If he cared for her, he owed her this. Didn’t he?
Corey lay in the bed like a broken dream.
Not yet, he couldn’t call her. He would need more proof. Fingerprints. Dental records. The business of proving who lay in this bed meant more than simply picking up a phone and summoning the press. They wouldn’t run a story without harder evidence, and he had none.
Gooch came back into the room. Whit tucked Corey’s cool hand back under the sheets. Corey moaned, rasped, a shuddery breath.
‘Any trouble?’
‘Nope. The local drugstore sells them.’ Gooch produced a cheap disposable camera from the bag and began to snap photos of Corey from various angles. Whit had thought it an appropriate precaution. He told Gooch what Kathy had said.
‘So what are you thinking?’ Gooch asked.
‘I think Lucinda put him here.’
Gooch gave him a disbelieving squint. ‘I don’t like her, but if her child was hurt, she’d want him taken care of.’
‘He is taken care of. And his brother tracked him down here – he at least was in contact with this nurse here – and dies.’
‘You’re suggesting Lucinda killed one son because he found out about her other son.?’
‘I don’t know. And that missing girl, Marcy Ballew? She worked here, then she vanishes from Port Leo. She has to be connected to this somehow.’
‘Consider this,’ Gooch said. ‘Kathy knows that John Taylor really is Corey Hubble, long-missing son of a prominent politician. Maybe she wants to sell that information to Pete. And maybe the Ballew girl was in on the scheme. She goes to Port Leo to deal with Pete, loses her wallet, and ends up missing or on the run.’
‘If Pete thought Corey was in this town, why not just come here and get him and publicize the hell out of it? It doesn’t make sense,’ Whit said.
‘Maybe he didn’t know. She’s calling him from little Missatuck, Texas. Corey’s in Deshay, Louisiana. God only knows what story she told him.’ Gooch finished his roll of film.
Whit ran a finger along the burr of hair and scar along Corey’s scalp.
‘So you think Lucinda shot her own kid and set him up here?’ Gooch asked.
‘No,’ Whit said, ‘I think Delford Spires shot him.’
‘Why would Delford shoot a teenager?’
‘Before he disappeared, Corey told Marian Duchamp that he was going to kill Delford Spires. I think Delford and Lucinda were involved – he is still extraordinarily protective of her – and Corey found out. That weekend he vanished, I think he headed north to Houston, to the conference his mother was attending. Suppose Delford’s shacked up there with Lucinda. Corey finds them, there’s a fight, the gun goes off. Corey’s wounded.’
They would rush him to a hospital,’ Gooch said.
‘You’d think. But maybe Delford’s worried he’ll lose his job. Maybe Lucinda’s worried about the political ramifications of her lover shooting her son. Obviously they chose another route.’
‘How would they have taken care of him, though, if he’d been shot?’
‘She’s an RN. I saw her diplomas in her office, it got mentioned a lot in the papers when she first ran for office and she was big on health care, nursing home reform.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Gooch, but this is Corey, and he got here with a new identity.’
‘So how would this Kathy have found out about Corey?’ Gooch asked.
‘A Web site about Pete Hubble included a picture of Corey and the number to Pete’s answering service – sort of an on-line milk carton. Kathy might have seen that and realized she was sitting on a financial opportunity.’
A jowly man with reddened cheeks and wispy blond hair stormed into the room. He wore a short-sleeve button-down shirt crisp with starch. A succession of chins nearly hid his tie’s knot.
‘I’m Felix Duplessis, the chief administrator here. Who the hell are you people and why are you terrorizing my staff?’ he demanded.
‘We’re not terrorizing anyone,’ Whit said mildly. ‘I’m Judge Whit Mosley, from Encina County, Texas, and this is my associate, Leonard Guchinski.’
‘A judge?’ Duplessis blinked. ‘One of our nurses said you’re bothering this patient.’
‘Good,’ Whit said. ‘It’s about time someone bothered about him.’
‘I’m asking you to leave.’
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Whit said. ‘This man has been missing for sixteen years and he’s just been found, and we’re calling the police and the FBI.’
Duplessis gaped. Whit explained. At the mention of Marcy Ballew’s name Duplessis grew gray-pale. A return to the main office of the nursing home showed Kathy Breaux was gone. Duplessis paged her over the intercom.
‘What can you tell us about John Taylor?’ Whit asked.
Duplessis shook his head as he dug through a file. ‘Not much. He’s our youngest patient by far. He’s supposed to be transferred today. We just received a call this morning.’
Transferred. Someone wanted the evidence whisked away, dumped in a fresh bed. ‘How is his care paid for?’ Whit asked.
‘A trust fund pays for what the government don’t.’ Duplessis pulled a thick file with TAYLOR, JOHN on the tab.
‘Who administers this trust?’
‘A woman named Laura Taylor. From Texas. Austin, I believe.’
Faith worked out of Austin as Lucinda’s chief of staff. ‘Does she ever visit?’
‘Rarely. She was here, oh, a couple of weeks ago.’
‘What does she look like?’
Duplessis shrugged. ‘Big old girl type. Early forties, tall, heavyset, pretty hazel eyes. No nonsense.’
Pretty hazel eyes. Faith.
Whit flipped through the file. John Taylor, thirty-two years old, born in San Antonio, Texas, suffered severe head injuries in a car crash sixteen years ago and vegetative since the accident. He had been moved to Deshay six years ago from a home in Texarkana, where he had spent the past ten years. At the back of the file were the transfer papers from Texarkana, the signature at the bottom a loopy scrawl with the name typed beneath: Buddy Beere.
‘Oh, no,’ Whit said. ‘Oh, no.’ He reached for the phone.
40
David knocked on the door again. Claudia stood at the porch’s end, watching the oaken limbs sway in the wind.
Yeah, stay out of the way, because you’re not even an officer anymore, just a tagalong. Give David a peck, send him on his way, get on your own feet, find yourself a job. Maybe out of Port Leo.
‘Mr Beere?’ David called through the shut door. ‘Sheriff’s department, open up, please.’ He gave Claudia a half smile, warm, just happy she was there. She half smiled back.
They had driven out to Buddy Beere’s address in David’s cruiser, outside the Port Leo city limits, cutting through a grove of bent live oaks, and driven into a small clearing, studded with a few laurel oaks and a tidy cabin. A van was parked next to the cabin. Beside it was a shanty garage, tilting slightly with age. The cabin faced away from the road, faced away from the direction of town and bay, as though the little house had turned its back on the world.
‘Anyone home?’ David called. ‘Mr Beere?’
They heard movement inside then, a scuffling sound, someone hurrying across a wood floor. Locks unlatched slowly – six of them – and the door creaked open an inch. A brown eye – oddly reddened and squinting – peered out at them.
‘Mr Beere?’ David said.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m Deputy Power with the Encina County Sheriff’s Department. This is Claudia Salazar, you spoke with her on the phone yesterday.’ Claudia nodded, not drawing closer. She wasn’t here in any official capacity and didn’t want to give the wrong impression to Buddy that she was still an investigator. One hint of that and Delford, in his current mania, would press charges against her.
The eye blinked. ‘Hello. Yes. Sorry it took me a while to reach the door, I was in the bathroom.’