Jack Keller - 01 - The Devil's Right Hand Page 10

  “Please, mister,” the kid sobbed. “Please…”

  When they were kids, DeWayne had been a strange child, prone to tantrums that no one could explain or control. His aunt and uncle blamed it on his mother having run off, leaving six-month-old DeWayne in their care. As he got older, the tantrums matured into fits of berserk rage in which DeWayne would throw fists, bottles, anything handy. Once he had tried to slash another kid’s throat with a box-cutter over a half-pint of milk spilled in the school cafeteria. He was twelve at the time. DeWayne had bounced in and out of juvenile court more times than he could remember and suspended so many times that the entire school seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when he dropped out. The only one who could calm him down was Leonard, who would wrap DeWayne up in his big arms and silently hold him until the storm passed. Leonard never asked what was wrong, never made any comment at all when the incident was over. He just set DeWayne down, gave him an extra squeeze, and walked away. DeWayne had always depended on that, depended on Leonard’s quiet, unquestioning solidity to anchor him and keep him from flying off completely. Now, that was gone. DeWayne felt that familiar sick giddiness, like he’d been on a roller coaster too long. He staggered slightly as he raised the gun.

  “Please!” the kid shrieked. A dark stain appeared at the crotch of his jeans as he wet himself. When DeWayne saw the slowly spreading stain and the puddle that was collecting under the kid’s ass, he began to laugh. It began as a slow bubbling chuckle with an edge of hysteria. The laugh picked up speed and depth as the kid’s face showed the dawning realization of what he had done, and quickly exploded into a full out belly laugh that left DeWayne clutching his stomach with one hand as he held the gun on the kid with the other. He slid slowly to the floor on the other side of the area behind the counter, laughing, his gun hand never wavering. The kid looked uncertain for a minute, then angry, then he started to laugh along, forcing it out as if to placate the man with the pistol. The falsity of the sound sobered DeWayne immediately. “Okay,” he said, “you can cut it out.” The kid stopped, his face again frozen in a mask of fear. DeWayne reached up and pulled the carton of cigarettes down off the counter. He ripped it open with one hand and took out a pack. He ripped the cellophane off the pack with his teeth and opened the pack, tapping a cigarette out and withdrawing it with his teeth. He offered the clerk one, but the kid shook his head.

  “Good for you, bubba,” DeWayne said. “These things’ll sure as hell shorten your life.” He looked over at the kid. “I kilt two men tonight,” he said. “Maybe three,” he added, thinking of how the blonde dude had looked after DeWayne had kicked him in the head. “One of ‘em was a cop. So I reckon it don’t much matter if I kill you. I’m gonna die if they catch me. They either gonna shoot me down like a dog in the street or they’re gonna strap me down a few years from now and shoot a load of poison into me. What’s one more dead guy to me, now? And you can tell the cops I been here. And what I looked like, and what I was drivin’. Don’t think I want to give up that ride just yet.”

  “I won’t say anything,” the kid whispered. “I promise.”

  DeWayne snorted in derision. “Right,” he said. “Boss comes back, all the money’s gone from the register, you got a tank o’gas not paid fer, and two sixes of beer missin’, plus a carton of smokes. An’ you’re not gonna say anything about where they’ve gone? Don’t bullshit me, Todd.”

  “Please,” the kid begged. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “It’s not like I want to, kid,” DeWayne said with real regret in his voice. “I ain’t got to where I enjoy it. Not yet, an’ I suppose that’s a blessin’. But it’s like I said. I can’t take no chances. I coulda shot a couple other people tonight. I didn’t do it. Now…I’m thinkin’ maybe I oughta done it.” The kid began to sob uncontrollably then. DeWayne’s earlier frenzy had worn off. All he felt now was tired, bone-weary. The kid’s wailing was beginning to get on his nerves. Besides, he had to get moving. He raised the gun. It felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. As he took aim, an idea came to him.

  “Kid,” he said. Todd sobbed harder. “Kid! Damn it, look up!” Finally, Todd raised his tear-streaked face. He looked like a three-year-old.

