A Hard Ticket Home (26 page)

Authors: David Housewright

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Hard-Boiled, #Private Investigators

BOOK: A Hard Ticket Home

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The drive back to Falcon Heights was unencumbered by traffic. At three a.m., we had the freeways to ourselves. Even the drunks had gone home.

Merci sat next to me. She wore my jacket over her shoulders and my heater was going full blast, yet she shivered just the same. Several times I asked her if she was all right and each time she said yes. Despite the early hour I felt refreshed, invigorated the way I usually felt after a tough workout. I asked Merci if she wanted to stop for a bite—there was an all-nighter on the strip that served a fair omelet. She wasn’t up for it. She had spent too much time with the decanter of scotch.

“I thought they were going to kill me.”

“They moved faster than I anticipated. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry.” She repeated the word like it was something she had never heard before. “Sorry isn’t going to cut it. You owe me money.”

I nodded my understanding.

“You said a hundred bucks an hour.”

“So I did.”

“I figure you owe me twelve hundred. Plus another fifty to have my dress dry-cleaned.”

“Make it fifteen hundred,” I told her, feeling generous.

“Twelve-fifty is fine. And I want cash. I don’t accept checks. I ain’t no bank.”

“No problem.”

Merci sat back, pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. She continued to tremble.

“Are you okay?”

“I wish you would stop asking that,” she told me.

“I feel responsible.”

“You are responsible.”

“I know. I’m responsible for a lot of things. For example, there’s still the matter of why Richard and Molly Carlson came to me in the first place.”

“To find Jamie,” Merci reminded me.

“No. To find a compatible bone marrow donor for Stacy. Remember Stacy? Little girl who’s dying of leukemia?”

“Little Stacy.” Merci tugged the jacket tighter around her.

“Don’t you think it’s about time you hustled your ass up to Grand Rapids and took the test to see if you’re compatible?”

“Why me?”

“For the same reason they wanted Jamie to take the test. Family members are best. And you’re family.”

Merci gazed out the windshield at something well beyond the reach of my headlights. After a few moments, she asked, “How did you know?”

“This and that. Richard Carlson wanting me to find you—the fact he was so happy when I did. I figure he was holding you in reserve, just in case. And then there was the way he knew exactly when your mother died … .”

“Bastard didn’t even go to the funeral.”

“Probably he didn’t want his wife to know. Then there was Bruder insisting his son was safe with
friends.
What friends? The way the cops were hunting him, you know they were watching everyone he’s ever known. So, who would he have left his son with? How ’bout his unclaimed sister-in-law, the boy’s Aunt Merci? I figured that when you had to make a phone call before you could accept my offer last night, like you first needed to ask permission. Of who? The baby-sitter, was my guess.

“But to be honest, I didn’t put it all together until I saw you in the gown Jamie gave you.”

“I said I was as pretty as Jamie.”

“And you are. Every bit as pretty.”

We drove a full mile in silence. Finally, I said, “It’s pumpkin time, princess.”

“You’re right. Jamie and I were sisters. We figured it out during our senior year of high school. We weren’t sure what to do about it—deep, dark family secret, small town, all that bullshit. Jamie wanted to tell the world. Richard said he’d disown her if she did. She disowned him first. She came down here to live with me. For seven years I had a family.”

“And the night Jamie was killed?”

“David brought TC to me. He asked me to hide them both and I did. David was terribly confused. A lot of the things he said didn’t make sense. He kept muttering that
they
were out to get him. That
they
had killed Jamie and
they
were going to kill him and TC. At first I thought
they
were you. Eventually, I learned about the Family Boyz and the Entrepreneurs and about Warren Casselman.”

“Casselman?”

“David admitted that he slept with Casselman’s wife and he believed Casselman might have killed Jamie outta revenge.”

“The thought hadn’t occurred to me,” I admitted, wondering why.

“I tell you, if it weren’t for TC I would have turned him over to the cops right then. He was cheating on my sister.”

“The night you came to my house, it wasn’t to kill me, it was to find out what I knew.”

Merci nodded.

“Later, you realized Bruder couldn’t hide forever, so you sent him to me, hoping I’d help.”

“Instead, you got him killed,” Merci muttered. I ignored the remark.

“Where’s his son?”

“Good people are taking care of him,” she confirmed. “Not like me, they’re straight.”

