Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted (12 page)

‘He didn’t mean it. Damn fool talks too much.’

They sat for a while, saying nothing. Rudy plonked his rump down in the dust, bored from waiting.

D
arla Levine was hot
, tired and sticky. Worse than that, she felt perilously dull-witted from the enforced company of Chippy, who, when he wasn’t yapping at her, insisted on playing a Los Tigres del Norte CD, singing along at the top of his lungs for most of the trip.

‘How much longer?’

‘Should be right up ahead,’ Chippy said, peering through the dusty windscreen.

‘You’ve been saying that for ages.’

They had been on the road since early that morning and were now deep in the highlands of Tennessee. Darla was sick to the back teeth of looking at trees.

‘
Mira!
 There!’

Before them the road snaked around to the right and set back from it, about one hundred feet away was Misty’s, a diner and rest stop for weary travellers. Chippy pulled across the highway and drove into the compact dirt lot.

‘Park behind the trucks.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t want him to know I have a photographer with me.’

‘’Kay.’

He parked near a row of dusty trees. ‘Man, I’m starving. You think they do tamales?’

‘Stay here, I won’t be long.’

‘Why you say I gotta stay all the time like a dog or some shit? I ain’t no dog.’

‘I need you to walk by the windows and make an identification. When he comes out I need you to take his picture. Don’t let him see you.’

‘But you said this was an assignment.’

‘I said you’re to take his picture. That’s all.’

Chippy looked fleetingly puzzled, then his features crumpled. ‘Aw, Popeye don’t know about this one?’

‘Make sure you get a good clear shot of him.’

‘Aw, shit.’

Darla gathered up her things, climbed out and moved towards the diner through rigs parked three-deep.

It was a ramshackle affair. The original building was prefabricated, with a single-slope roof and two window walls overlooking the forecourt. Clearly, over time there had been a number of extensions added to the main structure; more than Darla guessed were legal. She figured that out this way building inspectors had to be as rare as liberals.

Darla pushed the door open and stepped into a long room with double booths running the length of one wall, a bar at the other, and free-standing tables on the floor in the middle. The place was busy, wall to wall with road travellers, truckers, sales folk, small families with tired-looking faces and bored children picking at chips.

Darla scanned the place and spotted her target within seconds. Though she had never met Clint Robinson in person, she recognised him from the photos Billy had managed to acquire. He was seated in the second to last booth near the restrooms. Darla made her way towards him, aware that many sets of eyes were following. At the booth she stopped walking and said, ‘Mr Robinson?’

Clint Robinson looked up from his food. She put him in his late forties, but he might have been older. He was thin, with washed-out blue eyes, a week’s growth on his face and a busted nose. There was grease on his chin and oil on his shirt. He looked like a man who had been shit on by life so often he had learned to like the smell.

‘You Darly?’ His voice was high and nasal.

‘Darla. Yes, we spoke on the phone.’

He let his eyes roam over her body, from her head to her toes, slowly, disrespectfully taking his time. ‘You sure do fit your clothes.’

‘May I sit down?’

‘Still a free country, ain’t it?’

She slid into the booth opposite him and opened her bag. She took out a notebook and a digital recorder, which she placed on the table between them.

‘You want some food? This place does a mean steak.’

‘I’ll have a coffee.’

He signalled to the waitress. She brought over a cup and laid it before Darla without exchanging a word. Darla wondered how the hell she had understood exactly what the hand gesture had meant. The waitress poured the coffee and left. Darla looked at her cup. The coffee was the colour of tar. She added milk and sugar and looked at it again. Now it was like lighter tar.

‘Mind if I eat? I got to get back out on the road.’

‘Please, carry on.’

Robinson picked up his burger and took a huge bite. He chewed it for a while, looking at her across the top of it. Darla waited. She had met men like Clint before. He didn’t intimidate her in the slightest.

When he had finished his food, he wiped his mouth, belched loudly and slid his coffee cup closer to his side of the table.

‘You got the money?’

‘I brought it.’

‘Well let’s see it.’

Darla took an envelope from her bag. She opened it and let him see the wad of cash inside – one thousand dollars to be exact. Robinson’s eyes widened.

‘I guess I shoulda asked for more.’

‘We agreed a price,’ Darla said, beginning to put the envelope back in her bag. ‘If you don’t want to talk I am sure I can find someone else interested in—’

‘Aw now, hold your horses. I never said I weren’t interested. So whaddya want to know?’

Darla pressed the ‘on’ button on her recorder.

‘Like I told you on the phone, I want to know everything you can tell me about Jessie Conway.’

‘Conway,’ he sniffed out a laugh. ‘When I knowed her she was Vedder, Jessica Vedder. Before she was Robinson, that is. Not that she kept 
that
 name long.’

‘You’ve known Jessie how long?

‘Long enough.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘Since she was in school. I shoulda known it was her when I saw them news pictures. She’s changed her hair. She used to wear it blonde.’

‘You said she was married to your brother, Doug was it?’

‘Yeah,’ his expression darkened. ‘You met her, right? Bet she still looks like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But that devious bitch killed my brother; shot him same as she shot them kids in that school. There ain’t nothin’ soft about that woman. You best believe it.’

