The Last Kind Words (13 page)

“Fuck,” I said.

“What’s that?”

The waitress was watching me. She didn’t seem bored waiting. A hint of talcum powder trailed across her cleavage. She probed a bad back tooth with her tongue and winced but didn’t stop.

“Sorry. Give me a Dewar’s and Coke. A lot of ice.”

“You okay, man?”

“Sure.”

She tilted her head back toward the bar. “Flo over there wants you to buy her a dirty martini.”

I could guess who Flo was. “And why would she expect me to do that?”

The waitress shrugged. “It’ll make her more friendly to you, you know?”

“I’ve got all the friends I can handle.”

“The guys like her. Some of them anyway.”

“Not tonight.”

“Okay, man.”

I spent the next forty-five minutes reading and slowly getting drunk. My stomach was empty by now, and the liquor hit me harder than it should have. It didn’t slow me down. I kept knocking them back, hoping to disconnect. The pages flashed before me. Facts, dates, blood-spatter patterns, interviews. I knew the picture but details kept adding color and texture. More than I wanted to know.

The reports were about as cool and dry as they came. There wasn’t a hint of emotion anywhere, not even in my brother’s confession. He’d told the cops the same thing that he’d told me. There was no reason. He explained what he’d done that night step by step. How he’d moved from one victim to the next. He named the seven. He didn’t name Rebecca Clarke. She’d been completely left out. No one seemed to care.

The victims soon emptied of whatever personality I’d instilled them with. Paul Coleman. Sarah Coleman. Tom Coleman. Neal Coleman. Suzy Coleman. Doug Schuller. Mrs. Howard.

He said he hadn’t known any of them prior to that night. He’d had no grudges with any of them. He didn’t even know their names. He’d never seen them before. He’d chosen his victims completely at random. He’d driven around town until he felt the urge to kill and then he’d climbed out of his car and headed off on foot. When he was finished with one he’d proceeded to the next. He hadn’t done a thing to hide his crimes. He hadn’t muffled the gunshots. The noise awoke other vacationers in the trailer park, who’d called the police. Collie had been long gone by the time they arrived.

Why go on a spree and end it of your own accord? Why not go out in a blaze? Had his rage really been vented? Had he been angry at all? The papers described him as coldhearted, methodical, meticulous.

Collie hadn’t taken the stand. He’d never attempted to explain himself
in court. His attorneys hadn’t bothered to dispute the Becky Clarke snuff. They figured he was already up for seven charges of murder so an eighth didn’t matter. They were adamant on a plea of insanity. It was a bold and stupid play, but they were strapped—Collie refused to recant his confession. Still, they should have homed in on that dispute and made it the central theme of their case. If they could cast doubt on that one killing, then they might shake the D.A.’s case a little. Becky Clarke had been strangled with a sash of some kind. They hadn’t pulled any fibers. Collie had used a blade and a gun and his fists to commit his other murders. When the cops arrested him they found the gun unloaded on the bar where he’d put it.

So where were the knife and the sash? Why would he toss those and not the pistol?

The whole fucking thing was ridiculous.

I went through the paperwork again. I had the feeling I’d missed something. I dug around and came up with one of the forensics sheets. I scanned it, and most of the terminology didn’t mean anything to me.

And then there it was. No one had made a big deal out of it.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

Saliva. They’d found dried saliva on each victim’s forehead. No one suggested what it might mean. They only dealt in facts.

But I knew. Collie had kissed each of them on the forehead before, or after, he’d murdered them.

Every one of them except Rebecca Clarke. There’d been no saliva found on her.

I shut the folders and shoved them away from me. I sat back and listened to the juke crooning and droning. I kept seeing Scooter bolting across Kimmy’s front lawn. I thought about Chub playing it on the straight and narrow, running a completely legit garage. I saw my brother press his lips to the old woman’s brow an instant before he beat her to death.

