Black Night Falling (11 page)

Stokes Creek was a long and narrow inlet off the Ouachita River, running along the southern edge of the airfield I’d first flown in at. I could see houses spaced all around the U-shaped shoreline as I drove towards it, the opposite banks of the waterway no more than three hundred yards apart. I stopped at the general store at the eastern tip of the creek and asked for directions to Tucker’s brother’s place – a half-mile down the road it turned out.

The house was a sprawling wooden structure near the water’s edge, with flaking green shutters and a shady porch that ran the length of the bottom storey on the landward side of the property. There were four rocking chairs spaced along it, Clay Tucker sitting in one wearing a yellowing white shirt, and a man who looked like him sitting in another. I’d driven out there to grill Tucker’s brother on Clay’s whereabouts, assuming there was no chance he’d be hiding out from Coughlin somewhere so obvious, and yet there he was, bold as a Halloween lantern. It was another wrinkle that didn’t make sense.

I stopped the car out front, and as I did, I saw two pickup trucks parked on the far side of the house. The closer of the two looked like the one I’d chased outside the Mountain Motor Court that night.

Tucker saw me as soon I opened the car door. He jumped out of his chair, sending it rocking wildly. He bolted along the porch and disappeared around the side of the house. I ran after him. The second man darted towards me and tried to block me off, but I had the momentum and barged him out of the way, sprinting full pelt after Tucker.

I rounded the house and saw him in a small boat, ripping the starter cord on the outboard motor. I splashed into the shallows, water kicking up all around me, and shoved him over the side, nearly toppling myself as I did. He clawed his way up to all fours in the brown water, spluttering and panting.

‘Why’d you run, Tucker?’

The second man jogged down the bank but stopped short of the water. ‘Clay?’

Tucker turned his head, water dripping from his hair. ‘Go on inside. Get the shotgun.’

I shouted over to the brother, still pointing at Tucker. ‘You bring a gun out here and I’ll break it over your head. Stay there.’

The brother looked at me and must have seen a madman – knee-deep in the muddy water, suit trousers soaked through, balling my fist. There was doubt on his face and he didn’t move.

I waded around the boat so I was standing over Tucker. ‘The fire was no accident, was it?’

He pushed himself up so he was on his knees. His face was white as a sheet. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re in hock to Teddy Coughlin. Start there.’

He got to his feet and called out to his brother. ‘Leland, will you go inside and get the goddamn gun?’

‘DON’T MOVE.’ I turned back to Tucker. ‘Who started the fire, them or you?’

He started to make for the bank, but I stood in his way.

‘You don’t know the first damn thing, do you?’ he said.

‘So tell me.’

‘And wind up like your friend? No way.’

I stepped closer to him. ‘What does that mean?’

He was shaking and it spilled into a scared laugh. ‘It means talking to you’ll get me killed.’

‘Why? By who?’

He stumbled around me and out of the water and flopped down onto the mud. He hung his head. ‘Why’s this have to land on my doorstep? I ain’t never wanted nothing to do with this.’

‘Answer the question, goddamn you.’

‘I don’t know, already.’ He held his arms out. ‘Ain’t like no one sat me down and explained anything to me. The man calls me and says, “
Get outta your bar or you’re gonna burn
,” so I did. Next thing I know, I got two goons bouncing my head off the wall and telling me to keep my mouth shut. I tried to tell them, I can’t say nothing ’cause I don’t know nothing—’

My brain fritzed. He was warned in advance. He could have stopped it. ‘Who? Who called you?’

He shook his head. ‘Walk away, city boy. Get the hell out of here while you can.’

I jumped on top of him and had my hands at his throat before I knew what I was doing. ‘Why didn’t you warn him?’ I pressed him into the mud. ‘Why didn’t you tell—’

There was a shout behind me. I lifted my head and saw Leland advancing on us with a shotgun aimed from his hip. ‘I said, get off of him.’

I let go of his throat and staggered to my feet. Tucker reached for his neck, gasping.

‘You left Jimmy to burn. You could’ve saved him.’

Leland picked his way down the bank until he was standing close to Tucker.

Tucker screwed his face up. ‘Jimmy’s the one they wanted. I try to warn him and they’d have killed us both. It was him or me. I never wished no harm upon him, but I got kids, I got a wife.’

‘So you saved yourself.’

He looked along the water, squinting.

I eyed Leland and his shotgun, no inkling how close he was to pulling the trigger or not. ‘Who killed him, Clay? Give me that and I’ll take my leave.’

He fixed me with a look now. ‘I swear to you, I ain’t know what’s going on.’

‘Who warned you?’

He shook his head, drops of water shaking loose from his hair.

I knelt down so I was at eyeball level with him. Leland tracked me with the gun barrel. ‘I know you’re afraid. I can help you. Give me the name.’

