The White River Killer: A Mystery Novel (19 page)

21

A
NCIENT
A
ZTEC
C
USTOMS

O
N THE DRIVE HOME,
Hubbard mentally sorted through all the information he had gathered. When added together, it was tantalizing but inconclusive. By the time he reached his house, he had to admit; he wasn’t much further along than when he began the day.

Hubbard turned into the long driveway leading to his farmhouse. Dozens of new tire tracks from his uncle’s huge work crew from today crisscrossed his once-pristine yard in all directions. He sighed.
You can tell a lot about a farmer by his lawn.

Hubbard parked his truck, got out, and did a double-take toward his house. The sky was darkening as the sun headed for the horizon. The only light from the house came from the living room windows. Their brightness drew his eye to the single source of light, since it made the home’s façade look like a one-eyed buccaneer. Inside the house, he could see the freshly painted glow of yellow walls.
Yellow.
He hated yellow. Hadn’t he told Maria and Emily not to bother painting the room?

He walked through the front door prepared to let loose—a terrible end to a terrible day. He threw the truck keys on the hall table and took three more steps to the arched entry to the living room.

He stopped abruptly, bobbing his head downward to trap harsh words before they escaped.

Before he could point heatedly to the blinding yellow walls, the rearranged furniture, or the army of knick knacks gathered from the four corners of the house and pushed together on every flat surface in the room—he saw Emily’s face. It was so transparently excited, pleased, thrilled, or whatever over-the-top adjective he could think of that it outshone the amber warning-signal walls. His daughter was bouncing on her tiptoes, trying to contain her anticipation of Hubbard’s reaction.

He needed a moment to regroup.

He glanced at Maria, who had a new streak of yellow paint highlighting her raven hair. Her bottom lip protruded a bit and she blew stray hair strands off her sweaty forehead.
God, you’re so pretty, even now . . . Goddammit Hubbard, get a grip. She works for you.

Holding up one finger, he made a small circle in the air and said, “This takes my breath away. Give me a second. I want to take it all in.”

Emily brought her hands together, stopping just short of applause, her hands frozen in mid-air, as if she couldn’t wait for what he might say next. In a moment of blind luck, Hubbard had stumbled on words that met her gigantic expectations. Maria patted Emily’s shoulder.

How much damage had they done? Maybe he could learn to live with yellow.
Just ignore the room for eight years until she leaves for college.

Hubbard took a step into the room, did a half-smile and nodded at the walls like they were new friends.

Emily ran to an end table and did a sweep of her hand over the crowded field of bric-a-brac like a game show hostess. “Ta-da!”

He guessed that the flotsam filling the room must have been Emily’s contribution to the effort.

“Maria said that we might want to keep only
the most beautiful
of our art objects in here. I told her that I wanted daddy to choose. This is
everything I could find
.”

Hubbard believed her. He nodded. “It’ll be tough to choose.” He spotted a trio of framed photographs on the round table that held a big lamp, which was now positioned by the windows. He recognized them by their old frames, photos that he kept in a box in the attic. How did she get her hands on those?

He walked to the pedestal table. Frozen images from the time before: his mother in the kitchen, his father on an Easter morning. Behind the two pictures lay a third framed image that couldn’t stay here: a faded color print of the twelve-year-old Hubbard, wearing a baseball uniform, standing on the pitcher’s mound, while boasting a toothy grin. It was the season he was going to show everyone in Warren County what his strong right arm could do.

He stopped playing baseball that summer, but still, he showed them all. True, not many had the opportunity to see his blistering fastballs win a game; but they all heard stories about his fistfights or witnessed the bloody aftermath of a brutal swing from his powerful right.

Behind him, Emily was intent on rearranging her decorator items atop the sofa’s end table. His daughter was occupied, so he took the opportunity to tip his photo over with a finger. He turned around, prepared to smile and say something appropriate. Maria was staring at the downturned frame, her brow creased. Her brown eyes flashed upward and locked into his. It was an uncomfortable moment before he looked away. She had seen the part of him that he wanted to hide. It was private. He felt his face flush.

Don’t you ever blink?

