Cutting Loose, page 24
KCTV was making the most of their scoop. When he changed channels, the found the story hard to escape. After a while, he found a rerun of The Godfather, then he turned back to KCTV. He had not yet seen footage of the press conference in Nashville so maybe it was time to get it over with.
Soon the story was back. He kept the sound down until he appeared, hoping he had not made an ass of himself. Finally there he was, stepping forward to the microphone.
“Thank you, Les, Marvin. Uh, I guess it’s all been said. . . We, uh, did our best. It was a team job. Lot of people pitching in. The Delaney case had been stuck solid for a long time. We managed to link it to a murder case we were looking at.”
“Emmett,” called a reporter. “Have you talked to the FBI about it?”
“I sure have. And they’re delighted we’ve managed to crack the case. Monckton was kidnapped, so that makes it their business. It was my pleasure to hand over to them when we had a result. Law-enforcement agencies working together makes it easier for all of us.”
They kept him flapping his jaw for a while, until he raised a hand and stepped back. A moment later the phone rang, and Emmett, forgetting his embargo, picked it up.
“Emmett? Moose here.”
“Jesus, Moose, good to hear you.”
“How’s it hanging?”
“I’m just watching myself yakking on the tube.”
“Want me to call back?”
“No. I know the sound of my own voice, I guess. Listen, Moose, I never really thanked you for what you did in Belize.”
“Get outa here.”
Emmett turned the TV off.
“No, really, you broke it. Gave me a route to Monckton. Without that, we’d be nowhere.”
“Okay. Plaudits gratefully accepted. So what’s next?”
“Good question. I’ve got the FBI on my ass, maybe even bugging this line.”
“Really?”
“They do what they need to do, legal or not. Like we know. Hoover set the pattern.”
“Listen, Emmett. Watch yourself. You hear me?”
“Sure.”
“There’s a bunch of people out there mad at you.”
SIXTEEN
It felt good to be back home. The familiarity was soothing. He walked around the ground floor, then went down the stairs into the basement. So much had happened down there. There were so many memories. To find the essence of a person, their inmost self, was a precious experience. So much of an individual was superficial―the casual comments that mean nothing, the conditioned thinking, all of it no more than top dressing. To strip that away and find what lay below was profound and satisfying. That had become his world. He could look at his trophies and remember the events in every detail. The dead lay in their graves outside; they were his community. He could walk around the yard knowing they were his possessions forever: he had defined them.
Carey and Sol were different. Max turned suddenly and clenched a fist, thinking back. The newscast was still raw: that crumpled figure lay there in long shot in the farmyard. After all his searching, he had let that bastard slip through his fingers; and, as if Sol’s death were not bad enough, that fucking cop had appeared again. To release his rage, he had chopped firewood for an hour, until he was bathed in sweat.
Capp was dangerous. His face had filled the screen as he told Sol’s story; and not for the first time. He had shot his way onto the tube, and his appearance on that garage forecourt in Masonville when the barrel was opened had been a shock. Max, there on his couch had had a sense of heightened perception as he watched, as though something alive had moved to his touch: Capps had entered his life.
Later, Max had seen him again briefly in a sedan in Ratcliffe near Sol’s condo. Capps must have put together a lot of the story: he had somehow made a connection between the girl and Sol Monckton. How could that have happened? Had he made some crazy mistake? The connection, though, was there: it was a fact, and Capps had followed it. It had led him to that creep Noah Wetherspoon and Touchette; it had led him to the farmyard in Dickson County; and he had arrived there soon after the shootout. Capps was an enemy on a scale he had never met before. If he knew so much, perhaps he had realized that Sol had not committed that murder. It did not fit his profile, and Capps was capable of understanding that. Who, then, Capps would be thinking, had killed that girl? If it was not Sol, then it was an associate; and only two were on record―Carey and himself. Capps would know that this killing was a male act. There was only one conclusion: Capps was on his trail. After all those years of swimming below the surface, of being unknown and unknowable―dead in Delaney―he was now in the sights of this fucking cop.
