A Kiss Gone Bad (31 page)

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.’

Kneeling, breathing through an open mouth, she saw his feet paddle past the other side of the Beetle. ‘Come out now,’ he called.
‘I don’t want to shoot up my nice car and boat, and I’ll make it quick.’

She didn’t move.

‘That other cop, he’s messy but still breathing. Come out or maybe I go back up there and make sure he stops.’

She didn’t move. He began to walk toward the back wall. A few more steps and he would be able to spot her. She braced herself.

As he turned, the barrel swiveling toward the ground,
she launched herself up, slamming her forearm against the blued bottom of the shotgun’s barrel. It swept right, exploding,
cannonading into the garage wall. She pistoned her legs, driving Buddy hard into the side wall of the garage. She dropped
the shears, both hands grabbing hold of the shotgun, trying to wrest it away.

He slammed the shotgun barrel against her head, hard, twice, stars and sharp pain blurring her vision. Shoving up with her
arms, she got the gun above her head and powered her knee square into his gut.

He squirmed back, gasping, still holding the gun, and she kicked, hammering him in the mouth. Teeth broke and lips opened
under her boot’s heel. Buddy staggered back, blood bursting from his torn mouth. She pulled hard on the shotgun. It discharged
once more in the air, deafening in the small space of the garage.

With a scream he yanked the weapon free from her grasp and swung it at her head. She fell to her knees, ducking, taking the
blow on her shoulder. He pulled the gun back to its firing stance, squeezed.

Nothing.

Empty, jammed,
she thought. Buddy charged at her, raising the Model 870 like a club, and she plowed back into him, knocking him to the dirt
floor. She scooped up the fallen shears and vaulted into the narrow skiff to clamber toward the garage doors. He rammed the
side of the light boat with his body, and she fell from the prow, diving headfirst, scraping her back against the trailer
hitch, hitting the hard-packed dirt. The shears were beneath her and she twisted, trying to free them from her own weight.
She saw Buddy squeezing through the narrowed space between the tipped boat and the Volkswagen. He tried to vault it, land
on top of her, but he tumbled headfirst as she scrabbled out from underneath the boat.

He grabbed her ankle.

Claudia screamed, trying to kick him again. He tugged her back toward him, the shears slipped from her grasp, and she saw
him pull a long brightness from a shoulder sheath. Bowie knife.

He slammed the knife into her calf, and she screamed her throat raw in one second. She felt her own flesh tearing, the knife
colder than ice. She kicked hard with the other leg, impacting collarbone, and pushed away, frantically grabbing for the shears.
She smelled her own blood as her fingers closed around the shears’ handle. Pain – beyond pain – raced along every nerve in
her body.

He lifted the knife from her flesh.

‘Quit fighting, quit fighting!’ he yelled. He climbed on top of her and lifted the reddened knife. Claudia rammed the shears
into his gut, hard, feeling Buddy Beere’s innards part before the points. She surged to a sitting position as she pushed,
felt the blades slide along rib bone, and the shears vanished into him, all the way to the hafts.

Her face was an inch from his. She felt the bowie tear into her shirt below her arm, the blade catch in the fabric, its edge
whisper along her skin.

Buddy did not scream. He fell away from her, hands slapping the shears’ smooth handles. Blood seeped from him and she crab-crawled
backward, smelling his blood, her blood, kicking the dirt between them. Buddy lay on his side, blinking at her, mewling.

‘No … Mama, help …’ he wheezed.

‘You fucking loser,’ Claudia gasped. She hobbled to her feet. Agony lanced her leg, blood greased her skin. She staggered
toward the cruiser and threw herself inside, glass from the broken windshield crunching under her. Buddy Beere still lay on
his side, the shears protruding from his stomach, mouth a wet ruin from her kick, eyes dimming of life.

