Out Of Time (24 page)

“Made George what?” I prompted.

She was staring at the photos of her missing husband and I wasn’t even sure she heard me.

“You have to help me,” she finally said after a long moment of silence. Her baby had gone to sleep on the cushion beside her, oblivious to his mother’s sorrow. “The police don’t really care that George has disappeared. They think he was dirty, I know they do. They kept asking me stuff like, did he drink? Did he do drugs? Did he gamble? They didn’t believe me when I told them no way.”

Her voice faltered before she continued. “It was true that he started drinking more after Roy died,” she admitted, “but it was never a problem. And he pretty much quit entirely once I got pregnant and couldn’t join in. I tried to tell the police that but they wouldn’t believe me. Then some guy named Steven Hill came over and said tha S anant and t he used to work with George. He said he would help find George, but I didn’t know then that he worked for Professional Standards. He didn’t want to find George, not really, he just wanted to find evidence that George was dirty.”

“Was he dirty?” I asked. “I’m sorry, but I need to know.”

She took it calmly. “Look around you. Does it look like George was taking payoffs? He used to work security at Durham Bulls games and high school basketball games just to earn a few extra dollars. And he was home with me the rest of the time. He didn’t have the energy to be dirty. And he sure didn’t have the money.”

She had a point. George Carter had not been living in the lap of luxury. “Maybe he was gambling or on drugs or in debt?” I suggested.

This time she glared. “George went to church, worked three jobs, mowed our lawn every weekend and spent most of his free time massaging my back once I got pregnant. Does that sound like a drug fiend or gambling man to you?”

Actually, it sounded like a brother from another planet. But I didn’t offer my opinion. I tried another tact. “Had anything unusual happened to upset him before he disappeared? Strange phone calls? Visitors you didn’t know?”

She nodded. “The cops asked me the same thing. I told that Steven Hill guy about the judge visiting, but that was all. He said they already knew about it and had looked into it. He told me I better keep it to myself.” Her voice dropped. “He acted like maybe the judge was dirty. That maybe he and George had been doing something wrong together. I didn’t believe it for a minute.”

“What was the judge’s name?” I asked.

“I forget,” she said. “He came to see George just after Christmas. George told me later that it was a sad story. That the judge had been drinking a lot and he’d been voted out of office and just wanted to talk to George about things. He told me not to worry. The visit had been about nothing. But he was really quiet for a few days after that, and I remember that he disappeared for an afternoon the next Tuesday when he was supposed to have the day off. He said he’d been called back into work, but, later on, I wondered.”

That would have been the day George Carter visited Gail on death row, I thought. “You know that judge is dead, right?” I asked. “He was killed last week.”

She froze. “You don’t think George had anything to…” She could not finish the sentence.

I shook my head. “I don’t know what to think,” I confessed. “Are you sure George didn’t get any unusual phone calls before he disappeared. Maybe from other officers, people he worked with?”

She shook her head. “If he did get any calls, it wasn’t when I was home.”

“Tell me exactly what the police did when you reported George missing?” I asked. I wanted to know exactly who had been involved in the search and how.

She stroked her son’s thick hair idly while she composed her thoughts. “I called them around dusk the day that George disappeared. He’d left that morning to buy the baby a car seat. They won’t let you take the baby home from the hospital unless you have one, and I was due at any time. After that, he was going to go cut some firewood. A guy he knew from work had volunteered to let him clear away some fallen trees from Hurricane Fran. We’d just gotten the chimney repaired and cleaned. We were going to use our fireplace for the first time that night. George said he’d be back by early afternoon, but he wasn’t. I was nine months pregnant and freaking out. I called everywhere. I even called that damn cop bar and he wasn’t there. The bartender said he’d been there the night before with Pete Bunn. I wasn’t too happy when I heard his name. Pete had worked with George a long time ago and there had been some trouble later on. I didn’t want to talk to him, but I was desperate. I finally called him around six o ‘clock. He was on the job, and I asked him if he’d seen George. He hadn’t.”

