In Plain Sight (26 page)

“Is that why you killed him? Because he stole from you?”

“I found him in my room going through my drawers looking for money. The week before he'd taken eighty bucks. This time it was my camera. I'd told him then he'd better keep away, but he thought he was entitled. He thought I should work my ass off and he could just come in and take whatever he wanted.”

“Did he offer to put it back?”

“No. He started to run, but I caught him. ‘This time,' I told him, ‘I'm going to teach you a lesson. This time I'm going to teach you to stay out of my stuff.' “

“So what did you do? Shoot him?”

“I punched him in the face—hard. The funny thing is I always had trouble with my right hook in the ring.” Garriques paused for a minute. “I guess I must have rammed his cartilage up into his brain. He just dropped dead.”

I thought about his wife. “What did Enid think?”

“She didn't think anything because she didn't know. She wasn't here.”

“If it was an accident, why didn't you call the police—your friends on the force would have hushed it up.”

“I didn't have that many friends.” Garriques paused for a few seconds. “I thought about it, though. But it seemed simpler to just bury the body. I figured everyone would think Porter had just wandered off like he usually did. And that way I wouldn't get Enid's family involved. I wasn't exactly on their good side right then.”

“How come?” I asked as I crouched down.

Garriques shrugged. “I'd roughed up one of Fast Eddie's boys. I mean, I didn't know who the asshole was. I told him to move and he gave me some lip. What was I supposed to do? You don't know what it's like out there. You ain't got respect, you ain't got nothing. Fast Eddie should have understood that.”

“It's a good thing you were family,” I observed.

Garriques gave a dry little laugh. “Yeah, wasn't it, though?”

“So what about Brandon? How did he find out about Porter?”

“He saw me bury him.”

“Why didn't he go to the police? Porter was his best friend.”

“The same reasons I didn't. The family. He didn't want any problems either. And anyway, I told him I'd make sure that everyone thought he'd done it.”

“And he believed you?”

“I guess you've noticed that intelligence isn't his greatest asset.”

“Why did he tell Marsha?”

Garriques shrugged again. “He said it just slipped out one night. Who was it that said, ‘Love makes idiots of us all'?”

“Does that apply to you, too?”

“No. I knew who Enid's family was. I knew what I was getting into,” Garriques replied as he stepped out from behind the tree trunk.

“Tell me, were you going to add George to the other graveyard inhabitants?”

But Garriques didn't answer. He was trotting toward me, using my voice as a guide. Evidently he'd decided the time for conversation was over. I flattened myself against the muddy ground and waited. For some reason I kept thinking about the time my grandmother had spanked me for playing in the mud. I wonder what she'd say if she could see me now. Finally when Garriques was about fifteen feet away I raised the twenty-two and fired.

Garriques shrieked and clutched his right shoulder. I waited for him to fall, but he didn't. He stayed on his feet. I fired again. Nothing happened. I'd missed. Garriques kept coming.

“You and your friend are dead,” Garriques said. He tried to raise his gun and groaned. “Fuck,” he cursed as he switched hands.

I figured it was now or never and started running.

I headed for the barn. As I ran I could hear the crack of Garriques's bullets whenever one of them hit something. By the time I reached the barn my breath was coming out in short, hoarse bursts and I had a stitch in my side. I'd gone a couple of feet when I tripped over a bale of hay and went sprawling on the floor. I'd just crawled around to its far side when Garriques sidled through the doorway. He wasn't going to make himself an easy target.

“If you come out, I promise I'll make it quick for you and Sampson,” he said.

What a guy. I didn't say anything. Instead I waited for him to come closer. I had one bullet left and I wanted to make it count. Garriques took another step and another. When he took his third one I fired my last shot. Garriques let out a shriek and went down on the floor face first. His body twitched for a few seconds and he lay still. I waited for a minute, and then I waited for another minute before I went over. I felt as if I was moving in slow motion. I could hear the rain rattling on the roof and each one of my footsteps as it hit the floorboard. Garriques wasn't moving at all. He wasn't making any sounds. I'd just about convinced myself that I'd killed him when he rolled over and lifted up his gun. I kicked at his hand. The gun wavered. I kicked again and the gun went flying and disappeared in the dark. Now we were both out of weapons.

“I guess I'll have to do this the hard way,” Garriques said and grabbed for me again.

