Voodoo Moon (22 page)

I
unstraddled
her bottom, knelt next to her in such a way that the only part of my body touching hers was my hands.

"You really think he killed her?" She was done weeping. For now, anyway.

"Sure looks like it."

"Couldn't have been faked?"

"Could have. But it's tough to fake."

"She should've dumped him. I don't know what she saw in him, anyway."

"I guess she loved him."

"He was so unfaithful. I'm not sure why she put up with all the bad stuff Noah did to her. She must have really thought she loved him
."

"I'm sure she did
."

"God, I wish I could get my hands on him."

The calming effect of my massage was starting to lose its charm, apparently.

The knock was curt. "Hello," a female voice said. The uncertainty in her voice suggested that she wasn't sure that anybody was even in here.

Police Chief Susan Charles.

I eased off the bed and opened the door for her.

"I'll turn on another light," I said.

The light revealed Tandy sitting on the edge of the bed, combing through her short hair with her fingers.

Susan said, "I was actually looking for Tandy. There are two detectives here from the state, and they were asking if we could all talk to Tandy at the same time."

"Fine," Tandy said. "I need to go to the bathroom first." She went in and closed the door.

Susan stepped closer. "You get a good look at Laura West?" I nodded.

"He must've really been angry."

"There's one thing that's strange, though
."
I told her about his phone call and wanting to see me.

"Did he say about what?"

"He seemed to think Paul
Renard
is still alive."

She smiled. Obviously couldn't help herself. "Are you serious?"

"That's what he said."

"God, I knew he wanted ratings but—"

"That's what I thought. But I wanted to hear his story, anyway."

"I'll let you go through his effects with me if you want. See if we can turn anything up. I need to talk to you anyway. About the crime scene when you saw it. We'll go through his things afterwards
."

"I'd appreciate that."

Tandy came back. "Do you have any Tums or anything like that? My stomach is a mess."

"I'm afraid I don't," I said.

"I've got some in my car:," Susan said.

"Thanks."

She looked around the room. "Forgive me for saying so, but this is kind of depressing."

"Gee," I said. "I hadn't noticed."

She smirked at me. "Uh-huh
."
Then, "You ready, Tandy?"

Tandy nodded. Then, "Robert says that maybe she died pretty quickly."

Susan knew she was being put on the spot. She avoided glancing at me to tip her hand. "Sometimes, it can be very fast."

"Did you see her?"

"Yes."

"You think it was fast?"

This time, Susan did glance at me. "I think there's a good possibility it was fast."

"She should have dumped him," Tandy said. "I told her to." She wasn't talking to us. She was talking to Laura. "Big TV star. I think she actually went for that somehow. She was so smart. I don't know why she'd fall for that. Do you?"

This time, she directed her question at me.

"No," I said gently. "I don't know why she'd fall for that, either."

Susan led her quietly out the door.

T
he retired man was still at the desk. He looked, if possible, even worse than I felt, in his old cardigan, old flannel-type shirt, and old tired eyes.

"This here is town is
becomin
' quite a place
."

"It sure is."

"And both of '
em'll
make the national news."

"Probably will
."

I had two questions for him. But he wasn't going to make it easy for me.

"There was a senator out here once. State senator by the name of Gibbons. Found out his mistress was bein' unfaithful so he killed her. Shot her eight times. Right out on the highway. Couldn't even wait for her to get out of the car, he was so pissed. Shot her eight times inside the car, then took her body and threw it in the ditch. Now, that's pissed."

"That's pissed, all right."

"Then, when they caught him, he hanged himself in jail. And then you know what?"

"What?"

"Three weeks after that, his wife got in a car wreck. Killed her and the oldest boy."

I didn't need any more depressing stories. "Right at the point where tragedy becomes absurdity" has always been one of my favorite phrases. When things get
so
bad you have to start seeing the ridiculous nature of them.

But tonight, because of Tandy, pale, frail, fucked-up Tandy, I wasn't able to find anything humorous, let alone absurd, about any of it.

"Well, that's quite a story," I said.

"Ain't done yet."

"You ain't?"

"Oh, no. So the youngest boy of the family?"

"Yes."

"Guess what happens to him?"

"I don't think I want to hear."

"He starts
stickin
' up banks when he's sixteen."

"God."

"And so they catch him one day down to the Missouri border same—place Jesse James was always
workin
'—and they kill him."

"Well," I said. "I'm sure glad you shared that with me."

He grinned with his shining store-
boughts
. "And I ain't done yet."

"You ain't?"

"No, sir. Seems the bank-
robbin
' kid had a girlfriend and she was just about due to have a baby—this here girl couldn't have been more than fourteen; jailbait, we used to call little gals like her—when she finds out that the bank-
robbin
' kid has been shot to death by Highway Patrol cops."

"Lord Almighty."

"Then
she
tries to kill herself."

"She does?"

"Yep. But she don't make it. They save her life. So she can have the kid. So she has the kid, except she dies when he's ten—overdose, she was a junkie—and the kid is raised by his aunt and uncle. And guess where I seen him the other night?"

"The kid?"

