Blind Tiger, page 44
“No call for rough stuff, Hennessy,” Croft said. “Yet.”
He reached down and helped Laurel to her feet and guided her up the steps. But once they reached the porch, she yanked her arm free of his deceptively solicitous grip.
He took the white linen handkerchief from her mouth. It was monogrammed with his initials. Feeling her saliva on it, he frowned with distaste. She would have liked to spit in his eye, but reasoned that, at this point, her best defense was to show as little reaction as possible. But while her features remained composed and indifferent, she was quaking on the inside. No one knew where she was. Not Irv, Thatcher, no one.
Croft raised a hand to shade his eyes. “Gert, let’s take her inside, get her and her delicate skin out of this sun. We wouldn’t want her to burn.”
Gert gave a phlegmy laugh as she pulled open the squeaky screened door. “Of course not, wouldn’t want that to happen.”
Hennessy stayed outside.
The room was as Laurel remembered: cavernous, dim, and hazy with cigarette smoke. There was no sign of Lefty. Only an ominous silence came from upstairs. The shotgun lay on the bar. Gert walked over to it, sat down on a stool, and lit a fresh cigarette as though settling in for the floor show.
Laurel realized she was it.
Croft pushed her into a chair, then dragged one over, stationed it directly in front of her, and sat down.
“Mrs. Plummer—can I call you Laurel?—where is Chester Landry?”
Of all the things he could have said, that question was the least expected.
Gert must have thought the same. She came off her stool with a thud. “Chester Landry, my ass. Ask her where my girl’s at. Soon’s I find that scheming little bitch, I’m gonna wring her neck, and let Miss High Horse here watch while I do it.”
Croft acted as though he hadn’t heard her and remained focused on Laurel. “Where was Landry headed when he slunk off last night?”
Laurel laughed. “You could have asked me that without going to all this elaborate trouble.”
“Then tell me where he is.”
“I have no earthly idea.”
He sighed. Then, with shocking alacrity and force, he backhanded her across the face.
Fifty-Eight
Following the stomach pumping procedure, Daisy Amos was resting more comfortably. Thatcher knew Bill hated leaving her side and resuming his duties, but he was hard pressed to do so on this of all days, when three major investigations demanded attention and action.
He asked Thatcher to escort the doctor downstairs to the parlor where he would soon join them. “Put these on him.” He produced a pair of handcuffs.
Bill remained in the foyer with Scotty, who had been communicating with headquarters by telephone. He reported that the two Texas Rangers had divided up. One was getting information from the deputies who’d investigated the scene of the ambush. The other had gone to the Johnson homestead to assess the devastation there in advance of the arrival of the arson specialists.
Thatcher overheard Bill ask Scotty to locate Bernie Croft. “Don’t approach him. Don’t indicate that you’re looking for him. Just let me know where he is. Me and me only.”
“Yes, sir.” The deputy left.
When Bill entered the parlor, Driscoll said, “I hope you can trust Mrs. Amos’s friend to make her drink the water I prepared.” He’d added honey to a large pitcher of water and had left it on the bedside table.
“Even if she continues to throw up for a time, she needs the water. It will help flush the arsenic from her system naturally through urination. I’ve heard that the honey helps. Chemically, somehow. Also eggs. She should be fed eggs. The sulfur in them—”
Bill interrupted him. “You told Alice all that. I’m confident she’ll follow your instructions to the letter.”
Driscoll held up his cuffed hands. “Are these necessary?”
“They were for Thatcher when he was suspected of the crime you’ve confessed to. They stay on. You poisoned my wife.”
“Bernie brought two cases of liquor to my office and left them to be spiked with a slow-working poison, so it wouldn’t be immediately noticed. He told me those bottles were to be ‘gifts’ for members of the Johnson family. I had no way of knowing that Mrs. Amos would be allotted some, too.”
Bill had admitted to Thatcher during his tell-all on the porch that Croft was Daisy’s supplier of bootleg whiskey. That he’d given her bottles spiked with arsenic was indicative of the malice he felt toward Bill as well as Daisy for choosing Bill over him.