“Pete Bunn?” I asked. “He was on the same drug unit as your husband a couple of years back, right? Before George went back on patrol?”

She nodded. “But George never liked him much and didn’t stay in touch after he left the unit.”

“What was the trouble about?”

She looked disgusted. “Testifying at the trial for Roy’s murder. Pete had been there with Roy and George the night before, at the bar, but he refused to admit it and begged George not to tell anyone. He didn’t want to take the stand. He said his wife would kill him if she knew he’d been out drinking. George hated people who lied. He thought Pete should have taken the stand and explained what a good cop Roy was.”

“If George didn’t like Pete, why do you think they had drinks together the night before your husband disappeared?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was surprised to hear he’d been seen with Pete. All George told me that night was that a friend needed to talk to him about something and he was going to be late coming home from work. People called George a lot when they were having trouble. He was a good listener. Everyone loved him.” Her voice faltered as she realized she was speaking in the past tense. She paused, regaining her composure. The silence that followed was broken when the baby decided to drop a load in his diapers, a task that involved some spectacular sound effects. It sounded like an elephant stepping on a carton of water balloons and bubble wrap. I had an urge to run for high ground but, without missing a beat, Carter’s wife just plucked a fresh diaper from a stac Sr f>

“When George got home that last night,” she said, “he was really quiet. I was already asleep, being pregnant and all, but I woke up when he got in bed, and I could tell he was just lying there awake. He wouldn’t say what was wrong, but I know something was.” She was silent for a moment, remembering. “I told the cops about Pete and they followed up, but said it was nothing. They said George and Pete had a few drinks then left the bar separately. That Pete had worked the late shift after that, filling in for some guy getting married the next day.”

“So Pete Bunn didn’t know where your husband was when you called him the Saturday he disappeared?” I confirmed.

She shook her head. “No one knew where he had gone. I called everyone I could think of. I know you’re supposed to wait twenty-four hours, but I was so worried. It was a nightmare. I was so upset I started having contractions, and that freaked me out even worse. I finally phoned George’s sergeant and he sent some guys over right away. Steven Hill joined them about an hour later and promised he’d do everything he could. They sent out a bulletin describing George’s car. No one had seen him. He was just… gone.” She stared down at the photo album in her lap, running her thin fingers over the images of her missing husband. “I stopped having contractions. My mother came over. We waited and waited. A week went by. Then two. George Jr. was born. I went back to work. I had to.” She looked up. “That’s about it.”

“Why are the police so sure he left voluntarily?” I asked. The baby was starting to squirm, and I was afraid he’d begin bawling, bringing our interview to an end.

“George called me,” she said in a voice so low I had to lean forward to hear her correctly.

“He called you?” I asked, surprised.

She nodded. “The police put a tap on our phone, in case he had been kidnapped or something. At least that’s what Steven Hill said. I think now he was hoping to catch someone calling George about a payoff or something illegal.”

“And George was taped trying to phone you?”

“That’s what they said,” she murmured softly. “He called late one night. You could hear heavy traffic in the background. His voice was muffled. He sounded far away.” Her voice broke. Now it was a tossup as to who would start crying first, her or her son.

“What exactly did he say?” I asked gently.

“Something like, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry but it’s better if I just go.’ And then the connection was cut off.”

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“That’s it?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Not much to go on,” I said.

She wiped a tear from her eye. “I think they had other evidence,” she admitted in a faint voice. “Steven Hill didn’t say exactly what. He told me he would keep it quiet. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but he said if I just hung in there, he’d try to find George and bring him back. Or, at the very least, there was a chance that I could draw part of his pension if nothing was ever proved about possible wrongdoing.”

“But you still don’t believe that your husband was doing anything wrong?”

She shook his head. “I know George, and he was a good cop and a good man. I mean, he is a good man.”