  “You got a girlfriend, bubba?” DeWayne asked. After a moment, the kid nodded. “You got a picture of her?” Todd looked at him dumfounded for a moment, then pulled out his wallet. “Slide that over to me,” DeWayne said. Todd did. DeWayne picked it up and flipped it open. A picture of a young blonde girl stared up at him. She was seated in a porch swing, looking at the camera with a bright smile. DeWayne stared at the picture for a long moment and sighed. There was a whole world in that picture that DeWayne would never see. “She’s a cutie-pie there, Todd,” he said. “What’s her name?”

  “S-s-Sandy,” Todd said.

  “Y’all got it on yet?” he asked.

  “Th-that’s…n-none of your…” Todd stammered.

  “Thought not,” DeWayne grinned. “So where’s she live?” DeWayne said. There was no answer. He looked up. Todd was staring at him with an expression of horror. DeWayne raised the gun again. “Answer the question, Todd,” he said.

  Todd shook his head. “No,” he said. “No way. You’ll hurt her.”

  “I ain’t never hurt a woman before in my life that didn’t deserve it,” DeWayne said. “But I tell you my plan. When the cops get here, you tell ‘em a pair of wild-ass screamin’ niggers in a pick up truck come in here with bandanas on and robbed you.” He gestured towards the parking lot with his head. “I got a police scanner in my vehicle yonder. I hear anything different, like a good description of me or my car, I pay Miss Sandy here a visit right quick. If I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in the joint waitin’ to die, I figger I’m gonna need one last bit of pussy to tide me over, know what I mean? But if you do like I say, she’ll be okay and save that nice cherry just for you. Or,” he said, raising the gun again, “I could just kill you and not worry about it. So what’s it gonna be, Todd?” He pulled back the hammer.

  “Seventy-one-oh-three Black Oak Church Road!” Todd screamed. “Oh, GOD please don’t…” DeWayne stood up. He scooped up the beer and cigarettes and walked towards the door.

  “Mister?” the kid said. DeWayne stopped and turned back. The clerk gestured towards the ceiling. DeWayne looked up. A small video camera was mounted on the wall behind him, pointed at the sales counter. “There’s a videotape of you in here,” the kid said. “It won’t matter what I say.”

  “I hope you know how to get the tape out,” DeWayne said. The kid nodded and reached under the counter. DeWayne raised the gun again in case the kid wanted to try anything. He tensed when he saw the black object in the kid’s hand until he saw it was a small videotape.

  “Thanks, bubba,” he said as he walked over and took the tape. “I knew you was a smart one. Now you and that pretty little thing have a nice life together, y’hear?” He walked out.

  “Shit,” Angela said as she hung up the phone. She stared at the North Carolina map on the wall of her office for a few moments, gnawing at a fingernail. She was seated behind the desk in her office.

  “Anything?” Keller said. He came in and sat in one of the wooden chairs in front of the desk.

  Angela shook her head. “Internal Affairs has the whole thing locked down tight. My usual contacts either don’t know anything or won’t tell me.”

  “Told you. It’s a whitewash. They’re trying to cover up for Wesson. And Jones is the sacrificial lamb.”

  Angela shrugged. “Sorry, Keller. Not much more I can do. You able to get in touch with Jones?”

  He shook his head. “She’s either not home or screening her calls. I left a couple of messages, but…”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  Keller nodded. “Probably. She’s caught enough flak by being associated with me. But I’m the only witness. I need to let her know that I can help her out.”

  “Keller,” Angela said. “Maybe she wants to take the fall,
you ever think of that?”

  Keller shook his head stubbornly. “No way. I don’t buy it.” He got up and walked to the office door. He leaned against the jamb. The firm’s tiny waiting room had a plate glass window that fronted the street. Keller stared for a few moments through the large gilt letters that read “H & H BAIL BONDS”. Finally, he said, “Wesson’s funeral is this afternoon. She’ll probably be there.”

