The Empress File

CHAPTER 12

John called an hour later.

"Harold talked to Dessusdelit. She says she'll see him at her house tomorrow morning."

"Did he tell her-"

"No. He just said it was important, that it involved corruption and high city officials. She agreed right away – nervous, I guess. He's supposed to be there at ten o'clock."

"Terrific," I said. John sounded unnaturally cheerful, and I heard Marvel's voice in the background. "Is that Marvel?"

"Yeah, I'm at her place."

"Let me talk to her."

"Just a minute," he said. I heard him call her; then there was a delay; then he came back on and said, "You gotta wait a minute; she can't talk to you unless she got her pants on."

I heard Marvel squeal and John laughing; then Marvel came on, somewhat breathless, and said, "You don't pay any attention to this liar."

"Hey, he's a good guy," I said.

She laughed and said, in an aside to John, "Quit that," and then to me, "He's been hanging over me since that first night. You know what finally did it? I think it was those fuckin' wing tips of his. He looked so cute in them."

"Jesus, that is perverted."

"That's me."

"I don't mean to bring you down, but something occurred to me. This woman out at animal control."

"Sherrie?"

"Yeah. A black guy's going to show up at Dessusdelit's place tomorrow with a copy of the secret books. The question may arise, Where did he get them?"

"Oh, shit," she said. There was another pause. "I can handle it, I think."

"OK."

"I can tell her. to get sick, or something. If I tell her it's important, she'll do it."

"With no questions?"

"Nothing I'll answer. She's not too bright. I can handle it."

"OK. I just thought I'd mention it."

"Good thought," she said.

"And listen. take care of John."

"Better'n he could possibly believe," she said.

LuEllen and I went to bed, LuEllen speculating about John and Marvel. Would they get married? Would it be a church wedding? Would Marvel wear a formal white wedding gown, and would that be right at her age? Would we be invited, and if we were, could we come?

She went on for a while, while I listened distractedly. Finally I got out of bed, picked up the phone, and called Bobby on a voice line. I outlined what we were doing and asked if he could monitor Dessusdelit's phones in the morning.

"We're putting a lot of pressure on her," I said. "If something goes wrong, or if she decides to run for it or figures out some kind of double cross."

"I'll monitor it," he said. "If anything happens, I'll get back to you."

"Why do you want him to do that?" LuEllen asked when I hung up.

"I don't know," I said. "It seems like a good idea."

I was sound asleep when the phone rang the next morning. I groaned, sat up, looked at the clock. Ten-thirty. I got to the phone on the fifth ring.

"This Kidd?" Bobby, his voice urgent, harsh, not waiting even for my "hello?"

"Yeah, Bobby? What's going on?"

"Get over to Dessusdelit's house," he snapped. "Something bad's happening."

"What?" I asked. LuEllen sat up, watching, roused by the tone of my voice.

"I was monitoring her line. About two, three minutes ago, the dogcatcher-"

"Duane Hill-"

"Yeah. He made a call. He was at her house. He called this St. Thomas guy, told him to get his ass over there, they had an emergency and he had to drive a car. That sounds like trouble to me. Hill wasn't even supposed to be there, was he?"

"No."

"Anyway, St. Thomas said he'd be right there."

"All right, we're on the way. Call John, try his motel and Marvel's place. tell him."

"OK."

Even when you're in a hurry, it takes a long time to get going. We dressed, rushing, but it still took six or seven minutes to get to the car. Add that to the two or three between the time Hill hung up and Bobby got to us. And I got us lost, trying to improvise a shortcut. We got tangled in a series of cul-de-sacs on the wrong side of the municipal golf course, and we had to go back out to my first wrong turn.

"What're we going to do when we get there?"

LuEllen said. "We just can't come busting up to the door."

"We could do that," I said. "Tell her we were in the neighborhood and just thought we'd stop by."

"She's too smart," LuEllen argued. "She'd make a connection. We're still strangers, too friendly too fast. Then Harold comes out of the blue."

"Maybe Marvel will think of something. When Bobby explains, all she'll have to do is call Dessusdelit, and say, 'Listen, we know you got him.' "

"Hope she does," LuEllen said. "Hope she does."