Claudia flicked at the radio. It still worked. ‘Officer down … help me … this is Claudia Salazar … with David Power. Officer
down … officer down … He’s been shot, gunshot … I’ve been stabbed … suspect is Buddy Beere … I think I killed him … officer
down … we’re at Buddy Beere’s house off FM 1223 … couple of miles past Port Leo on the right … 4704 FM 1223 … hurry, hurry.’

She clutched her leg. Movement at the edge of her vision. Through the shattered windshield she saw a woman, stumbling from
the house, naked, bruised, her face a mass of blue.

The county dispatcher’s voice blared on the radio, telling her to hold on, help was on the way.

‘Velvet!’ Claudia called. ‘Velvet!’

Velvet limped toward the car but saw Buddy collapsed in the shadow of the garage. Claudia, clutching her leg, pulled herself
out from the cruiser. Velvet stopped, stared at Claudia, then stared back at Buddy.

‘Velvet, honey, it’s okay …’ Claudia gasped. ‘It’s gonna be okay.’ God, she hoped. She wasn’t sure she could stay conscious
much longer.
And David, oh, babe …

Velvet knelt by Buddy, yanked the shears out with a decisive pull, tore open the scrub pants, and began to perform crude surgery.
In the distance sirens roared in their approach.

‘Velvet! Stop! Stop!’ Claudia called.

The blood flew upward with Velvet’s blows, dotting her face, and soaked the ground.

‘I need to talk to Claudia,’ Whit said into the phone.

‘She don’t work here no more. Judge,’ the weekend police department dispatcher, a lady named Trudy, told him. ‘Delford fired
her. She went and raised holy hell with the Hubbles, and he canned her.’

‘Hell over what?’

‘That girl they pulled out of the bay … the one that found Pete Hubble’s body, apparently she had something going on with
Sam Hubble and Sam’s disappeared, although Delford don’t want to put out an APB. I heard him and Claud arguing about it. Delford’s
furious with Claudia, I don’t even dare say her name aloud when he’s around.’ She quickly told him about Junior Deloache,
Heather Farrell, all the whirl of death since he left town.

‘God Almighty.’ Claudia fired. Heather and Junior dead. Sam missing. Jesus. His stomach tottered on the lip of a pit. ‘I need
Spires’s home and pager numbers.’

Trudy gave him the numbers.

He dialed Delford’s number. No answer. He tried the pager number, keyed in the nursing home’s number, hoping for a quick response.

Think. Think.

Buddy Beere knew about Corey Hubble. Perhaps even assisted in the grand deception. Pete had found out where Corey was and
Buddy silenced him. Perhaps silenced Marcy Ballew as well.

But how did Buddy learn that Pete had found Corey? Who knew what Pete knew? Not even Velvet, he’d kept even her in the dark.
Not Kathy … killing Pete meant no
money, and Whit didn’t even know if she knew Buddy Beere.

‘They authorized him to be moved,’ Felix Duplessis said again, sitting in his chair, staring at Whit. His face sagged with
the worn look of someone who suspects a good day will not come in the immediate future. The call came this morning. She insisted
he be moved to a home up in Shreveport immediately.’

‘She?’ Gooch asked.

‘John’s trustee,’ Duplessis said. ‘Laura Taylor.’

‘Let me have her number, please,’ Whit said. Aside from the Austin number was a 361 area code: Texas Coastal Bend.

Duplessis clicked on his speakerphone, and Whit dialed. The phone chirped and a woman’s voice answered.

‘Hello?’

Duplessis said, ‘Miz Taylor?’

A pause. ‘Yes, this is she.’ She sounded tired, anxious, and exactly like Faith Hubble. Whit leaned over the phone, still
silent, his eyes closed.

‘This is Felix Duplessis at Memorial Oaks in Deshay. How are you?’

‘All right. Have you moved John yet?’

‘There’s been a delay here, ma’am.’

‘He has to be moved immediately to the home in Shreveport. That’s what we pay for. Immediately.’

‘Well, yes, ma’am, but we’ve had a problem,’ Duplessis said. ‘There’s a gentleman …’

Whit stood by the speakerphone and leaned down. ‘Faith. It’s Whit. I’m here. I found Corey.’