Emily ran back to Maria and put her arm around her. It looked like she wanted to share this moment of glory. Hubbard didn’t know if he liked how attached she was getting to Maria. Things were moving much too quickly. “It looks great.” Maria and his daughter smiled back at him from the center of a room that looked as bright as sunrise.

He had to get out of there.

There was a brief silence before Hubbard could think of an excuse. “I need to check the fields while there’s still light.”

Hubbard left the room, ignoring Emily’s pleas to remain for a more in-depth tour. Once he was outside, he could breathe again. He kept walking until he got to the place near the gate where he could survey the fields. It was quite a sight. As promised, his uncle’s crew had completed work that would’ve taken him two weeks to complete. Now all he had to do was to pay back a favor.

Twenty minutes later, Hubbard heard Luis’s truck horn at the front of the house.

Maria came out the back door and waved to him. “Señor Hub-birrrd.”

Hubbard sighed. Of course she would have an endearing way of pronouncing his name. He waved back to her, acknowledging that he knew she was leaving.
If I could just keep this distance between us
. . . He returned to the house and was immediately hit a mesmerizing aroma from the kitchen that he hadn’t noticed before.

In the kitchen, Emily focused on a digital timer like a bird dog.

“What are you doing?”

“Maria said that I need to tell you when the timer went off. That meant the Coke-A-Van was ready. I have to ask you to take it out—but I can do it. I know how to do it
safe
.”

“Coke-A-Van?”

Emily nodded. She pointed to a cookbook on the counter, which was surprising since he didn’t own one. Hubbard picked it up and examined it. It was written in Spanish; apparently the dish was Coq Au Vin—French. Someone must have told Maria that he once had a stupid kid’s dream to escape from Hayslip and move to Europe. What was she trying to prove with all this painting and French cooking? He noticed that Emily was staring at him.

“What’s wrong daddy?”

“Nothing,” he said. But Emily didn’t appear swayed by his denial.

Hubbard turned toward the countdown timer as it sped through the last minute of cooking time. Maria did all this in one day? What was she? A one-woman blitzkrieg? It would be too easy to read qualities into a woman who was little more than a question mark. Guatemala. What’s in Guatemala? What remnants of ancient Aztec customs did she still follow? Or Inca customs? Catholic customs? Whatever. The point was they had nothing in common—nothing in common? Why was he even thinking this way? If she stayed here, he was going to screw up. It was just a matter of time.

“You know, um, I don’t think Maria will be here much longer.”

The timer went off. It was loud, and they both jumped a bit.

Emily turned to him. Her eyes were watery. “Why not? She has to be here. She’s perfect.”

“Perfect for what?”

“Just per-fect.”

Hubbard tried to placate his daughter. “She’s a very nice lady.”

“She’s great. She said she’d go with us to the Tomato Festival if you said okay. I said, of course you’d say okay. Everybody goes to the Tomato Festival.”

Hubbard’s eyes opened wider with alarm. “You can’t do that. You can’t invite her to something like that. It’s the wrong message to send . . .
You see
,
you don’t understand.
That’s exactly why she has to go.”

“B-B-Because I asked her to go with us to the Tomato Festival?”

“No, not because of that . . .” He tried to slow his explanation down. “We don’t know her. We have nothing in common with her.”

“I know Spanish, so I talk to Maria all the time.
I
have something in common with her. A thousand things in common. Millions of things.” She offered proof. “
We both love the color yellow
.”

“Well, that’s not enough. I knew this arrangement was wrong and it is. I can’t be here with Maria.”

“I love her.”

Hubbard was feeling a fair amount of panic. Why did he let this happen? “No! No, you don’t. You’ve known her a couple of days. Once we get somebody in here who’s right for us—”

Emily started breathing heavily and her bottom lip jutted out.

“Young lady, don’t you cry. Don’t you even
think
about crying . . .”

The tears came anyway. Emily looked like she wanted to say all manner of things to her father, beginning to speak twice before stopping. Finally, she blurted,
“Maria is perfect
.
I want Maria.”

At least that’s what it sounded like to Hubbard, her words were delivered in a loud wail of anger and he missed parts of it. Emily bolted from the kitchen shouting something completely unintelligible through her tears. Her small feet made sounds like thunder as she ran up the stairs to her bedroom.