She didn't. And we were late. A white Ford turned out of the lane from the country club as we were approaching.

"That's the car Harold drove to Greenville," I said. We'd stood next to it for a few minutes, talking, before I left.

"Well, shit, maybe he's out," she said.

I accelerated, went on past the country club road, and closed on the Ford. There was a man inside, in the driver's seat. I couldn't see him that clearly, and closed further.

"No, no," LuEllen said. "Back off, back off. Take that turn."

"What, what?" I braked and swerved down a turnoff.

"That was St. Thomas, the guy who was killing the cats."

"Sure?" But I had no real doubt.

"Yeah, didn't you see the red hair?"

I hadn't, but I believed her and turned the car around, stopping at the highway, uncertain which way to go. "So where's Harold? In the trunk?"

"I don't know," she said. "What?"

I put the car on the highway, headed back toward the country club. I'd answered my own question. "If Harold drove that car to Dessusdelit's, he'd park either in her driveway or in front of the place," I explained. "If they whacked him, they wouldn't be carrying his body across the lawn to put it in the trunk."

"So."

"So look for Hill's panel truck. It's white, and it says 'Animal Control' on the side. A Chevy-"

"There it is," LuEllen said immediately, pointing back over my shoulder. The van was winding through the country club streets, still a block or so away, but moving toward the stone pillars that marked the entrance road. I slowed and took the first turn on the opposite side of the road.

"Now what?" LuEllen asked. The van hesitated before turning onto the highway, then accelerated away, after the white Ford.

"I don't know. Follow. See what happens. If we had a gun."

"If pigs had wings." Hill's van went past an obvious turnoff to animal control.

"Where's he going? Why's he going through town?"

"I don't know."

We found out five minutes later, after a nerve-wrenching job of tailing the white van through light traffic. On the northern highway business strip, just at the edge of town, the van slowed and turned into the Wal-Mart parking lot. We watched from the shoulder of the road as the van stopped at the front entrance. St. Thomas was waiting inside. He walked out and climbed in the driver's side of the van, which then started back out. By that time I'd made a U-turn and was parked behind the gas pumps in the Shell station.

"They ditched Harold's car in the Wal-Mart lot," LuEllen said.

"Let's call the cops."

"And tell them what?"

"That a guy was kidnapped-"

"We'll be on a tape-"

"Jesus, LuEllen."

The van went past on the highway, headed back into town. I waited a few seconds and pulled out after them.

"He's going out to animal control," LuEllen said.

"Yeah. Can't get too close out there. There's nothing else around."

I put several cars between us and the panel truck and, when there was no longer any question where it was headed, pulled over to a drive-up phone outside a convenience store. I dialed Marvel's place, then John's, and got no answer at either.

"Let's go," said LuEllen.

We continued on to the animal control complex and spotted the van parked outside.

"Where are they?"

"I don't know, but we can't go in," I said, continuing past the turnoff. We were on a gravel road that had some traffic, but not much. Even going by the place was a risk. "If they've killed him. or are planning to. there wouldn't be any reason not to do us."

"Maybe they're just talking to him," LuEllen said. She didn't believe it.

"Maybe Hitler was only kidding."

"All right. Let's ditch the car."

Four hundred yards farther on, a track left the main road to the right, away from the river, and a sign said LEVI CREEK PUBLIC HUNTING. It didn't look as if it had been used since duck season. I drove far enough down that a passerby couldn't see the car from the road, killed the engine, and we scrambled out. As I closed the door I noticed LuEllen's camera bag in the back seat.

"Bring the camera," I said.

"Got it," LuEllen answered. We jogged through the heat waves coming off the road, through some nascent wildflowers, toward the base of the hill we'd climbed on our last trip out. From this side a definite track wound up to the top. LuEllen, who is both in better shape and a better athlete than I am, led the way. When I came over the crest, she was crouched on the far side, peering down at the animal control building.

"Nobody around," she said.

I crawled up beside her and looked down. The van was twenty feet from the front door, which was closed.

"What is that noise?" I asked. Ooka-ooka-ooka. We'd heard it the first time we'd been there. It sounded like a broken pump.

