Jeff Abbott - Black Joint Point

Smash the glass in the frames, cut the ropes? They’d hear her, and she wouldn’t have time to free herself.

If she could ease out the porthole – no guarantee she’d fit – she could wriggle onto the swim platform. And then what? More than seventy-five miles out at sea, no way to call for help, roasting in the sun until they found her. Or she fell off and drowned. Bound foot and hand as she was, she could hardly wriggle up and across the main deck without them hearing her. Maybe she could ease into the water and slice her ropes on the propellers. Yeah, just like a movie action hero. One flick of the propeller switch and she’d shred like cabbage, assuming she didn’t drown first. She remembered the silky sharks, plowing through the yellowfin school. She might be too big for the silkies but sharks didn’t measure their meals. They just ate. They would still take her, make her a five-course meal, a leisurely limb at a time.

She listened. In the quiet roll of the waters she heard them threatening Ben, shoving him into a chair, Ben protesting. She lay very still, breathing through her mouth.

She heard a phone ring. Ring. Click on. ‘Good afternoon, this is Stoney Vaughn.’

‘Good afternoon, Stoney.’ Danny’s voice was creamy as butter. ‘This is your friend Danny, from New Orleans.’

A pause, then Stoney, annoyed, ‘I told you to quit calling me, you fucking nut.’

‘We’ve got your brother and his girlfriend.’

Silence.

‘You weren’t on your little boat today. Were you too busy killing people, stealing, ruining lives?’

‘Stoney,’ Ben said. ‘He says you took something of theirs?’

Silence again. ‘They’re lying. Is this some sort of sick joke?’

‘The Devil’s Eye, Stoney. Give it to me – along with the journal you stole and a big freaking wad of cash, just to make up for all the grief you’ve caused me – and we’ll be even. And I’ll let Ben and his friend go.’

Then Stoney’s voice, not much more than a whisper, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about…’

Claudia struggled to a kneeling position, fumbled for the handle, started cranking open the porthole. See if you can slide through the porthole. Get up to the deck. Radio for help. Now, while they’re occupied.

Slowly, the pane of glass began to rise.

‘So you haven’t seen Jimmy since Monday?’ David Power asked Linda Bird. He didn’t like to sit during questionings; he liked to stand. Pace around the room a little like a lawyer. Because the interviewee was always nervous talking to the police, guaranteed nervous, even if they were as pure and innocent as a half dozen saints, and him standing made them a little smaller. That was the goal, make them feel small and they’d crack. The Encina County sheriff, Randy Hollis, sat across from Linda Bird, doodling interlocking circles on a legal pad.

Jimmy Bird’s wife looked up at David. Her hair was cut in a style last fashionable ten years ago, frazzled from home dye jobs. A small patch of acne scars, badly camouflaged with makeup, dimpled her cheeks. ‘Yes. I told you that already.’

She wasn’t feeling small enough yet. He crossed his arms. ‘No need to get upset, if you don’t got anything to hide, Linda.’

‘You either believe me or you don’t,’ Linda Bird said. ‘If he’s gonna keep asking me the same things again and again, like a fucking parrot, I’m getting me a lawyer, because then he’s just trying to trick me.’ She glared over at Sheriff Hollis.

‘I’ll call you a lawyer right now, Mrs Bird,’ Sheriff Hollis said. He had a low, pleasant voice, the kind that made for good radio. ‘But no one is accusing you of anything except being Jimmy’s wife, and we just want to know where he might have gone to.’

‘Jimmy mention any places he might like to go? Where’s he got family?’ David asked.

‘All his family’s either in the cemetery or Tivoli, and none of ’em like him.’

‘Names of his family in Tivoli?’

She gave them, an aunt and two male cousins.

‘Patch fired Jimmy, what, a year ago?’

‘Right before Labor Day.’

‘Why?’

‘Jimmy got mad that Patch wanted him to work on a Saturday and called him a motherfucker under his voice. Patch heard him and fired him on the spot. Jimmy begged him for another chance, but Patch said he’d crossed a line and he wasn’t getting even a toe back over it.’ Linda Bird lit a cigarette without asking permission; David glanced at Sheriff Hollis, who let it slide.

‘Did Jimmy hold a grudge?’

‘He really wanted that job back – Patch was a good man, easy to work for most of the time, and doing odd jobs for him wasn’t too much hard work – but Jimmy’s pride got the best of him. He talked about screwing Patch over.’

‘How?’

‘Flattening a tire, sugaring his tank. Kid stuff.’ She tapped ashes into a coffee cup. ‘He sure as hell didn’t mention murder. Jimmy don’t even like to spank our four-year-old. I’ve never been afraid of him and if he could go off and kill two people just like that’ – here she snapped her fingers – ‘Then I don’t know him. And if he’s gone dangerous, I want police protection for me and my little girl.’

A patrol officer stuck his head into the interrogation room. ‘David? Your other appointment’s here.’ David nodded and the dispatcher shut the door.

‘You got a suspect?’ Linda asked.

‘It’s on another case,’ David said.

‘Aren’t you the busy bee?’

‘How’s the marriage?’ Sheriff Hollis set down his pen.

A pause. ‘I filed for divorce last week. He knew it was coming.’

‘So he might have reason to leave town.’

‘He might. Although he’d hate to leave our girl, Britni. He does love her – I give him that, even if he don’t got the sense God gave a goose.’

‘Why’d you file?’ David asked.

‘Irreconcilable boredom.’

Randy Hollis leaned forward. ‘If Jimmy calls you, Linda, what do you do?’

‘Tell him to stay the hell away. If he’s innocent in this, then he should come forward. If he’s guilty, give up. For Britni’s sake. Is this all?’

‘Judge Mosley’s conducting an inquest. He may call you for a statement.’

‘He’s okay,’ she said with a contemptuous glance at David. ‘A judge’s robe ain’t the same as a uniform, doesn’t make a man turn mean.’

David felt his temper rise. ‘You be clear on this, Linda. Your husband calls you, you don’t offer him any help. You don’t want to be an accessory. I don’t want to be charging you. Putting your little girl through that grief.’

‘Try it without proof,’ she said. ‘This ain’t Red China.’

She wasn’t going to get small, David saw, so he asked Linda Bird a few more questions he already knew the answers to and dismissed her. She left and David had his hand on the door when Sheriff Hollis said, ‘David. About Lucy Gilbert.’

‘What?’

‘Are you just taking another statement or questioning her as a suspect?’ Asked like he didn’t know the answer, and David could tell he did.

‘Questioning her.’

‘Why?’

‘She and Suzanne Gilbert are Patch Gilbert’s only relatives. They stand to benefit from his death.’

‘That aside, what you got on her?’

‘She runs a disreputable business.’

‘You talking about that psychic hotline thing?’ Hollis said. ‘How’s that disreputable? My mother calls it, says the girls on the phones are real nice and insightful.’

‘You like your mother pissing away her Social Security on phone psychics?’

‘She can piss her money how she pleases. I heard Lucy Gilbert’s dating Whit Mosley.’

‘So?’

‘His Honor’s not a big friend of yours, is he?’ Hollis capped his pen, gave David an unexpected frown.