Hubbard rubbed his temples and the buzzer went off again. He opened the oven door and tried to grab the pot without using the mitt. “Shit!” He pulled his hand back, kicked the oven door closed, and walked over to the sink. He ran cold water over the burn.

The cell phone went off in his coat pocket. He ignored it, keeping his hand under the water. The caller tried again. He turned off the water and pulled the phone from his pocket. On the display was a number he didn’t recognize with an out-of-state area code. He set it aside. Then the kitchen wall phone rang. He ignored it, turning the cold water back on. Then his cell phone started up again. He gave up. He turned off the water and answered it.

“Hullo.”

“Mr. Hubbard, I’m so glad I reached you. I hope this is a good time. This is Special Agent Lisa Longinotti with the FBI. Do you remember me? I was wondering if you could get away for a little while this evening and meet me for a drink so we could talk. Maybe go over a few things.” Her voice sounded amazingly . . . pleasant.

It would be nice to have a moment of calm.

22

T
HE
FBI A
FTER
D
ARK

I
T WAS EASY TO FIND A PLACE
for Emily to spend the night. The Hendersons had a teenage daughter that Emily adored and they were only a farm away. Hubbard was not as lucky with Longinotti’s preferred meeting spot. He hadn’t returned to
The Bandstand,
a bar on the outskirts of town, in two years. Not coincidentally, he stopped coming here when he ceased drinking. Agent Lisa Longinotti surprised him by insisting they meet here tonight.

The Bandstand
had the good fortune to be a private club holding a liquor license in a dry county. As he parked, he could hear the pounding of low bass notes in the music coming from the dance floor. It was only eight p.m. and the lot was almost full.

Hubbard didn’t quite know the purpose of this meeting. The attractive agent was openly flirtatious with him on the phone, just wanting to talk, a lonely girl away from home, the reason wasn’t totally clear. Surely there must be some prohibition covering an agent’s involvement with a person associated with an active case. But in the view of the FBI, Hubbard wasn’t a suspect or a witness to Amir’s murder, so maybe that rule didn’t apply in this situation? But Lisa, no, Agent Longinotti came across as a young woman dedicated to her job. A farmer living in Arkansas would be a hard bump on her career path.

Hubbard remembered when he was in Toil’s office, examining the photo of Amir released to the press by the FBI. After he set the image down, he noticed the comely agent was watching his reaction intently. He had tried to erase the troubled expression on his face and shield his thoughts. Perhaps he was too slow.

Walking toward the front door, his memories of the dive flooded back. As he climbed the stairs to the entrance, he battled the nerves that twisted his insides into a knot. A drink would help.

The long-standing Bandstand building had been enlarged multiple times over many years, each new extension not bothering to match any other part of the building. Its current incarnation formed an ill-defined “V” shape. The entrance was at the V’s point, allowing patrons in both wings to see the arrival of newcomers. Hubbard stopped just inside the door to pay the fee that made him a card-carrying member for a night, and continued into the main room.

From the elevated landing, Hubbard surveyed the crowd. If he couldn’t spot her from this vantage point, he’d be forced to walk the length of both wings to find her. He dreaded all the looks, the questions, and the natural assumption he was there to party. He walked down the steps into the crowd.

“John Riley,” a female voice coming from his right floated above the buzz of the crowd.

Hubbard turned and saw Kath Baker leaving a group of admiring men.

“I thought you were trying to be a ‘new person.’ Looks like the old one won out,” Kath purred. Like most men under the age of sixty, he was mesmerized as she closed in, not walking, but undulating toward him as if her body was made of liquid pleasure.

She put her arms around his neck, and pressed against him. The club disappeared for Hubbard, replaced by her body’s warmth, the sweet press of her breasts, her blue eyes, and the scent of her flowery perfume. “You can’t tell me you’re not feeling what I’m feeling.”

Standing with her leg against him, she could probably feel him and what he was feeling. “Kath, I really am trying to . . .” His voice had become a gravelly whisper.

“John? John? Over here,” another female to his left called.

Over his shoulder, Hubbard saw Agent Lisa Longinotti, waving for his attention, standing by a table in the West Wing as locals called it, oblivious to the interest of the males surrounding her. Her professional garb, so different from the way the other women in the bar dressed, was attention-getting.

“Who’s the bitch?” Kath tightened her grip on his neck.