It changed nothing: Carey was still his target. The need to kill her would always be there; doubly so, now that Sol was dead. He knew that Carey was also the cop’s target. Down there In that basement, among everything he treasured―his reference books, his mementoes, the gurney to one side, his tools racked neatly beyond―he became calm. There would be a reckoning and it was coming soon. Anger had to stay channeled, as it had for all those years. It was patience and care that would take him to Carey.
What was his next move? Yes, he could trail Capps, in hopes it would be lead him to her, but that was dangerous. His room for maneuver had become limited. Was Mack Pruett truly a dead end?
Finding Mack’s parents after their conversation had been easy; the details of his case were on file and available to the public, and a trawl through libraries produced the information that he had lived at one time in Fairfield, Texas, not far from Eastham Unit, where Mack was still in jail. He had simply driven to Fairfield, and looked in a phone book in a Post Office. There they were―Loomis and Etta Pruett, living at 32 Bewlay Avenue, Fairfield.
Bewlay Avenue was a country road with few houses. In the city, you could park and keep watch, but out there a lone car would be seen by a local at some point, so he drove past slowly and saw a well-maintained clapboard farmhouse set back perhaps twenty yards from the road. A Ford F100 pickup truck was parked to one side. There was no other vehicle. A barn and a silo were on the other side of the road. Pruett Senior, he guessed, would be either retired or close to it. He drove back half an hour later and the scene was unchanged. He kept driving. It had been a wasted trip.
Sitting in his basement, though, the day after that newscast, he knew he had to take another look at the Pruetts. Why was there an M. Pruett listed in Sol’s files? There had to be a reason. Was there another Pruett―a cousin perhaps? If there was a trail, he would find it.
He took a can of Bud from the fridge and drank from it as he walked around the basement. Idly, he opened a drawer and touched the objects inside. There were rings, a hair clip, a couple of shoes, panties, a cameo, a tress of hair, and the drawers below held more. He picked up a small handkerchief. It was the only possession of hers he had been able to find. It had been on a sideboard in the kitchen. She had been the lucky one.
Two days after they had met, he was sitting by the railroad tracks, hoping she would appear, when there she came, slipping through the grass and weeds. He raised a hand and she smiled and approached.
“Max, hi.”
“Hi yourself.”
“So what you bin doing?”
“Hanging ’round.”
She studied him. “Max, you’re dirtier than a dog.”
“Huh?”
“You need a wash bad.”
“I guess. Didn’t get under a roof last night.”
“The house is empty. My folks are out. Come on back.”
Beyond the embankment was a row of shacks. She led him by the hand into a small yard past the privy and through a back door that still had traces of green paint. In the small kitchen was a basin with no running water.
“Wait.”
She was soon back with a pail of water.
“Bar a soap right there. Face cloth. I’ll give you ten minutes.”
When she came back in, he was putting his shirt on. The handkerchief was in his pocket. She ran a hand over his hard torso and kissed him. He held her close, but a cog took that last turn in his mind, and he knew that if he did not hurt her he would feel nothing. A moment had arrived; he would have to leave then or submit to a need he was not ready for.
He kissed her on the cheek and said, “Thanks.”
He turned and went to the door. Surprised, eyebrows lifted, she said, “Will I see you again?”
“Sure.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
He waved and was gone. He would never come back; there would be no tomorrow. Running along the tracks, he knew in his heart that the mercy he had shown her twice would never be repeated in the years ahead.
In time, the darkness at the edges of his life claimed him fully. It was not a fall into the abyss: he was the abyss. The world he saw around him, the world of families, of commuters, of careers, of bowling alleys, of 7-11s, seemed to him to be a shadow-land, an attempt to recreate images on a TV screen. It was vapor and off-stage sounds. The existence etched inside his brain was the only one with substance, and his every waking thought involved an attempt to give it living form. Wondering why he was this particular person seemed futile: the sun was what it was and so was he. The words used to describe people like him―degenerate, evil, beneath contempt―were sequences of letters with no meaning. The taking of life was for him he affirmation of life.
