Eleven

When he left the bank in Fairview Quarrie drove back to the station house in Winfield, where he found the chief in his office wading through a pile of papers with the air conditioner barely working and perspiration lacing his brow.

‘You’re back then,’ Billings said.

Quarrie perched on the arm of the ratty chair. ‘I got as far as Fairview and that shotgun barrel before the trail ran cold. It’s almost certain our boy crossed the state line so we ought to get onto the Feds.’

‘Already taken care of.’

Sitting back in the chair Billings laid down his pen. ‘You know, since you found that cruiser so quick I’ve been asking a couple of questions about you.’ He indicated Quarrie’s holstered guns. ‘From what I hear you’re pretty special with that pair of irons. More than special: they say there ain’t a cop in Texas can beat you when it comes to combat examination. They told me how you can draw and kill a man before he can pull the trigger even if he’s holding?’

Quarrie nodded. ‘I can do that.’

The chief arched both eyebrows. ‘Throwback to the old days, huh? Old-school Ranger like your Uncle Frank.’

‘They say prevention’s better than cure, Chief – ask any hospital Doc.’

With a smile then Billings gestured. ‘So, if I had a piece pointed at you right now – my old Model 10, say – all cocked and ready to go, you could draw and fire, kill me before I had time to get a round off?’

Evenly Quarrie looked back. ‘Chief, I could put a pair in you and holster again before you could get the message from your brain to your trigger finger.’ His eyes were a little dull. ‘Frank Hamer took a bullet seventeen times and on four occasions he was left for dead. It was him taught me to take care of myself, and if you’ve been checking you’ll know I got a son to bring up on my own. Right before she died, I promised his momma I’d take care of him so making sure nothing happens to me is something I study on.’

Billings puffed the air from his cheeks. ‘Seventeen times, eh? Is that a fact?’

‘And four times left for dead.’

‘You know, I think I read somewhere how old Hamer wrote the king of England during the war, something about a bodyguard of retired Rangers going over there in case the Germans made it as far as London.’

Quarrie nodded. ‘Yes sir, that’s what he did.’

‘Big letter writers then, your family.’ Billings seemed to be musing now. ‘I hear how your best friend is a black guy and you wrote President Truman about him. Something about a court-martial in Korea?’

Quarrie held his eye. ‘His name is Pious Noon, Chief. They said he was a coward, but he risked his life to drag me off a hill after I was gut shot and bleeding out.’

Eyes bright Billings nodded. ‘That’s what I heard. It’s what you told the president in the letter they published in the New York Times. From what I read, on account of it that boy’s sentence was commuted to life in prison but he ended up with just five in the federal pen.’

‘What’s your point, Chief?’ Quarrie said.

Adjusting his jacket, the chief got to his feet. ‘I don’t have a point. Just like to know who it is I’m working with whenever I’m partnering up.’

They drove back to Mary-Beth Gavin’s place only this time in Quarrie’s car. Parking outside the darkened windows of the rundown house, he looked up and down the street.

‘Must’ve been a hell of a racket going on in there and nobody heard a thing?’

The chief shook his head.

‘That’s the neighborhood for you I guess.’

Getting out of the car they walked the path to where Billings unlocked the front door.

Inside the house everything was just as it had been before. Nothing had been touched only Mary-Beth’s outline was fading a little where it had been chalked on the floor. Quarrie stood in the hallway with his thumbs hooked in his belt. Head to one side he considered that mark and the way the furniture had been knocked about. He was talking as if to himself. ‘He comes here because he knows who she is and she has something he wants.’

‘Quarrie, that’s your supposition, not mine.’

Quarrie looked sideways at him. ‘You got another idea?’

Billings shrugged. ‘B&E gone wrong; intended rape victim – maybe he couldn’t get a hard on.’ He threw out a hand. ‘I don’t know, Sergeant. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here like one of us is supposed to.’

With a smile Quarrie stepped into the room. He stared at the floor, the rug and walls where the spots of spattered blood had dried. Picking his way between the drawers, the broken mirror and smashed leaves of the table, he paused where the room opened into the kitchen.

‘Probably you’re right,’ Billings said from behind him. ‘He wanted something from her. We just have to figure out what it was.’

Quarrie took a few moments to look over the kitchen. Compared to the rest of the house it seemed relatively untouched. Opening the refrigerator he found milk and butter, a package of bacon wrapped in waxed paper as well as an unopened bottle of wine.

