The White River Killer: A Mystery Novel (20 page)

She didn’t overlook anything.
Hubbard stared at the drink in front of him. He wanted a drink the moment he stepped inside the club. If he didn’t take it, she’d continue to pester him.

“The whole town was only too happy to give us the low down on you. People talk, talk, and talk about you and your uncle . . . C’mon John, take a drink, you know you want to. I made arrangements with the bartender.
You can have as many drinks as you want tonight and it’s all on me.
How does that sound?”

Hubbard’s brow curled. “All the drinks I want?” They were offering him a government-funded bender to stop him from pursuing this. Next time, they would try something else. Hubbard surveyed the crowd as if he was looking for an escape route. Something clicked for him and all the previous tension fell away. He took a drink.

“There. That’s better, isn’t it? Why don’t you go find that slutty girl who was at the door and have a good time? I hear you’re quite the lady’s man—but only when you’re drunk.”

Hubbard took another sip. Longinotti reached for her purse to leave.

“Tell me something.”

“What would that be?” Longinotti smiled, looking as if she was enjoying seeing his fall, getting him to climb into a bottle with only the power of her insight.

“You’re the profiler, aren’t you? That’s your job with the FBI.”

“Such a bright boy, too bad you’re nothing but a farmer.”

Hubbard nodded in agreement. “Yeah . . . You can see right through me. Can’t you? . . . You knew I’d get angry when you insulted me and repeated stupid lies about my family. Anger at slander is such an
unexpected
reaction. But still you predicted it. Brilliant. Then you piled on insight after insight: Like I wouldn’t hit a woman even if she deserved much worse. Again, you amaze me. Oh yes, and after taking a sip of bourbon . . .” Hubbard took another drink. “I won’t stop until I’m unconscious. Bravo. You’ll have to call me tomorrow morning to find out how that one came out.”

Longinotti put her purse down.

“Thank you for tonight and the drinks. You’ve confirmed something that I’ve suspected, but had no way of proving: The FBI’s not here to solve anything. That’s not your assignment down here in ‘Moonshine County’, is it? That’s why all your resources are being used to stop anyone from getting close to the truth about Amir. And why the state police are kept at arm’s length and Sheriff Toil became your local contact.”

Longinotti’s voice was like the hiss of a serpent. “I’d be careful. You’re heading . . .”

“I’ve arrived, agent. Didn’t you say I get there before everyone else? As for you coming here tonight, a woman alone, helpless, and unaided . . .” Hubbard pointed to three men in turn, sitting at different tables, spread across the room. “I believe the ‘trucker’ in the penny loafers, that tired ‘businessman’, and that ‘farmer’ in the new boots and jeans are all getting a government paycheck.”

The farmer was looking at Hubbard by the time his finger came to him. The undercover agent wore a surly facial expression familiar to Hubbard. He usually saw it just before a fight broke out. “You can hear me, can’t you, Farmer Brown? We’re wired for sound in this booth. Don’t you guys have a budget? You must be burning through money.”

The farmer averted his eyes.

“To be honest, Agent Longinotti, I’m cheating a little. Two of your men are new to me, but I’ve seen that guy in the suit before. He was sitting in a Suburban having a very heated conversation with someone on his cell phone on the morning you all arrived in Hayslip. At first I thought he was having an argument with his girlfriend, but when I saw the ring on his finger, I realized he was talking to his wife. Only a woman could make a man cry, beg and plead like that.”

“He wasn’t beg . . .” Longinotti stopped abruptly. Her mouth became a thin, cruel line.

The farmer’s wide eyes went from the businessman, who seemed a bit unsettled, over to Longinotti.

“Tell me, Miss Longinotti, it is ‘miss’, isn’t it? Are there any guidelines about inter-office relationships with married agents? I would assume so, but I don’t know.”

Hubbard stood.

“Don’t get up.” Hubbard grabbed his glass and finished the last of the drink. “You didn’t ask, but as an expert in psychology, I think you should know this one rule about guys sitting alone in a bar. They always look up when the pretty girls come in the door. Always. After all, that’s the reason they’re here, hoping one of those girls ends up with them. They don’t sit alone, facing the booths along the back wall
unless they’re working.
Men are very predictable, even without a profiler in tow.”

Hubbard was glad Longinotti wasn’t packing her gun tonight. She looked like she would love to use it on him.

