The Long Count (12 page)

The old man’s eyes were open and almost absently he seemed to stare. A single hole in the middle of his forehead, the skin puffed up and a line of blood running down the side of his nose. His hands were in his lap as if he had been resigned to whatever was to befall.

Holstering his gun, Quarrie went back to the door and studied that print once more: the same boot, US Army-issue with a steel shank in the sole, and yet he hadn’t passed the car. There had been no sign of it out front of the hospital building and he had not seen it anywhere on the road. There were plenty of other dirt tracks back this way though, and it could be just about anywhere by now.

Walking back to his car he lifted the radio transmitter from the dashboard and tried to call. He got no response however, the interference was too severe. Slipping behind the wheel he was about to close the door when lightning ignited the sky. Looking up, he saw a figure at a window on the second floor.

He cut for the main entrance at a run. With every step he was waiting for a shot to ring out but it did not come. Another bolt of lightning and he looked again but the window was bare. For a second or so he hovered on the steps then moved inside the ruin where shadows rippled with running water and the staircase climbed one wall.

He could feel adrenalin pumping as he made his way up the stairs. At the top he paused. Fire doors left and right, it was very dark up there and he could just about pick them out. Overhead thunder rolled and another streak of lightning hit. Pushing open the doors on his right he could see the length of the corridor. Slowly he paced, the sound of rain from above and the wind
threatening to tear down what was left of the walls. He could feel the way his flesh had started to creep as if his skin had a life of its own. He came to the first room and it was empty. The next two were also empty. The fourth was empty, and when he got to the fifth he paused.

He stood there, gun in hand, as another sheet of lightning washed across the building and his gaze fastened on the walls. Children, images of stick children, hundreds of them scribbled from ceiling to floor. There was nobody there. Nobody at the window and he wondered if he had not been mistaken and it was only the drawings he saw. But then he heard the sound of an engine and he was at the bars of the broken window as a set of headlights sliced through the darkness below.

He took the stairs three at a time. Spilling out of the empty doors he ran back to the gate in the wall. At his car he was behind the wheel, fumbling for the keys in his jacket pocket; he had them in the ignition and the engine roared into life. Foot flat on the accelerator he spun the car around in an arc with standing water lifting in a curtained plume.

Moments later he was through the gates and giving chase. Back along the causeway to where it came to the wider road, the wind howling, wipers clicking back and forth, he was on that patch of dirt with the trees crowding him and the car skewing so badly he almost left the road. Spinning the wheel under his palm, he righted the car then fed power to the motor once more.

He drove as fast as he could without running off the road but could pick up no hint of a car. The road was a switchback that carried the trees and there was no sign of any tail lights, not so much as a reddened glow.

When finally he got to the asphalt he stopped. The nose of the Ford poking onto the highway, he looked both ways but there was no sign of any vehicle. He sat there trying to work out which way the Chevy might’ve gone. Making a right he drove half a mile to
where lights flickered from an Esso station, gas at twenty-three cents a gallon with a cup of coffee to go.

The middle-aged man at the cash desk told him the phone was out because of the storm and Quarrie went back to his car. He drove as far as Joaquin where the supper club was open and their phone was working OK. He called Austin and asked them to beef up the ‘all points’ they already had out on the car. He asked them to contact the Louisiana State Police because the border was just a few miles further east. After that he called the Panola County sheriff’s department and told them about the caretaker still in his chair.

A Louisiana state trooper found the Chevy abandoned by the railroad tracks just across the state line. Quarrie was asleep when a call came in on the radio the following morning. Parked out back of the supper club in Joaquin he had spent the night in his car. The rain had stopped and the sun was up and the wind had died to little more than a murmur now. Hanging up the radio, he drove thirty miles to a railroad siding where an old gray Chevrolet was parked. The driver’s door was hanging open and it was a short hop from there to a bend in the rails where the pace of the trains would be slow.

The trooper was waiting for him, wearing a blue shirt and knee-high boots that were polished to a shine. In his twenties, he was sitting in his cruiser, a single red light on the roof and an outline of the state painted on the door. Climbing from the Ford, Quarrie felt a little weathered about the eyes. Taking a package of cigarettes from his pocket he peeled one out and stuck it in the corner of his mouth.

‘Morning to you,’ the trooper acknowledged him, with a smile. ‘Got me a Thermos of coffee going and you look like you could use a cup.’

They sat in the cruiser; the trooper’s flat-brimmed hat on the back seat, he had the Thermos on the dashboard and he poured out another cup. The coffee steamed and Quarrie blew on it, the trooper sitting next to him hunched against the window.

‘So how long you been chasing this guy?’

‘Coming up on a week.’

‘Cop killer, huh?’

Quarrie nodded. ‘Kicked off with a woman in Marion County and that’s where he killed the cop. Stole him a cruiser and drowned another guy in the trunk. Since then it’s been a colored girl from a mission cottage and an old caretaker as well.’ He looked sideways at the trooper. ‘Almost caught up with him last night down there in the Piney Woods but either he knows the roads better than I do or he just got lucky.’

