Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 (30 page)

"He needed the tapes for a new book," I said. "He was so desperate to regain eminence in the field that he was willing to risk it -- especially after I ordered him not to have any more sessions with Dahlia. Yesterday morning he could have gone back to the rental car and used a crowbar on the trunk. If he had, the evidence would be buried in the woods and we'd never make a case. Instead, he went to the airport for an interview with a television producer. His behavior was obsessive, but not remarkable within this particular community. As far as I can tell, most of them are sincere in their beliefs. They buy books, send donations, and flock to conferences to gaze in awe at drawings of silver men with almond eyes. They accept a photograph of a bedroom window as proof of an abduction. Any evidence to the contrary is documentation of this vast, murky government conspiracy. No scraps from a crash? The government agents stole them. Enhancement of a photograph indicates a light is an airplane? The government agents doctored the negative. The more I read, the more a certain word kept popping up in the back of my mind."

"Paranoia," Ruby Bee said, then stalked over to Jules Channel and put her hands on her hips. "Well? Are you gonna tell everybody about the top secret underground laboratory in the desert and how Arthur Sageman had proof that aliens were gonna enslave my grandchildren and make 'em work in mines on Mars?"

He retreated. "I don't think this is the time to go into that."

"You fooled Estelle and me into trying to help you sneak into Arthur's room. Was he the secret agent, or are you? Did you kill him to keep him from telling what he knew on television?"

Jules didn't notice when he backed into a waist-high patch of poison ivy, and no one felt obliged to mention it. "I'm a reporter. It's my job to ferret out the facts and share them with the public."

"You're not a reporter, at least not for that tabloid in Florida," Ruby Bee went on. She was stealing my thunder, but I wasn't about to stop her (except from stepping into the poison ivy, which a deputy did). "The tabloids don't send reporters out to the places where things happen. The Weekly Examiner wouldn't even send one photographer to take a picture of a Chevrolet eaten by a dinosaur!"

This had a profound effect on everybody. Harve nervously examined the gravy stains on his tie. The deputies were bug-eyed. Lucy's face was tighter than the bark on the oak tree beside her. Rosemary was beyond fluttering. Even McMasterson had raised his head to frown. I was doing everything I could not to giggle, but I wasn't having complete success."

"A dinosaur ate your car?" said Jules. "What kind?"

"I already told you -- a Chevrolet. Now just tell us who you are, Mr. Jules Channel!"

"I'm a government agent."

"So you did murder Arthur Sageman," she said, then realized she was in close proximity to a homicidal maniac and took refuge behind Harve. "Get out your gun," she whispered in Harve's ear. "Arrest him."

"He may be a government agent," I said, "but they come in more varieties than there are Buchanons in Stump County. Which bureau do you work for?"

"The IRS," he said sulkily.

I gave everyone a moment to let that sink in, then said, "And you're after the ETH Foundation with all its millions in donations and taxfree profits from the sale of books and related paraphernalia. The thought of missing out on your fair share bugs the hell out of you all, doesn't it? You just can't bear the thought of Sageman living in luxury without chipping in to ease the national debt."

Jules seemed to sense he wasn't the most popular person in the clearing. "All of you pay taxes. Why should these nonprofit groups get away with using the revenue for the personal advantage of the employees?"

"That doesn't give you the right to kill him," said Ruby Bee, standing on her tiptoes to glare over Harve's shoulder.

"I didn't kill him. I was trying to copy the disks with the financial information that fails to show up on his tax returns. I'd be amazed if he reports half the donations. His so-called legitimate expenses are as bogus as his UFO investigations. Every time he leaves his house, our agents go in and sift through his books and files, but we never find what we need to put him in a cell with Jim Bakker."

Ruby Bee wasn't convinced. "What about all your stories in the Weekly Examiner? Your name was right there on the story about how Hitler was a woman."

