked away, black and twisted.

  I knew I’d have to talk to Gilmore eventually. I didn’t expect him to come around the back of my car in the Elbow Room parking lot and give me a left hook to the kidneys.

  The pain forced me to my knees. I puked up the liquor and nearly went over but managed to keep my face out of the asphalt. I made a noise that sounded like an animal about to start gnawing its leg out of a trap, then I vomited again. I’d tossed my cookies more in the last two days than in the twenty years prior.

  Gagging, trying to catch a sip of air, I looked up and saw Gilmore standing over me. He wore a sorrowful grin even while he sucked on a cigarette. His eyes were dancing pinpoints of dejection. His hair was short and chopped across the front, messy but still fashionable. His face had some alcoholic bloat to it.

  Maybe he’d been following me and had seen me duck into the Elbow Room. Maybe he watched as I turned pages, and he recognized the photocopied files. Or maybe the old man from the archives had left a message on Gilmore’s voice mail and given him shit for circumventing protocol. Gimore would question the guy and eventually put it together. Who else would grab Collie’s jacket except me?

  My father had said that Gilmore had no edge to him now that he’d lost his wife. I couldn’t quite agree with that.

  I crawled forward a bit and tried to stand. Gilmore gave me another shot in the same place. He grunted a little like it caused him pain. It hurt me ten times worse than the first punch and I went down flat on my face.

  He lit another cigarette and leaned back against the trunk of my car. He stared off in the distance like he couldn’t bear to look at me.

  “Terrier.
Didn’t think you’d ever come back. Been keeping your snout clean out there wherever it is you’ve settled?”

  Cars drove by. The front door of the Elbow Room opened and closed. I heard hushed voices punctuated by mean girlish laughter. Gilmore took me by the arm and got me to my knees.

  A few of the other patrons walked by on their way to their cars. Gilmore acknowledged them and said, “Evening.”

  I deserved what I’d gotten. I accepted it the way I’d accepted the beating from Big Dan’s boys. I took my chances with my eyes open.

  Still, I thought Gilmore was overreacting a bit. It was a petty move. He knew I’d never punch a cop, not even in self-defense.

  He tried to help me to my feet, but I was still too wobbly. He left me kneeling on asphalt and patted my back tenderly.

  “You know, Terrier, you broke your mother’s heart.”

  Jesus Christ, I thought, here it comes.

  He toed the paperwork scattered across the ground. He said nothing about it.

  “I always liked you. You and your whole family. From the start, or nearly so, we understood each other. There are lines you cross and those you don’t. Your grandfather knew that, your uncles, your father. But it got crossed up when it came to you and your brother.”

  I wanted to tell him I was nothing like Collie, but I still couldn’t speak. The pain was lessening. I breathed deep. As I listened to him talking quietly behind me, I couldn’t stop picturing him pulling his piece and popping me in the back of my head, execution style.

  “I wish you would’ve called me. I wish you would have asked. I deserve that much respect, no matter what you think of me or cops in general.” He rubbed my back again, took a deep drag on his cigarette, and let the smoke out over my shoulder. “I thought you were the bright one. I thought you might be going somewhere. I had hopes, Terry, I really did. I figured you and Kimmy would get out of that house and go your own way. You’d leave the life behind and raise a family. It would’ve been a good thing. I knew you had it in you.” He sighed. “But then you ran out on everyone. You showed a real lack of character there, you know?”

  I knew.

  “You got a wife wherever you been living? Kids?”

  I coughed and shook my head.

  “That’s too bad.” He flicked his cigarette butt away, lit another. “Did you really come back just to stir up trouble?”

  “No,” I groaned.

  “Well, that’s good to hear. I’m happy to hear that. You still on the grift wherever it is you’ve gotten to?”

  “No.”

  “Good, that’s good to know. But there’s something about home that brings it out in you again, huh?”

  I thought it might be time to try standing. He slung one of my arms over his shoulder and helped me up. When I was on my feet again, I propped myself against the back bumper of my car. I slumped there for a couple of minutes, watching him smoke.

  When I was able to, I bent and retrieved the copied files, opened the car door, and stuffed them back under the passenger seat.

  “I bet you could use a beer right about now,” Gilmore said.

  My voice sounded exactly like I felt—sick, weak, trembling. “I think I’m done for the night.”

  “Then you can buy me one. Come on, Terry.”

  He turned away from me and headed into the Elbow Room. I followed him, limping along. I smelled like asphalt and vomit. I thought I might get sick again the second I stepped back into the bar. Gilmore breezed over to the table I’d been at and took the opposite bench. I sat exactly where I’d been sitting all night.

  The waitress came by and Gilmore ordered us two beers. She returned with them and he paid her and said thank you. I grabbed the wet bar towel from her tray and wiped my face with it.

  Gilmore sipped his beer and stared at me like I was a long-lost friend he’d been searching for and had finally found. “You look well,” he said.

  “I’ve been better.”

  “You deserved worse from me, but we’ll let that slide for now.”

  His eyes were dark and lonely. His kids were gone. He probably saw them only on alternating weekends, if that. When he was forced to drop them off at their mother’s again, the grief would try to drown him from the inside.

