Fast Lane

Chapter 29

I woke up bright and early the next morning and headed to the Denver Bus Terminal. I found the locker that matched the key I got off Bert Debbles. Inside were newspaper clippings, a copy of a twenty-five-year-old warrant for my arrest and a handwritten letter from Debbles.

I was surprised at how well Debbles had done his homework. Most of the clippings were about my poppa’s death, but he also included one of my Denver Examiner columns. A couple of the clippings had a school photo taken of me when I was seventeen, looking all solemn and gloomy. Looking like someone who was going to be losing his poppa.

Debbles’ letter was scrawled in pencil and detailed his suspicions. I took all of it to the men’s room, set a match to it, and flushed the ashes down the toilet. After washing my hands, I headed back home.

Eddie Braggs was standing in front of my door scowling at the doorbell as he rang it. I parked my car across the street, and walking up behind him, clasped his shoulder.

“They let you out of your cage?” I asked with a grin.

Without turning his head, he peered at me from the corners of his eyes. “You wouldn’t answer your phone,” he complained. “We need to talk.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “What about?”

“Why don’t we go inside?”

“Sure,” I said. “Anything for an old buddy.”

I opened the door and followed him in. After sitting ourselves down his eyes compressed into narrow slits, sizing me up-weighing me on the Eddie Braggs’ scale of guilt. I leaned back in my chair and stretched lazily-the way anyone in my position would-a man without a worry in the world.

I said, “This is a first, having you weight-test my furniture. What’s the special occasion?”

“You knew a Margo Halloran?”

I nodded. “I heard about it on the radio. It’s a shame.”

“How well did you know her?”

“To be honest,” I said, “only in the biblical sense. She picked me up at a bar a few weeks ago and we ended up going off to Mexico together. What a disaster!” I whistled, shaking my head. “I don’t want to talk ill of the dead, but we didn’t have the relaxing trip I’d hoped for. I ended up having to ditch her.”

That took him by surprise. His head jerked up and his eyes opened to their normal shape. “I know,” he admitted, “her mother called the paper and gave us the story.”

“After what happened to her, I feel bad about ditching her.” I let my face fall into a somber frown. “But I just didn’t have any choice. I like a stiff drink as much as the next guy, but I guess she liked it more than the next guy and the guy after him. When we got to Mexico she started going through a bottle a day.”

“That’s why you ditched her?”

“No sir.” I shook my head. “I would’ve put up with that, but when she started bed hopping I had to leave.”

With a snort, Eddie’s scowl disappeared. “When her mother called and told us about how you stranded her daughter in Mexico it gave me a hunch you were involved with her murder.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, none of it makes any sense. What the hell was she doing in that room?”

I shrugged.

“And how the hell did you get those scratches?”

“You like them? Almost healed now. I got them working on a missing persons case, and that was before I left for Mexico-you can check over at the Denver airport if you want. The ticket agent recognized me and asked questions about them-I’m sure she’d remember.”

“Never mind.” He waved it away. “I can see they’re a few weeks old. This murder is bugging the hell out of me. There’s something awful damn funny about it. Johnny, I’ve been in this business over twenty-five years and I’ve never seen anything so vicious.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Your paper reported she was beaten pretty bad.”

“That’s not even the half of it. If we printed what really happened, no one would believe it. And if we printed pictures, half this city would be retching their stomachs out. Here, take a look at these.”

He took an envelope from his overcoat, slid from it a stack of photographs and handed them to me. As I looked at them my knees went weak. “Oh God,” I murmured.

“That’s right,” he said sourly. “Whoever did that enjoyed it. I want to get the bastard. I want to get him more than I ever wanted to do anything.”

“You thought I could’ve done this?”

“I don’t know what I thought. I guess I got a little concerned after hearing about your trip to Mexico. And”-he waggled a finger at me- “I don’t think you can blame me. What the hell was she doing in that room?”

One of the pictures was of her while she was still among the living. In it, she’s giving her easy relaxed smile. She’s standing with her shoulders thrown back, and with the sweater she was wearing, she looked like she was about to bust right out of it. It did something to me seeing that picture. Stirred something deep inside. “She was sure something,” I said. “Mind if I keep this one?”

He shrugged. “Okay, why not? She was quite a looker. Did you know she was once a Miss Rocky Mountains runner-up?”

“She never mentioned it.”

“Twelve years ago. With some luck she could’ve been Miss America.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off her picture-the one of her smiling, and knowing damn well what she was doing with her chest. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. “Do the police have anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“No one heard or saw anything?”

“In that neighborhood?” He shook his head grimly. “If anyone did, they’d reach for the nearest bottle and stay blissfully drunk until they forgot about it.”

“What about fingerprints?”

“Not a one,” he said. “Whoever did this wore cloth gardening gloves. They were found in a dumpster behind the building. We’re not going to find out anything from them.”

He shook his head and laughed sourly, his eyes glistening. “We’ll catch the son of a bitch, Johnny. We’ll catch him when we find out what Margo Halloran was doing in that room. Or maybe”-he frowned-”when we find out about the old man.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Not much. He moved into the room about a week ago. There was no identification on him. No one seems to remember talking to him. And he had no face left. Just be thankful I didn’t show you any pictures of his corpse.”

“Pretty bad?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Imagine taking a sledgehammer to a watermelon. His head was worse than that.”