"Jules Channel is a nice man in Lantana, Florida, who never sets foot out of his office. We have an arrangement in which I use his name and credentials to gain access to the UFO investigators. I send him related stories, which he runs under his by-line. His other stories are entirely his own doing. In all honesty, I thought the Hitler-transvestite story was his best. One of these days I'll take a vacation and buy him a drink."

I was a little disgruntled by his identity, having pegged him as a private eye -- and having fudged on a tax return or two in the past. "We'll run your name through your home office, but I believe that you didn't shoot Sageman." Ruby Bee emerged, although she didn't look as if she were going to be offering Jules Channel (or whatever his name was) any lemon icebox pie anytime soon. "Then who did?" she asked.

I wasn't real surprised when I turned around and saw a gun pointed at me. I wasn't real happy about it, mind you, but it's one of the risks of the profession.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

"Is Lucy Fernclift your real name," I asked, "or are you pulling the same crap as this clown?"

"I thought it was ingenious. If I'd ever dreamed the IRS would do this sort of thing, I'd come up with another way to ingratiate myself with the ufology group. An undercover taxman? Shit, this is embarrassing." She started to slap her hand to her forehead, then realized she'd knock herself silly and managed a self-deprecatory laugh. It was heartening to know she actually had a sense of humor -- somewhere (mine was way downstream).

Harve and the deputies were shifting nervously. Les's hand hovered near his holster, and he appeared to be entertaining a fantasy of a medal from the mayor, a promotion from Harve, and a press conference of his very own. I imagined a bullet in my gut.

I positioned myself in the middle of the burn marks, where I was between him and his target. "You need to put down the gun, Lucy. There are too many witnesses and too many fingerprints. You're not very good at this, which speaks well of your character. I'll try to help you."

"Help me what?" she demanded.

"Help you get away." I shot an enigmatic look at Harve, trusting him to decipher it, and then said, "Your car's up there on County One-oh-two. Nobody'll stop you from getting in it and driving away -- as long as you swear here and now that Estelle's okay."

"Of course she's okay." Lucy let the gun wobble in each of our directions, then aimed it at me with a steadiness I found disconcerting. "She was skulking around the parking lot when I came out of Sageman's room. He was the one who deserved to be stopped. He was forcing that foolish girl to remember things that never happened."

"But they did," Rosemary said. She might have intended to elaborate, but on the basis of Lucy's reaction, she may well have seen her life flash before her eyes. Fluttering good-bye, she moved behind a tree.

Lucy continued to speak to me as if we were alone. "Would he ever stop to consider what would happen to the girl after he turned in his manuscript.

Would he worry how she was going to handle the notoriety when she became the fashionable freak in the UFO sideshow? No, he was going to sit back, smile, autograph books, show slides, and lecture with great pomposity while he publicly humiliated her with the intimate details of her rape. Even if she committed suicide, he'd keep smiling as long as the royalty checks rolled in. I tried to reason with him, but he told me to go away so he could make notes for his next best-seller." Trembling, she lowered the gun, but not her fierce gaze. "What could I do? You tell me. I'm listening."

I murmured to Harve to control his deputies, then joined her at the edge of the clearing. "Get your affairs in order. Your brother's file contains his personal history. Since you didn't embark on a life of crime as a mere child, you'll be easy to trace through utility bills, credit cards, employment records, and so on. What I suggest you do is drive home and find a good ol' boy lawyer who understands the concept of family loyalty. He should have two first names, wear pinstriped suits, and play golf with the prosecutor and poker with the judge."

"Now that you mention it, John Earl January settled my granddaddy's estate last year after his own daddy was found dead in a whorehouse. He's running for the state court of appeals, but he might find time to hear me out."

"Go give him a call. Nobody's going to stop you, as long as you're telling the truth about Estelle. Let me make it clear that if she's not okay, I'll turn in my badge and come after you in a fashion the Fugitive never even had nightmares about."