“One question—are you really going to play the recording of this conversation for Special Agent-in-Charge Ramirez? . . . Don’t answer. I’m way ahead of you. Goodnight.”

Hubbard wove his way through a crowd that had increased substantially since his arrival. At the entrance, he ran into Big John Dugan. The long-time proprietor served as his own bouncer at the club.

Dugan broke into a wide grin when he saw Hubbard. “John Riley, I was glad to hear you were coming tonight. We’ve missed you.”

“Well, I’ve missed all the folks here.”

“You’re leaving too soon. I thought you’d be here all night. That lady said you could buy as many drinks as you want and we should put it all on her card.
The sky’s the limit.
I told her, you don’t know how many drinks John Riley—”

“Yeah, she said the same . . . Wait. What exactly did she say?”

“She said you could buy as many drinks—”

“Right . . . Okay . . . I want to buy a round for the house. Give everyone in the club a duplicate of what they’re drinking now and put it on her card. After all, she said I could buy as many drinks as I wanted.”

“Well, I don’t know . . . I don’t think she meant it that way. I’ll have to ask . . .”

They both turned toward the agents, standing in a small circle by the booths on the far wall, immersed in an argument, accusatory fingers punctuating the air.

“Who are they?”

“Well, you probably don’t want to mess with them. They’re FBI.”

“They’re cops? In my bar? I hate cops.”

“I think I’ve heard that before. Well, don’t mess with them. They’re tough. Play it safe or you’ll get hurt. It’d take a hell of a man to stand up to the FBI singlehanded. People would be talking about this night for years. You don’t want that.”

“
The hell I wouldn’t!
You’ll back me up about her instructions about you and the drinks?”

“Of course, that’s what the agent told both of us.”

Dugan shook his hand. “Come see us.” Dugan grabbed one waitress by the arm and started heading for the bar, picking up another waitress as he went.

After exiting the building, Hubbard headed to his truck. Agent Longinotti did have one surprise for him tonight. Something he never saw coming. She knew how much he wanted that drink on the table. It wasn’t theatrics when he finished it front of her. He drank the booze because he couldn’t control his desire for it.

In the blurry years since he started drinking, he had avoided the obvious.

He was an alcoholic.

Was that the only thing he refused to see?

He drove across the lot and stopped the truck when he got to the exit leading to the two-lane highway. If he turned right, he could make it to the liquor store on the county line in fifteen minutes. If he went left, he would return to an empty house.

Behind him, a driver tapped the horn, urging him to make a decision.

Hubbard turned onto the road.

23

T
HE
O
PEN
D
OOR
P
OLICY

H
UBBARD WASN’T HAPPY WITH HIS DECISION.
Or the direction he turned on the empty roadway. If he had more self-control, he’d be driving the
opposite
way. He battled an almost overwhelming desire to stop and turn the damn truck around; exerting so much mental effort blood pounded in his temples.

It felt all wrong, but he was heading home.

Minutes later, he turned the pickup off the dirt road and onto the gravel driveway. When he drove around the last pine tree that bordered his property, the truck’s headlights lit his farmhouse.

His foot hit the brake, slowing the vehicle to a crawl. His brow creased with concern as he surveyed the home’s façade. Someone had been inside it while he was at
The Bandstand
, and then took great pains to make the home break-in so obvious that he would spot it from his driveway.

Hubbard never left his house without some light still burning. In the country, nighttime was too dark to stumble through, so everyone left some kind of illumination burning. But now, the floodlight at the barn was out, the light fixture over the front door was extinguished and the interior of the house was completely black. The front windows were like slate, dully reflecting the pickup lights back to him. Even the yellow room was opaque.

Most troubling, and most obvious, was the front entry. Whoever did this left the front door open, propping it with a mossy stone to assure it stayed that way. The entrance now looked like the opening of a cave.

He pulled onto the lawn so that his headlamps were aimed directly at the front door. The lights shot through the doorway and down the main hall; the stair banister and curved legs of the hall table cast spider shadows that stretched into eventual blackness.

From the cab, Hubbard looked around for signs of another vehicle or person. Nothing.

He considered the front of his house. Was the intruder or intruders still here?

What were his options? He could call the police. But there was just something childish about calling Toil to ask him to drive over here and walk through the house with him. If there was no one here, it would become a story told at the café.