As I twisted away it occurred to me I'd fallen for an old trick: I hadn't hit him. He'd been faking.

I ran for the ladder. I could hear Garriques behind me. I had my foot on the second rung when he pulled me down.

“Oh, no you don't,” he said.

I turned and jabbed my fingers into where I thought his eyes would be. I hit something soft, and he groaned and his grip loosened. I started back up. Then I heard a loud crack. I could feel my footing go. The rung under me was giving way. I managed to hang on and pull myself to the next one. Then I heard another sound. Garriques was climbing again.

I climbed faster.

I was almost at the top when I heard a series of high, shrill squeaks. The shrieks got louder and louder till the sounds seemed to fill the space around me.

Something brushed against my cheek.

Something else brushed against the other one.

Suddenly the air was swirling with small, frantic shapes.

I closed my eyes and kept climbing through the bats.

“They won't hurt you,” I repeated to myself as I kept going. “They're more scared of you than you are of them.”

Bat wings touched against my forehead as I reached the loft. The books were wrong, I thought. They do collide into you after all. Then I felt a pull on my leg. Garriques. I grabbed hold of the ladder railing and stomped on his head. I heard a grunt, felt a slight loosening. I stomped harder. Garriques groaned and let go. I pulled myself up onto the loft. The air was thick with bats. Their noise filled my ears. Their smell filled my nostrils. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cover my head with my hands. But I couldn't, not with Garriques right behind me. Instead I reached out and grabbed a bat. Its body felt soft and lumpy under my fingers. I shivered and suppressing the urge to drop it turned toward the ladder. Garriques's forehead appeared. In another minute he'd be in the loft with me, and I couldn't have that. Even wounded he was stronger than I was. I waited till I could see his mouth. Then I shoved the bat in his face.

He screamed and clawed at it with both his hands.

I reached over and pushed.

Garriques tottered and fell.

I heard a thud as he hit the floor.

I looked down and caught a glimpse of him through the swirling bats.

This time he wasn't moving.

G
eorge grinned when I walked into his hospital room. “Did you bring the beer?” he asked.

I patted my backpack. “In here.”

George's “roommate” made a disapproving noise as I went by. Harold Root had been brought in half an hour after George had come up from the ICU, and all I'd seen him do the past couple of days was watch TV and complain to the nurses about having to share a room. I didn't know what he'd been admitted for and frankly I wasn't interested enough to ask.

“Maybe this isn't such a good idea,” I said when I reached George's bedside.

“Trust me,” George replied. “It is.”

“I hope so.” I brought out the first bottle of Sam Adams, uncapped it, and handed it to him.

George took a long swallow. He groaned with pleasure. “Ah. There is a God after all.”

“Then I'd say you owe him some prayers. You should be dead.”

“Listen,” George told me, “why do you think my last name is Sampson? It'll take more than being shot in the shoulder and stuffed in a trunk to kill me.”

Root coughed. George and I turned toward him. “Do you mind?” he snapped. “I'm trying to watch TV.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. I pointed to the beer. “You want some?”

Root sniffed. “Alcohol's not allowed in here. This is a hospital not a bar.” He had a long, pinched face and looked as if he hadn't enjoyed his life and wanted to make sure no one else enjoyed theirs either. “I shouldn't have to deal with the likes of you in the state I'm in.”

“You're right, you shouldn't.” I got up and drew the curtain around George's bed. Suddenly we were cocooned in white.

“Do you think it's a race thing?” George whispered.

“No. I think it's an idiot thing,” I whispered back.

Root raised his voice. “I'm calling the nurse and demanding my own room right now.”

“You do that,” I told him. Then George and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“Sssh.” George put his finger to his lips.

“I'm trying.” And I went off into another fit of giggling. When I'd gotten myself back under control I moved the IV pole and perched on the edge of George's bed.

“Did you bring any more of this stuff?” George asked hopefully, indicating the beer with a tilt of his head.

“Three. Wait until you see what else I brought you.” I dove into my backpack and came out with a joint.

“You're going to get us arrested,” he hissed.

“Then you don't want me to light it?” I didn't think that George was as straight as he pretended to be, but maybe I was wrong.

He hesitated.

I offered to put it away.