"She's probably chewed off the duct tape and broken out of the closet by now. The last time I took the tape off her mouth to give her food, she commented loud and long on the greasiness of the chill dog and the lack of catsup for the onion rings, then offered to style my hair." Lucy pushed back her bangs and gave me a timid smile. "What do you think about my widow's peak? Does it make me look sexier?" I was trying to decide as she trotted up the trail toward the road, and I made everybody else stand there and debate the question until I heard a car engine come to life. Sageman had been her victim, sure. She'd walked into his room, argued with him, and killed him. In the law's view, he was unarmed. In mine, he was as dangerous as a pit bull. He hadn't ripped any flesh off anyone, but he'd left souls ravaged. Psyches are fragile. There's a fine line between helping someone dredge up repressed memories and creating false ones. In some cases, people get to be the subjects of best-selling books; in others, they destroy their families and themselves.

The state police would come down on me for allowing her to escape, albeit temporarily. The irony was that I'd have to admit I was protecting Dahlia (née O'Neill) Buchanon, presuming I found her. The implications were downright terrifying.

Kevin snuggled his face into his beloved's breasts, luxuriating in their warmth, and said, "You was never absent from our bed. I love you too much to mistake your velvety thighs for a limp pillow. Never once have I reached for you and come up empty-handed." He went on to describe some things he'd done when he hadn't come up empty-handed; it was about the most romantic thing Dahlia'd ever heard, even on Donahue.

She wiped away a tear as she tried to get more comfortable. There was no gettin' around the dilemma; they were stuck as long as Bigfoot prowled the woods outside. Her one glimpse of him had been more than enough to send her fleeing into the outhouse, which, for the record, was one of her more regular refuges. Kevin's abrupt arrival had liked to stop her heart, but once she figured out who it was, she'd dragged him onto her lap and kissed the sweat offen his brow (there'd been a lot).

Bigfoot could have left. On the other hand, he could be right outside the door, his fists curled, his mouth salivating, his mind filled with perverted ideas. And it weren't all that unpleasant where they were, now that the rain'd quit dripping on 'em. They'd gotten used to the smell and the dim light that filtered through the knotholes, and it was kinda homey snuggling together in their little love nest.

Kevin forced himself to stop nibbling her nipples and lift his face. "You said you had proof. Whaddya mean?"

"I bought one of those home pregnancy kits," Dahlia said, blushing like a bride. "You pee on a strip of paper and wait to see what color it turns. It turned blue."

"We're having a boy?" Kevin came near falling on the floor as images flooded his mind: hunting, fishing, scaling fish, gutting squirrels, man-to-man talks about the birds and the bees. A boy, he sang to himself, lost in the image of a little Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon, Jr.

"It just meant I'm pregnant," Dahlia said, although images were no slower to flood her mind: pink foam hair rollers, pinafores and patent leather shoes, ruffly curtains, hair bows, soap operas, woman-to-woman talks about how to please a husband. A girl, she sang to herself as she cradled Kevin in her arms and leaned back. It wasn't long before both of them forgot all about what evil lurked beyond the outhouse door.

Putting the metal to the pedal, Brother Verber sped past the Pot o' Gold Mobile Home Park and squealed around the corner onto the highway without even looking to see what was coming. Paper cups and old church bulletins flew out the window, but he didn't pay any mind. His face was red, and sweat was coursing down his face till it liked to blind him. His breathing was so shallow he was close to passing out. Sprawled across the backseat, Sister Barbara already had.

"Get outta the way, you sumbitch!" he bellowed at a figure hesitating out in front of the barbershop. The inadvertent profanity jarred him out of his frenzy, and he braked momentarily to add, "And God bless you, Brother Perkins."

He passed two or three more cars, then turned into the parking lot in front of the PD and slammed on the brakes.

Arly's car was nowhere to be seen, but he could at least use her telephone to call for medical help and her radio to alert the sheriff. He jumped out of the car, squeezed by a white van, and hurried around to the other side to open the back door. Sister Barbara had slid to the floor sometime during the ride, and it took some tugging and struggling to get her limp body back on the seat.