The Profiler's Daughter (Sky Stone Thriller Series) (47 page)

Butch took a few moments to consider. “Guess I’d direct you to my high school yearbook. I’d forgotten most of the stuff I did until I looked at that thing. Like a goddamned documentary on paper. You’ll pardon my French.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Butch gave her a funny look. “You know. The usual yearbook crap.”

“I was home schooled. No yearbook.”

“Home schooled, huh?” Butch took another swig of Coke. “Well, there’s photographs of my many athletic contributions. Basketball, baseball, football – I was quarterback.” He paused, apparently waiting for some kind of adulatory response from Sky.

When none was forthcoming, Butch continued. “Then there’s the Tempest High School productions. Musicals an’ such. I had starring roles in
Bye Bye Birdie
and
Music Man
. I was Harold Hill, naturally.” Butch lifted an arm and blotted his face on a shirt sleeve. “There’s the pictures of all the dances, of course. Spring Cotillions, Winter Balls. Every November we had our Sadie Hawkins Day Dance.”

“What’s Sadie Hawkins Day?”

“That’s where the girl asks the guy.” Butch glanced down the road. “And the proms. Lord, nearly every girlfriend I ever had is in those pages. Which is not necessarily a good thing, I assure you.”

No, Sky silently agreed. That was a
great
thing.

“What about Tempest High yearbooks from the late seventies and early eighties. Any idea where I might find those?”

“Maybe.” Butch finished his Coke and crushed the paper cup. “Of course, I cannot part with such valuable information without recompense.”

“I’ll be happy to pay. Name your price.” Sky began to open her wallet.

Butch reached out and gently pulled the wallet from her hand. “Put your money away, sweet thing. That’s not what I have in mind.”

“Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not your sweet thing.” Who did this guy think he was?

Butch appeared unconcerned. He pulled a cardboard tub from the Dairy Queen bag and gave the contents a leisurely examination. Like he was trying to decide which side of the sandwich to attack first. He lifted the bun and fiddled with the lettuce.

“Fine,” Sky relented. “Dinner tomorrow night. So where are those yearbooks? And you can forget about dinner if they’re not there.”

“Oh, they’re there, all right. Tempest Public Library.” Butch grinned. “Porter Boulevard, not too far from the Deadwood Hotel.” He readjusted the lettuce. “There’s a humongous oil painting – the Battle of San Jacinto – takes up practically the whole balcony wall. Just past that painting is a janitor’s closet. That’s where you’ll find your old yearbooks. Across from the DAR Reading Room.”

“A janitor’s closet?” Sky was skeptical.

“I got no idea who put ‘em there, or why.” Butch waved a hand. “My buddies and me snuck in there to smoke cigarettes, back in the day. That’s how I found ‘em. We’d amuse ourselves by laughing at the hair styles. There’s some old magazines, too.” He shrugged. “Guess hard copy was all they had in those days. Poor devils.”

Anticipation rippled through Sky. Tomorrow morning she’d hit the library, investigate Porter Manville’s high school days. And nobody had to know a thing.

“I’m surprised you’re so familiar with the library,” she said. “Being a cowboy and all.”

“That library is my mama’s pet project. She’s been president of the Save the Library Foundation for about a thousand years. Calls it her legacy.” Butch sniffed. “I spent so much time in that place as a youngster, I’d know those rooms blindfolded. And your instincts are correct. I’m no scholar.”

Sky changed the subject. “What kind of boots are you wearing?”

“Lucchese is the brand. The Rotary pitches in, buys a pair for the quarterback if the high school football team wins the conference championship. A long-standing tradition. Unofficial, of course. That’s top secret information.” Butch offered a self-effacing grin.

“What kind of leather?” she asked.

“Caiman.”

“Excuse me?” Sky wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.

“Caiman,” Butch repeated. “It’s a type of crocodile. Kind of extravagant, I don’t wear ‘em that often. They’re still a little tight.”

Caiman. Like Nicolette’s tattoo. A strange coincidence.

Sky said, “You work on a ranch?”

“At the moment.” Butch adjusted his position on the bench. His considerable size gave the impression that he was seated at a child’s table. “I came home a few weeks ago to help out. Some archeologist made a world shaking discovery in one of our creek beds.” Butch held his hands up in mock amazement. “They’re holding press conferences, calling it the oldest archeological site in North America. So we’re dealing with a slew of eggheads and college kids overrunning the southwest pasture. White buckets, tents, flags flying, it’s a real circus. I am the liaison between them and my daddy. He’d just as soon shoo ‘em off the property with his Remington. Mama won’t let him, of course.”