After a half mile of more silence, Merci asked, “So now what?”

“I think it’s time Richard Carlson accepted his responsibilities, I think it’s time he acknowledged his daughter. Don’t you?”

“Like that’s going to happen. I’m a prostitute. A convicted felon.”

“Yeah, but you’re also family. And you’ll be bringing him and Molly their grandson.”

“I hate the idea of letting Richard turn TC into some kind of tobacco-chewing, back-slapping, ass-kicking, north county good ol’ boy.”

“Perhaps his Aunt Merci will be around to help him out.”

Merci shook her head slowly.

“God, how I hate Grand Rapids.”

I parked the Cherokee at the curb and escorted Merci to my front door.

“When am I going to see my money?” she asked.

“As soon as the bank opens.”

I unlocked the door and stepped inside the dark house ahead of her. It was an impolite act on my part and I was soon punished for it. Before I could switch on a light, someone hit me on the head from behind with the proverbial blunt instrument. Twice. The first blow drove me to my knees. The second knocked me unconscious.

There was something in my hand, something small and oddly shaped. It was driving me crazy. I lay there on the living room floor, my eyes shut, and played with the object, squeezing it, rolling it between my fingers. When at last I was able to open my eyes, I found I couldn’t see. Blackness everywhere. Was I blind? No. It was night. I was at home. Someone had hit me from behind. Must’ve been Merci. I tried to rise. It was hard work. I managed to kneel. My eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light and I could make out shapes of furniture. But why would Merci hit me? Money? Surely, she didn’t think I had it on me, that I had it lying around the house. I managed to stand. My mind cleared a bit more. I heard noises coming from upstairs. The thudding sound of someone walking across the hardwood floors above me. What would Merci be doing up there? I continued to roll the object between my fingers. Oddest damn thing. I held it close to my eyes, tried to catch it in the dim street light shining through my windows. It looked like a bullet. The .22 I had ejected from Merci’s gun. How many days ago was that? I turned it in my fingers again, squeezed it tight. A muffled scream from upstairs. My God in heaven! I dropped the bullet and reached for my Beretta as it clattered on the floor. Only my gun wasn’t there—Alec never returned it and I forgot to ask.

I stumbled unsteadily up the stairs, making entirely too much noise. Light spilled out from under the door to my guest room—the room that once belonged to my father. I leaned on the door. It flew open. It wasn’t even closed all the way, much less locked. I nearly stumbled to the floor, but regained my balance. Devanter laughed at me. He had been waiting, a knife in his hand. One of my knives from the wooden block in my kitchen. In his other hand was a lit cigarette. He flicked it to the floor. Merci Cole was behind him on the bed. She was nude. Small, round burn marks dotted her flesh. Her hands and feet were bound to the headboard and baseboard with strips of raspberry lace, the rest of her
gown was shredded and lying on the floor. She screamed. Panties in her mouth muffled the cry.

Devanter rushed at me. Or rather, he rushed at someone I recognized as me. See, I wasn’t there any longer. Instead I was up high, floating near the ceiling somewhere, looking down. Watching. Watching what this person did, this person who looked like me, who staggered on quaking legs like a drunk about to pass out. He didn’t seem afraid, this person. He just stood there when Devanter rushed at him, the knife held high above his head. And when Devanter tried to strike down at him, this person who looked like me crossed his right forearm over his left forearm and thrust them above his head, meeting the blow straight on, blocking it with the V of his crossed arms, absorbing the shock of the blow with those already impossibly weak legs.

This person who looked like me but who couldn’t possibly be me then grabbed Devanter’s wrist. He grabbed the wrist with both hands like it was a baseball bat. He swung the wrist down in a clockwise motion. Swung it down and then up again even as he stepped in under the arm that was attached to the wrist. He turned his body and pivoted on the balls of his feet—amazing that he could still stand—and kept swinging that arm upward until it reached twelve o’clock and then back down again, winding Devanter’s arm like a corkscrew until Devanter’s body simply had to follow that arm, up and around in a clockwise motion.