‘How long were she and Doug married?’

‘Three years, thereabouts.’

‘When did she and your brother marry?’

‘Straight out of school, ’round, oh, late ’89. They were sweethearts, even though she made out she was better than him. Doug was sweet on that girl from the moment he met her. Back then Jessica Vedder didn’t have a pot to piss in. Doug wanted to provide for that woman, start a family of his own.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘Next? Nothing, they rented a place over in Rutherford. Doug had a job at the mill there and she worked a job at the market. Didn’t get to see much of ’em, but they seemed happy enough.’

‘Something must have happened between them.’

‘I told you, she had notions.’

‘Notions?’

‘Said she wanted to go to college.’

‘Hardly a notion.’

His eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Maybe not to you, but who’d y’think was gonna pay for all that? Her daddy hadn’t two cents to rub together. He weren’t gonna pay for it. He didn’t pay nuthin’ for them kids.’

‘Kids?’

‘Her and her dumb brother.’

‘I didn’t realise Jessie had a brother. Is he still around?’

‘Dunno, ain’t seen him in years. Used to work down the valley with a road crew. Could be scattered to the winds by now.’

‘What about her folks?’

‘Gone.’

‘Left the area?’

‘Naw, dead.’

‘They’re dead?’

‘Yep, fire took ’em out.’

‘What year was this?’

‘Oh, ’92 I’d say. Not long after Jessica and Doug split.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘Yeah, they reckon the old man had rigged up some kind of generator but it blew. Burned hot too. Don’t think there was enough of them to fill a matchbox when it was finished.’ He was watching Darla carefully as he spoke. She wondered if he was trying to shock her with his description. He had a mean streak, Darla could see that. She wondered if it ran in the family.

‘So, her parents were poor and she was married, broke, but ambitious.’

‘My brother worked hard for that woman, but like I say, she had notions. I told him, that woman ain’t for you, but he wouldn’t listen. He wouldn’t listen. Now, Doug is dead and buried and she’s supposed to be like some kinda fuckin’ hero. She ain’t no hero. What she is is one devious bitch.’

‘She’s a hero to a lot of people.’

‘My ass. You got witnesses to back up her version of events? ’Cause that woman likes to say things, she likes to paint a picture that makes her look like a peach, but Jessica Vedder, I can tell you right now, she ain’t no peach. That woman could fool a snake.’

‘Is that what happened with your brother? She fooled him?’

Robinson looked at his plate, his brow furrowed deeply. ‘Everyone knew he was stupid over that woman, couldn’t nobody tell him nothing about her. Then she took up with this other bozo, but she wasn’t finished playing Doug. I knew it and everyone else knew it. Everyone except Doug.’

Darla flipped through her notes. ‘Not long after they separated, Jessie filed a police report saying your brother was stalking her.’

Clint raised his head, his expression one of derision. ‘Stalking my ass. Shit, they lived in the same town. Stands to reason they’d run into each other.’

‘You don’t think she was afraid of him?’

‘I tell you what I do know. I 
know
 she killed him. I 
know
 she shot him dead like a rabid dog. Point-blank range. I 
know
 Doug never stood a chance.’

Darla leaned forward. ‘I read the police report, Mr Robinson. On the night your brother died his blood alcohol was .28. I also read the hospital records on Jessie. She was battered black and blue and had cuts and lacerations to her scalp and hands.’

‘Yeah, they had … disagreements. Look, she knew what buttons to push with Doug and she pushed ’em. I know folk say a man ought to keep his hands to himself, but she was like a flint. And let me explain something to you, Darly, maybe damp down that judgement I see in your eyes. You can talk all you want about fightin’ and whatnot, but only one of them is in the ground.’

Darla looked down at her notes. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Robinson, I didn’t mean to be rude.’

‘I ain’t saying my brother was some kind of saint, but neither was she. She’s cold, that woman, cold as stone.’ Clint Robinson sat back in his seat and shook his head a little. ‘People can say all they want, but if I ever cross her again I’m gonna make real sure to keep 
my
 back to the wall.’

C
aleb’s sleep
was fitful and filled with dreams. He woke early the next morning and worked out, but could not shake the feeling of claustrophobia and unease. This was unusual after a successful mission and it troubled him.

He drank a cup of coffee and drove the Taurus across town to the apartment of Frank Fulchano, or ‘Frankie the Fence’ as he was also – and perhaps better – known. Frank was a small, twisted little bird, with skin the colour of molasses. He was a forty-eight-year-old street hustler with foul teeth and a fouler disposition. He lived in a small walk-up in Tuckaseegee. Caleb had met him months before at Sonja’s bar.

Caleb had been to the apartment only once before but found it easily. He parked one street over, eyeballed a group of youths watching him from some nearby steps and walked back to the flat. He climbed the metal stairs to the third level, carrying a black gym bag over his shoulder.