No answer from the other end of the line.

‘Faith?’ Whit tried again. ‘Are you there?’

‘I’m here,’ she finally said.

‘Why does Corey have to be moved so quickly?’

‘I …’

And as soon as he asked the question, he saw his own logic misfire. Pete had died because he learned the secret. The secret
the other Hubbles had cultivated and manufactured. But neither Faith nor Lucinda knew of his plans for the movie, that he
was blood-hounding Corey’s trail.

Pete would have had only one confidant, one person he needed to turn against the Hubbles.

‘Is it Sam?’ Whit asked. ‘It is. Sam.’

‘He’s run off. He may be on his way there.’ Her voice broke. ‘Whit, don’t let him do anything … stupid. Please.’

‘He killed Pete,’ Whit said. ‘He killed his own father. Goddamn it. Faith. You knew?’

‘If Sam is there … please don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt him!’

Whit turned to Felix Duplessis. ‘We need to move Corey … I mean, John. Or get guards here, one of the two. Now.’

‘Now, wait a second, we just got to get this sorted out …’ Duplessis said, and through the blinds Whit saw a BMW slide crookedly
into a parking space, bumping a van. A lanky figure loped toward the nursing home’s front door.

‘Faith, he’s here,’ Whit said. ‘Sam’s just pulled up. Do you know if he’s armed?’

Gooch bolted from the room.

‘Don’t hurt him!’ Faith screamed. ‘Please!’

Whit ran out of the office. He spotted Gooch heading toward Corey’s room, pushing the wheelchaired patients back into their
rooms, telling the aides to get them out of the hallway. The aides, collecting the breakfast trays, began to argue with him.

‘Call the police! Now!’ Whit yelled back at Duplessis. His yell made the hallway go silent.

‘Whit!’ Faith screamed from the phone. ‘Don’t hurt him, he’s my baby, don’t …’ and her voice vanished as Duplessis jabbed
a button and dialed 911.

Whit reached the lobby just as Sam Hubble, wearing a denim jacket and dark glasses, left the information desk with a nod,
heading toward the north ward of rooms.

‘Sam!’ Whit yelled.

Sam Hubble turned.

‘You fucker.’ Sam reached behind him, pulling a Ruger from its tucked spot in the back of his jeans, hidden by a baggy T-shirt.
He pointed it at Whit’s head, six feet away. The woman at the information desk screamed and ran down the other hallway.

‘It’s over, Sam,’ Whit said, holding his palms up. ‘It’s over. I just talked with your mother. She wants to talk to you. Give
me the gun and let’s go to the office and talk with her.’

‘You fuck my mother so you think you can tell me what to do?’ Sam narrowed his eyes into a hateful stare. ‘I don’t think it
works that way.’

He knew, oh, damn. He knew like Corey knew, years ago. ‘I don’t want you to get hurt. Your mother’s on the phone, she wants
to talk with you.’

‘I hate you,’ Sam said. ‘Why did you have to come here, drag her into this?’

‘It’s over,’ Whit repeated. ‘The only person Pete would have trusted with the whole story of what he found was you. You’re
the only one he would have told, because he wanted you to be with him. He had dirt so bad on your mother and your grandmother
that he actually might have won custody from them. So he told you what happened to your uncle Corey, but you decided to side
with the home team. Your grandmother and your mother. You didn’t want Pete ruining their lives, so you ended his.’ He softened
his tone. ‘It’s over, Sam. Put it down.’

‘Shut your mouth.’ Sam gestured with the Ruger. He glanced at the others in the lobby: a woman visiting a wheelchair-bound
man, both cowering by a coffee table. ‘I start shooting and maybe I don’t start with you.’

‘There’s no point in hurting anyone else. The police are on their way. Give me the gun and let’s go talk to your mom.’

‘No.’ Sam backed down the hall, keeping the gun leveled at Whit. Whit followed him, slowly.

‘Pete told you what he thought you should know about your perfect family, all to convince you to be on his side.’