  “No,” Angela said. “No way. Keller, those guys will probably shoot you on sight.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  Angela threw up her hands. “Jesus. You never give up, do you?”

  “It’s why you hired me.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Eddie Wesson was buried on a hot, humid summer afternoon, surrounded by fellow officers in dress uniforms complete with gold braid and white gloves. Keller could see the crowd through the bars of the cemetery’s heavy wrought-iron fence. He sat in his rental car across the street from the gates of the cemetery. A line of cars and pickup trucks stretched along the curbside, dominated by a long black limousine directly in front of the gates. A TV van idled nearby, its antenna raised and pointed towards the station feeding the hunger of the newsroom for more news, faster. A trim young brunette in an expensive-looking blouse stood by the van, holding a microphone down by her side. A cameraman and sound technician lounged against the van with the loose-limbed slouch of soldiers after a long patrol. The woman jumped as shots cracked out, muffled in the heavy, humid air. It looked like they were giving Wesson the full treatment, complete with salute. The technicians knew the signal and hoisted their gear into action positions as the reporter adjusted her earpiece. Keller drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and waited.

  People began filing out the front gate, most in dress uniforms. An gray-haired cop with more braid than most was immediately taken aside by the reporter, who stuck her microphone in his face. The older man’s reply was brief. Keller picked out the widow by her black dress and the folded flag she carried across her chest with one hand. She held the hand of a bewildered looking little girl with the other. An older couple stood to either side of her, ready to offer support. The rest of the cops broke up into smaller groups and milled around on the pavement talking to each other. They didn’t actually ignore the widow, but no one made a direct attempt to talk to her as she and the child got into a long black limousine. Their only connection to her had just been put into the ground. She was no part of their world any more. The camera lens tracked them into the darkness of the vehicle’s interior. Then Keller saw Marie.

  She was dressed like the rest of them, in her formal blues. She was again wearing her dark glasses. She walked up to a small knot of officers who were chatting about something, as nonchalantly as if the funeral had never happened. All conversation, however, ceased as Marie walked up. They stood in their circle, not looking at her or at each other. Finally she turned and walked away, her shoulders slumped. Keller swore under his breath and started the car. The brunette reporter detached herself and her team from the crowd and trotted after her. Marie made a go-away gesture with her hand without looking around and walked faster. The reporter persisted, following behind her at a trot and holding the microphone in front of her like a baton being passed to a runner. Finally Marie whirled, and said something short and brutal that caused the reporter to reel backwards, the technicians crashing into her from behind. The reporter turned to shove the sound guy away, cursing. The cameraman was laughing. He continued to film the collision and its aftermath until the reporter made a savage slashing motion across her throat. Marie continued her march down the street alone. Keller pulled out and followed.

  Her car was parked at the end of the street near the corner. Keller pulled over and rolled down his window. “Marie,” he called to her.

  She turned around. Her face hardened. “Shit,” she said. “It’s you.”

  “I need to talk to you,” Keller said.

  She opened the car door. “You’re not helping me, you know,” she said savagely.

  “I can,” he insisted. “I’m the only one besides you who knows what really happened. I’m the one who can prove Wesson’s death isn’t your fault.”

  “Oh, great,” she said, tossing her cap onto the front seat. “That’ll make me REAL popular.”

  “Like you are now?” Keller said.

  She sat down in the car, but left her feet on the pavement and her legs outside. “I can make it back from this,” she insisted. “It’ll blow over. But not if I keep getting seen with you.”

  “It’s not going to blow over, Marie,” Keller said. “I’ve seen this shit before. You’re getting shafted.” He took a deep breath, hating what he had to say. “You’re gone, Marie. It’s over. But you don’t have to go quietly.”

  Marie looked up the street. Cars were beginning to pull away from the curb. She swung her legs into her car and closed the door. “C’mon,” she said. “I can’t be seen with you. Follow me.”

  “Where are we going?” Keller said.

  “My place,” she replied. He backed up slightly to allow her to get out, then followed.