Frank lived in the last apartment at the end of a graffiti-soiled walkway. Caleb passed apartments, noting that all the windows had bars over them. The air was filled with music and the smell of fried food. Caleb rapped on Frank’s door and took a hasty step back as an explosion of barking came from within. Something big and solid struck the door.

A few moments later the door opened on the chain and a Hispanic woman of indeterminate age wearing just a t-shirt and panties looked him up a down. A massive dog with cropped ears rammed most of its head through the gap and barked throatily.

‘What you want?’

‘Frank’s expecting me.’

‘He didn’t say nothing about expecting no one.’

‘I got business with him.’ Caleb opened the bag and partially withdrew Barbara Cross’s laptop.

‘Wait here.’ She closed the door.

Caleb waited, feeling the back of his shirt grow clammy and stick to his skin. He was thirsty and the heat and dust disturbed him. He thought of the cabin, of the cool creek filled with sweet, cold water and he licked his lips.

Minutes ticked by. Caleb eased his weight from one foot to the other. His mind wandered a little. He had a shift later that morning in the Home Depot. Maybe he’d try to pick up some more sheet metal afterwards, assuming the floor manager was nowhere around. That Polish prick had it in for him, although Caleb, who usually did his best to avoid hassle, did not know why.

The woman returned to the door with the dog. She stuck her hand out. ‘Give me the bag.’

‘No.’

‘
No?
 What you mean, no?’

‘I mean no.’

‘What you got?’

‘Various things.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Like what?’

‘Electronics, jewellery, a jacket.’

‘He don’t do clothes.’

Caleb shrugged. ‘You keep it then.’

She looked at him and closed the door. Caleb heard the chain rattle and then she opened the door just enough for him to slide past. She held the dog by its chain. It stood on its hind legs and tried to sniff him. Caleb doubted she’d be able to restrain it if it meant business.

‘He down the hall, last room.’

Caleb walked past two open doors. The first one led to a kitchen and in it sat another woman, younger than the one who had let him in, a daughter maybe, pudgy, wearing denim shorts and flip-flops. The second room was empty, but fresh cigarette smoke drifted on the beams of sunlight and there was a trace of a man’s cologne.

Frank was in the last room, as she had said. It was a small office of sorts. Two of the walls were covered from floor to ceiling with crowded shelves. There was a sofa propped up against the third, and the fourth held a widescreen television that looked very new and very out of place. Frank sat on the couch. He wore a white wife-beater and jeans, on his head was a straw cowboy hat with a bandana tied around the rim. His bare feet were propped up on a coffee table littered with cables and assorted electrical equipment. He was smoking something from a plastic bottle. The air was thick with the cloying stink of it.

‘I told you ’bout comin’ here, man.’ He inhaled deeply, held it and released, tilting his head all the way back, exposing his throat. Caleb shrugged one shoulder.

‘I have something.’

‘Shit, we coulda done business at the bar.’

‘I don’t want to do business there.’

‘What the fuck … this ain’t about what you wanna do, chico.’

Frank put the bottle down and grinned at Caleb.

‘You’re still sweet on Sonja, heh?’

Caleb narrowed his eyes. ‘What?’

‘I see you watching her, man. I know you interested in some cream. Don’t let Bear know you sweet on his bird. Man liable to clip them wings.’

Caleb saw a shadow move in the hall outside. Frank’s pupils were black and massive. He was sweating up a storm and his jaw muscles twitched rapidly. Something was not right.

‘So what you got?’

Caleb opened the bag and emptied the contents onto the coffee table.

Frank glanced at what he laid out, waved a hand. ‘I give you two for the lot.’

‘Two hundred?’ Caleb frowned. He had done business with Frank before. He didn’t like the filthy dick but he had never been slighted like this. He picked up the delicate gold watch he had removed from Barbara’s wrist. ‘This is a Cartier. These go for real money.’

‘Then take it to a 
real
 fucking store.’

Caleb noticed Frank’s eyes dart to the door behind him and back again. Caleb always, even as a child, had an innate sense of danger, and he felt it now. Yes, the look could mean nothing, or it could mean plenty. Pretending to gather up his goods, Caleb reached down into this boot and withdrew his grandfather’s knife. He stepped to the right and turned as a thin, wiry man with bad skin lowered a gun to where his head had been seconds before.

Caleb swung the knife in a backwards arc and drove it straight into the man’s left eye. He twisted his wrist, feeling the blade crunch around in the socket. The man dropped the gun and began screaming, as blood and fluid splashed across Caleb’s skin. Caleb bent, grabbed the gun and shot the man in the side of the head.

Frank tried to scramble to his feet but he was out of shape and wasted. Caleb shot him twice, knocking him backwards onto the sofa. He swiped his stolen goods into the bag, yanked his knife from the dead man and stepped into the hall.

The woman came into the hall from the kitchen, preventing his escape. She stared at him, released the dog and it charged without hesitation. Caleb shot it mid-stride, and shot the woman during the next, blowing half her face off in the process. He looked through the rooms for the girl and found an open window in a bedroom. She was gone.

‘Shit.’

He used the bottom of his t-shirt to open the door handle and hurried along the walkway, leaving the apartment door open, the smell of cordite in his nostrils.