Jeff Abbott - A Kiss Gone Bad

Duplessis gaped. Whit explained. At the mention of Marcy Ballew’s name Duplessis grew gray-pale. A return to the main office of the nursing home showed Kathy Breaux was gone. Duplessis paged her over the intercom.

‘What can you tell us about John Taylor?’ Whit asked.

Duplessis shook his head as he dug through a file. ‘Not much. He’s our youngest patient by far. He’s supposed to be transferred today. We just received a call this morning.’

Transferred. Someone wanted the evidence whisked away, dumped in a fresh bed. ‘How is his care paid for?’ Whit asked.

‘A trust fund pays for what the government don’t.’ Duplessis pulled a thick file with TAYLOR, JOHN on the tab.

‘Who administers this trust?’

‘A woman named Laura Taylor. From Texas. Austin, I believe.’

Faith worked out of Austin as Lucinda’s chief of staff. ‘Does she ever visit?’

‘Rarely. She was here, oh, a couple of weeks ago.’

‘What does she look like?’

Duplessis shrugged. ‘Big old girl type. Early forties, tall, heavyset, pretty hazel eyes. No nonsense.’

Pretty hazel eyes. Faith.

Whit flipped through the file. John Taylor, thirty-two years old, born in San Antonio, Texas, suffered severe head injuries in a car crash sixteen years ago and vegetative since the accident. He had been moved to Deshay six years ago from a home in Texarkana, where he had spent the past ten years. At the back of the file were the transfer papers from Texarkana, the signature at the bottom a loopy scrawl with the name typed beneath: Buddy Beere.

‘Oh, no,’ Whit said. ‘Oh, no.’ He reached for the phone.

David knocked on the door again. Claudia stood at the porch’s end, watching the oaken limbs sway in the wind.

Yeah, stay out of the way, because you’re not even an officer anymore, just a tagalong. Give David a peck, send him on his way, get on your own feet, find yourself a job. Maybe out of Port Leo.

‘Mr Beere?’ David called through the shut door. ‘Sheriff’s department, open up, please.’ He gave Claudia a half smile, warm, just happy she was there. She half smiled back.

They had driven out to Buddy Beere’s address in David’s cruiser, outside the Port Leo city limits, cutting through a grove of bent live oaks, and driven into a small clearing, studded with a few laurel oaks and a tidy cabin. A van was parked next to the cabin. Beside it was a shanty garage, tilting slightly with age. The cabin faced away from the road, faced away from the direction of town and bay, as though the little house had turned its back on the world.

‘Anyone home?’ David called. ‘Mr Beere?’

They heard movement inside then, a scuffling sound, someone hurrying across a wood floor. Locks unlatched slowly – six of them – and the door creaked open an inch. A brown eye – oddly reddened and squinting – peered out at them.

‘Mr Beere?’ David said.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m Deputy Power with the Encina County Sheriff’s Department. This is Claudia Salazar, you spoke with her on the phone yesterday.’ Claudia nodded, not drawing closer. She wasn’t here in any official capacity and didn’t want to give the wrong impression to Buddy that she was still an investigator. One hint of that and Delford, in his current mania, would press charges against her.

The eye blinked. ‘Hello. Yes. Sorry it took me a while to reach the door, I was in the bathroom.’

‘Not out campaigning today?’ Claudia asked in a little too-bright tone from her end of the porch.

‘Oh, no, not today,’ Buddy said.

‘Over your cold yet?’ Claudia asked.

‘Mostly. Thank you.’ The door did not open any farther. ‘I don’t want to give my cold to y’all.’

David cleared his throat. ‘We don’t mind. Your boss is helping us with some inquiries. We’re reviewing when certain patients were transferred into your nursing home.’

Buddy opened the door a little wider, and over David’s shoulder Claudia could see his whole face now, round, soft, some slight scarring from old acne, a puzzled look. He wore surgical scrub pants, the kind she’d seen at the nursing home, a thick T-shirt. He slid his hand up along the locks set into the door.

‘Transfers? Gosh, all those records would be at Placid Harbor.’ He opened the door a little more. He was stronger than he looked, stocky, arms and chest thicker than she would have guessed from the hunched way he bore himself about town.

‘Okay, Mr Beere, would you mind stepping outside here for a moment?’ David asked. ‘So we can talk?’

‘Sure. Let me get my sandals. There’s splinters on that porch,’ Buddy Beere said, reaching by the door. ‘Just a second-’

David turned and took four steps toward Claudia, shrugging, a question forming on his lips: ‘You wanna ask…’ and then a blast of thunder exploded from the door. David fell, blood and flesh flying from his shoulder. Buddy Beere stepped entirely out of the door, bringing the shotgun around and up. Claudia threw herself off the porch as the barrel roared again and little meteors screamed past her, heat cutting near her throat, her hair.

She had no weapon. She scrabbled to her feet and ran for David’s cruiser. Another blast and the cruiser’s windshield dissolved into pixie dust. She was a clear shot in his sights. She swerved left hard, running low, putting the corner of the shanty garage between her and him.

Another blast, into the cruiser’s hood. He was laughing. No, giggling.

Mother of God, he’s killed David.

Claudia hunkered down by a corner of the weathered garage, trying to guess which approach he might take. There was a rifle and radio in David’s cruiser, but it was twenty feet away and she imagined Buddy Beere, the gun steady in his hands, watching for her to stick her head out as a sweet target.

The garage might offer a weapon, but once she went in, she would be pinned. The doors were antique, opening in the middle like a horse’s stall. Unlocked and slightly agape. Running across Buddy’s acreage offered little in the way of cover, beyond the motte of live oaks situated on the wrong side of the garage. To the other side seacoast bluestems grew thick but only thigh-high. Not enough. He could take a leisurely bead on her head and fire at will.

She heard the kick of his feet coming along the side of the garage, between her and the police cruiser. She made her choice.

She slipped inside the garage. It was neatly kept, small windows offering a hint of light. Tools were aligned along the back wall, a broom, a set of fishing tackle, an old sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle parked on the right side, cramped in the space. A trailer, carrying a small fishing skiff, was next to the Beetle. She hurried to the back of the garage, squeezing between car and boat. Her eyes ranged along the back wall of the garage: screwdrivers, wrenches, a pair of wicked-looking gardening shears.

‘Claudia?’ she heard Buddy’s voice ask. He said it Clau-di-a, the honeyed singsong a child might use in playing hide-and-seek, hoping to lure a playmate into the open. She grabbed the gardening shears and hunkered down behind the skiff; it offered the most immediate cover. But it gave her the least room to run or fight. She crouched, the shears heavy in her hands.

Shot pummeled through the doors, just in case she’d been hiding there. Sunlight glowed through the frail, splintered wood. Silence followed, and she saw one of the doors creak open.

‘You know,’ Buddy said, almost conversationally to the empty air, ‘John Wayne Gacy invited the surveillance cops to breakfast at his house. That’s when they noticed the funny smell and found a basement full of dead boys. I always thought he should have killed the cops – how stupid just to cave. Dennis Nilsen pointed to where the chopped-up remains of his darlings were when the police came knocking. He should have at least killed those cops, gone out with a bang.’