“No, don't,” he said after another couple seconds of hesitation. “What the hell.” He moved over and patted the space he'd just vacated. “Come on. There's room.”

I lay down next to him and lit up.

“I haven't done this since Murphy died,” George said as we passed the joint back and forth.

“Me either. He was definitely a bad influence.”

“That's for sure,” George agreed.

“How come you're so much more uptight with me than you were with him?”

“I don't know.” George was about to say something else when Root started talking.

“What's that I smell?” he demanded. His voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. “Are you smoking in there?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” I told him. “There are rules against that kind of thing.”

“We'd better put it out,” George whispered.

“It would probably be a good idea,” I agreed.

“I guess I really was lucky,” George reflected as he snuffed the joint out with his fingers and handed it to me.

“I'd say so.” I put the joint back in my pocket and took a sip of beer. “I still don't understand how you knew it was Garriques. What put you on to him?”

“Mostly luck. You know when you started talking to the waitresses at The Pancake Palace?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that got me thinking about the fact that everything in the case—Marsha, the reservoir, Estrella—had one thing in common. Wellington. Everywhere I turned the school popped up.”

“Which was when you went to see Garriques.”

“Actually what I did was walk in and ask if I could see the principal. I just wanted to get some general background information on Marsha and Estrella, and I thought that talking to the headman would be a good place to start; but the longer we talked, the more I got the feeling that this guy was hiding something, and I wanted to know what it was.”

“I wished I'd gotten that feeling.”

George grinned. “People see what they're accustomed to seeing. He'd always been a good guy to you, so that's what you saw him as. I was just more open to impressions.” George took another sip of beer. “I think one of the things that flagged him for me was he got into this buddy-buddy mode.”

“Buddy-buddy?”

“You know. Us ex-cops got to stick together. Something about it felt phony. Which was why I went downtown and got one of my friends to pull his record.”

“I'm impressed. They still had it after all this time?”

“Oh, yeah. You'd be amazed at what they've got.”

“I'm sure I would be. So what was on Garriques's file?”

“A fair number of excessive violence complaints.”

“He was a boxer,” I said, thinking about how Garriques had killed Porter. “Maybe he just liked hitting people.”

“He was the subject of two internal inquiries,” George continued, ignoring my interruption. “Garriques was cleared, but reading between the lines, I'd say the department was looking to get rid of him. He'd grown into a liability.”

“I wonder if they knew about his family connections?” I mused.

“It wouldn't surprise me at all,” George said. “This place really is a small town. It's hard to hide things.”

“I don't know. Garriques did pretty well in that department,” I observed.

“Yes, he did, didn't he?”

George and I both lapsed into silence for a minute.

“So you went back and talked to Garriques?” I finally said, taking up one of the conversational strands.

George shook his head. “No. I went and found Estrella's friend, Pam. I figured if Estrella said anything to anyone she'd have said it to her. Well, she had. Unfortunately Estrella was dropping lots of acid at the time, so Pam wasn't inclined to take Estrella's story too seriously. Then when Estrella got killed, Pam figured maybe Estrella's story was true and that if she didn't want to be next, she'd better pretend she hadn't heard anything.”

“Then why did she talk to you?”

“Because I pointed out she could serve a couple of years for dealing. In the nicest possible manner of course ...”

“Of course ...”

“After that she got a little more conversational. The description she gave me, the one she got from Estrella, matched Garriques in a general way. But given Estrella's possible mental state it wasn't enough to move on. I needed more.” George paused and asked me for the second beer. After I'd opened it and he'd taken a sip he continued. “I went to talk to Ana Torres next. I was hoping Estrella had told her something.”

“Had she?”

“No. She said the two of them hadn't talked ever since Estrella started running with a bad crowd. Which is why I ended up following Garriques. It was my last shot. I figured maybe I'd rattle him. Well, I did. I just didn't get the result I wanted.”

I sighed. “We could have saved ourselves a lot of trouble if we'd gotten together.”

“I know.”

“Why didn't you answer my messages?”

“At first I was too busy to, and then I couldn't. It's hard to phone from the trunk of a car.”

“Not if you have a cellular phone.”

George laughed. Suddenly I became aware of the fact that his body was pressing up against mine. God, I shouldn't have brought the pot. I'd forgotten how horny it makes me feel. To distract myself I told him about Porter and the farm and Brandon Funk.