Funny, those were the exact same words many people had used to describe Roy Taylor. But if a good man is so hard to find, why do they always seem to end up dead, maimed or missing?

“What was he wearing the day he disappeared?” I asked. “And was there anything else missing from the house? Clothing or a suitcase?”

“Nothing was missing but the clothes he had on his back,” she said. The baby began to cry and she rubbed his tummy gently while she reached for the second photo album with her free hand and turned to the last page. “You can see for yourself what he was wearing. We took photos of my belly that morning because it was so huge. I used up the last few shots on the roll taking pictures of George dressed as a lumberjack. We joked that he was the only black man in the history of Durham County to ever wear a flannel shirt.”

My heart jumped at her words. Have you ever had your life changed just by hearing a single phrase or with a single glance? It happened to me that day. I stared down at the last known photos of George Carter and I knew at once that he was dead. There he stood, posed on the front steps of his home, holding a chainsaw over his shoulder like a rifle, a goofy smile on his face. He was just as my pal Marcus Dupree had described him. He was tall and graceful, his face seemingly etched from stone, his aquiline features a deep brown, the triangular nose prominent between chiseled cheekbones. But it was his shirt that made me certain he was dead. George Carter was wearing a green-and-black checked flannel shirt and I had seen the pattern before—in Pete Bunn’s farm dumping pile. Yes, George Carter was probably dead.

“Why are you staring at him that way?” his wife asked anxiously.

I looked up into her tear-filled eyes. “Nothing,” I lied. “I just recognized him from some Durham Bulls games. S Buor= I always wondered who he was. He’s a striking looking man.” And an innocent one, too, I thought to myself. If he was dead as I feared, chances were good he wasn’t my killer.

“Yes, he is striking,” Carter’s wife agreed softly, running her fingers over his image. “And such a good man, too.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. Innocence is an intolerable sight to an old cynic like me, yet I could not bear to be the one to topple her world. I murmured my thanks and left as soon as I could, making meaningless promises on my way out the door. I left her sitting there, late for work with no baby-sitter in sight, still staring at the photo album. 

I’d planned to go visit Roy Taylor’s fishing cabin that night—an awful lot of people had seemed interested in it, and I thought an exclusive search party was in order. But the information about George Carter was too important to ignore. I had to talk to Pete Bunn immediately. He knew something about Carter’s disappearance or I’d eat that green-and-black shirt.

Knowing that Carter was dead and probably parked on Pete Bunn’s farm, I wasn’t about to revisit him without a gun. And if my gun was gone, the only option was to beg Bobby D. for one of his. After all, I’d already commandeered his car. What was a pistol or two between friends?

This meant either a trip to the hospital to ask Bobby’s permission or a clandestine visit to his apartment. Efficiency won out. I already had his entire ring of keys and it would be at least a week before they let him out of the hospital. With any luck, I’d have his gun back in place by the time he was sprung. I stared at Bobby’s keys. God knows what closet doors I could open with those—or what skeletons might fall out.

It was a short drive to West Raleigh where Bobby D. maintained a love pad on the ground floor of a large Victorian house near N.C. State University. Like Bobby, the place was large: large rooms, large kitchen, large closets, large television screen, large velvet portrait of Elvis—in his porcine Vegas days, of course—hanging on the bedroom wall above a king-size bed. The apartment was as immaculate as always. Bobby had a whole squadron of middle-aged girlfriends only too happy to scrub his love nest clean. I’ve never understood why so many women clean up after men to prove their love, while men get away with proving their love by letting the women clean.

I checked the refrigerator and had a good laugh over the Weight Watchers entrees, since I knew he ate them four at a time. Then I selected a couple of French bread pizzas to nuke for an early supper as I searched for his gun cache. I knew he had a collection somewhere; he always bragged when he added one to his stash. I found it in a gray metal box hidden in the closet. He owned enough firepower to arm a small street gang.