“What’s the world shaking discovery?”

“Oh, they dug up a bunch of tools, projectile points and whatnot. Drilled some core samples from the rocks. Dated ‘em to fifteen thousand years ago. I guess that’s the world shaking discovery. Conventional wisdom put the earliest occupation at thirteen thousand years.” Butch shrugged. “Funny what gets some folks excited. I’ve been picking up arrowheads from those fields as far back as I can remember. We just toss ‘em in an old milk pail on the back porch. Must have a few hundred in there.”

“What were you doing in New Orleans?”

“Playing basketball, mostly. Forward, for Tulane. I stayed after graduation, to help clean up after Hurricane Katrina.” Butch smiled again and this time Sky noticed the perfect cleft in his chin. “And I always order a pork tenderloin at the DQ.” Butch lifted his sandwich. “So now you know quite a bit about me. But I know very little about you. Excepting maybe you’re the prettiest creature I ever saw.” He lifted an instructive index finger. “Not a compliment, by the way. Merely a statement of fact.”

“I’m a psychologist,” Sky offered. “From Boston.”

“Well, that explains it.”

“Explains what?”

“Your disposition,” Butch said. “Serious. All business. Like you don’t have an inclination to enjoy life. Smell the roses, so to speak. What brings a Boston psychologist all the way to Tempest, Texas?”

“I can’t say.”

“A lady of mystery? That just happens to be my favorite variety. Rare around these parts.” Butch bit into the tenderloin and studied Sky’s face as he chewed. His blue eyes fixed on hers with an expression so intense that Sky nearly looked away.

Butch swallowed the last bite of tenderloin and said, “Why are you so sad?”

“I had a miscarriage,” Sky heard herself say. “My ninth month. A car accident. My baby girl died. The doctors say I can’t have any more.”

Butch Yost didn’t say he was sorry. He didn’t tell Sky how time would heal her wounds. He didn’t change the subject or act like he wanted to be somewhere else.

He just reached across the picnic table in the hot night air and cupped Sky’s hands in his.

They sat in silence as cars whipped by on the two-lane blacktop. Customers came and went, laughter bubbled up from across the lot. The teenage couple whispered to each other as they climbed into a pickup and drove away. The night air seemed to cool a bit.

After a while, Butch released Sky’s hands. He pulled a paper napkin from the Dairy Queen bag and dabbed at her face, along her jaw line and cheeks.

“Good as new,” he said. “Now let’s get you to the Deadwood. You need to soak in a cool bath, grab a long night’s sleep. The world always seems brighter in the morning.”

Butch stuffed the empty wrappers and soft drink cups in the Dairy Queen bag and compressed it into a tight ball. Taking a moment to set up the shot, he lobbed the bag into a nearby trash barrel. He followed with the untouched Blizzard, sinking that as well.

“Two points,” he said, turning to Sky. “You got any footwear you can slip on, sweet thing? I’m dead serious about those rattlers.”

Promptly at ten the next morning, Sky stood between the white marble columns of the Tempest Public Library. The impressive Grecian structure boasted a lavish entrance pavilion. Sky read the historical marker and waited for the doors to open:
Built in 1911 of native limestone with funds from Andrew Carnegie.

The broad sky was a cloudless blue.

On the Wells Fargo Bank across the street, a digital sign blinked 85º.

A lone Ford pickup meandered down the deserted avenue and Sky thought about Saturday mornings in Boston. Bumper-to-bumper traffic, a din of car horns, delivery vans, bus exhaust, pedestrians glutting the sidewalks, clutching their cell phones and mocha lattés, rushing. Always rushing.

Sky studied her reflection in the library’s glass entrance. She wore faded denim cut-offs, a pair of yellow flip-flops, and a red bandana halter beneath a man’s white Fruit of the Loom v-neck t-shirt. All had been purchased an hour ago from the Ben Franklin Five and Dime on Main Street, along with some knockoff Ray-Ban sunglasses and a scoop of maple nut goodies from the old-fashioned candy counter. She looked absurdly young in the cheap summer clothes. Like a kid at the county fair.

A black-masked bird with yellow cheeks landed on a stunted juniper and trilled a piercing melody as an elderly gentleman pushed his walker past the library steps. Sky felt the curious sensation of a world moving in slow motion.