"I don't know," she said. She opened the camera bag, took off the short lens she kept on the Nikon, and put on the biggest one she had, a 210mm zoom. Nothing moved. And the building stopped going ooka-ooka. Then started again. We lay on the bare patch, watching.

"If they beat him up, and if he's in obviously bad shape, we want photos of him coming out with Hill. Maybe we could yell or scream or something, they wouldn't know who we are, but they'd have to let him go."

"Jesus, that worries me. Our security could be fucked."

"Yeah, but-" It suddenly dawned on me what the sound was. Ooka-ooka. I half stood and stared down the hill. "Motherfucker."

"What?"

"That's the pump for the fuckin' vacuum chamber. I bet that's what it is."

LuEllen didn't say anything but just stared, and the pump stopped. "You think?" she asked in the silence.

"Maybe they're trying to find out who else knows."

"Jesus, no. I don't believe it."

"We fucked up," I said. "We've gotta get to the car and call the cops. Or maybe we can call them, Hill and St. Thomas. I'll try to disguise my voice, tell them we know they've got Harold."

I was headed for the path down the hill when LuEllen whispered, "Wait. wait. Here we go." She waved me back.

The door to the animal control building opened, and St. Thomas stepped out into the sun and looked around. There was nothing to see but the van in the driveway. He was agitated, jerking around when a dog suddenly started barking from the cages. He walked around the building, checking, then went back inside. A moment later he and Hill came out, carrying what looked like a body wrapped in a sheet. Hill used only his left hand; his right was around the arm of a black woman, who seemed to be weeping.

"Ah shit," LuEllen said, shooting off a string of exposures.

They carried the body to the levee, walking fast, looking around, then along the land side of the levee, down from the crest where you couldn't see them from the river. They went along until they got to the revetment where we'd tied up the boat. Erosion had cut a little notch out of the levee just above the concrete slabs. They dropped the body, both of them breathing hard, and St. Thomas stepped up to the top of the bank and scanned the river. They were in weeds and brush up to their shoulders, and there was nothing on the water. When he was sure it was clear, they unwrapped the body, dragged it over the levee, and heaved it in the river. It sank almost immediately.

With every step they took, LuEllen snapped another photograph.

With the body gone, the two men climbed back down the levee to where the black woman waited. She was half crouched, talking fast. We couldn't hear what they were saying, but Hill laughed and shook his head. St. Thomas said something to her, then stood and offered his hand, and they climbed back up the levee to the path on top, and he gestured into the river.

"Telling her not to worry, the body's gone," LuEllen guessed, looking up at me.

"No, keep shooting," I snapped.

She looked back through the viewfinder and triggered off a shot and then, without looking up, asked, "Why?"

"Because they're going to kill her," I said. I started to stand, thinking to shout, but Hill, already moving, stepped up behind the woman with his hand extended. It was holding the black automatic that St. Thomas had used on the cats. The woman never saw it coming. Hill fired a single shot into the back of her head, and she tumbled down the embankment like a broken doll.

"Motherfucker," LuEllen groaned. She took shots of them going down the levee, pitching the woman's body into the water, then coming back up. Hill was animated, laughing, and slapped St. Thomas on the shoulder. St. Thomas said something, and Hill took the pistol out of his belt, looked at it, and turned and pitched it into the river.

"Shoot it," I blurted. LuEllen was still looking through the viewfinder and fired a last shot just as the pistol hit the water. I tried to mark the spot in my memory and then said, "Let's get the fuck out of here. If they even get a smell of us or decide to check this place out."

We ran back down the hill, down the road, and off onto the track.

"They'd know the car," LuEllen said, looking back toward the hill as we got in it.

"They were a hundred yards away, and they're both heavy guys, and they had no reason to run. Even if they're going up the hill, they wouldn't be more than halfway yet," I said. I turned the car around, rolled it back to the road, and went out the opposite way.

We argued about the killings.

"We can't tell anybody," LuEllen said urgently. "I don't want to quit, but I don't want to get involved in any kind of murder investigation. That'd blow me, that'd blow you."

"We can't just sit on it," I argued. "They fuckin' murdered them."

