Summer of the Dead (14 page)

Then it all receded, just as suddenly as it had appeared: the anger, the outrage, the fantasy of seriously hurting the man. And Bell realized, once again, that this was why she'd chosen the law for her life's work: Because it offered something other than the closed loop of vengeance. It broke the black circle. It gave her a place to put those renegade emotions, the ones that spilled over the sides of her life, the ones that wouldn't fit anywhere else and that, if she hadn't found a way to control them, would certainly have destroyed her. The law wasn't always rational or fair, it didn't always work the way it ought to, it sometimes seemed to be only a half-step up from the chaos it was intended to bring to heel—but up was the right direction. Beat the hell out of down.

It saved her, again and again.

The law, she believed, wasn't there just to keep the bad guys in line. It was there to keep the good guys in line, too. The good guys who were tempted by adversity to think that ends ever justified means.

“Bell?” Hick said. Not out of impatience, just curiosity. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to get hold of Rhonda right away.”

Rhonda was terrific in dealing with victims; she had a real knack for it. She wasn't mean, the way Sheriff Fogelsong could be when perturbed at their hesitations or their evasions, but she also wasn't too gooey-soft or instantly forgiving.

“She's taking a deposition,” Bell went on, “over at the Monk County Courthouse. Tell her to get back here as soon as she can and make another run at Regina Wills. Regina's the key. Not much chance she'll back off and let the girl speak—but whatever small chance there is, we have to try.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

Before she could answer, the phone on her desk rang. Bell nodded to Hickey, releasing him to return to his own work. He waved back at her over his head as he departed.

“Elkins.”

“Howdy, Miss Belfa,” Buster said. “Thought I'd take a chance and call you back early. Got finished sooner'n I expected with my afternoon business.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Bell tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

“What'd you need, sunshine?”

She moved aside two piles of folders on her desk to find what she was looking for. “Okay,” Bell said. “I've got your notes from the Arnett and Frank autopsies right here.”

“Dreadful, dreadful. Tragic loss. Town's as shook up as I've ever seen it, and I'll tell you this—I've been around here a long time.”

“Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask you about Charlie Frank's injuries. The stab wounds. From the sketch you made, I can see that the wounds vary substantially in depth. The ones across the upper part of his torso—near his shoulders—are almost superficial. But in the middle and lower part of the torso, they're very deep. Deep enough to pierce vital organs.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”

“Is that unusual? I mean, to have such a variety of force levels used in a knife attack like this?”

She could imagine Buster Crutchfield in full cogitation mode: the wrinkled sack of his face collapsing inward, rheumy eyes getting squinty. “Well,” he said, “not especially, darlin' heart. Lotsa things could account for that—the position of the assailant, which might've shifted during the attack. And Charlie himself surely moved around a lot, trying to defend himself. Man fighting for his life—he ain't likely to hold still.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Tell you this much, sweetie.”

Bell snapped back to attention, assuming he had suddenly remembered a crucial detail common to both victims. “Like I said,” Buster went on, his drawl as soft as corn silk, “I been around these parts a long, long time. But we've never had a summer quite as dark and sad as this one.”

“Stipulated.” She was disappointed, and grunted her good-bye accordingly.

 

Chapter Fifteen

Bell hadn't realized how hungry she was until, two hours later, she heard Lee Ann Frickie opening a package of peanut butter crackers in the outer office. The come-hither crackle of tearing cellophane was enough to lure Bell right out of her chair. She looked plaintively at her secretary. Lee Ann instantly capitulated and divvied up the contents.

“This,” said Lee Ann, stacking three round brown crackers in Bell's palm, “does not constitute a proper lunch, Belfa.”

“Point taken.”

With a grin that combined sheepishness and gratitude, Bell returned to her desk. She had one more meeting and then she could call it a day. She had set it up the previous afternoon, making the call and getting Tommy LeSeur's voice mail—which was what she'd expected. She preferred it, in this case. She wanted to be clear. It was easier to state your business when you were leaving a message, when there was no chance of being interrupted by the other party.

“This is Belfa Elkins, Raythune County prosecutor,” she'd said. “I'd like you to come by my office tomorrow at four thirty
P.M
. If you have a problem with that, I'll be happy to discuss it with your parole officer.” That, she knew, would guarantee his attendance; an extra hassle with a parole officer was not the sort of thing that any ex-con relished.

