A Clean Kill (34 page)

I was angry. I also was so beat up, cut up, and shot up that I was starting to walk funny. I stopped by Loutie Blue’s house and picked up Joey before leaving for Gulf Shores.

I drove for the first hour, until a ghost hunkered down behind me and proceeded to pound my head with his ghost mallet in a steady rhythm that seemed to echo my heartbeat. Pulling over at a quick mart, I found a bottle of Excedrin Migraine on the shelf and washed down a few with a cold Coke. Back outside, Joey was already in the driver’s seat. I thanked him, and he put the Safari in drive.

Just west of Gulf Shores, Joey spoke for the first time. “We gonna mess this guy up?”

“I couldn’t mess up a ten-year-old girl right now.”

Joey let some time pass. “Be glad to do it for you.”

I can’t say I didn’t give the suggestion serious consideration. In the end, I said, “No. I want to confront
him. See what he says. What he does. But, if he tries to get tough—well, I’m too banged up already. So, if he starts something, I would very much appreciate your beating the living shit out of him.”

Joey nodded. “You got it.”

Minutes later, Joey pulled the Safari onto the Baneberry-Cort Construction work site, and I stepped out. Cort spotted me. He didn’t run, but he didn’t quite walk either as he beat a path for a red pickup truck. I was already out. I banged on the door to get Joey’s attention and pointed at the pickup.

Joey floored the gas pedal, sending a rooster tail of sand and gravel into the air. He charged Cort’s pickup and, maybe three yards before collision, slammed on brakes and slid with a loud bang into the pickup’s front grille.

Cort bounced back and forth inside the cab, shook his head, and dropped the transmission into reverse. Joey was ready. He floored the accelerator once again, knowing his forward gear would produce more acceleration than Cort’s reverse.

Nose to nose, Joey pushed the pickup across the construction site in a wavering line that filled the air with rock and dust and sand. The trucks smashed through stacks of plywood and insulation, over a trough of fresh cement, and across the sugar-white beach on the other side. Twenty feet from the high-tide mark, Joey locked up his brakes and shot Cort’s pickup out into the Gulf of Mexico.

I followed on foot, arriving on the beach in time to see Cort climbing through the driver’s side window of his truck and falling head-first into the Gulf. I looked over at Joey, and he shot me with his index finger.

Someone behind me yelled, “What the hell you doin’?”

I turned to see three construction workers running at me. The door on the Safari slammed, and Joey stepped between me and the laborers. He held a Colt .45 automatic at his side. All he said was, “Stop.” That’s what they did. He turned to me. “Go have your talk.”

I walked to the water’s edge. Jonathan Cort stood in the shallow surf, catching his breath. Waves slapped the backs of his knees. He looked up and took a step forward.

I said, “Don’t.”

“You can’t tell me what to do. I’m going to kick your …” His eyes wandered past me and spotted the gun in Joey’s hand. He stopped. “What is this?”

“We need to talk.”

“Fine. Let me come up there and …”

“No. You’re going to stand there. I got shot last night.”

Cort’s eyes seemed to acquire an added twinkle at the thought. “I heard.”

“So I’m not going to fight you. You’re going to keep your distance.” I walked down to where the water lapped the wet sand only inches from my shoes. “I just met with Sheri. She told me you saw Zion Thibbodeaux at the hospital the night Kate Baneberry died.”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?”

“I did. Told my lawyer.”

“You told a lawyer who was representing you and your partner in a civil action for money. Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“Attorney’s advice.” He glanced over my shoulder again at Joey. “So it’s none of your fucking business what I did.”

“I think what you did was kill Kate Baneberry for the insurance money. I also think you found out about Zion Thibbodeaux after Judge Savin and his minions at Russell and Wagler hung him out to dry. When you did, you planted the story with your lawyer about Zybo in case anyone ever got suspicious about how you killed her.”

The man actually smiled, and there was something like pride in it. “Yeah, well, that all sounds real good. But, tell me, how do you think I did something like that?”

“Probably a potassium push. Maybe a drug like Pavulon ahead of time to paralyze her so your partner’s pretty wife wouldn’t put up a fuss about dying.”

Cort stopped smiling. He looked at the water, then leaned down and picked up something off the sandy bottom. After glancing at Joey, he held up a gray-green sand dollar between his thumb and index finger. “Guess I’m gonna have good luck.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

He smiled again and threw the sand dollar at me with a sidearm toss. It missed. Joey glanced back and then returned to his job of watching Cort’s men. “Boy, all you’re doing is telling bedtime stories.
If
this happened and
if
that happened. Shit, McInnes, last time I looked they didn’t convict people in this state on
ifs
and
maybes
and bullshit theories.”

I tried to bore into his conceited eyes. “But you killed her just the same, didn’t you?”

He smiled and shrugged. “What difference does it
make? Nobody’ll ever prove it. Nobody’ll ever even believe it.”

“Sheri believes it. So do I.”

“Big fucking deal. So little Sheri hates me. I’ll learn to live with it. Hell, Sheri’s old man already thinks she’s gone off the deep end.” The man smiled. It was almost friendly. “No, no. Even saying for argument’s sake that I killed Kate Baneberry,” he shook his head, “nobody will
ever
prove it.” The bastard actually winked at me. “Face it, McInnes.
Whoever
did the job, it was a clean kill.”

Acid burned inside my gut. The afternoon sky moved and blurred behind Cort’s head. The soft, repetitive sloshing of the Gulf at my feet grew loud and grating. I needed to get out of there. I needed not to murder this piece of shit in front of three witnesses.

“Joey!”

“Yeah.”

“Time to go.”

“Yeah.”

I turned and walked to the Safari, where I stepped inside and shut the passenger door. As I moved, I could feel Cort walking behind me, coming up out of the water.