He scoffed. ‘How you gonna help me? You got an army behind you I don’t see?’

‘Samuel Masters is looking for ways to get at Teddy Coughlin. If you tell him what you know—’

He slapped the mud with the flat of his hand. ‘Fink on Big Teddy? Y’all dumber than you look. Masters is a flash in the pan, Teddy ain’t never going away. Everyone knows it too, and that’s why ain’t no one gonna open the book on him.’

‘Don’t be naïve. There’s always a weak link. Always. Someone’ll be desperate enough to talk, and he’s the only one going to get a pass. This is your chance to—’

‘No one ever crossed Teddy and walked away.’ He pushed a strand of wet hair from his temple. ‘No one.’ He reached up without taking his eyes off me, gripped the shotgun’s barrel and pointed it at his own head. ‘I’ll make Leland pull the damn trigger before I rat Teddy out. It’s the same damn thing.’

I looked away over the water, the fear on his face contagious.

‘Anyway, I done told you I don’t know nothing. I don’t know what Jimmy done to end up like that.’

‘Who called to warn you? I’m not going away until you spill on that.’

‘Are you confused about who’s side Leland’s on?’

I looked at Leland, saw his finger wasn’t touching the trigger. I took a swing in the dark. ‘Leland’s not a killer, he’s not firing that gun. Neither of you are.’ My heartbeat ran triple-time. ‘Tell me.’

‘I can’t, goddammit.’ His eyes welled up. ‘I never wanted this. I never wanted none of this.’

‘You want money?’ I took my wallet out. ‘You owe Coughlin, right? How much?’

‘More than you got.’

I drew my sleeve across my face, taking the sweat from my forehead and leaving creek water in its place. ‘Try this then: I’ll go have a talk with your insurance adjuster; figure he’ll be interested to hear how you knew about the fire and let it happen.’

He was still then.

‘Think I won’t?’ I said.

‘Goddammit, leave me out of this, can’t you? You gonna get us all killed.’

‘You left an innocent man to die. Don’t try me for sympathy.’

He looked at his brother, uncertainty writ across his face. ‘Son of a bitch.’ Then he closed his eyes. ‘Cole Barrett.’

It shouldn’t have been a surprise to hear his name, and still it shocked me. I rose up slowly, feeling water seeping up my trouser legs like a creeping panic. Barrett set the fire – so whatever Robinson had on him was serious enough to kill for. ‘Did Coughlin order it?’

‘That’s what I’m telling you, I ain’t have a clue what was behind it. On our mother’s grave.’ His eyes were wide, pleading. Afraid.

Leland had let the gun sag below his paunch, his fight all but gone. They would have been pitiful in other circumstances.

‘That was you at my motel room window the other night, wasn’t it? Your pickup truck.’

Tucker offered no denial.

‘What were you doing there?’

He let his head loll back, his arms still wrapped around his knees. ‘See what all you was up to. You come around asking all them questions . . . made me nervous as hell.’

I stared at him, deciding what my next move was.

Tucker must have sensed as much. ‘You can’t go to the cops and you can’t go after Barrett,’ he said. ‘Do like I told you and walk away. For all our sakes.’

I tried to marshal my thoughts. I thought about Robinson’s notes sitting back in my room, wondered if the truth about Barrett was in there somewhere. And what he’d do to me if he knew they existed. ‘Never.’

I left Tucker staggering back into his brother’s house and drove away from Stokes Creek. I wanted like hell to drag them to the authorities to see them punished, but as limp a pair as they were, it was still them had the shotgun, and it spoke for them.

It felt like my guts were lodged in my throat. If Barrett killed Robinson to keep something buried, then it stood to reason he’d kill me too if he thought I was a threat. I thought back to my theory, that Barrett found out Glover wasn’t the murderer sometime after he shot him. Was that motive enough – or was it something even more sinister?

I parked outside my room at the Mountain Motor Court and sank my head against the steering wheel. My soaking trousers clung to my calves, and my skin felt cold and stained with dirt. The snatched memory of another conversation came back to me, Dinsmore speculating about the fire report being falsified by Teddy Coughlin’s office; what was pure guesswork at the time now seemed a real possibility – and it indicated a conspiracy that went so high, there was no way I could penetrate it. It felt like the walls were closing in on me.

I dragged myself out of the car and unlocked my room door. I stepped inside and froze cold. Cole Barrett was standing in the far corner.

‘We need to talk. Shut the door.’ He looked me up and down. ‘The hell happened to you?’

A tremor ran head to toe through me. I glanced at his hands – empty, but he was wearing a hip holster. His wicker Stetson was on my bed, thrown there like he was home. I weighed making a run for it, but then I remembered Robinson’s papers – and then saw they were gone. ‘Where are they?’

‘Where’s what?’

‘The files. You cleared them out already?’