At 4:37
P.M.
—Bell glanced at her watch when Lee Ann called her extension from the outer office—Tommy LeSeur showed up. Bell looked through the half-open doorway. The owner of the bar bearing his name was a big man with a belly gone slack. He wore a long black leather duster and a black cowboy hat set far back on his head, giving him a look of aggressive nonchalance. His facial hair, mostly gray and white, was arranged in a sort of lazy goatee, more abstract scraggle than defined shape.

“Come on in,” Bell said.

LeSeur grunted and moved forward. Behind him, Lee Ann twisted to one side in her desk chair, catching Bell's eye. Did she want the door open or closed?

With a slight shake of her head, Bell gave the signal:
Keep it open.
It had nothing to do with her being afraid of Tommy LeSeur; the point was that he shouldn't get the idea he was that important. A closed-door meeting with a prosecutor was a privilege. He was a bum. Bell wanted him to know that. He wasn't worthy of a closed-door session. He was just another ex-felon with whom she had to deal. Didn't even rise to the level of requiring privacy.

“Yeah,” LeSeur said. That was his version of hello. After casing the place with a brief lick of a glance, he emptied himself into the metal chair that faced Bell's desk at an angle. Immediately he slouched even lower, scooting his butt forward and setting the scruff of his neck against the top of the chairback. He didn't bother removing his hat. Bell wondered why the hat didn't fall off, with his head tilted so severely, and she decided to chalk it up to the adhesive properties of sweat.

“You had some trouble out at your place on Saturday night,” she said. “I was there, right at the end. Saw the guy on the floor. Helped out Deputy Sturm.”

He squinted at her, as if trying to recollect her face, then shrugged. No go. She wasn't the kind of woman he'd remember, anyway. She wasn't blond, she wasn't buxom, and she didn't giggle when he tongued a fingertip and then ran it slowly across the front brim of his hat with insinuating lasciviousness, which was what he did before replying.

“Yeah,” he said. “So?”

“You're on parole, Mr. LeSeur.”

“Tell me somethin' I don't know, lady.”

“Fine line.”

“Huh?”

“That's what you walk. A fine line. Your parole officer tells me that you're allowed to run your bar, because it's the only way you know how to make a living, but you're required to refrain from any association with other ex-felons or with anyone who has a history of engaging in criminal enterprises.”

“Yeah.” He stuck out his chin, making it easier to scratch. “So.”

“So there was a murder at your place.”

“Yeah.”

“Not a good sign.”

“They caught the guy, lady, okay? Jed Stark just messed with the wrong piece of tail. Pissed off some jealous asshole. Case closed.” LeSeur smacked the handrests with his palms, ready to haul himself up and out of the chair. “That it?”

“No.”

He waited. His hands stayed put.

“Your bar is in Collier County, Mr. LeSeur, which puts it out of my jurisdiction.”

“Yeah.” A pleased gleam in his watery eyes. “Yeah, I was getting ready to point that out. You got no call to be hassling me.”

“But when you were picked up several years ago for possession of narcotics with intent to distribute—that was well before my time here, Mr. LeSeur, but you'd be amazed at how good record-keeping can be these days—the arrest took place in Raythune County. Not Collier. So it turns out that I
do
have a dog in this fight.”

The gleam faded. “Okay, lady. What do you want from me?”

Bell drew a small photo from the middle of a stack of papers on her desk. She'd brought it in with her that morning. She slid it across the desktop. LeSeur had to sit up and lean forward to see it. One look, then he slouched back in his chair again, unimpressed.

“Who's that?” he said.

“My sister. Shirley Dolan.”

“You want me to give her a job at the bar or something? That it?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

With two fingers, Bell dragged the snapshot back across the desk and tucked it under a book. He hadn't touched it. Had he tried to, she would've slapped his hand away.

“Next time that woman shows up at your bar,” Bell said, “you're not going to let her in.”

He looked amused. “I'm not?”

“No.”

“Why's that?”

“Because I say so.”

LeSeur licked his bottom lip. Lip and tongue were an identical shade of gray.

“Lady,” he said, “you ain't scaring me.”