But still, only an insane person would get out of his vehicle and check this out by himself. Anyone with a lick of sense would call and get some kind of help.

Hubbard turned off his truck and got out. From the tool box in the truck bed he pulled out a tire iron.

He wished he kept his guns. Even that red hammer would be handy now.

Hubbard stared at the bright façade of his home. It was an almost radioactive white under the high beams, turning the dark windows into dead eyes. He looked up, then down, going from window to window, searching for any signs of movement. He stood quietly, and listened for any sound that might be out of place in the cool night air.

In the distance, he heard the indistinct sound of a car door closing . . . or
a truck’s
door. He heard an engine start up. It seemed to come from behind him and to his right, but in the country, sound can travel far and can fool you in terms of its direction.

To his left, there was a new sound, distinct and near, of a vehicle approaching from the direction of the highway down the rural road. It was moving fast.

Hubbard turned toward the road, gripping the tire tool. Somehow he knew the vehicle was racing toward him.

The car slowed only a bit when it turned off the road to crunch along his gravel driveway. Temporarily, it was hidden by the pines and then he saw its headlights, turned to high beam, emerge from behind the trees. He could tell it was a car, but it changed course before he could make out details and drove straight toward him across the yard.

Hubbard lifted the tire tool. It didn’t feel like much of a weapon.

The car skidded to a stop twenty yards in front of him. Hubbard lifted his left hand to shield his eyes. He could see the dark form of a man getting out of the driver’s door.

“Hello, kid. What’s going on?”

Hubbard took a deep breath and then felt anger wash over him due to R.J.’s dramatic arrival. “What the hell?
What are you doing?”

“I could ask you the same thing. What’s going on? Why are you standing here holding a tire iron with the front door of your house wide open?”

“Somebody broke in. I guess the open door is some kind of message.”

“I told you—”

“Yeah, you told me. But I’m not dropping this thing until I find the murderer . . . and I’m close.
I’m real close
. I want you to know that.” It was a lie, but he wondered if it would trigger some kind of reaction.

R.J. was little more than a silhouette in the night, but he was quiet for a long moment. “I knew you wouldn’t drop this . . . Well, I guess I can’t talk you out of it . . . C’mon, let’s check out the house.” R.J. opened the door to the back seat and reached in.

Hubbard felt uneasy. He was aware of the solitude of this location. “Oh, don’t worry about it . . . I got this . . . Okay?”

R.J. pulled something long and narrow out of the back seat of his car that Hubbard couldn’t make out in the darkness.

“Well, there’s no harm playing it safe.” He came in front of the headlights with the item in his hands.

It was a shotgun. Hubbard held his breath.

“Okay, head inside,” R.J. said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Hubbard hesitated.

“Don’t worry,” his uncle said, “I know how to handle weapons.”

“Yeah . . . It’s not that.”

There was a moment of silence as the two men stared at each other.

R.J. broke the silence. “Okay. I’ll go in first. This would be a lot easier if you trusted me.”

“Yeah, I know.”

R.J. tilted his head as if he didn’t quite understand the remark and then turned and headed for the house.

“This isn’t really necessary.”

“Humor me.”

They got to the front door. Close up, Hubbard could tell that the bulb had been smashed; shards of glass were on the porch floor.

R.J. reached in and found the foyer light switch and flicked it up. It worked. A small circle of light appeared overhead.

R.J. walked to the living room and flicked the overhead light on. It worked, too and the yellow walls lit up.

“Jesus,” R.J. said, startled by the brightness. This is new, isn’t it? You’ve got to find another color.”

“I don’t know. It grows on you.”

R.J. sighed. “Okay.”

They continued on this way throughout the house, R.J. always in the lead. “So, what have you found out about the killing?”

Hubbard laid out the bait. “I think it all revolves around the new interstate highway.”

R.J. stopped in place. “How do you know about that? It hasn’t been announced.”

“I have my sources. How do you know about it?”

Shrugging his shoulders, R.J. said, “I’ve just heard rumors.” He walked up the stairs to the bedrooms.

Hubbard followed behind. “Somebody paid Amir to take photographs of land parcels adjacent to the new route. Somebody with insider knowledge could make a huge profit scooping up farmland that would soon be prime retail spots. There could have been several investors in that little enterprise.”