“Um . . . Well, actually she’s an agent with the FBI and she’s on a case.”

Kath pulled her hands away. “Yeah. Right. You son-of-a-bitch, you can’t treat me like I’m a fool. Is she rich? Is that it?”

“No, she really is . . .”

“You’re going to be so sorry. You’ve done this to me twice. Nobody does that to me.”

Walking away from him, she strutted no longer. Her shoulders were hunched and her hands were balled into fists.

“Kath . . .” He was just making it worse. Men followed along in her wake and she was gone.

Agent Longinotti adopted a sheepish grin, shrugged her shoulders, and opened her hands toward the ceiling. As Hubbard headed for her, she crooked a finger, beckoning him to follow her.

They tacked right and left through a swelling tide of boisterous patrons. Hubbard saw countless men turn their heads, drawn in as much by her metropolitan exoticness as her toned legs.

Hubbard took a breath and surveyed the room to clear his head. He recognized many of the faces—probably not a good thing to be so familiar with the patrons of a honky-tonk.

Longinotti had taken one of the wooden booths that lined the back wall of the west wing. As soon as they sat down, a waitress appeared to take their drink order. The agent pointed to her drink. “I’ve gotten a head start. You’re going to have to catch up.”

Hubbard noted pink nail polish that had been absent earlier in the day. He looked at her drink. “What are you having?”

“Jack and Coke.”

“I’ve lost track of a lot of nights in the company of Mr. Daniels.”

“Me, too.”

Something was off. Longinotti’s assertiveness seemed more like a performance than hormones. Hubbard looked up at the waitress. “Just soda water and a lime.”

Her lips pouted. “You’re not going to let me drink alone. That’s not fair. I’m off-duty, I want to relax.” She reached for his hand. It was surprisingly cold. “Oooh, your hand is so warm. It feels good.”

“I’m sorry. I’m trying to cut back.” The waitress was still there. “Soda water and a lime, please.”

The waitress glanced at Longinotti before she left them.

“So tell me, why does everyone call you by two names—John Riley? Are you so big that one name just doesn’t do it?”

Hubbard’s mouth curled up in embarrassment. “Nothing like that. My grandfather was alive when I was born. His name was John, too. They used my middle name, Riley, to keep things straight. I guess my grandpa didn’t want anyone to think he was the one with dirty diapers. Anyway, it stuck.”

Longinotti continued with questions about his life, his daughter, and especially about his uncle. After another failed attempt to get Hubbard to order a stiffer drink, she leaned against the seatback and tapped her empty glass with one pink fingernail as if she was contemplating the solution to a difficult problem. She engaged his eyes. “You know, you’ve got Ramirez really buffaloed. He’s afraid you’re going to screw up the investigation.”

“Me? What am I doing?”

“Look at it from his perspective: There are only three people here who could get in our way: Connors, Toil, or you. Connors is an idiot. Toil just wants to be a farmer—”

“Don’t I want to be a farmer, too?”

“No. You want to be anything but that. You think playing a reporter is your ticket away from this town? Parlez-vous français, Monsieur Hubbard?”

How did she know that?
“Um, if you mean the ‘White River Killer’ headline on my story, that wasn’t me, that was . . .”

“We know that. It’s the story’s content that’s got us worried.”

Longinotti used the word “us.” It wasn’t just Ramirez who thought he was trouble.

“I didn’t have anything in my article that everyone else hasn’t reported as well.”

“No, you’re right, you didn’t. But the Hayslip newspaper is distributed on Wednesday, which is why it didn’t get the notice it deserved.”

“Why did it deserve—”

“When’s your story deadline? Isn’t it Monday morning? You knew all the facts of the case almost immediately after it happened. You were ahead of everyone else then, and we’re still trying to catch up with you now.”

Hubbard’s mind raced, trying to come up with a reason that would make the FBI believe he was ahead of them on this investigation. He remembered his recent calls to New York. The only way they could know about that . . . They had his phone records. They knew who he’d been talking to and tonight was their reaction. “I don’t think . . .”

“Mrs. Welsh is a character, isn’t she? I like that term she uses, “brinkmanship.” You’re a man who lives on the brink, isn’t that right? How many long nights have you spent holding a drink in one hand and a gun in the other, trying to find the courage to pull the trigger?

