The Angel of Knowlton Park (35 page)

"You'd rather have a bunch of cops busting in and tearing up your place than talking to me for a few minutes?"

"I'd rather you all sucked my dick and choked."

This was going a hell of a lot of nowhere. He was frustrated enough to call in a SWAT team, but this wasn't Portland. It would take interdepartmental cooperation and time he didn't have. Timmy Watts was lying cold and dead in a cooler up in Augusta because nobody in his slug-assed family could be bothered to plan a funeral, and his killer was laughing up his sleeve because the cops couldn't catch him. Burgess jerked the screen door open, stepped aside as the dogs rushed out, then stepped in, shutting the door behind him.

He skirted discarded clothes and junk, reached the end of the hall, where the voice had been, and stepped into a sparsely furnished, yet cluttered living room. A mountainous man in dirty overalls held up by one strap sat on a sofa facing the door, his back to the view of the lake. The rifle in the man's hands was pointed at Burgess's chest.

His heart skipped as it shifted into a different gear, the accelerated beats surging in his brain like an insistent backdrop of drums, his gut suffused with the hot acid rush of adrenaline. "Henry Devereau?"

"Who the fuck else? My house, ain't it?" The weapon didn't move.

"Mind if I sit down?"

Devereau gave a derisive snort. "Ain't no chair that I can see."

He looked around, saw that Devereau was right. "Mind if I stand?"

"Suit yourself."

"What was it that your nephew, Dwayne Martin, was supposed to deliver that he wasn't delivering?"

Devereau's grin revealed a host of missing teeth. "Five cords of wood."

"I don't think so. I think it was methamphetamine that you'd paid for."

Devereau shrugged his massive shoulders, sending his whole torso jiggling. Not a typical meth users body, but not everyone who dealt also used. "Think what you want." The gun dipped slightly but stayed pointed at Burgess.

"You have any kind of a relationship with Timmy Watts?"

"He's my nephew."

"Did you know the boy?"

"I seen him a few times. Once, when Iris come out, she brought him with her. He was a cute kid. Didn't deserve what happened." Devereau had a high, reedy voice, incongruous in his massive body, and wheezed the way morbidly fat people often did.

"You have a relationship with Iris?"

"Is that a crime? Iris is a good kid. She's not like them other thieves and whores."

Devereau had that right. A belligerent, bullying nutcase who used or sold amphetamine and was a doting uncle. It was a strange damned world they lived in. Burgess played a long shot. "I'm worried about Iris," he said. "About how she's handling this. You know she was close to Timmy." He watched Devereau's face, saw the nod, even, despite the man's monstrosity, a kind of shared concern. "When I went to talk with her, there was something she didn't want to tell me. Something she knew that maybe mattered to the case but for some reason, she wouldn't share."

He tried not to look at the gun. Tried to act like he carried on conversations all the time while staring down a rifle barrel. Tried not to let on how much it pissed him off. "I'm afraid that if that secret involves the killer, it could get her killed, too."

Devereau didn't respond, so he continued. "It looks like whoever killed Timmy might have been someone he knew. The night he was killed, Timmy was running away."

"Not as dumb as I thought," Devereau said.

"Somebody killed him, Mr. Devereau. Somebody stabbed him repeatedly with a knife..." Burgess searched for something that would move Devereau away from stubborn and uncooperative. "Timmy might have been going to see Iris. According to her, he'd run away once before and actually reached her. That's a long way for a little boy. He got a ride with someone. She says she doesn't know who. But she knows. Even if that person isn't the killer, he's likely someone Timmy saw that night. One of the last people to see the boy alive. We need to find him. Talk with him."

"You sound like a friggin' TV program. Sheesh, you got everything but the friggin' violins. You know what?" Devereau gestured with the rifle. "Why doncha take a commercial break. Come back later."

Looking back toward the door, Burgess saw that the floor there was a different color. Darker. As though the center of the room, until recently, had been covered by a carpet and protected from some of the dirt. "What if that person is the killer? What if Iris is protecting a killer for some reason and doesn't even know it? The killer does. You want the same thing to happen to Iris?"

There was no response. Burgess didn't know whether the man was mulling it over in a slow, ponderous mind, or indifferent, or simply couldn't conceive of someone killing Iris. He hadn't seen what the killer had done to Timmy. Maybe Devereau knew the killer wouldn't hurt Iris because he
was
the killer? Timmy would have taken a ride with him. He was family, after all. It wasn't inconceivable that Devereau could have been in the neighborhood or that this man might have done something monstrous.

"Maybe
you
killed him," Burgess suggested. "Killed him to get back at Dwayne Martin. At your sister."

"Wouldn't mind killing my sister. Might, one of these days. She'd be no loss, nor any of those sons of hers. But a kid? Pathetic little kid like that? Why would I?"

"Why would anyone?"

"Preverts," Devereau said. "They're the ones that kill kids." The gun never wavered. There was something Zen in the man's ability to keep his hands calm and still while his voice and mood wandered all over the place.

"And people who lose their tempers. You've got a temper."

"You come all the way from Portland to tell me that?"

"No. I came all the way from Portland to see what you were like. See if you might have done it. Lotta people heard you threaten Dwayne."

"Ain't nobody seen me do nothing to the kid, though. Right?"