The trooper whistled softly. ‘I’m counting five there, Sergeant. That’s quite a party. You got a motive for any of it yet?’

Quarrie made a face. ‘He’s looking for something. I just don’t know what it is.’

Sinking the last of the coffee he handed the cup back to the trooper and they both got out. Fixing his hat, Quarrie crossed to the abandoned Chevy; the door wide open he considered the interior but there was nothing to tell him anything, at least not with the naked eye. He turned his attention to the dirt on the siding, looking for footmarks, and he spotted the same print as before.

‘He’s wearing a pair of jungle boots with a nick in the heel.’ He indicated. ‘You can see how it is right there.’

Dropping to his haunches the trooper took a good look at the handful of prints scattered next to the car. Then he followed as Quarrie picked out the trail to where the dirt gave out and the rocks around the rail ties began.

‘I’d like to be able to tell you how those boots are pretty distinctive,’ Quarrie said, ‘but with what with the draft and all they’re a dime a dozen right now.’

Leaving the trooper to have the car towed Quarrie crossed the line back to Texas and pulled into a gas station. From the payphone he called Austin for Carla Simpson’s address in Tulsa.

En route he made a stop at the Bowen house. When he turned into the driveway he could see the garage doors were open and both the pickup and sedan were parked in the yard. The hood of the truck was up and Isaac appeared wiping his hands on a rag. His uniform was gone and he wore a plaid shirt, a pair of jeans and some old work boots that looked as if they had belonged to his dad. His hair was slicked back and he peered across the driveway as Quarrie got out of his car.

Stuffing the rag into his back pocket, he smiled. ‘Good to see you again, Sergeant. Do you have something for me? Anything about my dad?’

Quarrie shook his head. ‘No sir, I don’t. Not yet.’

Isaac made a face. ‘But you still think somebody shot him, right? You don’t hold anything by what that lieutenant from the sheriff’s department said?’

‘No, I don’t. Somebody shot him all right and I can’t believe the coroner’s going to tell us any different when he finally gets round to the autopsy. Has anybody from his office been in touch?’

‘No, they haven’t, not yet.’

Quarrie followed him into the house and leaned against the arch that led from the kitchen to the living room.

‘So the reason I swung by,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way to Tulsa right now and I just came from Trinity Hospital – the one where your brother was at.’

‘You did?’ Isaac reached for the coffee pot.

‘Yes, I did. Isaac, that caretaker you talked to, the Mexican – he’s dead. Somebody killed him not long after I left out.’

Isaac was trembling, coffee slopping from the pot as he tried to pour.

‘You OK there?’ Quarrie said.

Replacing the pot a little awkwardly on the side, Isaac made a fist and worked it with his other palm. ‘Just nerves I reckon; everything that’s been happening. I guess it’s beginning to get to me.’ Looking over his shoulder his eyes seemed a little hollow.

‘You’re doing OK,’ Quarrie told him. ‘You just hang tough and you’ll be fine.’ He paused for a moment then he said, ‘The caretaker remembered your brother, who he was at least anyhow. Isaac, you told me how Ishmael had issues and everything but you never said that hospital was an asylum for the criminally insane.’

Isaac had stopped shaking. Shoulders hunched, he shrugged. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I actually knew it myself. Now I think about it I don’t know as anybody said.’

‘Well, that’s what it was, and Pablo told me that as far as he knew your brother was the only patient with no rap sheet, so I can’t think why he was there.’

Isaac stared beyond him for a moment. Then he nodded. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Ishmael might’ve had his problems but he’d never been in any trouble that I can remember; there were never any cops at the house.’

‘So what was he doing in a place like that?’ Quarrie spread a palm. ‘The caretaker told me he’d only been there a few months. Where was he at before?’

Isaac pressed his palms together. ‘A place in Houston,’ he said. ‘I don’t know the name of it. He’d been in and out of lots of hospitals down the years and in-between times he would’ve been living here.’

Pouring a cup of coffee Quarrie took it through to the living room where he sat down on the couch. He considered the family
photograph on the mantelpiece and Isaac echoed his gaze.

‘That was taken when we were visiting a friend of my dad’s in Oklahoma,’ he said. ‘Place called Lawton I think it was. Old army buddy from World War II, him and his wife; we stayed with them Memorial weekend.’ He smiled then as if at the memory. ‘I remember my mom saying how that guy and Dad sat up drinking whiskey and telling war stories after me and Ish were in bed. I guess they fought together in Africa when Dad was stabbed in the gut.’

Quarrie looked back at him. ‘The bayonet you got downstairs?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Isaac nodded. ‘Kept it as a souvenir and he was always working the blade, used to take a stone to it all the time.’

Quarrie returned his attention to the photograph. ‘Lawton, Oklahoma,’ he said. ‘That ain’t very far from where I live. Is that feller you were visiting still there?’

‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t really remember him. I couldn’t tell you his name.’ Isaac gestured. ‘It wasn’t like we were around the house any. We were only there for the weekend, and it being a holiday and all me and Ish were off exploring most of the time.’