‘You’re talking double Dutch. Bring yourself inside.’

I pushed the door over without taking my eyes off him. ‘What do you want?’

‘You need to quit playing detective before you get yourself hurt.’

My chest tightened like a drum. ‘Don’t threaten me.’

‘I ain’t threatening you. Clean your ears out, you’ll hear I’m offering you a warning.’

‘Same way you did with Jimmy Robinson?’

He uncrossed his arms, looked at me through narrowed eyes.

‘Did you set the fire at Duke’s?’ I said.

‘What? No, course I didn’t.’

‘I know you knew about it.’

‘Ain’t the same thing.’ He stepped out of the corner and set himself in the middle of the room. ‘You been talking to Clay Tucker.’

I said nothing, imagining Tucker squealing to Barrett the minute I left. Every muscle in my body was tensed. ‘Who did then?’

He closed his eyes and exhaled. ‘The more you know, the quicker it’ll get you killed.’

‘I’ll take my chances.’

‘Then you sure as hell gonna end up like your friend. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.’

‘You condescending son of a—’

‘You think there’s safety in the truth, is that it? I’m here to tell you it got your friend killed. Hell, the man that wore the sheriff’s badge before me was shot in broad daylight because he didn’t know when to zip his mouth, and wasn’t no one even arrested for it. That’s how truth goes in this town.’

‘Sheriff Cooper. Your boss had him killed, didn’t he? Put you right in the dead man’s shoes.’

He glared at me, his jaw muscles bulging.

‘My friend came to see you, didn’t he? Jimmy Robinson.’

He ran his tongue over his teeth. Then he nodded. ‘He did.’

‘What did he want?’

‘He’d arrived at a wrong conclusion.’

‘Which was what?’

He shook his head. ‘For your sake, you don’t want me to get into it. Just know that he was wrong, and so are you if you think I killed him.’

‘You came here for his papers, then. Dressing it up as some bullshit warning to me doesn’t make you any different to a common thief.’

He twitched. ‘I told you once, I ain’t know what papers you’re talking about. Now, I’ll see myself out, but so I can leave knowing I made it plain, hear this: get out of town today. Right now. I’m sorry for your friend, but ain’t no good can come from you ending up the same way.’

He picked up his hat and placed it on his head, started towards the door.

‘Did Teddy Coughlin send you to deliver that message? He must be in worse shape than I thought if you’re the best he’s got.’

He stopped in front of me. ‘Ain’t no one sent me.’ He blew a breath out, frustrated. ‘I tried my damnedest to warn your friend and he still wound up dead. I got no use for seeing history repeat.’

He opened the door, but I slammed it shut again. ‘You’re not leaving with those papers—’

Before I could finish the sentence, his pistol was out of his holster and in my stomach.

I couldn’t hear anything, and for a heartbeat I thought he’d pulled the trigger and I was already falling. Then the sound of my own breathing broke through – shallow, distorted – and I felt the blood rushing back into my limbs. His face was inches from mine.

‘I don’t scare that easy, Barrett.’ I tensed my gut to still a tremble as I said it.

He looked at me, held it, his eyes a watery blue that, strangely, betrayed no malice. ‘I believe you. And it’s a damn shame.’

He stepped around me and out through the door. I watched from the doorway as he crossed to the far end of the parking lot, hand on his gun, glancing back at me as he went. The grey LaSalle was parked among other cars there, same one I’d seen outside his house, and I kicked myself for missing it on the way in. He climbed inside and pulled away.

The fear started to subside, and in its place came the familiar surge of rage. I braced myself on the desk, shaking, fighting not to snatch up the chair from the floor and put it through the window, disgusted at my old weakness: finding bravery in anger only once the danger had passed. I took a half-dozen deep breaths, determined to control myself and not to slip back down the path of surrendering to my basest impulses.

The white heat passed, and all that was left was a hollow feeling, like taking a gutful of liquor on an empty stomach. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Barrett admitted he’d known about the fire, but was adamant he wasn’t behind it. Clay Tucker loomed in my thoughts, and I wondered if he’d bought me off with half the story – if he’d set the fire after all, but told me about Barrett’s warning to let me jump to my own conclusions. But then there were Robinson’s files – why would Barrett steal them if they weren’t incriminating? How the hell did he even find out about them? And why was I still alive if it was him killed Robinson—

A knock at the door snapped me out of my thoughts with a start. I peered out the window, expecting I’d find Barrett, come back to finish the job. Instead, I saw the motel manager. I opened up.

‘Mr Yates, got a message for—’

‘Did you let someone into my room?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘My room. Did someone get a key from you?’

He blanched. ‘Of course not. I don’t know what you’re referring to.’

Maybe I was a sucker, but I believed him. The lock was a simple one, easy enough to pick. Hell, Barrett could have had master keys for the whole town for all I knew. ‘Forget it. What’s the message?’