  Marie Jones lived in a small one-story house with a two-car garage in a development full of nearly identical one-story houses with attached two-car garages. The houses were clustered around cul-de-sacs off a central street, in an attempt to make neighbors out of the strangers who moved in, stayed a few years until the next transfer, then moved out. Each house had a concrete-slab driveway where the cars were actually parked. The garages had no room for actual vehicles; they were full of lawnmowers, bikes, tool benches, and boxes of things that the families in the houses never actually got unpacked because they were of little use, but never discarded because they were too valuable. Keller parked behind Marie’s car in the driveway after she got out and moved a plastic Big Wheel from the center of the drive. He followed her inside.

  Inside, the house was small and neatly kept. The front door opened up into a small living room with a couch, a recliner, a TV/VCR combination sitting on an old footlocker, and a pair of low plastic bookshelves. A few plush toys were scattered here and there.

  “Wait here,” Marie said. “I need to change out of these blues before I drop over from heatstroke.” She went off down the hallway, leaving Keller alone.

  Keller sat down on the couch. After a few moments, he got up and walked slowly around the living room while he waited. He stopped to look at the pictures that completely filled one wall. In one of the photographs, an obviously much younger Marie was standing, holding a rifle confidently on her hip. She was standing next to a smiling gray-haired man. Another photo showed her cradling a soccer ball in one hand, standing next to the same man. In this picture, the man was in a police uniform. They were both smiling. In another photo, obviously a professional portrait, she was dressed in an Army Class-A uniform, looking serious against a cloudy silver background. A series of smaller pictures in a collage frame showed her in a variety of situations with a young child: a hospital bed holding an infant, holding a baby in her arms in front of a Christmas tree, bending over to push a laughing toddler in a swing. There was no sign of the father.

  Keller heard Marie reenter the room. He continued looking at the pictures. “This your dad?” he said over his shoulder, pointing at the picture of her with the gray-haired man.

  “Yeah,” she said around a hair clip held in her teeth as she pinned her hair up.

  “He was a cop, too.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thirty years. He’s retired now.”

  Keller turned around. Marie had changed into a baggy sweatshirt and a pair of running shorts. Her face was drawn and pale and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  “Where you from?” he asked.

  “Portland, Oregon,” she said.

  “Miss it?”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  Keller gestured back at the picture. “Bet your dad loved the idea of his little girl joining the force.”

  “I’m not a
little..” she began, then caught herself and grinned. “Sorry. Conditioned reflex. But yeah, he nearly had a stroke. He got over it.”

  He looked again at the picture of Marie in her class-A’s. He noticed another, smaller frame hanging next to it. Instead of a photograph, the frame held a small badge. It was a wreath surrounding an iron cross with a target in the center of it.

  “Expert rifleman,” he said. “Impressive.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “Dad always wanted a boy to take hunting with him, but he only got daughters. So he taught me to shoot.” She grimaced. “For all the good it did me. I ended up in the MP’s. Germany.” she walked back over to the easy chair and sat down. Keller tried not to stare at her legs. “You were in Saudi, I hear.”

  “Yeah. And points north.”

  She smiled a little sadly. “Closest I ever got to a war was directing traffic at Oktoberfest.”

  “You were lucky,” he said. She looked strangely at him and he realized that he had spoken with a bit more heat than he had intended. He looked back at the wall. “Cute kid.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “He’s with his grandparents for the weekend.”

  “Not with your ex?”

  Her lips tightened. “You didn’t come here to talk about my kid.”

  “Right.” Keller sat down on the couch.

  “You said I didn’t have to go quietly,” she said. “What did you mean?” she said.

  “Has anyone come to you and actually said, ‘keep your mouth shut, let it blow over, and we’ll take care of you’?’”

  She shook her head and looked at the floor. “No.”

  “They need someone to blame for Wesson getting killed. Good cops don’t let punks like DeWayne Puryear gun them down.”

  Her voice was bitter. “Good cops don’t let punks take their guns away, either.”