“I suppose so. But using insider knowledge like that is a crime. If a group of men thought you were close to exposing their actions . . . well, there’s probably a lot of money at stake. Whoever’s behind this won’t give that up easily. The White River Killer would be the least of your worries.”

“I never thought White River Killer did it. That’s Andrews’s theory. No, it’s all about that highway. I just got a little more work to do . . . and I’ll know the truth.”

R.J. was at Emily’s bedroom. He suddenly turned. “Okay. That’s it.”

Hubbard took a step back, sucking in some air, watching the gun barrel swing off R.J.’s shoulder.

“You’re right . . . No one’s in here. Whoever did this is gone.” R.J. cracked open the shotgun at the muzzle and took out two shells. “You okay, kid? You looked spooked. Do you want to spend the night at my house?”

“No . . . no, I’m fine.”

Hubbard followed him down the stairs. The unloaded shotgun cradled on top of R.J.’s shoulders, pointing back at Hubbard.

“You know, kid. If something happens to you, it means that I’ll be raising Emily.” Hubbard felt his brow crease. “Yeah, I thought that might get your attention . . . Maybe that’s what the rock at the door means. Think about what you’re doing before you get hurt.”

R.J. was at the door. Hubbard grabbed his arm.

“Just one question before you leave. Why is the FBI so suspicious of you? Agent Ramirez said . . .”

“Kid, the FBI is always suspicious of me. I appreciate your concern, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

“But what are they questioning you about—”

“It’s late. I’m tired. Let’s put a pin in this discussion until another time.” R.J. was on the porch steps when he finished his thought. “Don’t forget. You owe me a favor and I’ve got a tight timeline.”

“How could I forget that?”

Hubbard stood on the porch steps and watched his uncle depart. When he could no longer see the lights of his car, he sat on the porch steps; looking at green space he once called a lawn. R.J. had managed to dodge his questions once again.
What kind of person drives around with a loaded shotgun in the backseat?
Even in gun-toting Arkansas, that was extreme. He remembered the coroner’s description of the killer, “one sick, smooth-talking son-of-a-bitch.”

Hubbard took a big breath and slowly released it. “I need a drink.”

It was two a.m. Hubbard sat on the edge of his bed, staring into the darkness. He couldn’t sleep, or maybe he didn’t want to risk another nightmare. He got up and flipped on the light. He had to do something.

Downstairs, Hubbard sat down in front of his ancient computer.

There were at least a dozen members of the media and many more law enforcement personnel involved in the murder investigation. Why was he singled out for special treatment? What did the murderer think he knew? The college girls said Amir was afraid to have his photo taken and the FBI seemed interested in altering or destroying any image of the student they could find.
Why?

He replayed his dangerous encounter at the student’s apartment. The two thieves were in the process of stealing photo albums and a computer from the residence. Outside, several photos had been dropped by the men during their escape and had trailed across the yard. The single image he saw briefly, lying on the apartment’s deck when he was in a rush to leave, was a shot of an empty field.

Photographs,
always photographs.

The Internet was a long shot, but it was the only research tool he had at his disposal. Over the next two hours, he typed in search terms that seemed to make some sense. They were all variations on ‘terrorism’ or ‘Arab terrorists’ or ‘terrorist attacks’, ‘Egypt’, ‘Abadi’ or varying combinations of those words. The search terms didn’t have to be complex to bring a tidal wave of results. Growing fatigued, his eyes could barely focus on the succession of bearded extremists that appeared on the screen.
What do I expect to find?
Taking a last chance, he typed in a succession of terms, starting with ‘terrorists’, ‘Egypt’, and ‘wealthy’. He remembered how they dispatched Osama bin Laden and added ‘Seal Team Six’ to the string. Before he entered the request, he added one more name: ‘Amir’.

A news story from the
London Times
appeared at the top of a short list. He clicked on it, to see the image of yet another bearded terrorist accompanying yet another account of bloodshed and violence. This attack was in America. Hubbard remembered it, the Grand Central Station bombing five years ago. Almost one hundred lives were lost. As with bin Laden, a Navy Seal team was dispatched overseas and got retribution, tracking down the madman responsible for the attack, hiding in Malaysia. But this was not a narrow account of the New York attack, the headline read, “Egypt’s Leading Family Divided between the West and Fundamentalism.” The thrust of the story was that the psycho,
Abbas
Alfarsi,
was part of a well-established Egyptian family, one of Egypt’s ruling class.