  “You didn’t hang around for your brother’s trial,” he continued. “You never got to see the evidence against him. Hear the witnesses. Listen to the testimony. Take the stand in his defense. Your mother did, you know. She wept the whole time but she tried to put in a righteous word. You could’ve said something too, if you’d cared.”

  “What would the point have been? He admitted his guilt.”

  “That’s right, he did.”

  I started to feel better. Suddenly I wanted the beer that was in front of me. I took a swig. Gilmore finished his and ordered another round. He paid again. Our eyes met.

  “You know what he says now?” I asked.

  “That he didn’t smoke the teenage girl. Rebecca Clarke.”

  “That’s right. Is there any chance it’s the truth?”

  “None,” Gilmore said. “He did them all.”

  “He never confessed to killing her.”

  “He didn’t have to. Maybe he just forgot. Isn’t that what he said? That he wasn’t sure at the time? A night like that, a crazy murder spree. Who wouldn’t want to forget?”

  I nodded and sipped. “What about the kiss?”

  He pulled that tight and wistful grin again. He couldn’t help himself, his face fell into it so naturally now. It showed me how forlorn he’d become. He let out a false chuckle that told me even more about how his life had smashed up since I’d last seen him. “You spotted that, huh? Sharp eyes.”

  “Yes. He apparently kissed them all on the forehead. But not Rebecca Clarke.”

  “So he was too excited. So he was too juiced up on rage or adrenaline to perform that specific sick ritual that one particular time. He still choked her to death.”

  “Maybe not. What about the sash or cord? What about the knife? They were never found.”

  “So he ditched them. He admitted to knifing the gas-station attendant, Douglas Schuller.”

  “Right, he admitted it to me again the other day. But he said he didn’t snuff Becky Clarke.”

  “Did his wife put you up to this?” Gilmore asked.

  I drew my chin back. “You know about her?”

  “Yeah, she haunts me on a weekly basis.”

  “But you never mentioned her to my mother or father?”

  “They’ve cut themselves off from your brother. It wasn’t my place to lay something like that in their laps. Have you told them?”

  “No,” I said. “You’ve met Lin?”

  “She’s made it her life’s mission to cause me heartburn. She camps out in my office, brings me information. What she calls evidence. Jail-house lawyers are bad enough, but jailhouse wife attorney-wannabes are much worse. You know who falls in love with death-row inmates?”

  “Mentally unstable individuals.”

  “That’s right. Imagine what Christmas dinner is going to be like if she ever shows up on your doorstep.”

  I took a pull of beer and propped myself up lengthwise in the booth. I swallowed a grunt of pain. I watched Gilmore. There was a certain air to him that it took me a moment to place. He was doing his best to assure and console me.

  “He told me there’d been others,” I said.

  Gilmore angled himself closer. “What others?”

  “Not others he’d iced. Other girls who fit Rebecca Clarke’s profile, murdered in similar ways. Some while he was in prison.”

  “Three or four.”

  “Doesn’t that make it suspicious?”

  Gilmore held back a mocking laugh, the strength of it causing his body to shake. “You know how many unsteady drunken bastards kill their wives or girlfriends every year? You know how many do it by choking them to death? How many of those women are young, cute, and brunette?”

  “You’re saying they were al
l snuffed by their boyfriends?”

  “No, I’m not saying that, Terrier.”

  “Then what?”

  He threw back his beer and looked for the waitress. I wondered if he was going to step up to double shots of scotch. I wondered how much booze he had to kill every night to help him get to sleep. I was curious as to how often he was allowed to see his kids and if he could still come up with those unique and colorful voices to entertain them. I imagined Phyllis with a new boyfriend, trying to get on with her life, and Gilmore holding on to the past like so many of us did. I could picture him in the darkness, reaching out to clench a woman who was no longer there.

  He caught the waitress’s eye and she came by with another round. He pushed one to me and I pushed it back to him.

  Gilmore’s lips jacked up as if someone had jammed their thumbs into the corners of his mouth and pushed. “Listen to me,” he said. He tapped a fingernail on the tabletop. It clicked as loudly as if he’d pulled the trigger on an empty gun. “One of those women was found behind a motel in Riverhead, garroted with her own bra. It looks like a rape job gone bad.” He tapped his finger again. “One had her hyoid bone broken, which probably happened in an accidental fall. She was drunk at the time. She was nineteen and out of work. She’d spent an hour that night arguing with her father on the phone because he wouldn’t send her enough money to pay her rent. Neighbors heard her stumbling around. When they found her she was lying on a futon, her throat crushed against the wooden arm.” Again that click, like we were playing Russian roulette. “Someone used a belt on the last girl. She was a distributor for a low-level meth dealer. She was hooked on her own product and undoubtedly shorted her supplier. That’s why she bought it.”

  “Did you personally investigate those cases?”

  “No, they weren’t mine. But I looked into them when Lin brought me her concerns. I do my job. There’s nothing there.”

  “Give me those files too. Give me names.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  His eyes went hard as shale. “You’re a burglar, Terrier, like the rest of your family. You don’t get to see police files. Let me amend that. Let’s make that, you don’t get to see any more files. I don’t need you running around out there stirring up strife, putting your nose in business that doesn’t concern you. You want to talk about Collie or discuss his case, I’m here to help. He’s going to be gone in a week and a half. You need someone to give you an ear, I’ll do that. But you have to keep away from the rest of it.”