Jeff Abbott - A Kiss Gone Bad

Claudia frowned. ‘Can you sit it out so he doesn’t suspect and let us get a search warrant?’

Rachel nodded. ‘If you think it will help.’ She got out of the car. ‘But hurry. And you got to get me out of here when you get back.’

‘We will, I promise,’ Claudia said. ‘I promise.’

David backed out onto the road, floored the accelerator, and peeled down the road toward the highway. ‘Jesus, Claudia. Jesus, this is huge!’ he roared. ‘Holy hell!’

Claudia thought: Oh, no way was Pete gonna kill himself with that girl stuck at the camp. No way now Whit can rule for suicide.

Lying on the bunk in the thin morning light, Whit opened the file of clippings Patsy Duchamp had given him yesterday. He heard Gooch clopping about on the deck. They had already scarfed a quick breakfast of yesterday’s doughnuts and were chugging back to shore, where Whit would begin his great judicial charade and try not to get himself or anyone else killed.

A note from Patsy was stuck on the thick file of clips: Whit, sorry if it’s overkill, but the lady who did this is a retired military librarian, and let’s just say she is a COMPLETIST. Hope this is helpful. You owe me a pitcher of Shiner Bock. Patsy.

Completist was right. The woman had found practically every mention of Corey Hubble. Whit skipped the first clippings, looking for the ones specifically related to Corey’s disappearance.

The first articles were entirely straightforward, except for the inherent lurid appeal of headlines like SENATOR’S SON MISSING or HUBBLE SUSPECTED RUNAWAY, and it was the same information Claudia had shared with him from the police report. The tone of the quotes – most of which were from Delford and only a couple from Lucinda – went from fear of Corey being a victim of foul play to a seeming certainty that he had run away. No indication Pete, or anyone else, was suspected of killing Corey. The story garnered fewer inches as time passed. No new developments emerged.

He set the clippings from, during, and after Corey’s disappearance aside and went back through the rest. One was Lucinda’s husband’s obituary, with Corey simply listed as a survivor. Many were articles about Lucinda’s original campaign for the Texas Senate, picturing her stumping for votes with her two sons. Pete beamed, happy and proud; Corey wore the smile his mother told him to.

In a photo showing his mother on election night, when she narrowly won, Corey smiled in stunned amazement, as though victory was an unexpected pleasure. A few more clippings offered coverage of legislation Lucinda Hubble sponsored. He had stopped to read one article, dated a month before Corey’s disappearance, about Lucinda’s fiery stand on nursing home reform when his gaze drifted to a picture on the far side of the page.

It was a common photo for the Port Leo Mariner: proud fisherman hoisting aloft a sizable catch. The paper actively courted show-offs to promote Port Leo as an angler’s paradise. Four goofily grinning teenagers held high a trio of big bullet-shaped fish. The caption read: Tight Lines for Teens – Corey Hubble and friends caught a trio of beautiful red boogers, 22", 25", and 26", while out on St Leo Bay on Nov 22. Not pictured are the many biggies that got away. The kids used dead shrimp. Pictured (l to r): Corey Hubble and Marian Duchamp of Port Leo, Thomas Deloache Jr and Eddie Gardner of Houston.

Whit stared at the photo. He tucked the clippings back into the envelope. Then he went up on the deck to help Gooch dock at the Golden Gulf Marina.

After Gooch gave him sound advice on how to avoid assassination throughout the day (‘watch your ass something constant and scream fire if attacked’), Whit headed for his car. The T-head – and the docked boats – smelled of sharp diesel fuel, brewing coffee, and the sugary-piss tang of spilled white Zinfandel. He watched terns arcing over the gently rocking boats, scouring for generous breakfast scraps. His cell phone chirped. ‘Whit Mosley here.’

‘Hi. My name is Kevin McKinnon. You had sent me an E-mail about Pete Hubble?’ A low baritone, calm, an accountant’s voice.

Kevin, creator of the on-line Temple of Appreciation Web site, dedicated to Pete.

‘Yes, Kevin, hello, thank you for calling back.’

‘Yeah, well, what did you want?’

No point in hemming and hawing. ‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Pete has passed away.’

Silence. ‘You’re not funny.’

‘I’m afraid I’m quite serious. I’m the justice of the peace here in Port Leo, Texas, Pete’s hometown. He died Monday night. I’m supervising the inquest into his death.’

More silence. ‘Oh, Jesus, oh, God.’ The pain in his voice, the raw loss, stopped Whit.

Whit waited a moment, letting the man regain composure. ‘I saw a posting on your site that you had talked with him this week.’

‘Yes. How did he die?’

Whit told him briefly, without mentioning the suicide note. Kevin’s low baritone became a breathy, agonized mewl. ‘If this is a joke, it’s in really bad taste.’

Under other circumstances an amateur pornographer chiding him on taste might have been good for a laugh over drinks with Georgie and Gooch. Deep grief colored Kevin’s voice, sounding as true as the grief of the Hubbles.

‘I’m so terribly sorry. But it would be helpful if you could tell me what you talked about.’

‘I want some confirmation of this, mister. You fax me a death certificate.’

‘How about if you call me at my office at the Encina County courthouse? I’ll give you the switchboard number, you can talk to the operator and know you’re really talking to a judge.’

The offer disarmed him. ‘Oh, shit. This is real?’

‘You talked to him in the hours before he died. Did he sound suicidal?’

‘Hardly. He sounded elated. He’d gotten the funding for his movie. His regular movie.’

‘Did he mention where this money was coming from?’

‘No. I guess he couldn’t get the producers who regularly funded his porn work to back this movie. He said he needed a half million and he’d gotten it.’

Whit kept his voice under control. ‘He had landed a half-million dollars?’

Kevin coughed. ‘Why would he kill himself if he had gotten the money? That makes no sense.’

‘He didn’t mention who his investor was?’

‘I’m sure. I can’t believe he’s gone.’

Whit wondered: What was Pete to you, for God’s sakes, a picture on a computer? Or more?

‘Forgive me, Kevin, but can you tell me what your relationship was with Pete?’

‘Just a friend. Yeah, I dug his movies, I dug watching him, he was hotter than hell, man. But he was straight as an arrow. There was nothing between us. He liked that I had done a Web site about him. He was cool, thought it helped sell more videos for him, and it didn’t cost him a cent.’

‘Did he ever mention his brother Corey to you?’ Whit remembered that the one Internet search he’d done on Corey Hubble pointed him toward Kevin’s site, oddly enough.

‘Yeah, he told me the whole sad story once. I posted a page about his brother on the site a few months ago, you know, thinking to help. A picture of Corey, details about when he vanished, a number you could call if you had information. Pete’s answering service.’

‘Did he ever mention any of these names to you: Junior Deloache? Or Eddie Gardner? Or Jabez Jones?’

‘No. Sorry,’ Kevin said. ‘Jesus, now I got to write an obituary. Where the hell do I start?’

‘Kevin, thanks. If there’s anything else you remember…’

‘Yeah, wait. The money. He joked about it. I figured his financier had just given him a check, but he joked about how heavy the bag was. Maybe he got the money in cash.’