Sam hurried down the hallway, residents and aides and nurses scrambling and screaming, hurrying into rooms. At the end of
the hall Whit saw Gooch move out from Corey’s room, then duck back in.

‘He was lying,’ Sam managed. He bumped into a food tray trolley, shoved it over. Fish sticks and macaroni greased the floor.
The gun shook in his hand. The boy began to cry.

Whit kept his voice even, his movement even with Sam’s, close but not too close. ‘Monday night he thinks he’s spending it
with you, he sends Velvet away. And maybe you call, tell him you need some time to think. He’s alone. Your friend Heather
goes to see him. You hide out on an empty boat nearby, maybe. Had she been befriending him for you, spying on him? They drink,
she flirts. Maybe she sets up the camera for him. You sneak aboard. He strips and gets on the bed, maybe she strips, and you
come into the room, shove the gun in his mouth, and fire. Or she does. Which was it?’

‘Heather didn’t do nothing,’ Sam whispered. ‘Stop saying that.’

‘He’s dead, your family’s safe, and you found a bonus: a half million in cash. You’ve also got his computer and all his notes
on Corey. Heather pretends to find the body, but
when your father’s other associations start producing questions, you produce a suicide note. And Pete conveniently confesses
to his own brother’s accidental death. Just so no one bothers to pick up looking for Corey.’

Sam stopped. They stood ten feet away from the end of the hall, near Corey’s room. The screams had died down as the terrified
clients took cover, except for one rasping old woman’s voice calling from a nearby room, ‘Nurse? Nurse?’

‘I couldn’t let him … couldn’t let him do this to us.’ Tears streamed from Sam’s eyes.

‘I know you were just trying to help your grandmother, Sam. Your mother’s on the phone, down at the office, she wants to talk
to you. Give me the gun and come with me. We know how all this happened. There’s nothing to be gained from hurting Corey or
anyone else.’

A shrill of sirens screamed in the parking lot. A hard light gleamed in the boy’s eyes.

Sam muttered, ‘Fuck you,’ and Gooch launched himself from the door, pile-driving the boy down, smashing a fist against the
boy’s wrist. The pistol fell and Whit grabbed it.

Sam wriggled beneath Gooch, cursing, crying. Gooch yanked him to his feet, holding him with one massive arm.

‘You okay?’ he asked Whit.

Whit watched Sam’s face. ‘Yeah. Sam, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’

Officers charged into the hall, demanding all three of them lie facedown. Whit put the gun on the floor as ordered and put
his face on the cool tile. Duplessis hurried among the police, explaining, telling them Gooch and Whit were okay.

As the Deshay officers pulled Sam down the hall, he sobbed, ‘Let me call Heather. Please let me call Heather.’

Oh, God, he doesn’t know.

Whit went to go deal with the police and to tell Faith her son was still alive.

Hours later, when evening began its soft slide into Deshay, Whit returned to Corey Hubble’s room. Corey lay in the bed, eyelids
like half-moons, moaning softly. A police guard at the door nodded Whit in.

Whit pulled up a chair next to the bed.

‘Well. Hello. It’s been a long while. I know you and I weren’t close, but I also don’t know … what you can hear, what you
can understand. I’m gonna assume it’s more than we think.’ He touched the bone-thin arm under the sheet, remembering the smiling
boy holding a proud string of redfish aloft. ‘The fishing’s been good this year, Corey, although I sure haven’t had time to
go. We don’t have a prayer in football season this year. The coach doesn’t know his butt from a hole in the ground, so we’re
all resigned to losing. We ought to do better in basketball next spring, one of the Lindstrom boys is six-seven. And would
you believe I’m a judge? I know: a Mosley acting all respectable. But it may only be for a little while now.’ He cleared his
throat. ‘I went to go see Marian Duchamp. She cares about you, you know, even if things weren’t exactly running smooth between
you …’

The talk went on for another hour before Corey dozed into sleep. Whit stayed by his bed, watching the ghost breathe.