“Could it have been a robbery-maybe some doped-up addict who went overboard?”

“Maybe,” he scowled. “But what the hell was Margo Halloran doing there? And what about the gloves? No, this is something else. The kicker is the coroner’s report. Her death was pegged between noon and two o’clock. The old man was killed between three and five. Whoever did this waited at least an hour for the old man after killing Margo Halloran. He made it look like a robbery, but it wasn’t any robbery. He wanted to kill them, either Margo Halloran or the old man. When we find out which, we’ll nail the bastard.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I’m going to look into this and see if I can come up with anything. I owe Marge-Margo at least that.”

We both stood up, and shook hands. Eddie nodded to me. “Don’t worry, Johnny. We’ll get him. I got a hunch it’s only a matter of time.”

I watched him leave, feeling sort of bad for him. He was wasting his time. He’d never find out what Marge was doing in Bert Debbles’ room because it just didn’t make any sense. None at all. And even if he found out who the old man was, it wouldn’t help him any. He’d still have to find out why Bert Debbles came to Denver, and I’d already taken care of that.

So there he was, face up against a stone wall and too damn stupid to know it. It was a hundred miles high and a million miles across and there was no way in hell around it. All he was going to get out of butting his head against it was to knock himself silly. I almost wanted to tell him, to save him the embarrassment, but something he said stuck in my craw. Something I don’t think I could ever forgive him for.

“Whoever did that enjoyed it . . . .”

Maybe I did with Bert Debbles, because after all, it was like a second chance with my poppa-but he should’ve known better than to say that about Marge. No one felt worse about it than me. And I’m sure if Marge could, she’d back me up on that.

I put Marge’s picture away and made myself some coffee. Bringing both the coffee and the last two days’ newspapers over to the sofa, I settled back. Marge’s murder was on the front page, and they’d stuck in a photo of her from the Miss Rocky Mountains contest. In the photo, she’s wearing a one-piece bathing suit and waving and smiling like she’s the only one who knows the joke. Of course she was twelve years younger and a few cases of booze drier, but she didn’t look all that much different. Maybe a little fresher. Maybe a little happier.

I read the article carefully, finding out things about her she never told me. Like what college she went to. And that her daddy died only a few years back. And that she was a regular churchgoer. And that she’d been fired recently from her job as a Sales Manager. I knew she’d been fired, but I didn’t know from what. It’s funny, but you spend as much time with someone as I did with Marge and you find out there’s so little about the person you really knew.

I finished the article and started searching the paper for a story about Mary. I was more than a little surprised there was nothing on the front page. Murder-suicides are a big deal, and this one would be played up for all it was worth. A young pretty thing like Mary messing around with a married middle-aged son of a bitch like Bry. Shooting him dead in his own home. It should have been on the front page. I went through both papers carefully and found nothing. Not a damn single thing.

I went through both papers again, and again after that, and well, after a while I lost count of how many times I went through them. Eventually, though, I understood why there was no mention of Mary or Bry. There was only one way to explain it. Their bodies hadn’t been found yet.

They should have been. Both of them.

Where I left Mary, she was in plain sight from the road. Plenty of folks must have passed her by now. You’d think one of them would have wondered why she was slumped over the way she was. You’d think one of them would have stopped to see if she was okay. You’d think there would be at least one of them who wasn’t a heartless son of a bitch. You’d think so, but I guess that’s expecting too much.

Bry should’ve been found too, as soon as his wife returned home. His stinking corpse was left in the middle of the living room-he should’ve been the first thing she saw. And if she didn’t see him, she should’ve at least tripped over him. She should’ve called the police by now. Unless . . . .

Unless she never returned home. Maybe she finally figured he was cheating on her and left for good. Or maybe she did come back home and panicked when she found the body. Or had a heart attack and dropped dead herself. Or . . . .

Or the hell with it. It wasn’t worth worrying about. Eventually both bodies were going to be found, and when they were, the police would make the connection. They’d find that Mary’s gun was used on Bry. They’d have to figure it was a murder-suicide. As long as they didn’t screw up. As long as it didn’t take them too long to find Bry’s body, because if it took too long there was a chance they’d miss the connection. And that would mean Mary’s suicide wouldn’t make a damn bit of sense.

I started panicking. If the suicide couldn’t be explained, the police wouldn’t be satisfied with it. Maybe they’d start poking around and come up with something crazy. Maybe if they had reason to dig deep enough, they’d find something. I had planned on it being an open and shut case, and because of that I wasn’t as careful as I could have been. There were things they could find out. That I hitchhiked down the mountain. Or that I’d been seen near the convenience store. Or a dozen other things I hadn’t thought of and didn’t bother planning for.

Looking back at it now, I know I was making a mountain out of what wasn’t even half a molehill. But when you’re on edge and things don’t work out as expected your mind starts acting up. Instead of looking at things straight on, you see them from angles that don’t even exist. Before long, you’re talking yourself into possibilities that make no sense at all. And the crazier the idea, the more you start believing it.

That was what was going through my mind. I almost picked up the phone and called the police, thinking I’d leave an anonymous tip about Bry. I almost called them, and brother, if I had it would have been suicide. It would’ve tipped the cops off that it wasn’t the way it appeared.

Well, I had too much sense to call them-even in the condition I was in. But I was too fidgety-too nervous to sit still. I headed off to my office.