"So we handle it ourselves," she said. "We did once before."

I thought about the two bodies and what would be the now-rusty guns piled in the unmarked grave in West Virginia. Yeah, by God, we had handled it before, and it made me sick to think about. Not that we could have done anything different.

"I gotta think," I said. "We can't just let it go."

"OK, but please, please, we don't tell Marvel or John what happened. We don't tell anybody. This is for us, man." She was looking up at me and it occurred to me how small she was. "An investigation would drag us out in the open."

"For us." I threw an arm around her head and tightened up in a wrestler's headlock. She wrapped her inside arm around my waist. Not your basic Gone With the Wind clinch, but it felt right.

"Bobby will talk to them, tell them he called us."

"So we tell them that we went out to Dessusdelit's house, saw no sign of Harold's car, so we just kept going," LuEllen suggested. "We looked around for a while, checked animal control, but there just wasn't anything to see."

"Jesus." I ran my hand through my hair. There was an impulse to go out on the bow, take off the lines, and head south. That was impossible now.

LuEllen looked at me closely. "Kidd, sometimes you have these. impulses. to do the right thing. You've got to keep them under control. There's not a goddamned thing we can do for Harold or that woman. Nothing that would be worth going to prison for."

"I'd better call Marvel."

"What for?"

I shrugged. "To start working both ends against the middle."

Marvel was frantic.

"I don't know," I kept saying. I suggested that she and her friends start hunting for Harold's car.

"You don't think he's hurt?"

"You know these people better than I do," I said, a sour taste in my mouth.

"All right. We'll get people out looking. Maybe I ought to go over to Dessusdelit's house, confront her-"

"No, no. Don't do that. If they have done something with Harold, you could be in trouble. Especially the way they've got the cops fixed. The best thing is, find him. Find his car. Figure out what happened. But don't do anything to derail the plan. If worse comes to worst, and something happened to him, it's more important than ever that we take the town."

It occurred to me that none of us was using the words killed, murdered, and dead. It was if something happened. if he's hurt.

The day dragged by. Marvel launched her search, while LuEllen processed her film and began printing.

"You want something to weep about, look at these," she said when she came out of the bathroom/darkroom. She was printing on RC paper to cut the wash time, and the prints were still soft and damp. She laid them out on the table like grotesque place mats.

The killings were graphically portrayed, as real as anything I'd seen from Vietnam, Beirut, or Salvador. She laid them out in sequence, from the time Hill and St. Thomas came out the door carrying Harold's body to the instant when the murder gun hit the river. If LuEllen had been a newspaper photographer, she'd have had a Pulitzer locked up.

"Christ, it could be out of the thirties; even the people look the same. Hill's got that haircut, those short-sleeve shirts."

You couldn't quite see the pores in Hill's face when he pulled the trigger on Sherrie, but close enough. If the photos ever got into court, they'd send the two men to the electric chair.

LuEllen slumped in a chair. "I'm feeling pretty bad for a cowgirl."

LuEllen had processed both the negatives and the prints wearing vinyl gloves, and I carefully avoided touching them, even when they were dry. Photo material is notorious for picking up and preserving fingerprints. When I was done looking at them, we sealed the prints inside a plastic garbage bag and taped them to the underside of a drawer.

Marvel called every hour or so. Finally she decided she had to see us. We'd meet at the Holiday Inn, at John's room, in an hour.

She and John were waiting when we arrived.

"Not a fuckin' thing," she said, pacing the room. "Can't even find his car. What do you think?"

"He wouldn't go off by himself?"

"No, of course not," Marvel said angrily.

"Then. I think. he may be dead."

She stopped, looked at John, and a tear ran down her face. "I think so, too," she said. "They couldn't just grab him and let him go later."

"No." I turned and looked at LuEllen, and her face was like a rock.

"Oh, God." Marvel sighed. She was standing close to John, and he slipped an arm around her waist and squeezed her.

Jesus, I thought, these people trust us.

With nothing more to say, we left Marvel to continue her search and made a pro forma stop in the bar. Bell, the city councilman, was sitting at a table with a pretty, freckled blonde. He raised a hand to us, and LuEllen waved, but we turned away, found a corner table, and ordered.