“Not trying to scare you. Trying to educate you.”

He pondered this. “Look, I wouldn't know her from Adam, okay? How am I supposed to keep an eye on everybody who goes in and out of my—?”

“No idea,” she said, interrupting him. “That's your problem. But if I find out that she's been in your bar again, Mr. LeSeur, I can make a lot of trouble for you. The kind of trouble you don't want.”

Once again, the pondering look came into his eyes. “I ain't done nothing,” he said. There was an aggrieved quality to his voice, a practiced one. “I could report you for harassment, calling me in like this. Threatening me.”

“You could.”

They regarded each other levelly across the cluttered expanse of desktop.

“She's your sister, huh?” LeSeur said.

Bell gave a single nod, dipping her head without breaking eye contact.

“And you think—wait, now, lemme guess,” he said. “Hanging out in my place is gonna turn her bad or something.” The nasally snicker caused his head to jerk. “Like it's measles and you can catch it.” Now he laughed outright. Thirty-five years of smoking cigarettes and anything else he could find to smoke had turned his laugh into a soupy, clotted bray. “Got news for you, lady. Anybody who comes in my bar finds just what they're looking for. Nothing more, nothing less. And they go out the same way they come in.”

Except for Jed Stark,
Bell wanted to say, but didn't. Not the time.

“Whatever,” she said. “Just don't let Shirley Dolan in. Ever.”

He sat up even straighter and let his head swivel around the room: tall leaded window, brown drapes, glass-fronted bookcase. Across the shelves of that bookcase, the solemn march of lawbooks. Row after row of black leather binding. The leather looked as if it had sopped up centuries of serious thought. LeSeur squinted, silently reading the titles through the glass.
Or trying to,
Bell thought.
Pretending to.
The literacy rate in these parts was depressingly low.

He would capitulate—she knew it, and he knew it, too—but first he had to make her wait. His dignity required this brief delay. For all their macho bravado, for all their swagger, drug dealers—and Tommy LeSeur was a drug dealer first, last, and always, no matter what he called himself, no matter what fairy tale he told his parole officer—were a tender sort, Bell knew. Acutely sensitive to slights and insults. Like third-graders.

“Fine,” he declared. “One question, though.” When Bell didn't speak, he went on. “What's sis gonna say about all this? Next time I head her off at the door, I mean?”

“Don't know. Don't care.”

“She ain't gonna like it none.”

“Lots of things that I don't like, either,” Bell said. “But I have to put up with them.” She tried to put some extra flint into her stare, hoping he would take her meaning, realize he'd been insulted. At no point in the conversation had she taken her eyes away from LeSeur's pitted gray face. Looking away was a sign of weakness, and she knew how important it was not to look weak in front of the Tommy LeSeurs of this world.

Hell. It was important not to look weak in front of anybody, period.

He lifted his shoulders and dropped them again. No telling if he'd caught her drift. “That it? That's all I gotta do?”

“That's it.”

His capitulation came with a sneer. “Don't matter none, anyways,” he said. “I got plenty of business.”

And then it was over, the negotiation that wasn't a negotiation at all, because in this realm—the realm of daylight, of glass-fronted bookcases—she was in charge. There were other realms, Bell understood, where it would not have gone so smoothly, realms in which Tommy LeSeur would have had the whip hand.

He had a little trouble getting up, on account of how low he'd sunk in the chair while they talked, trying to look cool. She realized, with a smile she didn't bother to hide, that Tommy LeSeur was middle-aged. He might try to look young and cool, his body draped in long black leather—he took an abrupt step toward the door for the obvious purpose of causing the ridiculous garment to swing out behind him and then fall back dramatically into heavy, ponderous folds—but he was fast becoming an old man, dry and fat and used up, his joints stiffening and cramping if he sat too long. He was ordinary. He was a seedy, small-time hood who'd spent his life preying on other people's weaknesses, and now here he was, getting weaker himself by the day, his body spreading out, breaking down, right on schedule. His vanity was pathetic. Tommy LeSeur was a show-off. A loser. A joke. And yet—Bell knew this all too well, knew it just as surely as she knew that you must never turn your back on certain species of wild animals, even though they seem to be thoroughly tamed and domesticated—under no circumstances should he ever be underestimated.