The first killing had been so easy it seemed the most natural of acts. He was sixteen. The girl said she was thirteen. There was the meeting; there was the wooded area where they walked; there was the kissing and touching; there was the sweet moment of culmination, death, and release.
Memory was sweet too: it was a movie he could repeat, reverse, and fast-forward as much as he wished. Some loops were played more frequently as the years went by and the killings increased; those that touched that primal source most deeply. He learned with experience how to go rapidly to that certain point. By the time he went to jail in the January of 1961, his techniques were honed; but it was when he came out, and moved to the West Coast, that his final form began to emerge.
He slipped effortlessly into the new world that was emerging. People thought they were throwing away their shackles, but he knew better. They were children trying to wish reality away. If we pretend the world is beautiful, it will be; the wishing will make it so. When Charles Manson blew the smoke away, there―surprise, surprise―was the same old ugly world in which people did the same old ugly things to each other. Max, with the long hair, mouthing the hippy-dippy BS he despised, just carried on with his life. What did not change―what Manson had shown―was that it was still so very easy to kill people.
Manson broke surface later. When Max first came to the coast, the year was 1963 and the place was San Francisco. Life was a party, and he dove straight in. The old ways had gone so fast there was a strange new landscape in which people seemed both spoiled for choice and adrift; but Max, the rootless kid from nowhere, was at home with the lack of signposts. It was a playground in which he could be anyone he wished. What he had in abundance was sexual confidence, and he soon discovered that was all he needed.
Life was also money, and the getting of it. Lacking education and skills, he knew that crime was his only choice. One day in 1967, a short, skinny guy handed him a joint and said, “This stuff is new. It’s not bad.” He was right. They began to talk, and the guy said his named was Sol. Later, they went back to Max’s place and carried on their conversation. Sol was deeply into the alternative world, and Max could see an opportunity. If Sol doubted his commitment, he never said so. They robbed a bank a month later and decided they were a team.
The girls came and went in that wild life, but It was always Lara with her carefree style that he returned to. She reminded him of Rita as she might have become as an adult, and she wanted nothing from him except a good time. She made no demands.
A couple of months after he met Lara, Carey appeared and the two of them became friends. Carey, with her contempt for the straight world, and Lara, with her nonchalant, extrovert manner, seemed to fit together and make a whole. Max was intrigued by their friendship because he was more aware of their differences than their similarities. Lara was a free spirit; Carey was the product of her tight-assed upbringing. Max knew that at some level she saw him as a prole, beneath her socially, in spite of her talk of equality. Carey was hot and she knew it; but he was too canny to make a move. If she said no to him, it would jeopardize too much: her intelligence and cool head had made her a good addition to the crew. He knew, too, that his pride could not accept a rejection. She would look good, though, strapped to a gurney, her snotty manner just a memory.
He had kept his killings at a distance. They had all been strangers he had met away from his stamping grounds. Lara, though, had tormented him. He had good sex with her; he enjoyed her company; but she touched a deep part of him that meant the natural conclusion of their relationship would be finality.
It was a day in late September when Carey told him she was worried about Lara. Although she would sometimes disappear for a few days, she had been gone for two weeks. Max told Carey not to worry. Two weeks later, she went to Lara’s apartment and found a Hispanic family moving in.
“That’s Lara,” he had said. “Don’t worry. One fine day she’ll be back.”
She would not be back. Max had taken her to a restaurant in Sausalito that had a reputation for good seafood. A guitarist was playing a tune called ‘Maria Elena’ when they entered. They took seats overlooking the bay.
Lara smiled. “Tiburon across the water. You can see it.”
“Sure. This okay?”
“More than okay.”