He looked shaken, struggling to keep up. ‘It’s— Your wife, she said it was urgent, so I thought I should come right over.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She sounded upset. She asked you to telephone as soon as possible.’

The floor lurched under me. I pushed past him and ran across to the office, yanked the door open. The telephone was on a desk at the side. I ducked under the counter and snatched it up. The operator got me a circuit to the
Journal
and I counted the seconds as I waited for the connection. The manager came in after me, panting, started a half-hearted protest about me using their line, but I shot him a look that shut him up.

Acheson’s secretary answered and I asked for Lizzie.

‘Mr Yates, is that you? She’s gone home.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You should talk with her.’

I broke the connection and asked the operator to put me through to our home line. When the call finally went through, Lizzie answered straightaway. ‘Charlie?’

‘I’m here. What’s happened?’

Her voice was strained. ‘We’ve been robbed. They— Our house, they’ve torn it apart.’

‘Are you okay? Were you at home?’

‘No, no, I’m all right. I was at the paper. Charlie, it’s . . .’ Her voice broke.

I closed my eyes, relief the first sensation flooding me at the knowledge she wasn’t hurt. ‘Tell me.’

‘They’ve ransacked our home. It’s ruined. Clothes, the furniture. Everything.’

‘What did they take?’

‘I can’t be sure, it looks like a bomb went off. They broke all the windows.’

My head was pounding, blindsided by another haymaker. I tried to think what we had of value that they could have taken. ‘When?’

‘Sometime this morning. They must have come right after I left for the office. The police called to tell me they were here and it was a mess. They told me the neighbours telephoned it in.’

‘Did they catch anyone?’

‘No. No.’

‘What about a description? They must have heard—’

‘They told the officers it was two men, but the details they gave could be of anybody. Dark clothes, dark hats, stocky builds. They said they looked out in time to see them smash the last of the windows and then they took off towards the marina. They must have been inside the house for such a long time – they’ve wrecked everything.’

‘I’m coming home. I’ll get the first flight I can. Take a room in a hotel until I can get there. If you need money, get Acheson to float you an advance – I’ll call him to—’

‘Charlie, hold on a minute.’ She snatched a breath. ‘I will not be chased out of my own home again, not after Texarkana.’ The indignation in her voice reminded me that my wife was tougher than she looked, and twice as wilful. It was one of the things I loved about her. ‘I’ve called a locksmith and he’s going to be here soon.’ She faked a breezy tone. ‘Besides, it’s not like they left any reason to come back.’

‘You’d be safer—’

‘My mind’s made up, Charlie. And I thought about it before you called, and I don’t think you should come home. Not if you’re not ready.’

‘What? I need to be there. I need to know—’

‘Hear me out.’ She took a breath, as if she’d been preparing what she’d say next. ‘What you said the other day struck a chord with me. You could have walked away at any point in Texarkana, and no one would have thought any less of you, but you didn’t. That’s who you are, and it’s why I love you. I can’t ask you to change now. If you can stop someone else having to go through what I did . . .’

I leaned on the desk, surprised by her candour – adrenaline and emotion loosening her tongue, everything spilling out together. The more she told me to stay, the more I wanted to go to her. ‘Will you reconsider on the hotel, at least?’

‘I’d sooner buy a gun.’

I smiled despite myself. ‘I’ll call you again tonight.’

‘I’ll be here.’

Gravel dust clung to my damp trouser legs as I made my way back across the parking lot. The urge to blow town walked with me. Lizzie was scared, maybe even in danger. Robinson’s notes were gone. I could still feel where Barrett’s gun touched my stomach. I put my hand on the doorknob and thought about just walking away. Lizzie’s words echoed in my ears then, and it shamed me to think she held me in higher esteem than I ever deserved.

I went inside to change into dry clothes. I pulled a new shirt on, thinking about Robinson’s notes and wondering if Barrett had already destroyed them. Figure he must have. I pictured him taking the call from Tucker and racing over here to threaten me. Busting into my room and finding the papers stacked there. How long was he in here for? At least long enough to skim-read the notes and realise what they were. He had to assume I’d done the same, and that made it even stranger that he’d left me alive after that. Maybe only the fact that he wasn’t prepared for what he found saved me – for now. He swore he didn’t start the fire, but everything he’d done said that was a lie. If he killed Jimmy for what he knew, punching my ticket was the logical next step. Unless—

Unless something he found out was more pressing. His words came back to me: ‘
You been talking to Clay Tucker
.’
The inflection in his voice – a hint of uncertainty; a question, not a statement. And then I saw I’d got it all wrong.

Tucker never squealed to him – Barrett put it together on the spot. No one else could have clued me in. Which meant I’d given Tucker up to Barrett—

I ran to the car.