Joe Lansdale - Leather Maiden

I let go of the wheel and shifted in my seat. Through the windshield I could see a red bird bouncing about in a tree. The way the light was falling over it, the bird looked as if it were turning dark, transforming into a totally different kind of bird.

“I got to ask you something, Jimmy, and you got to be straight with me. Not even an inch of the bullshit.”

“Shoot.”

“I don’t want to ask this, but I got to. You didn’t…You don’t know what happened to Caroline, do you?”

“You mean did I kill her? Jesus, man. You know me better than that. No, of course not. Are you crazy?”

“I had to ask. I been around enough to know shit can happen.”

“No. A hundred times no. How can you ask me that?”

“Okay. It’s asked. It’s done. Do you have any idea what happened to her?”

He shook his head. “We were supposed to meet that night. Out near the Siegel house, at the old abandoned train station. She was doing a paper on the history of the house. About the sisters, you know? She thought she could get something good she could write about for class, modify later, maybe sell somewhere. She was the kind of person that thought ahead. A very clockwork kind of mind. When you assigned reading she could tell you verbatim what the author of the book said. She was a little less good at presenting her own opinion.”

“But the two of you weren’t meeting out there to discuss her article, were you?”

“No. At least I don’t think so. I went out there and found her car and she wasn’t there. She had picked up some food for the two of us. Taco Bell or some hamburger joint. I don’t remember.”

“Seems like a bad place for a sexual rendezvous.”

“We were going to talk. I hoped it would become sexual after a while, as usual. But she said she had something she wanted to tell me. When I got there she was gone. I looked all over for her, even drove up behind the Siegel house, got out and looked around. I couldn’t find her. Got afraid that if I called anyone on my cell they’d know we were more than student and teacher. I had some idea if I did call, and she turned up, me and her could make a story about her doing a paper on the house, and she asked me to come out and see it, as a teacher, of course. But that seemed too risky, not likely to be believed. So I left. I didn’t think anything had happened to her at first. It was curious. And I was a little worried. But it’s hard to think something like that might really happen to someone you know. I panicked. I drove around a bit. I came back, and she still wasn’t there. Then I got afraid. I still didn’t want to use my cell, but I decided I had to call, so I stopped at a phone booth, called the cops, said there was a car parked where it wasn’t supposed to be and that it had been there for a while. Nothing else. I went home. The cops went out, and next day I learned she was really missing.”

“And you never said a word?”

Jimmy shook his head. “No. I took the coward’s way out. I hoped she would turn up, of course. But by then I had come to realize what a fool I’d been. Told myself, she turned up, that was okay, but I was going to break it off. I didn’t want to ruin my life. As time went on, I thought I was safe. I figured something horrible had happened to Caroline, but that it wouldn’t help any for me to let on that we had been having an affair. All that could do was hurt me. In my marriage, which was starting to work again, and in my career, which was going very well. And it’s not like I had anything to do with her disappearance.”

“Do you have any idea, any kind of idea, what might have happened to her?”

“You asked that.”

“And I’m asking again. Think.”

Jimmy gave it some thought, shook his head. “No. The next day I went over to her apartment. I had a key. I used gloves, so as not to leave any fingerprints. I went over to see if she was there. This was before I learned later that day that she was considered to be missing. She wasn’t there, of course. The place was a mess. It had been tossed. I thought it was the police. But I don’t know for sure. Nothing was mentioned in the paper about her apartment being tossed.”

“That could be bad reporting,” I said, “or it could be something the police didn’t mention. Maybe on purpose. Did anyone see you there?”

“I was careful. I don’t think so.”

“Could you tell if anything was missing?”

“No. But a lot could have been missing and I wouldn’t have known it. Stuff was spread all over the place.”

“I presume by now everything in it has been taken out.”

“Sure. It’s rented. Don’t think I haven’t driven by there, maybe thinking she was gonna show. I don’t know.”

“What happened to her stuff?”

“I don’t know. Not really.”

“She had a friend, Ronnie. Did you know about her?”

“Just that they had lived together for a while, and then Caroline decided she wanted her own apartment.”

“What then?”

“I went home. Got rid of her number. Anything I had written down that had to do with her. I kept thinking she’d show up. But days rolled into weeks, into months. I was sorry for her. But I was beginning to think I was home free. Then you mentioned her the other night. And then you wrote the article. And now the DVD arrives. You stirred up the shit, Cason. Whoever sent us the DVDs must be the killer, or know who the killer is.”

I sat gripping the steering wheel for a moment, just to have something to hang on to. I said, “For now just be quiet about your relationship with Caroline. But I got to tell you, Jimmy, there may come a time when you have to tell the truth, let the chips fall as they may. All this time, all this water under the bridge, that DVD, it makes you look bad, man.”

“Hell, I know that.”

“Do you still have the DVD?”

“I’ve got it hid.”

“Do one better than that. Destroy it. We don’t know who else has a copy. Let’s not help things out by leaving another one lying around. Trixie might come across it.”

“If the cops find out I had it, won’t that be destroying evidence?”

“Let’s hope they don’t find out. I’ll hang on to my copy for a while in case that comes up.”

“All right, I’ll get rid of it.”

“I want you to go home and give some thought to the things you’ve already answered. Something that may have seemed unimportant at the time. Remember something, let me know. In the meantime, I guess you wait for the blackmailer. Did the DVD come by mail?”

“No. It was in a package, stuck in my mailbox at work.”

“Then it wasn’t stamped?”

“No. We can get stamped mail there, but this wasn’t stamped.”

“Mine either,” I said. “It was waiting for me at the newspaper office. Can anyone walk into the history department?”

“It’s easy. You did it today. All you have to do is ride the elevator up. So many people come in and out it could have been dropped off at any time. Could have been put in with the mail batch, then delivered by someone in the office. The office secretary is the one who does that.”

“Did she know Caroline?”

“She’s new. About fifty. Has three kids and a husband and shows us pictures of them and a little brown dog. I can assure you, she’s not involved with a months-old disappearance.”

I started up the car and drove out of the rest stop, headed back toward town. As I arrived at the university, Jimmy said, “Thanks, Cason.”

“I’ll do the best I can, Jimmy. But I’m going to add this: I told you to destroy the DVD. But you might want to just go on and tell the police, give it to them. There’s a good chance it’ll all come out anyway. Blackmailing starts, there’s no guarantee it’ll stop, even if you pay the money.”