They had lobster with Chardonnay and the evening sped by. Had he planned that it would happen that night? He was not sure himself, looking back. She was happy; she was relaxed; she was enjoying her life; and at the back of his garage was a 55 gallon barrel with its identification removed.
Those were good years; he was living his life unconfined. It was Delaney, though, that changed everything. The betrayal seared him. Dreams were tormenting. Time after time he would come awake sweating as he ran out of the kitchen and out into the heat and flames. Sometimes a couple of weeks might pass with untroubled sleep, and then, once again, he was opening the kitchen door and―
Was he imagining it? Where the fuck was the car? Had they really gone? It was impossible. Bullets hit the back of the house. He had the money bag in one hand and a shotgun in the other, and his mouth was hanging open in disbelief. The air seemed to be reverberating still with the sound of the explosion. Cinders and smuts were slowly descending. Fire was jumping from windows. A rooftop had disappeared. He saw a cop rise from behind a vehicle and raise a handgun. Then he was running, cutting across an open yard into the gap between buildings, and into a dry stream-bed, some five feet deep. The bed turned east, toward the media pack, and he kept running, head low, until he came to a concrete culvert. He paused in the tunnel, catching his breath, then he came out the far end and put his head above the level of the road. The tail end of the crowd of reporters was further down, all of them looking in the other direction at the smoke and flames rising into the hot blue sky. Here goes nothing, he thought, and ran on eastward to where the township died away into arid desert that stretched all the way to the sky.
At sundown he lay down in a coulee, dirty and exhausted, blood pounding in his head. If he survived this, he would find them.
The world seemed to be full of people who thought they had the inside information on the Delaney Three, and Emmett was starting to think they all had a theory about him as well. He was complicit in the bank robberies; he had been assigned by a Masonic ėlite in the Pentagon to hunt them down; he was an extraterrestrial who had been seen at Roswell: no doubt under the Stetson his head came to a point. For a while the nuts filled his horizon. If they were not yakking in the media, then they were on the phone or banging on the door. Moose laughed out loud when Emmett told him about it, calling from a safe number.
“I’ve never heard of a cop having these problems before, Emmett.”
“Me neither. I wouldn’t give this spot to a leopard.”
“Hey, Kramer―last I heard, he was in the toilet.”
“He gave me the serial murders, the girl in the barrel, and I’m running with it. After Monckton, he doesn’t have the clout to take it away from me. Right now, he doesn’t know if he’s on his ass or his elbow.”
“He’s not beat.”
“I hear you.”
Next day he caught a break.
The lockup garage was one of a row of thirty next to an industrial estate. The door was rolled up and a gaggle of police vehicles was parked close by. A camera flash from time to time lit the interior. Two plain-clothes detectives stood outside, waiting. When the photographer came out, a three-man forensic team entered.
Emmett turned off the road and entered the lot. The two detectives turned and watched as he braked and got out.
“Jesus, Emmett,” said the detective with the fawn suit.
“Hi, Lou.”
He nodded at the other detective. “Harry. How’s it going?”
“Yeah, Emmett. Okay.”
“So, homicide, then.”
“Looking that way.”
“Guys, hope you don’t mind if I’m here.”
“That’s okay. If it fits something, you’ve got, I’m happy,” said Lou.
“Missing girl―maybe.”
“You think?”
“Just looking, Lou. Nothing solid.”
“Okay. You saw the flyer.”
“Right.”
“That’s good. Uh, so, what we have―missing person, like you know, Jane Mendoza, 23, lives here in Giddings. Beautiful gal, never no trouble. Lives with her parents, Hector and Constanza, straight citizens. Two months ago, she was due back from night school. She didn’t make it. Normally she had a ride with a friend, but that person wasn’t there that evening. We’re guessing she got a ride with the perp. There’s no body. She’s just gone. But she’s not a kid to light out without a word. Well-raised, polite. It won’t end well. Not after this long.”