No matter how I tried, that night didn’t piece together right. Where had Collie gotten the S&W .38 and the knife? He was a Rand. Rands didn’t use guns. It had been a clean drop. No serial numbers. Had he
already been armed in the Elbow Room? I tried to picture it. If he’d been on the verge of going mad dog, why not start here, in this kind of crowd? Why drive around first? It seemed to me that he would’ve been cooling off then. Or had he run into one of his cronies and purchased the weapons then? There didn’t seem to be enough time. Collie had left the Elbow Room at eleven
P.M.
, and the murders began about twenty minutes later. He returned before closing at two
A.M
. and announced he was a murderer and someone should call the cops.

I didn’t see him rushing around looking to buy a piece. It wasn’t his way. But neither was knifing an old woman. Not until that night.

Where and when had he picked up the weapons? If it had been days or weeks before, then how could anyone consider his rampage a spur-of-the-moment occurrence? There were at least a couple of names I was familiar with who might have sold Collie an untraceable piece. I decided I’d pay them a visit.

A shadow crossed my table. I looked up and Flo was standing there, watching me.

The whiskey-and-hamburger smell had given way to tequila and bland salsa. Her lips appeared to be even more unnatural as she hit a pose beneath the weak barroom lighting. She had on a pair of diamond stud earrings that looked like the real thing.

“I know who you are,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She nodded. “You look just like your brother. With that same white streak in your hair.”

That got my attention. I drew the files back toward me in a display of something like protection. Then I took a final pull of my drink. When I finished I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and stared at her. “What do you know about my brother?”

“It’s a compliment. He’s a nice-looking man. Looks like your uncle. That Grey. He still comes in here sometimes. Handsome. A touch of class. He knows how to treat a woman.” Without any invitation she slid into the other side of the booth. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little company? I can see that you’re lonely. A young man like you, hurting so bad.”

“I don’t know where you’re getting that, lady.” I held the file close, like it contained a catalog of all my own sins. “I’m merry. I’m full of mirth.”

“You’re melancholy and you’re pining for an old girlfriend, right? The one that got away. The one that you’d give anything to be with.”

“That’s not a bold guess, Flo. Everybody in here is pining for the losses of his youth. Including you.”

“Not me, hon. I’ve got no sentiment left in me.”

“You were going to talk about my brother,” I said.

“Was I?”

“Yes. Did you know him? Collie Rand?”

“Everyone knew Collie.”

I sat up straighter. “Were you here that night?”

“Which night?”

“The night he was arrested.”

“Why don’t you buy me a dirty martini?”

“Why don’t you answer my question first, Flo?” I grinned at her. I hoped it looked like a john’s drunken smile. The pulse in my throat began to burn. I leaned toward her as if she was beginning to arouse me.

“I can make you forget, you know,” she said.

“Let’s stay on topic, Flo. Collie, my brother. The night he was arrested.”

“You won’t even remember her name after me.”

She reached for my wrist and held on. I didn’t want to be touched. I wondered about these people who thought they had some kind of a right to put their hands on you, to pull and pluck at you. I felt a surge of anger. “How about if you quit working me like I’m a lonely-hearts drunk with a wife who won’t suck my pud and answer my fucking question, right?”

She pulled her hand back. “You’re an abrasive son of a bitch, you know that?”

“Yeah, I know that.”

I pulled a twenty out and slapped it down in front of her. She snatched it away and tucked it into her bra.

“You got a bad temper,” she said. “Just like the other one. We can’t even sit here and have a friendly talk?”

It was a cheap shot but it hit home. I tried to let the tension out of me but it was a losing game. The waitress appeared and I downshifted to beer. Flo watched me expectantly. Jesus Christ, the corners you could get backed into.

I said, “Fine. And you can have a dirty martini.”

The waitress nodded and went to get our drinks.

“Look, about my brother—”

“I was here,” she said.

“Tell me what happened.”