The cupboards yielded nothing but crockery and some cookware; a few cans of food and a sack of ground coffee. Mary-Beth had kept a little cork noticeboard pinned to the wall, though nothing was pinned to it and it hung askew. Nothing stood out. Nothing spoke to him and he eased his hat a little higher on his brow.

‘Chief,’ he said, ‘did you come across an address book or anything like that? Something with phone numbers in it?’

‘No sir, we did not.’

Quarrie looked back at him. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’

‘Not really. Not everybody keeps an address book. She was new to town and according to the neighbor that found her, nobody ever seemed to come visit.’

The neighbor’s name was Jane Perkins and she actually lived three blocks down the street, and wasn’t a neighbor so much as a woman who also worked for MacIntyre’s Farm Machinery. Opening the door when they knocked, she showed them into an identical one-bedroomed house, only it was neat and clean. About Mary-Beth’s age, she told Quarrie that her husband had died of cancer and she’d been on her own the last five years.

‘I been working for Mr McIntyre almost ten,’ she added. ‘He owns these houses and I don’t know if you knew that, Mr Billings?’ She glanced at the chief. ‘They come as part of the job and that’s why Mary-Beth was so keen to get it. It’s why she worked that first week without any pay and I had her staying here with me because she didn’t have money for a motel.’

Quarrie squinted at her. ‘She roomed here?’

‘Yes, she did, but only for a week.’

‘Where did she come from?’

‘I don’t know, sir. She never told me.’

Quarrie raised an eyebrow. ‘A couple of girls rooming together and the two of you didn’t talk?’

‘Oh, we talked plenty, but Mary-Beth never really said where she was from or what she’d been doing before. I asked all right, but when she didn’t tell me right off I didn’t figure it polite to be asking again.’

‘Did anybody ever visit with her?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Mrs Perkins said. ‘At least nobody she ever talked about anyway. I don’t recall seeing any cars parked at her place, other than hers I mean. But then she was only here six weeks. She was nice enough, I guess. But she was quiet. She kept herself to herself.’

Sitting back in the chair, Quarrie crossed his ankle on his knee. ‘While she was staying here did she call anybody on the phone?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Mrs Perkins twisted her lips. ‘She certainly didn’t when I was home and she never asked to use the phone. But then I wasn’t home all the time. Sometimes she was here on her own.’

‘Do you still have the bill from back then? When she was staying with you, I mean.’

‘From the phone company? It might be around somewhere but I don’t hang on to them as a rule.’

‘But you read them though, right? The numbers I mean, check for any mistakes?’

Mrs Perkins made a face. ‘I don’t know as I do so much actually. Not especially now you mention it, no.’

‘But you have long-distance?’

‘Yes sir, but only if I call the operator.’

Quarrie looked closely at her then. ‘Mrs Perkins,’ he said, ‘if it’s all right with you I’m going to need to sequester your records from the phone company.’

Billings looked sideways at him.

‘What do you need those for?’ Mrs Perkins seemed a little puzzled.

Quarrie indicated the window. ‘You found Mary-Beth’s body. You saw how badly she’d been beaten up?’

With a shiver Mrs Perkins nodded.

‘Me and the chief here,’ Quarrie glanced at Billings, ‘we believe that whoever did that to her wanted something. We don’t think they got it and that’s why they beat her up. We think that was done out of frustration, and if she had something they wanted then it’s possible she knew them from somewhere. It’s possible they might’ve spoken to her on the phone.’ He looked at the chief once more where he was sitting across the room. ‘The police department’s already asked for Ms Gavin’s records, isn’t that right, Chief?’

Billings colored a little before he nodded.

Where she sat on the couch Mrs Perkins tucked her legs underneath her and looked from one of them to the other.

‘Right now we know nothing about her.’ Quarrie’s tone was gentle but firm. ‘We have no idea who she was or if she had any family or where she lived before. You say she didn’t really talk?’

Mrs Perkins shook her head. ‘Like I said just now, she kept pretty much to herself. I asked of course, made conversation, but she wasn’t one for giving much away. She wasn’t married – I know that much – because she was on her own of course, and she had no ring on her finger. Whether she’d ever been married I can’t say. She only stayed with me that one week and it wasn’t even a full week now I come to think on it. It was only four days before Mr MacIntyre told her she had the job permanent. After that she moved into the house down on the corner and I only ever saw her at work.’