Crossing his ankle on his knee Quarrie sat back. ‘Dr Beale,’ he said. ‘You told me how you saw him at Bellevue and then he came out here. So what did he tell you about Ishmael?’

Isaac made a face. ‘Not much. When I was at Bellevue he just said how he’d been a patient at Trinity and he was one of the ones they couldn’t account for.’

‘What about when he was here?’

‘We didn’t talk about Ish. I’d only just got back and found out about my dad. Dr Beale thought the sheriff was right though, I mean about him killing himself. He told me that people do the most unexpected things and oftentimes it’s most unexpected for the folk that are closest to them. He said that after a lifetime of dealing with Ishmael, it must’ve gotten too much.’

‘The doctor said that?’ Quarrie arched a brow.

‘Yes he did.’

‘But you still don’t think so, right?’

‘I didn’t.’ Isaac worked his shoulders into his neck. ‘But he’s a psychiatrist and he had a lot more to do with my dad than I did, at least he did these last couple of years. I guess he could be right. Maybe he is. Maybe the sheriff’s department is right after all and he did take a gun to his head.’

‘Is that what you’re thinking now?’ Quarrie lifted one eyebrow. ‘You called me up remember, telling me you didn’t believe there was any way he’d ever do that, and it was after you’d spoken to Beale.’

Isaac nodded. ‘I know I did. The fact is I had a thing going on about the storm shelter and how somebody must’ve been casing the place. But you told me nobody could work out that panel unless they knew it was there, and I know my dad would never let a stranger in.’

Quarrie worked his tongue around the inside of his mouth. ‘Well, anyway,’ he said. ‘I figure you need to find out why your brother was at Trinity. See if you can get hold of Dr Beale. Ask him what Ishmael was doing there and where he was at before.’

Driving the county road a thought occurred to him and he needed a phone so he headed for Mr Palmer’s place. Catching the whistle of a freight train, he gazed across the flatland briefly as the box cars rumbled east, then pulled off the road into the yard and found the old man shovelling swill for a dozen or so blue shoats.

‘Howdy, Mr Palmer,’ Quarrie said. ‘I’m sorry to bust in on you like this but I was hoping I could use your phone.’

The old man nodded towards the house. ‘You ain’t busting in. I like a bit of company. Go ahead and be my guest.’

Pushing open the screen door Quarrie found the kitchen a mess of unwashed pots and glasses with stains still lacing the sides. There were shavings of chewing tobacco littering the work surfaces and the place had the stale smell of a man too long on his own. Locating the phone Quarrie called the ranch and Eunice picked up. He waited while she went in search of Pious.

After a few minutes he came on the line. ‘What’s up, John Q? What can I do for you now?’

‘Ike Bowen, he was a triple volunteer like us.’

‘So?’

‘So, I want you to do me a favor. Can you make some calls back to Georgia maybe? I figure there’s got to be people still around who knew him. Isaac just told me about an old friend he had in Lawton, Oklahoma, they visited with but he couldn’t remember his name. See what you can dig up for me, Pious, would you? Somebody killed this guy and right now all I know about him is how he was a stickler for cleanliness and never once wrote his boy.’

Hanging up the phone he looked round to find Mr Palmer kicking mud from his boots.

‘Heard you talking about Ike Bowen,’ the old man said. ‘Cops round here think he shot hisself, but Isaac said how that ain’t your opinion and it was you that found him, right?’

Quarrie gave a brief nod.

‘What did the autopsy say?’

‘It ain’t been done yet, at least not as far as I know.’

Palmer made a face. ‘Not gotten round to her, uh? Well, we had quite the road wreck out Bonham way just a few days back. Bunch of kids in some hot rod, and with them being so young and all I guess that’s taken up most of his time. He’s a busy man, the coroner. It ain’t just Fannin County he works for, but Delta and Hunt, and sometimes Lamar as well.’ Taking off his hat he dropped it on the table among the debris. ‘Only met Bowen the one time and that was just to say hello to on account of he kept hisself to hisself.’

‘But you did speak to him?’ Quarrie said.

Again Palmer nodded. ‘Yes sir, not long after he started the remodel on his place up there in the woods. No wife with him, no woman, and that bothered my wife at the time, but then she’s gone herself now and they say it’s the men that are taken first.’ A little wistfully he arched his brows. ‘Anyways, it was just Ike and his son
living up there, though I never spoke to Isaac, not back then. I guess the other one was in the hospital.’

‘Ishmael,’ Quarrie said.

‘That’s right. Isaac told me about him, said he wasn’t quite right in the head.’ As if to emphasize the point Palmer worked the tip of his index finger against his temple. ‘I guess they’d go visit with him from time to time, used to see them in a vehicle on the county road there now and again.’

‘But you only spoke to Ike Bowen the once?’

Palmer nodded. ‘Yes, sir, just that one time and I never been to the house.’ He let go a sigh. ‘I like Isaac. Been through a whole hell of a lot what with the war and everything, and he told me about that last firefight. Shit like that going down when it’s just a couple of weeks left on your ticket, that’s got to be the worst time.’