Beverly Connor - The Night Killer

Garnett and Agent Mathews snickered. Diane shook her head. Frank and Ben just smiled again.

“We’re prepared to believe that,” said Ben. “But we still need to know where they are,” he said.

“Can I talk to Tammy?” he asked.

“Not right now,” said Frank.

“Is she all right?” he said.

“She’s fine,” said Frank. “But this isn’t the most pleasant place to be. You know that.”

“You need to come clean,” said Ben. “It will be better for you and for Tammy. If you didn’t kill anyone, then there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“We didn’t kill nobody,” he said, then closed his mouth.

“Maybe you let them die,” urged Ben.

“How do you let somebody die? People don’t need my permission,” he said. “You get old, you die.” He brushed his hair from his face and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Am I going to have to get me a lawyer for you to let me go take a leak?” he said.

“Just a couple more questions,” said Ben. “Why did you chase Dr. Fallon?”

“I thought she might be hurt,” he said.

“Slick,” said Frank, “we are past that explanation. We know she saw the skeleton on her car. Even the sheriff admitted there were bones in the tree. Now. . why did you chase her? What were you going to do?”

Slick’s dark eyes darted back and forth. “I wasn’t going to hurt her. Just make her forget.”

“Make her forget?” asked Frank. “How?”

“Nothing bad. Just give her some medicine to make her forget,” he said. “Then take her to the hospital and say she wrecked. Which she did.”

“Medicine like Rohypnol, roofies?” said Frank.

“Maybe,” he said. “It don’t hurt you. Just makes you forget,” he said. “That’s all we wanted-for her to forget she saw the skeleton.” He stopped and looked at each of them. “You see,” he added, “we didn’t want to get blamed for it. We didn’t know how it got in the tree.”

“Just one more question,” said Frank. “Tell us about the fight with Roy Barre over your land.”

Slick held up his hands, palms forward, and pushed the air in front of him.

“Whoa, now. You ain’t gonna mix me up in that. No way. I ain’t got nothing to do with what happened to the Barres or the Watsons.”

“Who do you think did it?” asked Frank.

“Been some talk about some crazy person running around in the woods. Maybe that woman-she was acting kind of crazy.”

Garnett looked over and smiled at Diane.

“You mean running away from someone who was going to drug her?” said Frank. “That kind of crazy?”

“She didn’t know I was gonna drug her. She didn’t know what I was gonna do,” said Slick.

“Exactly,” said Frank.

Slick looked confused.

“Just tell us about your disagreement with Barre,” said Frank. “What was that about?”

“It was mostly between Daddy and Roy. Roy’s land joins mine-what used to be Daddy’s before he died. The property line between us is a creek, which is dumb, if you ask me, ’cause creeks change. Hargus Creek has always been the property line. But there’s two creeks running side by side with about fifty acres between them. Roy said Hargus Creek is the one nearest us. That give him the fifty acres. Daddy said no, Hargus is the one closest to the Barres-which give the fifty acres to us. See? That was the feud-or, at least, part of it. They argued over it for years.

“Daddy needed some money, so he cut the timber on the fifty acres, and Roy caught him at it. There’s some law that says if you cut timber on somebody else’s land you gotta pay three times what you can get out of it. Well, if Daddy had three times what he could of got for the timber, he wouldn’t of needed to cut it.”

Slick brushed some of his stringy blond hair out of his eyes.

“Anyways, it got mixed up in court. Daddy always told me to stay out of court, ’cause it ain’t never fair, it costs a fortune, and the damn lawyers end up with all the money. Well, there Daddy was in court having to pay a lawyer to tell him he was wrong to cut the trees and he’d have to pay up. Weren’t fair. Fifty acres was nothing to Roy. He had thousands. We only had a couple hundred, on account of my granddaddy sold most of it off to the paper company years ago when the land belonged to him. And Roy was only winning ’cause he found some map that showed Hargus Creek where he claimed it was.”

“Did your father pay up?” asked Ben.

“With what? You can’t get blood out of a turnip. Daddy accused Roy of making the map up hisself. Then Daddy died and Roy tried to collect from me. Something about the debt being part of Daddy’s estate. Like I was going to have that kind of money, and like Daddy had an estate anyway.”

“Were you still having the feud with him when he was killed?” asked Frank.

“You thinking maybe I killed him? I was thinking about giving him some of that stuff that makes you forget, but Tammy said it don’t work that way,” he said.

“Incredible,” muttered Agent Mathews.

“I was out with my dogs looking for that woman when the Barres was getting killed,” said Slick.

“Can the dogs verify that?” asked Ben.

Slick looked at Ben, squinting his eyes. “Well, no, but I didn’t kill the Barres,” he said. “The sheriff ain’t been out asking me about it. Only the deputy, one time when he come over with that woman.”

That woman , thought Diane. She needed to have a T-shirt with That Woman written on it.

“If the sheriff don’t think I did it, then I guess I didn’t,” Slick said. “Look, I really need to go to the bathroom. And I’m not going to talk any more. I want a lawyer and I want to go to the bathroom.”

“Just one more thing,” said Frank.

“You been saying that. My bladder’s about to bust, man,” Slick said.

“How are things with your debt to Roy Barre?” asked Frank.

“Well, I reckon I owe his kids now, so I ain’t any better off. Now I’m getting up and going to take a piss.”

He stood up. Frank and Ben stood up with him.

“Damn it,” Slick said, and before they could do anything, he had his fly open and was peeing on the wall in the corner of the interview room.

Diane put her head in her hands.

After watching the interviews, Diane drove back to the museum, hoping there would be something dramatic going on so she could get the image of Slick urinating on the interview room wall out of her head.

However, they had been fruitful interviews. Ben and Frank had gotten Tammy and Slick to admit quite a lot-more than Slick and Tammy probably realized. Frank had asked about the Barres. That was something he didn’t have to do, and it pleased her that he had.

Diane pulled into her parking place and surveyed the lot as she exited the vehicle. There was only one tour bus and much of the lot was empty. Not completely unusual at this time of day, but she preferred to see a full lot.

She walked to the administrative wing and into Andie’s office, making a dead stop in the doorway. She was hit in the face immediately, both visually and aromatically. Andie’s office was filled with bouquets of red roses, violets, and daisies.

“I guess he wasn’t taking any chances,” Diane said, looking at all the flowers.

Andie was sitting at her desk working on the computer. She grinned at Diane. “So far he’s doing pretty well with the groveling,” she said.

“Certainly very lovely in here,” said Diane. “And it smells so nice.”

“You want to take some back to your office?” asked Andie.

“No, I think you should keep them up here. Looks very dramatic. How are you feeling?”

“Better. Not because of the flowers. I just got my head together. Chocolate does that for me. Also talking things over with you. Thanks,” she said.