I never looked back.

Christmas Eve turned out to be the warmest day of December. Kai-Li spent an hour on the phone with Sunny and hung up with some new kind of peace or happiness. I seemed to be forgiven. She wanted to go shopping for presents in Fairhope later in the day, to “do something normal” and make it feel like a holiday. We had something to celebrate, she said.

Around ten, Sheri Baneberry stopped by with Christmas cookies. I smiled. It seemed unlike her. She smiled too. A shy and genuine smile. “Mom always baked cookies for friends at Christmas. I wanted to do it this year.” She paused. “I wanted to do it for you.”

I thanked her. I felt as though I’d been kicked in the stomach.

Kai-Li went to the kitchen to make coffee and to leave me alone with my client. Unfortunately, neither Sheri nor I seemed able to say much.

Finally, I asked, “You heard from Bobbi?”

Her blonde hair moved against her face as she shook her head no. “I think she’s gone. The police came by asking about her.” Some time passed. Then Sheri walked to one of the beachside windows as if something had caught her eye. “Who’s that?”

I walked over to stand beside her. Out on the beach, seemingly hovering on the sand like a Halloween raven cut from black construction paper, stood Zion Thibbodeaux. I glanced over at Sheri. She looked frightened. “Stay here.”

“Is that him?”

I nodded. “He’s not someone you want to confront, Sheri.” I turned to look full in her face. “Can you stay here and let me go talk to him?”

“Can I …”

“You know what I mean.”

She turned and walked away from the window. “I’ll stay.”

I stuck my head in the kitchen and told Kai-Li what was happening. She hurried into the living room, where she sat beside Sheri on the sofa.

I left by the back door—the one Chris Galerina had watched with trepidation the night he shot himself—crossed the deck, and stepped down into the yard. Zybo didn’t move. I kept walking until I was standing on the shore, five feet from him.

The Cajun stared at me.

I said, “You got my message.”

He nodded slowly with a small ducking motion, but his eyes never left mine.

“Bad timing. Sheri Baneberry’s inside.”

“So what you want?”

“I ran into Jonathan Cort yesterday over in Gulf Shores.”

He nodded again, and I filled him in on my conversation with Cort. I didn’t add anything. I tried not to emphasize anything. It was a report, and it included Cort’s claim that Zybo had killed Kate Baneberry.

When I finished, Zybo said, “Dat what he say? He ready to finger me anytime it look like trouble?”

“I think that’s a fair interpretation.”

“Unh-huh.” Zybo’s eyes grazed across the sand at his feet. “A clean kill, huh?”

“Yeah. He sounded proud of it.”

The dark man turned his back to me—something like a sign of complete trust in his world. Time passed. He was thinking. “Tommy? You ever clean a empty swimmin’ pool? A big old cement one?” He kept his eyes on the horizon, his back to me and my guests.

I studied the black leather stretched across his back. “I was a life-guard one summer in high school.”

“What you use to clean it?”

“Why?”

“Go a minute here. Answer de question I’m askin’.”

“I think …” I looked up at the house. Sheri and Kai-Li stood at the window watching. “We used bleach. Ten or twenty gallons of Clorox.”

“Cort, he got a pool in his backyard. Did you know dat?”

“No.”

“Yeah. He got a big un.” He pushed his hands deep inside the pockets of his coat and rolled his shoulders like he had in the diner. “What you tink ah dis, Tommy Boy? Let tings calm down round heah for a few month. Get on back to normal. Den sometime in
March, maybe early April, Cort he decide to get his pool ready for warm weather.” He paused and then spoke the next sentence with no accent at all, mimicking a television reporter. “Apparently overcome by the fumes.” He went back to his roots. “Dats what I’m tin-kin’.” Zybo turned his profile to me now and smiled. “Let him lie there in a couple feet ah bleach and fuggin marinade over de weekend,” he kicked a puff of sand into the water, “turn de man as white as dis.” He turned to face me. He glanced up at the house and then back into my face. “Now, Tommy Boy,
dat
would be a clean kill.”

“It’s Christmas Eve.”

He grinned. “Merry Christmas.”

“I can’t talk about this today. Not any day.” I turned and walked back across the sand, over dead winter grass, and up onto the deck before glancing over my shoulder.

Zybo had disappeared. Other than the slow drift of clouds and the lapping of water at the shoreline, the only movement was the gentle rocking of the floating Christmas tree—its lights painting colored trails in the late-morning mist.

Sheri met me as I stepped back inside the house. “What’d he want?”

“We needed to wrap some things up.”

Her eyes were wide, her skin tight and pale. “Is he going away?”

“Yeah. I think he’s going away for now.”

Kai-Li put her arm around Sheri’s shoulders. “What do you mean ‘for now’?”

I looked out at the beach, at the sand and water and
the impossibility of the lonely lighted tree floating on the bay.

Sheri asked, “Is there somebody we should tell? I mean, a man like that—are we safe?”

I nodded. “We’re safe, Sheri.”

I turned to look at my frightened client. I pictured her at ten years old, standing on a kitchen chair while her mother—tired but smiling after a long day at the construction company—hemmed a Dracula cape for a Halloween costume that would never be worn. I thought of Kate Baneberry lying dead in a hospital room, of two dead punks in a Jeep Wagoneer, of Judge Luther Savin with half his neck blown away, and of Laurel Adderson sitting in the psyche wing of her own hospital. I thought of Jonathan Cort standing in the surf at Gulf Shores, grinning at me.

Kai-Li’s voice broke the chain of nightmare visions. “Talk to us, Thomas. Are you going to do anything about him coming back? Are you going to warn anyone?”

I turned to look back out at Mobile Bay. “No,” I said, “I don’t think I am.”

Mike Stewart is an attorney who lives and writes in Birmingham, Alabama.