Then boom. Just like that, Devanter was on his back on the floor. His wrist broken. He had dropped the knife when the bone cracked. It skittered across the floor and the person who looked like me went to fetch it. “Hurry,” I kept telling him. “Hurry.” But he seemed to take forever to get that knife. While he was getting it, Devanter struggled to his feet. It didn’t bother him a bit that his wrist was broken—he didn’t seem to mind at all. He rushed again at the person who looked like me just as he retrieved the knife and spun to meet the attack, holding the knife low with both hands, the point of the knife tipped upward.
Devanter’s momentum carried him forward. The person who looked like me brought the knife up. Devanter tried to parry the knife aside with his hand. But he forgot. His wrist was broken. His hand didn’t respond. He missed the knife.

A look came over his face. Devanter knew he had made a mistake. Only there was nothing he could do to correct it, nothing he could do to check his forward momentum. The person who looked like me thrust the knife into Devanter’s chest just below his rib cage, angling the blade upward toward the heart muscle. Devanter’s weight and speed did the rest. His body fell onto the blade. The blade went in cleanly all the way to the hilt because of Devanter’s weight and momentum and because of the upward thrust and because the person who looked like me but who couldn’t possibly be me enjoyed working in his kitchen and had always kept his knives razor sharp.

For a moment Devanter hung on the knife, literally hovering in the air, the person who looked like me holding him maybe two, three inches off the floor. His mouth was open and from where I was up by the ceiling I could see that it was filling with blood and that the blood was trickling from the corners of Devanter’s mouth and down his chin. Devanter’s eyes were open, too, and the person who looked like me could see them roll backward into Devanter’s head until only the whites were showing. And then the knife broke. The blade snapped off at the hilt. And Devanter fell to the floor, the blade buried in his chest. And the person who looked like me was left holding the wooden hilt.

The person who looked like me dropped the hilt and moved unsteadily to the bed where Merci Cole lay spread-eagled between the bedposts. He worked the knots in the lace but they were so tight. Then he did a remarkable thing this man who looked like me. He pulled the knife blade out of Devanter’s chest with his fingers and used it to saw through the lace. Even so it seemed like forever before he freed her. She removed the panties from her mouth and screamed at him, but he didn’t
understand what she said, her words were incomprehensible to him. He helped her from the bed. Her screaming became deafening sobs. He led her past Devanter’s body. Her bare foot stepped in blood, warm and sticky, and the sobs became screams again.

Merci Cole and the person who looked like me stumbled from the room. He held her with one arm. The other he dragged along the stucco wall of the hallway, supported them both as they moved toward the master bedroom. Once inside the person who looked like me locked the door. Merci Cole collapsed on the bed and curled herself into a fetal position. Shaking uncontrollably. Weeping as if she would never stop. The person who looked like me pulled a blue-green comforter over the woman, a final act of chivalry before he reached for the phone. He punched 911 on the number pad. The phone rang once. Twice …

I don’t recall what happened next.

I was dreaming. I dreamed I was in a hospital room. I was seriously injured. There seemed to be a tube protruding from my left forearm that led to a plastic bag hanging from a metal stand. Another tube. No, it was a wire attached to what looked like a clothespin, the clothespin squeezing the middle finger of my left hand. The wire ran to a small machine with a numerical display that reminded me of the depth finder on my bass boat. The light above me was dim and cast everything in shadow. It was hard to see. A woman with butterscotch hair was sitting in a chair near my bed and reading a magazine.

“Turn on the lights,” I told her.

Her head came up abruptly and she closed the magazine without marking her place.

“Hi,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Feeling?” I didn’t understand the question.

She placed her palm against my forehead the way my mom used to.

“I love you.” I think I told her that.

“I love you.” I think she told me that.

Everything went dark.

I thought I heard someone calling.

“Don’t you die, McKenzie. Don’t you dare die on me.”

She was dressed in white and hovering above me like an angel. Only she didn’t act like an angel.

“McKenzie, McKenzie,” she called while she slapped my face lightly. I used an open hand block to grab her wrist and pull her down across my chest. Muscle memory.

“Where am I? What happened to me?”

“Do you mind?” She tried pulling away.

“Sorry.” I released my grip.

“You’re in Regions Hospital,” she answered, massaging her wrist. “You were hit on the head real hard.”

She looked like someone I should know, only I couldn’t place her. “How are you feeling, cowboy?”

That’s when I recognized her.

“Lilly?”

I glanced at the photo ID that hung from a tiny chain around her neck. Lillian Linder, MD.

“Lilly.”

“I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you in here again.”