"What's next, boss?" LuEllen asked with a light overlay of sarcasm.

"Just keep cranking," I said. "But now we've got to put a little extra on Hill and St. Thomas. Dumping the machine isn't good enough anymore."

"I don't know," she said, now serious. "When I mess with you, things seem to turn violent. Before that time in West Virginia, I don't know if I'd ever seen a killed person."

"It's not us, not me-"

"You keep saying that."

"I've got to believe it," I said.

We talked for twenty minutes, through two drinks. Two is about as many as I can take before my lips start going numb. We paid, and LuEllen waved again at Bell. Bell nodded back, tipped up his glass, finishing a drink, and dug in his pocket for cash.

We were halfway across the parking lot when two car doors slammed with the kind of aggressive impact that makes you look around. Duane Hill was there, drunk, with St. Thomas on the other side. They each had a longneck beer.

"Hey, artist fuckhead," Hill yelled, wandering toward us.

"Keep walking," LuEllen said.

But I had the two drinks in me and, instead of walking, slowed down and stopped. Hill swaggered across the parking lot from his van, St. Thomas a step or two behind him. Two guys in broad-rimmed hats and cowboy boots had been sitting on the hood of a pickup down the lot. Now they hopped down and sidled over to watch.

"Where's that old bitch Trent? You trade her in on some younger cunt?" Hill asked.

"Fuck you, asshole," LuEllen said in a tone of pure ice. For a second Hill stopped, nonplussed. He was a brawler, tuned to danger, and he heard it in LuEllen's voice. He didn't know quite how to take it.

"Gonna let the pussy do your talking?" he said after a minute, trying to recover. He was about fifteen feet away. He half turned to the two onlookers, to catch their reaction to this witticism.

I gave him my best southern smile and got my right foot planted, slightly splayed to the right. The most dangerous man in a fight is the one who likes it the most. Watching him, I decided he'd be a grappler; he'd come storming in and try to throw me, rather than punch.

"I do hang around with nice-looking women," I said. "Mrs. Trent said you mostly hang around with some guy named Arnie."

The words hung in the air for a moment; then I leaned a little to the left, peering around him at St. Thomas, and shook my head. "Can't say I like your taste, Duane. He ain't got that much of an ass on him."

One of the cowboys let out a happy "Whoa," while Hill bellowed something unintelligible, dropped his beer, and charged, his head down, his hands out, and his legs churning. I was ready, my right foot grounded, and I whip-kicked him with my left foot, catching him on the side of the face. He went bellydown on the parking lot, landing on the blacktop like a racing driver. The fury climbed on top of me, the image of the killings, and I punted him once in the ribs, and again, as he rolled away, then pivoted toward St. Thomas. St. Thomas was an older guy, out of his fighting days. He wasn't moving, but Hill was trying to get up.

"What's going on here?" We all turned, and Bell was striding across the parking lot.

"Your town thug decided to beat me up," I said as Hill got slowly back to his feet. His nose and upper lip were bleeding heavily, the blood glistening on his teeth and dripping down his chin. He wanted to come for me again, but his ribs were holding him back. Every time he moved, the pain flared in his eyes; I'd give odds that I'd cracked a couple of his ribs.

"What about that, Duane?" Bell demanded.

One of the cowboys, with the insouciant lack of fear that seems to mark the breed, cleared his throat. "Duane sure started it," he said cheerfully. "Called the young lady there a real bad name."

Bell looked us over again and then nodded. "Y'all go home and sober up," he said. "Fightin' in a parking lot doesn't do credit to anyone. And Duane, I'll see you at City Hall tomorrow, ten o'clock sharp. Now git."

Hill, snarling, turned away, still favoring his ribs. Bell watched him go, then nodded at LuEllen, gave me a measured look, and headed toward his car, where the blonde waited with folded arms.

"Goddamn, this country is goin' to hell in a handbasket," one of the cowboys said, taking a hit from his beer bottle. He looked me up and down, taking in my artist's getup and beard. "Somebody's gone and taught the fuckin' hippies how to fight."