“He was around, then he left, then he came back and he said for somebody to call the police. The cops came and they busted him. Didn’t even have to wrestle him, he just laid flat on his face on the floor.”

“Think you can go into deeper detail than that?”

I’d shown too much interest. She thought if I started getting the answers I needed then she could hold out on the rest of the facts and reel in more cash. Her greasy eyes were full of hunger. She repeated the story and tried to flesh out the scene with minor specifics, but she couldn’t remember much. I got the feeling she had been bored. Collie hadn’t done much that was noteworthy. He put the gun on the bar, drank his Corona, and laid down. It was barely a ripple in her night.

She finally realized I wasn’t going to turn over any serious cash, and she slipped back to the bar and found herself a new guy to hang on to.

I was too swilled to be disappointed that I hadn’t gotten more out of her. I opened the file again, then closed it, then opened it. I hissed, shut it, and got to my feet. My stomach twisted with the alcohol. I headed for the door. I wanted to go home to my bed.

Why did it matter to Collie now five years too late, and why the hell should it matter to me?

Maybe it was in the blood, this thing that made us so bent, so wrong. The veins in my wrist ticked away, black and twisted.

I
knew I’d have to talk to Gilmore eventually. I didn’t expect him to come around the back of my car in the Elbow Room parking lot and give me a left hook to the kidneys.

The pain forced me to my knees. I puked up the liquor and nearly went over but managed to keep my face out of the asphalt. I made a noise that sounded like an animal about to start gnawing its leg out of a trap, then I vomited again. I’d tossed my cookies more in the last two days than in the twenty years prior.

Gagging, trying to catch a sip of air, I looked up and saw Gilmore standing over me. He wore a sorrowful grin even while he sucked on a cigarette. His eyes were dancing pinpoints of dejection. His hair was short and chopped across the front, messy but still fashionable. His face had some alcoholic bloat to it.

Maybe he’d been following me and had seen me duck into the Elbow Room. Maybe he watched as I turned pages, and he recognized the photocopied files. Or maybe the old man from the archives had left a message on Gilmore’s voice mail and given him shit for circumventing protocol. Gimore would question the guy and eventually put it together. Who else would grab Collie’s jacket except me?

My father had said that Gilmore had no edge to him now that he’d lost his wife. I couldn’t quite agree with that.

I crawled forward a bit and tried to stand. Gilmore gave me another shot in the same place. He grunted a little like it caused him pain. It hurt me ten times worse than the first punch and I went down flat on my face.

He lit another cigarette and leaned back against the trunk of my car. He stared off in the distance like he couldn’t bear to look at me.

“Terrier. Didn’t think you’d ever come back. Been keeping your snout clean out there wherever it is you’ve settled?”

Cars drove by. The front door of the Elbow Room opened and closed. I heard hushed voices punctuated by mean girlish laughter. Gilmore took me by the arm and got me to my knees.

A few of the other patrons walked by on their way to their cars. Gilmore acknowledged them and said, “Evening.”

I deserved what I’d gotten. I accepted it the way I’d accepted the beating from Big Dan’s boys. I took my chances with my eyes open.

Still, I thought Gilmore was overreacting a bit. It was a petty move. He knew I’d never punch a cop, not even in self-defense.

He tried to help me to my feet, but I was still too wobbly. He left me kneeling on asphalt and patted my back tenderly.

“You know, Terrier, you broke your mother’s heart.”

Jesus Christ, I thought, here it comes.

He toed the paperwork scattered across the ground. He said nothing about it.

“I always liked you. You and your whole family. From the start, or nearly so, we understood each other. There are lines you cross and those you don’t. Your grandfather knew that, your uncles, your father. But it got crossed up when it came to you and your brother.”

I wanted to tell him I was nothing like Collie, but I still couldn’t speak. The pain was lessening. I breathed deep. As I listened to him talking quietly behind me, I couldn’t stop picturing him pulling his piece and popping me in the back of my head, execution style.