“Is she still in danger?” Bill was asking Driscoll. “And you had better not bullshit me.”
“The arsenic will remain in her system, but for how long depends on a number of factors. That’s why I emphasize flushing it out and neutralizing it as much as possible.”
“Could she still die of it?”
“It can cause complications, organ damage and so forth, that can eventually prove fatal. It’s a toxin, after all. Had I not acted so swiftly and given her the lavage, more than likely she would have succumbed.”
To Thatcher, Driscoll was a complete mystery. He was like the doctor in that book. Two men with opposing personalities living inside the same body. One minute Driscoll was bawling like a child caught misbehaving, the next he was calm, detached, even defiant.
Within an hour the man had admitted to poisoning bottles of liquor he knew would be consumed by human beings and had confessed to murdering his wife and unborn baby. Thatcher rather agreed with Patsy Kemp, who’d said with bitterness: They ought to hang the bastard twice.
Bill was now asking Driscoll why he had agreed to poison the bourbon.
“Bernie had me over a barrel.” He poured out the whole sordid story about Croft trying to recruit him to transport booze on his rural route. “I was offended. I’m a physician, not a bootlegger.”
He looked down at his linked fingers. “But then, the night Mila… When I needed Bernie to see me through that crisis, he did so. He and that old bag at Lefty’s quickly set up the incident with the prostitute so I would have a cover story for leaving the house at that hour of the night.”
“Did Gert know about Mila?” Bill asked.
“I don’t believe so. Bernie said she was a whore at heart and wouldn’t ask questions so long as she was paid.” He sighed deeply. “Anyway, after that night, he owned me body and soul. I was subjected to a lot of humiliation from him. I tolerated it, believing I had no other choice. But when I found out that he’d told Norma about Pointer’s Gap, I—”
“What?” Bill held up his hand. “Run that past us again.”
“Norma knew about Mila. She sprang it on me the afternoon she brought Arthur to the house. I was floored, flabbergasted. Bernie was the only person who could have told her, except for the men who actually buried the body, and they were all Mexicans who didn’t even speak English.
“I had trusted Bernie to keep the secret. We’d made a pact. When I learned that he’d told Norma, I accosted him on the street.” He described a volatile encounter in an alleyway. “I was livid.”
Thatcher sat forward and placed his forearms on his thighs. “You were livid. What about Croft?”
“Smug. He said I was naïve to think that he wouldn’t have held some collateral for doing me such a huge favor. I told him that Norma was using it to pressure me into marriage. He agreed that people would become suspicious if she and I married too soon, and that Norma should be made to understand that. He offered to speak to her on my behalf, but I told him I would handle it. I…I hadn’t gotten around to it.”
Thatcher looked over at Bill, who, like him, appeared to have realized the significance of Bernie Croft’s offer to impress understanding upon Norma Blanchard.
Bill stood and pulled Driscoll out of his chair. “Just so we understand one another, Gabe. If Daisy gets well, you’ll stand trial and be judged by a jury of your peers. If she succumbs, you won’t live to see trial.”
Driscoll jerked his arm free. “There’s gratitude for you. I saved your wife’s life, and you repay me by issuing threats? First him,” he said, looking at Thatcher with scorn, “now you. Isn’t it against the law to threaten a suspect in your custody? Doesn’t that violate a lawman’s code of ethics?”
“I don’t give a damn.” Bill hauled off and slammed his fist into Gabe’s face. He fell backward and landed on the floor, out cold.
There was one knock on the front door before Scotty pushed it open and walked in. He looked down at Driscoll. “What happened?”
“He was trying to escape,” Bill said. “When you get him back to the jail, put him in shackles, too. What about our mayor?”
“That’s what I came to tell you. I know where he’s at.”
* * *
“What I think? We ought to go into town and check on her.”
“We heard you the first dozen times you said that.”
