I skidded to a stop in almost the same spot as before outside Leland Tucker’s cabin. I snatched a look each way along the road, saw no other cars there. The afternoon was bright enough, but with the sun lower in the sky than when I’d visited that morning, the scrub in front of the house was in shade, and the place felt dank. The rocking chairs on the porch were empty and still.
I ran to the front door and hammered on it, the sound reverberating around the clearing. There was no answer. I looked over, saw the two pickups were still parked at the side of the house. The breeze caught the trees and dappled sunlight moved and shimmered across the ground. I walked along the porch, peering through the windows, looking for movement, listening for sounds from inside. I came to the end and went around the corner of the house, followed the gentle slope down towards Stokes Creek. I felt my skin gooseflesh. ‘Tucker?’
I followed the wall to the far side of the building, had a view of the water now. I stopped still, keeping one hand on the corner of the house, as though there was some safety in that tether. I could hear the faint slap of the water against the bank. I called out again. No response.
I took two tentative steps towards the creek. Then I saw what the water was washing against, making the slapping sound. Not the bank. A figure, lying motionless, his lower half in the water. Clay Tucker.
I ran over, my stomach like a sack full of pins.
I crouched next to him and reached down to check for a pulse. His hair and face were wet, his neck too, but it was the greasy damp of water on lifeless skin. Dead.
I lifted my head, panic rising up in me. ‘Leland?’ His brother was nowhere in sight. I examined Tucker’s body for signs of injury, couldn’t see any. I shot to my feet and looked around.
I caught a glimpse of something back towards the house. It was on the ground between the pickups, hidden from view when I’d come down from the road. I moved towards it, a sinking feeling dragging on me like my blood had turned to lead, getting wise early to what I was going to find.
Leland was face down in the leaves. He was motionless.
I checked his pulse, knowing there wouldn’t be one. There was blood on his cheek, looked like it’d streamed from his mouth. He was gripping something in his hand. I bent close, saw it was a car key. A nightmare made real – seeing his own brother killed, then suffering the same fate as he tried to flee.
I heard a sound and jerked my head up, realising late that the killer might not have left. I stayed low, backed away from the body so I was shielded between the two pickups. I looked all around, watching for movement and listening hard.
Nothing happened. The trees kept swaying in the wind, and small waves rippled on the water. I could feel the pounding of my own heartbeat. I counted off two minutes, then made a break for my car. I jumped in and started the engine, glancing outside for any sign of danger.
The house was still.
*
‘You been talking to Clay Tucker.’
Barrett’s words haunted me as I sped away from the carnage at Tucker’s place. I envisaged him going straight from my motel to Tucker’s cabin; the terror in Tucker’s eyes when he saw him arrive, fearing the worst about Barrett’s intentions, then having all those fears met. I slammed my hand on the steering wheel, sickened by my own failings. The blood on my hands.
I pulled over at a diner on the road back from the creek, a dirty swill of anger, guilt and fear pooling in my guts. I used the telephone to call the police, told them there was a body in the water at Tucker’s address and hung up. I didn’t want my name taken down in connection with the call.
I was about to go when I remembered Masters’ warning from that morning – that if anything happened to Clay Tucker, he’d know to come looking for me. I braced myself against the wall, a new sense of anxiety rising in my chest, seeing everything with fresh eyes now: stopping at the general store to ask for directions to Tucker’s. My footprints in the mud around the bodies. My fingerprints on the window glass. I searched my memory, tried to think if a neighbour could have seen me scuffle with Tucker. None of the houses along the bank were in view of his – but then I remembered the houses on the opposite shore. At least three had a clear view across the narrow waterway.
I picked up the phone again and asked to be connected to Masters’ campaign office. I barely recognised my own voice as I spoke. A staffer picked up and called Masters to the line.
‘Twice in one day, Mr Yates; to what do I owe the honour?’
‘Clay Tucker is dead. His brother too.’
Masters let out a stunted breath. When he spoke again, his voice was a gruff whisper. ‘Please tell me you didn’t kill him.’
‘No, of course I didn’t. That’s what I’m calling to tell you.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘I found the bodies. At his house. I telephoned it into the cops just now.’
‘Goddammit, you went there after what I said this morning? You expect me to believe you went on out there and just happened to find—’
‘He was alive. I went there this morning and he was alive.’
‘And then you went back and he was dead? Buddy, what kind of a fool do you take me for?’