“How is he anyway?” George asked.

“Worse off than you are. He's going to be in here for a while.”

“Why did he come out?”

“He told me he and Garriques got in a fight about Marsha. It must have been bad because Garriques told him to get out of town. When Funk said no, Garriques told him that the same thing that had happened to Porter was going to happen to you and that he was going to leave him holding the bag. Again. But this time Funk decided to do something. He was going to the farm to try and help you.”

“Except Garriques followed him.”

“Exactly.”

“He should have gone to the cops.”

“He was still scared about being blamed for Porter, and he didn't want to get involved in all the family stuff that was going to go down. After all, Garriques is his brother-in-law. I think he was hoping that if he rescued you, you'd get Garriques and he could stay out of it.”

George reached over and took the beer. Our fingers touched. A tingle went through mine. “Too bad you didn't shoot Garriques in a more strategic area.”

“I'm just happy I hit him at all.”

George's expression darkened. “I hope that sonofabitch goes straight to hell. You know he shot me and left me to die.”

“I know.” I put my hand on George's arm.

“It was like being buried alive. I wouldn't do that to anyone.”

“Don't think about it,” I murmured.

“I can't help it. It sneaks up on me. I shouldn't have followed Garriques out there. No, what I shouldn't have done was come back the next day and looked around without telling you. Or Connelly. Or somebody.”

“You didn't expect he'd be there.”

“That's no excuse. I knew better.” I could see George's jaw muscles clenching while he remembered what had happened. Then he told me the story again because he needed to talk. “I'd just gotten out of the car when he'd pulled up. He asked me what I wanted and I gave him some bullshit answer, and looking at him I knew that he knew I was lying. That bastard pulled his gun on me before I could get to the car. I grabbed for it. I got it away from him, too, but the damned thing slipped out of my hand. It went off when it hit the ground.” George blinked. “You know what Connelly told me?”

“What?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

“He said the reason Garriques shoved me in the trunk instead of finishing me off was because a real estate agent was coming out with his client and he didn't know what else to do with me. I guess he didn't have another change of clothes. It's hard to show a house when you've got blood all over your pants.”

“I think it was more a matter of his not wanting Fast Eddie to find out what was going on. People like that tend to frown on unscheduled killings.”

George frowned. “Fast Eddie. What the hell does he have to do with this?”

I explained about the real estate agent and the homestead.

George snapped his fingers. “That's right. Fast Eddie's last name is Marino.”

“It certainly is.”

George shook his head. “It's lucky you came out before he finished the job.”

“I would say so,” I agreed as I tried not to think about the two I hadn't been able to save.

Even though I didn't want to, I found myself picturing Marsha's death. Had it been gray or sunny the morning Marsha died? Was she listening to the radio when her world came to an end? She'd been sitting in the back of the parking lot at The Pancake Palace waiting for Garriques to bring her her money and probably thinking about how her life was going to take a turn for the better. She must have been happy to see Garriques, pleased when he got in her car. Finally something was going to work out right. Only instead of giving her the thirty grand, he jammed one of his wife's hypodermics in her. At least that's what Connelly had told me. I guess he felt he owed me something.

It must have happened so fast Marsha didn't have time to react. She certainly wouldn't have been expecting it. And then all Garriques had to do was hold her and wait until the insulin took effect. How long would it have taken? Twenty minutes, half an hour at the most. In his confession Garriques had said she hadn't fought much; she hadn't tried hard to get away. After she'd become unconscious he'd driven her car over to the reservoir and tossed her in. Then he walked back, got in his car, and went to work.

“What are you thinking about?” George asked when another minute of silence had gone by.

I sighed. “Mostly about Marsha and Estrella.”

“What about them?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. I guess I was just thinking how one bad deed can give birth to so many. Porter steals a camera from Garriques and Garriques loses it, kills him and buries the body. Then Marsha finds out about it and tries to blackmail him.”

“And he kills her,” George said.

“And then Estrella sees the murder and he kills her.”

“She could have gone to the police,” George said.

“She was afraid to. She was afraid she'd be deported. And anyway you told me her friend said that she didn't think Garriques saw her.”

“That's true,” George murmured. “According to Connelly Garriques didn't. But later that morning he decided to go back to the reservoir and make sure he hadn't left anything lying around. He saw her backpack ...”