"Yeah. The one the jailbait delivered. He was on TV, and it was last Tuesday. '
Cept
he ain't a kid no more. He's twenty years old. And guess what show he was on?"

"You got me."

"
America's Most Wanted
. Armed robbery and two murders in Florida. And guess what?"

"I don't want to guess."

"He's got this sixteen-year-old gal
travelin
' with him and
she's
pregnant. Ain't that a pisser?"

"Oh, that's a pisser all right."

"The little gal he's
travelin
' with is knocked up. Who-
ee
!" And he slapped the countertop.

I said, wanting to change the subject quickly, "
Kibbe
get any calls the night he died?"

"Cops already asked me that. And you ain't a cop. At least Noah Chandler played one on TV. You didn't even do that."

"I used to be with the FBI."

He looked at me in a new way. "No shit?"

"No shit."

"Well, I'll be damned. The bureau, huh? That's what you folks call it, ain't it? The bureau?"

So I laid some fanciful FBI tales on him. People like him always like the helicopter-to-helicopter shoot-out story. I saw it one night on a TV movie and decided to put it in my repertoire.

"God, so you were just hanging on with one hand?"

"One hand."

"Over the Atlantic Ocean?"

"Over the dark and brooding Atlantic Ocean?"

"You kill him?"

"Two bullets in the heart."

"Wow."

"He hung on to the strut as long as he could, but then he finally fell into the ocean."

"Wow. They ever find the diamonds?"

"I found 'em next day. I used to be a frogman, so I insisted on diving myself. Took me twenty minutes but I had some luck"

"That Atlantic Ocean is big. You were sure lucky."

"Very lucky," I said. "Frogmen don't usually have that kind of luck."

"Say, you want a beer?"

"That sounds great."

While he went back and got us beers, I watched the show in the parking lot.

Everything had started to resemble a movie set. The crowd, the cops, the boxy white ambulance, the flashing, whipping emergency lights. I thought again of a portable scene moved whenever needed. You had a suspicious death, the entire menagerie would show up in only a matter of moments.

Mrs. Giles was the only surprise. I hadn't noticed her before. She wore a dark winter coat wrapped tight about her. She'd been there when
Kibbe
had been murdered. Now here she was again.

He brought the beers and we drank. I gunned mine. I wanted to ask Mrs. Giles something.

"You ever shoot anybody?"

"Once."

"Bet that was fun, wasn't it?"

"Not really."

He looked stunned. "Shoot a guy and get away with it 'cause you're law? And that ain't fun?"

"I felt kind of sorry for him, actually."

"How come?"

"Oh, he'd lost his job and his wife and his little boy was sick. And he just sort of went crazy one day and held some people in a bank for hostage."

"You kill him?"

"Yeah. But not because I was trying. He slipped at exactly the moment I fired the gun, and that put his chest in direct line of the bullet. Got him in the heart."

The made-up stories were always filled with macho swagger; the true ones were less imposing but a hell of a lot sadder.

I could see I'd disappointed him. He didn't want stories that talked about the human condition. He wanted tales that distracted him from the human story. No time to worry about misery or disease or heartbreak when you're caught up in an adventure story.

So I told him the whopper about the time I caught an assassin on the scaffolding of a building, thirty-eight floors up it was (the number of stories increased every time I told the story), and how he almost flung me to my death as I tried to wrestle his gun away. I think, though I'm not sure, that this story had its origin in one of the early James Bond movies.

"Wow," he said, impressed.

The phone rang and he took it.

I strayed to the window. She was still there, Mrs. Giles, shabby and cold and angry in the chill night.

When he got off the phone, I said, "You know, you'd be helping me out quite a bit if you told me about
Kibbe's
calls."

He looked at me, assessing. My stories had changed his attitude. "There's a doc in this town name of Williams. A head doc. You know, for nuts."

"Right."

"He called a couple of times the night
Kibbe
bought it."

"He leave any messages?"

"Just that
Kibbe
was supposed to call him back ASAP."

"Did you give
Kibbe
the message?"

"No. When I came on, Janice told me she hadn't been able to find him. And now he's dead."

I was the one who supposedly had the interesting stories. But here was one far more engaging than any I could concoct.

Dr. Williams calling
Kibbe
after
Kibbe
had stolen certain items from Dr.
Williams's
office. I wondered if
Kibbe
had found something. Or knew something. He must have. I doubted Dr. Williams had been placing a simple social call.

"Anything else?"

"Just that little copying joint down on Main."

"Copying joint?"

"Yeah. You know, they make Xeroxes and stuff. Said his order was ready."

"They say what kind of order it was?"

"Huh-uh."

"When was this?"

"Last night. Right at nine. Lady said she was just closing up and that he could pick up his order in the morning."

"I see." Then, "You happen to notice Dr. Williams around here the last couple of nights?"

"Not really. For one thing, we been kinda busy. And for another, when we
ain't
busy, I read them supermarket papers. They're always a lot of fun."

"But you'd recognize Dr. Williams if you saw him?"

"Oh, sure. They always have him on the tube whenever it's Mental Health Day or somethin' like that."