“I’ve missed your kind and gentle bedside manner.”

She grinned. “It’s starting to get old, you know, having to save your life every couple of years.”

I was that close? Again? I refused to think about it. “What’s my status?” I asked.

“Surprisingly good, but then you always were a quick healer.”

“Merci Cole?”

“The woman you came in with. She’s fine. Physically, anyway. Emotionally she’s still a bit unhinged—she’s been through quite a trauma.”

Her and me both, I nearly said.

“She’s been visiting a couple of times each day. Quite a few people have dropped by, in fact. I’m amazed that an arrogant jerk like you has so many friends.”

“Have I told you how much I’ve missed you, Lilly?”

“There’s good news and bad news, cowboy.”

“Tell me the bad news.”

“You suffered an epidural hematoma.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It is serious. There’s a blood vessel—the middle meningeal artery—under the skull that lies alongside the brain. When you were hit, the artery was torn and you started to bleed. The bleeding put pressure on the brain. That’s why you lost consciousness.”

“But I came out of it. At least I think I did.” My memory was still a little foggy on the subject.

“That’s not unusual. The initial trauma—the blow itself—knocked you unconscious the first time. You came back. You did what you had to do.”

I liked the way she put that.

“Meanwhile, the lacerated blood vessel was bleeding. When enough blood built up, the pressure forced you into unconsciousness for a second time. We did a CAT scan immediately after you were brought to us. The CAT revealed the hematoma. So we drilled two burr holes smaller than a dime into your skull to drain the fluid and alleviate the pressure.”

“You drilled into my skull?” The thought of it shocked me. My hands went to my head. There were two patches where my hair had been shaved that were covered by bandages.

“It took forever, too. You have a very thick skull, McKenzie.”

“What about the artery?” I asked.

“The meningeal should repair itself. We’ll do another CAT scan later today to make sure there’s no additional bleeding.”

“I’m all right, then?”

“You’re off the ventilator, oxygenating well, your BP and heart are much stronger than you have a right to expect, you’re going to be fine.”

“What’s the good news?”

“That’s the good news. We’ll keep you here for a while, observe your functions, your kidneys, make sure everything is working the way it’s supposed to. I’ll send up an OT and PT …”

“Occupational therapist and physical therapist.”

“You remember from last time, good. They’ll do an assessment. If you pass, you should be out of here in two, three days.”

I expected it to be worse and told her so.

“It could’ve been, cowboy. If you hadn’t been brought to us immediately, if surgery hadn’t been in time, you could have suffered brain damage. Or worse. As it is, we don’t expect any deficits.”

I heard everything she said, but the words “brain damage or worse” seemed much louder than the others.

“We don’t expect any brain damage,” Lilly told me, as if the thought had leaked out of the holes drilled in my head.

She patted my cheek. The thing about Lillian Linder, MD—despite her brusque manner, you knew you were in good hands.

“I need to go and see some sick people now,” she told me gently.

“Thanks, Lilly.”

“McKenzie, we have to stop meeting like this.”

“The doctor says you’re going to be all right,” Merci Cole assured me.

“What does she know?”

Merci was holding my hand against her smooth cheek. Tears collected in her eyes, but none fell.

“Thank you for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome.”

She tried to smile but couldn’t. There was a sadness in her that I had not seen before.

“I’m going home,” she said.

“To Grand Rapids?”

She nodded.

“Good for you.”

“We already took the tests. The doctors say I’m a perfect match. B-negative blood, all that. Stacy should be fine after we do the transplant.”

“That’s great. Just great.”

“My father and I—we had a long talk. Several, actually. With Molly. Molly’s like the arbitrator. She wants me to stay with them and Richard says okay. Me and Jamie’s son. I think they were so delighted at getting their grandson that taking me in, too, seemed like a small price to pay. I probably won’t stay long, though. Just until I decide what to do next. I was thinking of going back to school, see what the Vo-Tech or Community College has to offer.”

“Good luck.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Richard wants me to tell you he expects to see a bill for all your time and expenses, hospital expenses, too, if you’re not insured. He hasn’t changed much. All he cares about is money.”

“He cares about much more than that,” I told her.

“We’ll see.”

Merci smiled ever so slightly. In the end she was just like the rest of us. She needed to be loved. Eventually, it’s what life comes down to, a few people loving us and us loving them. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to impress that upon us.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” I told her. “I admire a man who pays his own way.”