Corrine gave Irv a malevolent squint. “Well, apparently you ain’t listening, old man. Miss Laurel said if she didn’t come tomorrow, which was yesterday, she’d come the next day, which is today.”
“Day ain’t over, is it?”
Ernie looked up at the sun. “Noon or better. But she has a point, Irv.”
“Aw, you’re just horny. You’d agree with anything she said,” Irv grumbled, shooting a glower toward Corrine.
“You said yourself you was scared Miss Laurel would come to grief,” she said. “Didn’t he say that, Ernie?”
Ernie tugged on his long earlobe. “Seems I do recollect—”
“I remember sayin’ it,” Irv snapped. “And I still hold to it. But you,” he said to Corrine, “agreed that we should lay low till we got the all clear. Laurel wouldn’t want us to show ourselves till it was safe. We’ve got no idea what all went on last night. I doubt much did on account of that storm. But still…”
Corrine stood and dusted off her seat. “Well, you can sit here till you become a fossil like in them rocks over yonder. I’m going.” She marched off toward Irv’s truck, which they’d camouflaged with cedar boughs.
“How are you going to get there?” he called after her. “You can’t drive.”
She started pulling the cedar branches off the truck and slinging them aside. “I can drive good enough. Ernie’s been teaching me.”
Irv turned an accusatory look on his friend. Ernie guiltily raised his bony shoulders. “In my spare time.”
“Hell’s bells.” Irv started after Corrine. “I’ll drive us.” Over his shoulder, he said to Ernie, “You stay and guard the place. Don’t do no cooking till we get back and keep those firearms within your reach.”
“Y’all be careful.”
* * *
Bill instructed Scotty to return Driscoll to the jail, leave a man there to guard him, then to bring a carload of deputies to Lefty’s.
He also ordered Scotty not to leave town without obtaining an arrest warrant for Mayor Bernard Croft. Looking dubious, Scotty asked how the sheriff planned on arranging that. “I’m calling the judge now.”
Scotty left with Driscoll, who had regained consciousness. His shouted protests over being treated inhumanely were ignored.
Bill placed a call. Thatcher overheard him threatening a judge to expose both his bribe-taking and the mistress he kept in Stephenville if he didn’t have the warrant ready by the time Scotty got to the courthouse to pick it up.
After completing the call, Bill went upstairs to check on Mrs. Amos. He didn’t stay long. “She’s better. Sleeping,” he told Thatcher as they left the house.
Less than five minutes after Scotty’s announcement that Bernie Croft had been seen heading for Lefty’s, the sheriff and Thatcher were speeding toward it, having no idea if their quarry was still there.
Croft’s notable town car, with Hennessy behind the wheel, had been spotted taking the turnoff to Lefty’s by a deputy who’d come off guard duty at the Johnsons’ property and was on his way back into town.
Bill took the turnoff now but didn’t go far off the highway before stopping. As he checked his pistol to make sure it was loaded, he said, “I’m waiting for that warrant.”
“I’ll reconnoiter.” Having checked his own Colt, Thatcher clicked the cylinder back into place and opened the passenger door. “Just in case I don’t come back, that poisoned bottle of bourbon is in your kitchen cabinet behind a box of oatmeal.”
“Only you would think of that right now.”
“Could make the difference in a verdict.” He hooked Barker’s rifle onto his shoulder by the strap.
“Take these, too.” Bill passed Thatcher a pair of binoculars. Thatcher recognized them as army issue and looked at Bill, who said, “They were among Tim’s effects.”
Thatcher left the car door ajar and jogged over to the trees that bordered the road. They were sparse, providing only marginal cover as he moved among them. The sun was high and hot. Last night’s rain steamed up from the spongy ground. Thatcher was breathing heavily by the time the roof of the roadhouse came into view.
He proceeded in a crouch. Still about a hundred yards away from the building, he spotted Croft’s auto parked in front. A boulder provided him an advantageous spot from which to take a closer look. Situating himself behind the outcropping, he propped his elbows on it and looked through the binoculars.