It was stifling and the place smelled bad. His knee hurt, and a fly buzzing around his head reminded him of the flies on Timmy's face. He watched the steady hands, the gun, the small eyes sunk in the fat of Devereau's face. "Timmy was a pathetic, abused little eight-year-old who tried to live a normal life and died a horrible death. He was a sweet little boy. The only light in his life was his sister, Iris. Iris is a good kid, too. And maybe, since no one in her family gives a damn, Iris might go the way her brother went. Raped and butchered."

He let it go a beat. "Iris plant those geraniums out there?"

"How'd you know?"

"Looks like a woman's touch."

Devereau nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Look. Maybe I'll talk to Iris. See what's up. I ain't promising. I'm pretty busy these days. But maybe I'll see her."

"Maybe it won't even be too late. But if it is, you can always come to the funeral. Buy her some nice flowers or something. Put one of those hubcaps on her grave."

"Screw you," Devereau said. "You can't mess with my mind. I've spent too much time around cops."

What mind? "Five cords of wood, huh. Doesn't seem worth a screaming match."

"Unless otherwise you gotta cut it yourself," Devereau said.

"I wonder what his story will be?"

"If you ain't heard it yet, you prolly ain't gonna. Dwayne don't love cops no more than I do."

"He's facing an assault with intent to murder a police officer," Burgess said. "He'd rat out anybody. Loves himself best, Dwayne does. So you've got no idea who might have wanted to hurt Timmy? No idea what Iris might be hiding?"

"Not unless it has something to do with her boyfriend. Iris prolly wouldn't want her folks to know about that."

"Boyfriend? You know his name?"

"Nah. She never said."

"Think she'd tell you?"

Devereau's shrug threw off a wave of rancid body odor. "Iris ain't much for confidences. I could ask."

"You do that. Iris tell you anything about this boyfriend?"

"Not really. Sounded like maybe he was older. She mentioned he was a teacher. Least I think that's what she said. He brought her out here once. That time she come with Timmy. When she planted them geraniums."

Burgess felt every pore go on alert. "But you didn't meet him?"

"Nope. He just dropped 'em off over to the edge of the yard there and hightailed it outta here." Devereau shook his head. "Dunno whether he was scart a me, or of them dogs. I never even seen him. Course I wouldn't, bein' in here, would I?" The tiny eyes looked puzzled. "Can't have been much of a boyfriend, though, could he," Devereau said, "leavin' her way the hell over there with all them plants and bags a soil and all."

Obviously, despite Devereau's claim that he'd seen nothing, he'd watched Iris being dropped off. "What was he driving?"

"Small car. Blue. Dark blue," Devereau said.

"You see the driver? You're sure it was a man?"

"No. I ain't sure. Only that Iris said... nope... hold on. It worn't Iris that said. It were Timmy. He said Iris had got a boyfriend, and he'd given them the ride."

"Timmy didn't say his name?"

"Nope. I think he woulda done, only Iris tole him to shuddup." Devereau shrugged. "Timmy always done what Iris said."

"Anything else?" Devereau shook his head. Burgess reached in his pocket for a card, and the gun suddenly became all business. "Just getting you a card with my phone number. So you can call if you learn anything."

"Slow and easy," Devereau said. "Take it out slow and easy and leave it on the kitchen table. And don't come back here. Next time, this gun's liable to go off in your face."

He backed through the door like a commoner leaving the presence of the Queen, and left the card on the table. On a window ledge over the sink, a pair of caged birds were making a racket. Maybe they were another one of Iris's innovations. Devereau seemed like the type to have one use for birds—shoot 'em and eat 'em. When he left, the dogs rushed eagerly past him. Not so much fierce as dumb and dangerous, like their owner. Back at the main road, he got out, leaning against the car, shaking, smelling like the inside of Devereau's house.

Lavoie pulled in behind him and came over, grinning. "You have fun in there?"

He sucked in air, purging his lungs of the stench and quelling the adrenaline surge. It hadn't gone as he'd expected, but it hadn't gone so badly, either, aside from the years it had probably taken off his life. At least he'd learned something.

Lavoie studied him. "You gonna stand there all day? It's effin' hot out here."

"Thanks for the back-up," Burgess said. "Devereau always conduct his interviews with a rifle in his hands?"

"Nah. Sometimes it's a shotgun. Unnerving, ain't it?"

"You might say that." As he drove back down the corrugated road, an old tourist industry motto came into his head. "Make Vacationland your vocationland." Great idea. Look where it had gotten him.

Chapter 27

Next on his list was Regina McBride. He hadn't called ahead. The tone of her letter told him that she was reluctant to get involved. She'd emphasized that everything she knew was in the letter, that the Watts shouldn't know the complaint had come from her, and had requested Human Services not contact her. Despite what she'd said, she probably knew much more. She was observant, lived in the neighborhood, and had cared about the child. He thought the conscience that prompted the letter would keep her from closing the door in his face once he appeared on the step.

By this time, he'd realized that this was the mother of Matty McBride, sometime friend of Ricky Watts, occasional companion of Timmy, the nervous teenager who'd first told them about the confrontation between Dwayne Watts and Henry Devereau. Maybe he'd get lucky and the son would be home, too. Then he could make it a twofer. He'd been meaning to see the boy again. Matty, he recalled, hadn't wanted them talking to his mother.

The McBrides lived on the nice side of the hill, where the streets slanted toward the Eastern Promenade. Not at the end, where grand old houses faced out to the water, but close enough to have a toe-hold on gentility. He thought about Alan Gordon's comment—that Matty and his mother were snobs with nothing to be snobbish about. Class was a funny thing. Some people didn't give a damn; some gave too many damns.