He hadn’t tried to rob the place. No one reported having their pockets picked.
The juke purred a trio of female voices, low and tempting. The speakers beat at my back. I chowed on cocktail peanuts and sucked beer. My concentration skittered around the room, picking up pieces of conversations and lonely muttering. Men were talking standard shit. Who’d beenwas-year9;t b of a ripped off by the boss, the government, the wife. Men with preteen sons talked proud. Men with older sons talked about intense disappointment. It was times like these that I was glad my family was full of men who kept quiet.
Someone bumped my shoulder and I spilled a quarter glass down my shirt. He didn’t say excuse me. I turned and glowered. I wondered if this could start a chain reaction that would land me on death row.
I glanced at the register. I could have it cleaned out in under ten seconds. I could wait for the bartender to go get another case of beer from the storeroom. Or I could sucker-punch him and nab the cash. No one would try to stop me. That kind of draw was always there for me. Knowing I could reach out and grab what I wanted at any time. Of course it was. I was a thief. The devil had to be in Collie’s ear all the time as well.
I wondered what set of circumstances would have to come together to send me on a spree where I would kill old women and nine-year-old girls. I knew my rage could send me into barroom brawls. But Suzy Coleman. I just couldn’t imagine anything pushing me to murder a little girl.
I stood and moved toward a table in back. As I passed the end of the bar, a middle-aged pro with greasy eyes put her arm out and grabbed my wrist. She smelled of Four Roses and stale hamburger. I thought if she was making a play for me this was the wrong way to go about it. She held on tightly without so much as lifting her gaze or saying a word. She was sitting with a john who either hadn’t been buying her whiskey fast enough or was taking too long cracking open his wallet and paying for her services. Now I saw she was using me to make him jump. He glanced up as if I was disturbing him and gave me the death glare.
I thought about Collie. I was going to be thinking about Collie for a long time to come, but especially in this place. Every scent, motion, action made me wonder. Was this what did it? Could this do it to me?
She opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind when she looked into my eyes.
I walked on, snapping her grip.
I got a table and eased into the bench seat and thought about my brother doing the same thing. It would’ve been a tight fit for him five years ago. He’d had a substantial gut. He would’ve had to suck it in. The table edge would be cutting into him. He’d try to ignore it, throw back another Corona.
I didn’t want my brother in my head, so why was I so desperately trying to get into his? It was a setup. I knew it. I could feel it. He was positioning me in some kind of a play in a game that wasn’t even mine.
I started to slide out of the booth just as the waitress came around. She was thin-lipped, frizzy-headed, bony- shouldered, and small-breasted, yet somehow exuded sensuality.
“Get you?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
Was there any possibility Collie was telling the truth? He seemed to believe it, but what kind of proof was that? He was at least as nuts as everyone else on death row, and that was a heap of crazy.
I slid back into the booth and knew I had to make a decision. Read the files or burn them. Stay or book. Give in or get the hell out. I’d gone this far for reasons I didn’t understand. Maybe I should head back out west. Maybe I should pull the job with Butch. Maybe I could show up at Kimmy and Chub’s front door and invite myself in. Had I come home to flame out like my brother?
“Fuck,” I said.
“What’s that?”
The waitress was watching me. She didn’t seem bored waiting. A hint of talcum powder trailed across her cleavage. She probed a bad back tooth with her tongue and winced but didn’t stop.
“Sorry. Give me a Dewar’s and Coke. A lot of ice.”
“You okay, man?”
“Sure.”
She tilted her head back toward the bar. “Flo over there wants you to buy her a dirty martini.”
I could guess who Flo was. “And why would she expect me to do that?”
The waitress shrugged. “It’ll make her more friendly to you, you know?”
“I’ve got all the friends I can handle.”
“The guys like her. Some of them anyway.”
“Not tonight.”
“Okay, man.”
I spent the next forty-five minutes reading and slowly getting drunk. My stomach was empty by now, and the liquor hit me harder than it should have. It didn’t slow me down. I kept knocking them back, hoping to disconnect. The pages flashed before me. Facts, dates, blood-spatter patterns, interviews. I knew the picture but details kept adding color and texture. More than I wanted to know.
The reports were about as cool and dry as they came. There wasn’t a hint of emotion anywhere, not even in my brother’s confession. He’d told the cops the same thing that he’d told me. There was no reason. He explained what he’d done that night step by step. How he’d moved from one victim to the next. He named the seven. He didn’t name Rebecca Clarke. She’d been completely left out. No one seemed to care.
The victims soon emptied of whatever personality I’d instilled them with. Paul Coleman. Sarah Coleman. Tom Coleman. Neal Coleman. Suzy Coleman. Doug Schuller. Mrs. Howard.
He said he hadn’t known any of them prior to that night. He’d had no grudges with any of them. He didn’t even know their names. He’d never seen them before. He’d chosen his victims completely at random. He’d driven around town until he felt the urge to kill and then he’d climbed out of his car and headed off on foot. When he was finished with one he’d proceeded to the next. He hadn’t done a thing to hide his crimes. He hadn’t muffled the gunshots. The noise awoke other vacationers in the trailer park, who’d called the police. Collie had been long gone by the time they arrived.
Why go on a spree and end it of your own accord? Why not go out in a blaze? Had his rage really been vented? Had he been angry at all? The papers described him as coldhearted, methodical, meticulous.
Collie hadn’t taken the stand. He’d never attempted to explain himself in court. His attorneys hadn’t bothered to dispute the Becky Clarke snuff. They figured he was already up for seven charges of murder so an eighth didn’t matter. They were adamant on a plea of insanity. It was a bold and stupid play, but they were strapped-Collie refused to recant his confession. Still, they should have homed in on that dispute and made it the central theme of their case. If they could cast doubt on that one killing, then they might shake the D.A.’s case a little. Becky Clarke had been strangled with a sash of some kind. They hadn’t pulled anyThe019 fibers. Collie had used a blade and a gun and his fists to commit his other murders. When the cops arrested him they found the gun unloaded on the bar where he’d put it.
So where were the knife and the sash? Why would he toss those and not the pistol?
The whole fucking thing was ridiculous.
I went through the paperwork again. I had the feeling I’d missed something. I dug around and came up with one of the forensics sheets. I scanned it, and most of the terminology didn’t mean anything to me.
And then there it was. No one had made a big deal out of it.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
Saliva. They’d found dried saliva on each victim’s forehead. No one suggested what it might mean. They only dealt in facts.
But I knew. Collie had kissed each of them on the forehead before, or after, he’d murdered them.
Every one of them except Rebecca Clarke. There’d been no saliva found on her.
I shut the folders and shoved them away from me. I sat back and listened to the juke crooning and droning. I kept seeing Scooter bolting across Kimmy’s front lawn. I thought about Chub playing it on the straight and narrow, running a completely legit garage. I saw my brother press his lips to the old woman’s brow an instant before he beat her to death.
No matter how I tried, that night didn’t piece together right. Where had Collie gotten the S &W.38 and the knife? He was a Rand. Rands didn’t use guns. It had been a clean drop. No serial numbers. Had he already been armed in the Elbow Room? I tried to picture it. If he’d been on the verge of going mad dog, why not start here, in this kind of crowd? Why drive around first? It seemed to me that he would’ve been cooling off then. Or had he run
