Murder Takes a Break

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Novels:

Dead on the Island (Truman Smith, Book 1)

Gator Kill (Truman Smith, Book 2)

When Old Men Die (Truman Smith, Book 3)

Westerns:

A Time for Hanging

Medicine Show

Ryan Rides Back

Horror (writing as Jack MacLane):

Blood Dreams

Goodnight MooM

Just Before Dark

Keepers of the Beast

Rest in Peace

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Murder Takes a Break

Cap'n Bob & Gus
 
a Bill Crider Bonus story from the "The Nighttime is the Right Time"

Shadder – a bonus story by Tom Piccirilli from "Futile Efforts"

R
andall Kirbo had come to Galveston in March for spring break.
 
That had been nine months ago, and no one in his family had seen him since.
 
As far as they knew, no one else had seen him, either.
 
And now they wanted me to find him.

I didn't want to take the job.
 
I used to do things like that for a living, but that was before my own sister had disappeared.
 
You could say I'd found her, in a sense, but it had been far too late to do her any good.
 

And then there was the time I'd tried to find Dino's daughter.
 
I'd found her, all right, but the less said about all that had happened then, the better, at least as far as I was concerned.
 

After that little bit of unpleasantness, I'd sort of given up my profession.

Dino thought it was time for me to take it up again.
 
It wasn't the first time he'd asked.

"It's like a personal favor, Tru," he said.
 
"You know I hate to ask you, but there it is."

He didn't hate to ask me at all, but he probably felt he had to say so.

"Let's see," I said.
 
"The last time you asked me to do something; you said there was nothing to it.
 
Just an old high school friend of ours who needed a little investigation done.
 
But it didn't work out quite that way, did it?"

"Hey," Dino said.
 
"That wasn't my fault.
 
I thought it was just about some dead bird."

"Prairie chicken," I told him.

"Whatever.
 
A bird's a bird, right?"

"Wrong," I said, but I didn't elaborate.
 
I didn't figure that Dino wanted to hear a lecture on endangered species.
 
"And you were wrong about the job, too.
 
I wound up getting shot at and beat up and — "

Dino raised a hand to stop me.
 
"OK, OK, you win.
 
It was a mistake for you to get involved.
 
But it'll be different this time."

He stopped and waited for me to say something.
 
So I said, "You forgot to say 'trust me.'"

"Trust me," he said, with what might have been an honest attempt to look sincere.

"I feel a lot better already," I told him.
 
"You want something to drink?"

We were in the living room of my house, which actually belonged to Dino.
 
He was just letting me live there.
 
I was sitting on my couch, which had been a really nice one in about 1956.
 
Dino was in a chair that might have been a little newer, but not much.
 
I got most of my furniture at garage sales.

"Not Big Red," Dino said.
 
"Somebody told me that if you spill that stuff on a carpet, you can never get the stains out.
 
No matter what you use."

Big Red was what I drank, and Dino was convinced that it was going to eat through my stomach lining any day now.
 
He didn't much like the way it tasted, either, and now he was glancing around to see if there were any suspicious stains on the furniture.
 
There were plenty, but it would be hard to say exactly what caused them.

"I don't usually have guests," I told him.
 
"So Big Red's about all I have on hand."

"You got any ginger ale?"

"You drank the last of it."

"That was months ago."

"Well, if you'd come out more often, I'd keep a bigger supply."

Dino didn't push it.
 
His uncles had practically been the barons of Galveston Island years before, back in the days when you could go out on the long pier to The Island Retreat and drop your silver in their slot machines, watch the little clickety balls bounce around their roulette wheels, or lose as much as you could stand at blackjack.
 

But hurricanes had shortened the pier, the Texas Rangers had dumped the slots into the Bay, The Island Retreat was closed, and Dino wasn't like his uncles.
 
He preferred to stay in his house, which didn't even have a view of the water, and watch infomercials on TV.

"I don't get out much," he said.
 
He was a master of understatement. "But I'm getting better at it."

That was true.
 
He'd gotten together with Evelyn Matthews, the mother of his daughter, after a lapse of a lot of years, and she'd done wonders for him.
 
He wasn't going to win the Outdoorsman of the Year award, but he wasn't spending all his waking minutes inside any more.
 
Most of them, yes, but not all.

"How about some water?" I asked.

"Water would be OK."
 
He looked around the room.
 
"Where's Nameless?"

Nameless was my cat.
 
Or the cat who lived with me.
 
You couldn't really say he was mine.
 
He didn't belong to anybody other than himself.

"He's outside," I said.
 
"Did you think he'd come to welcome you?"

Dino looked hurt.
 
"I think he's beginning to like me."

"Maybe," I said, but I didn't think so.

For that matter, I didn't think Nameless really liked anybody.
 
He liked chasing the little geckos that lived in the oleander bushes that surrounded the house, and he liked having his head rubbed now and then.
 
And eating.
 
He liked eating more than just about anything.
 
But I wasn't sure he had ever developed a real attachment to anyone human, even to me, and I was the one who provided his food.

I got off the couch and went into the kitchen to get the water.
 
I decided I'd have water, too.
 
Maybe Dino was right about my stomach lining.
 
I took a plastic ice tray out of the refrigerator's freezer compartment and twisted it until the ice loosened up.
 
Then I put four or five cubes in two glasses and filled them from the tap.

"Tastes great," Dino said when I gave him his glass and he'd taken a swallow.

"It's just water."

"Yeah."
 
He took another drink.
 
"But it's good water."

I looked at him.
 
"You going to talk about how great the water is, or are you going to tell me some more about this personal favor you want me to do?"

He put his glass on the low wooden coffee table.
 
The glass was beaded with moisture, and it would probably leave a ring, but that would be all right.
 
There were plenty of other rings there to keep it company.

"You still look for people, right?"

"No.
 
I don't look for people.
 
You know that."

"Well, what you do is practically the same thing."

"No, it's not."

What I did now was all done right there in the house, with a computer.
 
I did background checks, mostly.
 
It's easy, and it's profitable.
 
I run a little ad in the classified section of the Houston
Chronicle
, and I get plenty of calls from women who want to find out about the men they're dating, from businessmen who're considering hiring someone but who aren't quite sure about the resumè they've been given, from fathers who wonder about the guy who's been seeing their daughters.

If you ever sent in one of the little warranty cards that came with your new toaster or your new hair dryer, you're in a data base somewhere, and I can find you.
 

Or if you've played around on the Internet and ordered one of those free CD-ROMs that car companies and state governments offer you, you've probably provided all kinds of information that I can get to.

If you have a telephone with a listed number, I can get the number and your address in a few seconds.

Credit checks are just as simple if you know what you're doing, and I do.
 
I worked for a bail bondsman for a while, and I learned a few tricks.
 
I can even find out where you've used your credit card or an ATM.

If you're trying to hide something, it might take me a little longer to find out about you, but eventually I'll get there.
 
Not everyone knows it, but thanks to the Information Superhighway, personal privacy is pretty much a thing of the past.

But checking on people the way I do is nothing like going out and actually looking for someone that no one else can find, and Dino knows it.
 
He also knows very well why I don't like doing it the hard way anymore.