Merci held on to my hand for a while longer.

“Will you come visit me?”

“Sure. I have property near Grand Rapids.”

“Better hurry. If things don’t work out, I might take off again.”

“If you do, don’t let me find you.”

Bobby Dunston entered my hospital room carrying a bouquet of flowers. “These are from Shelby,” he announced so I wouldn’t think he’d give another man flowers. “I tried to smuggle you a six-pack, but the nurses stopped me.”

“Sure.”

“Shelby sends her love. You might not know it, but she’s been here almost without a rest since they brought you in. But now that they say you’re all right, she’s packing.”

“Packing?”

“We’re sneaking up to your place for a few days.”

“Just you and Shelby?”

“Just me and Shelby. Mom is taking the kids.”

“Good for you.”

“Shut up, McKenzie.”

He sat on a chair and crossed his legs.

“I had him, you know. Devanter. I had him. I knew he killed Katherine and Jamie eight hours before you killed him. I had a warrant for his arrest, only I couldn’t find him. I couldn’t find him because apparently he was hiding at your house. Why I didn’t think to look there first I’ll never know.”

“Don’t be bitter,” I told him.

“Who? Me?”

“I didn’t know it was Devanter,” I confessed. “I didn’t have a clue. Not until I saw him hovering over Merci with the knife. Hell, the people I accused were innocent. Innocent of that, anyway.”

“Maybe so, but the way the papers are playing it you’d think you were the greatest thing since Dick Tracy.”

“A very underrated investigator, I might add.”

“You realize, of course, that you look ridiculous with those bandages on your head.”

“I’m starting a new fashion—next week I’ll be on the cover of
GQ.
”

“It was the twine,” Bobby said. “The twine used to tie down both Katherine and Jamie. Microscopic examination indicated that the lay, circumference, and strand number were identical. So was the reason they each had it—to secure the rose bushes to the trellis on the south side of their houses. They had the same gardener. Devanter. That’s why he knew precisely where the twine was kept. I would have figured it out sooner only I let you distract me with all that Family Boyz nonsense.”

“It really was a coincidence, Jamie’s murder and the Boyz,” I admitted. “You guessed right the first time.”

“I made a lot of mistakes.”

“Why did Devanter do it? Do you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“He was at the VA—I saw his wounds. Maybe the answer is there. An honest-to-God deranged Viet Nam vet like you see in all the movies.”

“Except Devanter was never in Viet Nam, or the Persian Gulf, or anywhere else for that matter. He never served. He suffered his wounds working on an off-shore oil rig fifteen years ago.”

“But he was a patient at the VA.”

“He was a groundskeeper at the VA. We interviewed his former coworkers, the hospital staff. Apparently, he didn’t have any friends. Everyone who remembered him, and there were only a few, said he was scary, but quiet—a loner, but a good worker.”

“Aren’t they all?”

“We traced his movements. Born in Des Moines. After high school he drifted south, more or less in a straight line, working for a farm co-op
in Iowa, a nursery in Missouri, another nursery in Oklahoma, a golf course in Texas, then an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He was engaged to be married to a woman in Fort Worth, but he called it off just before the wedding and moved here. I spoke to the woman. She said Devanter broke off the engagement when he found out she couldn’t have children, something about a botched abortion when she was sixteen.”

“Was there anything about her that resembled Jamie and Katherine?”

“Not that we could determine. Little over a year ago, Devanter went to work for Warren and Lila Casselman. The Casselmans introduced him to their entrepreneur friends—by the way, did you hear that the feds busted them and the Family Boyz and a couple of Russians …”

“I was there. Front-row seat.”

“Then you know why everything happened the way it did.”

“Pretty much, but we can talk about that later. What about Devanter?”

“The ladies of the Northern Lights Entrepreneur’s Club apparently admired his handiwork. He agreed to help them with their gardens. They paid him for his trouble. That’s all we know and are likely to know.”

“No motive then?”

“Jealousy. Frustration. Obsession. Pick your own.”

“I thought you were the psycho expert.”

“Obsession, then. You were a little obsessed yourself. Why else would you put yourself through all this?”

“I was just doing my job.”

“Job? What job?”

I recalled the mission statement that Kirsten had attributed to me.
Live well. Be helpful.