The spell was broken by the ring of Kyle’s police siren. Sky took the call.

“Darling, where the hell are you?”

“None of your business.”

“Yeah, Jeeves said the same thing. In a much nicer way, I might add.”

“His name is Raj.” Sky held the phone between ear and shoulder and twisted the excess fabric of the t-shirt into a single knot at her left hip. “Raj is from Nepal. You can see the Himalayas from his mother’s kitchen window.”

“No shit. That explains his copacetic vibe.”

“Kyle, did you find a thumb drive when you went through Nicolette’s apartment on Monday?”

“No.” The distinctive click of a Bic came through the line, followed shortly by a commanding exhale. “Interesting question, though.”

“Why?”

“Because Porter Manville asked me the same thing yesterday. Said he’d mislaid a thumbdrive. Thought maybe Nicolette picked it up by accident at the lab. Thought we might have it in evidence.” Kyle paused. “So what do you know about that thumbdrive?”

“Nothing. You should quit smoking.” Sky slipped the Ray-Bans on. Even in the shade of the library portico, the Texas sun was blinding. She thought about the stranger who’d ransacked her office, looking for a thumbdrive. Were he and Manville looking for the same thumbdrive?

“So why are you calling?” she asked.

“It’s Magnus. He’s worried about you. Sent me to take you to the hospital. That’s why I’m standing in front of your grandmother’s freakin’ mansion. This is where you grew up? I’ve stayed in smaller hotels. What the hell is in all these rooms, anyway? This sucker is four stories high.”

“Magnus isn’t worried about me. He’s worried about his reputation. It’s all about the politics. When exactly did he become Porter Manville’s bitch?”

“So you spend a few days with a headshrinker, what’s the harm? This is serious stuff, darling. If Manville’s complaint goes to the prosecutor's office – ” Kyle paused. “Jake told me about your theory.”

“What theory?”

“You think Manville murdered Teddy.”

“Yes.”

“I know you, Sky. Teddy’s dead, so now it’s personal. That’s dangerous.” Frustration darkened his voice. “Where the hell are you?”

Sky yanked at the hem of the cut-offs. “Kyle, what’s the best predictor of future behavior?”

“Past behavior,” he said without skipping a beat.

“Yes,” Sky agreed. “Behavior from the past.” She watched the black-masked bird rip a strip of bark from the juniper tree and fly off.

“You’re being cryptic again, darling. So what the hell am I supposed to tell the Chief?”

“Tell Magnus I don’t work for him anymore.” Sky terminated the call and turned off the phone.

Flipping the Ray-Bans up like a crown, she pushed through the wrought iron door and entered the chill atmosphere of the Tempest Public Library.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

A dome of stained glass bathed Sky in a bluish light as she entered the octagonal library rotunda. In the center of the marble floor, resting on a pedestal, was a bronze bust of Herman Melville.

Heavily bearded, with a full lower lip and razor cheeks, Melville gazed at Sky with brooding eyes. A sidebar proclaimed him first author published by the Library of America.
Gift of Mrs. Benjamin Yost.

It startled Sky to find this Son of the Northeast honored in landlocked Tempest. Moby Dick, Melville’s magnum opus, was based on the true account of the Essex, a whaling ship out of Nantucket. Best known for being attacked and sunk in November of 1820 by a giant sperm whale. The gruesome tale of wreckage and cannibalism was retold by staff members daily at the Nantucket Whaling Museum, a few blocks from Sky’s house on Brant Point.

She studied the quote carved into the pedestal.

“All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters
round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden
turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever present
perils of life.”

What passed through Nicolette Mercer’s mind in those last seconds of life? Sky wondered. Did she surrender to the inevitable as hands circled her neck, fingers tightened? Did she give up?

No, Sky decided. Nicolette fought to the end. Nicolette was a fighter.

Sky didn’t know how she knew this, she just did. She also knew that Nicolette Mercer was no match for Porter Manville. She pictured the green satin panties, squirreled away in the pigeonhole of Manville’s rolltop desk. And the twelve point buck mounted on his office wall at Wellbiogen.

Trophies.

And what was the purpose of a trophy? To evoke the memory of the hunt, the thrill of the kill.

Sky grazed a finger over Melville’s bronze beard, for luck, and crossed the rotunda to study a schematic of the library.