Hubbard sucked in his breath.

“Oh, don’t pretend you’re offended. We had a psychologist profile you. No one could grow up with a childhood like yours and be normal. You have a very dark soul and you know it.”

There was a squeal of feminine voices at the bar entrance. Almost every man’s head turned to watch them pull at their skirts and flip their hair.

Hubbard was reeling, his insides burned like they were on fire. He pretended to watch the female performance at the entrance to conceal his anxiety.
What was the agent doing? How many people had she talked to? More importantly, what did they tell her?

“Okay, that was a lot to take in.” Hubbard turned back to the agent. “You profiled me like some sort of serial killer? Why are you so worried about someone screwing up your investigation? Shouldn’t you be more concerned with finding Amir’s killer? Isn’t that the reason your team came all the way from Washington to backwoods Arkansas?”

“Let me be plain. If anyone harms this investigation, it’s going to be you—plunging headlong into some place you don’t belong. Why would a man take such incredible risks for a part-time job? What’s fueling your obsession? Your father? You want to solve this murder because no one solved that one? Do you really think that will heal you?”

Hubbard tried to smile. “That’s silly. Your profiler needs to get a life.”

“You’re out of your league, John. We have the resources to get you out of our way—one way or another.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“Take it how you want. This can go hard or it can be easy. You’re a man with personal issues trying to resolve them by interfering with a federal investigation.”

“What the hell is in this profile of me?”

“Freud could have written a book about you. Daddy issues, mommy issues, and more importantly, uncle issues.”

The past never dies.
“That’s enough.”

“What’s the matter, John? It’s a small town. Everyone else knows the truth, why don’t you? Your uncle and mother got away with murder. Then the guilt destroyed your mother. How does it feel sitting around the family table at Thanksgiving—all warm and cozy?”

Hubbard’s fist crashed down on the table. “I said that’s enough.”

Longinotti jumped, her eyes showed a brief moment of fear, but she quickly recovered. “Yes, that’s right. Just what the profile predicted: a quick temper, unresolved rage you can barely control. If I were a man, this is the moment you’d be lunging across the table at me. That’s why I’m here. I’m a woman, all by herself. You can’t start one of your legendary bar fights with me, can you, John? Your profile says you never run. Why is that? You seem to have no problems running from the truth.”

“You’re just repeating the lies I’ve heard all of my goddamn life . . .”

“I can see what you’re trying to hide. It’s on your face. You know it’s true, don’t you? Is your uncle going to leave you all his money in his will? Is that the going rate for murdered fathers? What kind of man are you? Or are you still that little boy running through Shanty Town all alone? Why have you never had the courage—”

Hubbard’s voice sounded like a growl. “Don’t rely on the fact that you’re a woman. I’d kill you right now if you were a man . . .”

“Kill me? So, it runs in the family? You’ve betrayed your father and you’re going to kill me? Why don’t you take a good, hard look at yourself? I bet you don’t like what you see.”

A waitress carrying a tray came up to the table. “Everything all right here?”

Longinotti turned to the waitress and smiled sweetly. “Oh, yes. We’re good. Just talking about Father’s Day.” She made a show of putting one hand to her mouth as if she was concerned about being overheard in the noisy club. “It’s a sensitive subject.”

The waitress was unconvinced. “Well, okay. Just keep it down.” She put a drink down in front of Hubbard.

Longinotti smiled at the waitress like it was a surprise gift. “Your timing is impeccable. Thank you.”

The waitress looked at her and then at Hubbard. “Yeah . . . You okay, buddy?”

“He’s fine. He just needs his drink to calm himself. Isn’t that right, John?”

So this was the reason for the meeting at
The Bandstand
. She knew all the stories from his past. If he crawled into a bottle tonight, he’d be out of their way. Just a slight push was all he needed. He realized they were right. A slight push and he wanted a drink. He felt sick.

The waitress left.

“Jack Daniels and a little bit of water. Did we get your drink right? You know, one thought just occurred to me. John Riley and your Uncle R.J. Your initials are just the flipside of his. Did anyone ever point that out to you? I guess your mother had a sense of humor.” She waited for some response from Hubbard. None came.