He wasn’t surprised to see Hennessy leaning against the front fender of Croft’s car, smoking a cigarette. He whisked a fly off his face. He took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped the back of his neck with it. He turned once and looked behind him down the road. Seeing nothing, he faced the building again.
Thatcher focused the binoculars on the screened entrance, and then on each of the front windows, but could see nothing through any of them. He watched for a couple more minutes. Nothing happened. He was about to turn away and return to report to Bill, when the screened door was pushed open and Gert appeared.
She called out something to Hennessy. Thatcher didn’t catch her words, but the former IRA fighter responded immediately by tossing away his cigarette and climbing the steps to go inside.
* * *
Laurel had lost track of time under the barrage of Croft’s questions, few of which she knew the answers to. He didn’t believe that, so he continued relentlessly.
He hadn’t hit her again, but the threat of his doing so filled her with dread. Her ears were still ringing. The side of her face throbbed. She could feel it swelling.
The blow had also fueled her contempt. She took pride in knowing that the only way the Honorable Mayor Croft had managed to subdue her was to strike her while her hands were bound. Some big man he was.
He never raised his voice. He ignored Gert’s snorts of derision over his “going too easy on her.” At her suggestion that she take a whack at Laurel, Croft had said, “I don’t want her dead.”
“I ain’t gonna kill her till she tells me where she’s hid that girl. She ain’t reappeared at the shack.”
“You see, Laurel?” Croft spoke with the dulcet tone and phony smile of a public official making a campaign promise. “If you’ll just tell us what we want to know, we can end this unpleasantness.”
What you’ll end is me.
She feared she wouldn’t live out this day, but she didn’t know the answers to Croft’s questions about Chester Landry. Why would he think she would? And she would never give Corrine over to Gert.
Croft asked her the same questions repeatedly, her answers never varied, but she began replying with mounting hostility. With her hands bound behind her, and Gert’s evident affection for her shotgun, Laurel didn’t have any means of fighting back except to show her loathing and defiance of both of them.
“Let’s try one more time, Laurel,” Croft said. “Landry went behind my back and offered to form a partnership with you, didn’t he?”
“No.”
“You’ve admitted that he returned to your house last night.”
“Yes, but our conversation was interrupted by gunshots. We ran to the scene of the ambush. From there he disappeared. I’ve told you this a dozen times.” Brazenly, she asked, “Did you have Davy O’Connor killed?”
Ignoring that, he said, “You never saw Landry again?”
“No.”
“He just ran away.”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t say where he was off to?”
“No. If you ordered my friend’s execution, may God damn you,” she yelled.
“Landry didn’t lure you into a business arrangement that excluded me?”
“He couldn’t have lured me into anything. He was slimy. I wanted nothing to do with either of you. If you want to know his whereabouts, go in search of him and stop wasting your time with me. I can’t tell you something that I don’t know.”
Croft sighed theatrically and looked over at Gert. “Get Hennessy.”
Those two words caused Laurel’s stomach to lurch, but she kept her expression impassive as the man came inside and took up a position to the left of and slightly behind Croft.
Laurel didn’t acknowledge that he was there, didn’t dare to look at him, not wanting to see on his ugly face either a fearsome threat or a taunting smile that would remind her of his groping hands.
Croft gave Hennessy a sidelong glance, then, when he came back around, slapped Laurel hard enough to knock her chair backward. Her head hit the floor with a crack. Hennessy stepped around, jerked her to her feet, righted the chair, firmly planted it in front of Croft, and pushed her down into it.
Croft’s arrogant face swam into her vision through tears of pain and fury.
“One last time,” he said softly. “Where is Chester Landry?”
“Go. To. Hell.”
He heaved another sigh and gave her the look of a disappointed parent. “Since you’re resistant to my rough handling, perhaps you’ll be more receptive to Mr. Hennessy’s sweet talk.” He waited a beat before smiling and adding, “Upstairs.”