‘There’s more to it. Tucker told me Cole Barrett—’
‘Stop. Stop. Listen to me good: I’m not your attorney, if you tell me something incriminating, it’s not protected, and I sure as hell don’t want to hear it without due process.’
‘Jesus Christ, I know that, I don’t need an attorney. Tucker told me Barrett warned him about the fire the night it happened. When I got back to my motel, Barrett was waiting for me. I called him on it, and he knew it was Tucker who told me. Then he pulled a gun on me. Now you tell me that doesn’t make him suspect number one.’
‘No, that would be you. If your story’s true, I’ll grant he’s got some questions to answer, but right now, you need to drive yourself to the nearest police station and hand yourself in.’
‘I can’t. I’m onto something here, I know it. Jimmy Robinson was killed because he got close to it. It’s all connected – Walter Glover, the women he murdered, Coughlin, Barrett, the fire. I don’t know how, yet, but I will do.’
‘NO. Let this alone, Yates. If there’s something to find out, we’ll do it. Give yourself in and clear your name, that’s your best course of action.’
‘To who – Garland Sheriff’s? Barrett’s old running buddies?’
He exhaled. ‘Try Hot Springs PD. They’ll book you at their offices and you’ll get a chance to tell your side of the story. You can get out in front of this.’
I thought about Detective Layfield, wondered if he’d give me a fair shake, then remembered being suspicious when he said he wasn’t well acquainted with Barrett. ‘I can’t do that. Just know that I’m innocent.’
‘Yates, tell me where you are and we can—’
‘I’ll call you again when I’ve got the answers.’
*
I figured Masters would be on the horn to the cops as soon as I hung up, so going back to the motel was out of the question. Didn’t bother me. The burglary back home had made me realise I hadn’t owned anything of value in a long time. Lizzie was the only thing I cared about.
All I could think to do was run. Highway 70 skirted the top of Stokes Creek and carried me west out of town, crossing the Ouachita River. Cold air rushed through the open windows as I drove, the highway in front of me desolate. I kept the panic at bay by planning, weighing up what the hell to do next.
A murder suspect. A fugitive from the law.
I drove with no destination, waiting for some respite in darkness. When evening fell, I pulled in at a truck stop that was little more than a slash of asphalt through a break in the pinewoods. The sky was a dark shade of purple, the moonlight filtered and refracted by low clouds. I got out and leaned on the car roof, the engine ticking and creaking as it cooled. I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of it all.
Barrett had been adamant it wasn’t him killed Robinson. Not two hours later, Clay Tucker was dead. It wasn’t proof, but it was damning as all hell.
Barrett had warned Clay Tucker the fire was going to happen. Had to be him that killed Tucker, for telling me as much. Play devil’s advocate for a second: say Barrett didn’t set the fire – how else would he come to know about it? And the follow-up to that: who else would have a better motive than Barrett to kill Robinson and Tucker?
I picked through it in my head. Robinson was reinvestigating the murders of three women – Jeannette Runnels, Elizabeth Prescott and an unknown third – presumably the woman in the photograph. I took it from my pocket without thinking, looked at it again, her features hard to make out in the dull light.
Just what the hell did you have, Jimmy?
I thought about the initials I’d cribbed from Robinson’s notes: J.R., E.P. and N.G. – the first two now identified, and decent odds that the woman in the picture was N.G. Yet no one seemed to know who she was. I lingered on that thought, getting the feeling I’d missed something. I’d shown the picture around plenty, got nowhere – although there was always the chance someone had lied to me—
That wasn’t it. It came to me then, the oversight. I’d made an assumption without recognising it before – that all the murders Robinson was investigating happened in Hot Springs. But Robinson’s note on the back said she was killed in April – long before he started travelling here. Maybe I was asking the right questions in the wrong place. Maybe Robinson had started out closer to home.
I climbed behind the wheel again, two bad options crystallising: stay in Hot Springs, lay low, try to clear my name; I made the cops as heavy favourites to catch up with me if I did. Or go back to the last place on Earth I’d want to be. But it felt right somehow that Robinson’s trail would start there, and the more I thought about it, the more I saw it was the only move that made sense.
I guided the car back onto the blacktop and realised my scattergun course had already taken me some distance towards where I had to go. Maybe it was inevitable all along; drawn back, like a desperate wolf to a rotting carcass. I drove south, heading cross-country until the road joined up with Highway 67. The road to Texarkana.